1 - “I Speak, Therefore I Am”

Summary

Taking as an initial example Donald Trump’s promise to “build a wall” on the southern border of the United States to keep out undesirable immigrants, I take the symbol “wall” to show the four meanings that the term “symbolic” can have in its relation to language and power. The first is that language, like music or painting, is called a symbolic system because it is composed of signs and symbols that combine together in a rule-governed, systematic way to make meaning. The wall incident also gives us a glimpse into a second meaning of the term “symbolic,” namely the power of symbols to create semiotic relations of similarity, contiguity or conventionality with other symbols, that listeners interpret as such. The meanings given to the wall by the various actors are more or less conventional/arbitrary, more or less non-arbitrary or motivated by the actors’ desire to pursue their own political interests. The power to manipulate the meaning of signs and to impose those meanings on others and make them “stick” is a third aspect of symbolic power; it acts not through physical force but through our mental representations as mediated by symbolic forms. The fourth meaning of “symbolic” is the power to construct and perform a social reality that people believe is natural and given. The chapter discusses each of these four aspects of symbolic power – the power to signify, the power to interpret, the power to manipulate, the power to represent .