Abstract

Focusing on Guattari and Deleuze's collaborative critique of structural linguistics, this article claims that rather than offering an ‘escape from language’, Guattari and Deleuze recast language as a social and political practice. Through a reading of Guattari and Deleuze's analysis of Saussure, their reinterpretation of Hjelmslev, and a discussion of the concepts of order-words and minor use of language, the article shows how, to do this, the authors develop a social and semiotic critique whereby the very concept of language changes from representation to intervention in a material and social field.