The characteristic « wooden language » of totalitarian bureaucracies can be described in linguistic terms as a distortion of the various «fundamental components of speech». When language turns «wooden», there is no longer a «subject» or «referent» to whom or to which the words apply, no real «interlocutor», no real exchanges between interlocutors, and no shuttle movement between speech and «the
... [Show full abstract] resources of the language» in which it is delivered. However, given that communication is always problematic, in that it cannot be taken for granted, there is no remedy when «language turns wooden» other than freeing it to bring all its different components into play.