“Cultura del discurso crítico”: la identidad de los intelectuales según la perspectiva sociolingüística de Gouldner

Abstract

What is the identity of intellectuals? What are the elements that define it? In this paper we want to answer these questions from the perspective of a relevant but partially forgotten figure in 20th century social theory: Alvin Ward Gouldner. Gouldner is part of the so-called "linguistic turn": language, communication and discourse become the centre of his concerns. In particular, the way in which the author adopts this turn is from the creative combination of the inheritance of three previous approaches interested in these same questions: pragmatism —focused on argumentation and logic—, hermeneutics —dedicated to interpretation and understanding—, and “culturalist Marxism” —focused on symbols and representations—. With all these legacies, he shapes a particular sociolinguistic proposal from which he builds a new outlook about the specific identity of the intellectual class, which he will call “critical discourse culture”. The definition of this identity and its constituent elements will be carried out from the detailed study of the Gouldnerian work devoted to this question: his texts produced between 1976 and 1981.