• 기호학연구
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• no.57
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• pp.27-57
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• 2018

This paper aims at (re)investigating the interrelationship between Communism and language in terms of historical experiences of Soviet Union in $20^{th}$ century. Critically reviewing Boris Groy's famous thesis about Soviet communism as the "kingdom of language", in which Soviet system is regarded as the result of "linguistic turn, executed in the dimension of social practice", i.e., as a state of "total linguistification of society", I will examine it in comparison with another very interesting view on the language system of communism(socialism): Alexie Yurchak's controversial thesis on "performative shift" in late socialism. Yurchak's unique view on Soviet socialism as a specific discourse system, thoroughly illuminating peculiar paradox of Soviet discourse system in the period of late socialism, in which performative repetition of authoritative ideological discourses does not prohibit, but rather enable the possibility of creative deviation from or unexpected reappropriation of them, could provide us with profound insights on the problematics around the collapse (the end) of "linguistic imperial" of Soviet Union.