DENISE RILEY teaches at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her most recent books are The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony and Selected Poems.

JEAN-JACQUES LECERCLE is Professor of English in the University of Paris at Nanterre, France. He has published widely in the fields of philosophy of language and literary theory, and is the author of The Violence of Language, Philosophy of Nonsense, Interpretations of Pragmatics and Deleuze and Language.

Introduction; J-J.Lecercle PART ONE - D. Riley 'A Voice Without a Mouth': Inner Speech; D.Riley 'Bad Words': The Forensics of Spoken Injury; D.Riley PART TWO - J-J Lecercle Another Philosophy of Language; J-J.Lecercle The Concept of Language We Don't Need; J-J.Lecercle The Concept of Language We Do Need; J-J.Lecercle Index

The Force of Language illustrates how the philosophy of Language, if differently conceived, can directly incorporate questions of political thought and of emotionality, and offers the practical case of defensive strategies against the abusive speech. This follows a broad consideration of the inner voice or inner speech as a test case for a new approach to language, in particular as a way of radically rethinking the usual contrast between inner and outer through furnishing an account of how we internalize speech. The book's core offers a substantial critique of orthodox approaches to the philosophy of language form Chomsky and others; drawing on European political thought from Marx to Deleuze, it will move beyond this inheritance to explain and demonstrate its fresh conception of language at work.