Schizoanalysis as Pragmatics, or How to Unlock the Abstract Machine of Language to Build a Map

In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari associate schizoanalysis and the rhizome with pragmatics, which is a field of linguistics introduced by Austin, among others. This article examines the role Deleuze and Guattari ascribe to pragmatics, in contrast to the role that other linguistic philosophers ascribe to it. Deleuze and Guattari are critical of any definition of language as a tool for communication and information, which is centred around signification and competence. According to them, the main function of language is the transmission of order-words, so that language is inherently social and political – the prevalent definitions of language miss this dimension. The article discusses why Deleuze and Guattari call pragmatics the intensive and heterogeneous rhizome of language, and how both in theory and in practice this is often subjugated to or overshadowed by meaning and grammar, which are controlling and potentially suffocating aspects of language. It also discusses the significance of Deleuze and Guattari's notions of pragmatics as the rhizome of language, and of continuous variation as its abstract machine. In its concluding section, the article relates these concepts to Guattari's notion of transversality, in order to explain why Deleuze and Guattari equate schizoanalysis or rhizomatics with pragmatics.