Contents -- Introduction -- The pervasiveness of Gramsci's hegemony -- Approaching language and hegemony -- Approaching language and hegemony -- Overview -- 1. Language and Social Theory: The Many Linguistic Turns -- Language, production and politics in the twentieth century -- The many linguistic turns -- Saussure's structural approach to language -- The structuralist turn towards language -- Philosophy's 'linguistic turn' -- The many other 'linguistic turns' -- Marxism and language -- Conclusion -- 2. Linguistics and Politics in Gramsci's Italy -- Gramsc's home, Sardinia -- The Southern Question and the Risorgimento -- The Language Question -- Gramsci's youth -- Beyond the Wide Waters -- Gramsci's linguistics -- Italian linguistics -- Bartoli's polemic against the Neogrammarians -- Summary of various approaches to Language -- Gramsci and Esperanto -- Conclusion -- 3. Language and Hegemony in the Prison Notebooks -- Approaching the Prison Notebooks -- Non- linguistic understandings of hegemony -- Two broad themes in hegemony -- Gramsci's expansion of 'politics' -- Language, philosophy and intellectuals -- Subalternity and fragmented 'common sense' -- Language, nation, collective popular will -- Language and metaphor -- The structures of language -- Two grammars of hegemony -- Spontaneous grammar -- Normative grammar -- Normative history in spontaneous grammar -- Normative grammar and progressive hegemony -- Conclusion -- 4. Gramsci's Key Concepts, with Linguistic Enrichment -- Passive revolution and ineffective national language -- War of manoeuvre and war of position -- War of position as passive revolution -- National-popular collective will -- War of position and new social movement alliances -- Language as a model for the national Πpopular collective will -- Hegemony, political alliances and the united front against Fascism.

State and civil society -- The history of state and civil society -- The state -- Conclusion -- 5. Postmodernism, New Social Movements and Globalization: Implications for Social and Political Theory -- Postmodernism, language and relativism: is all the world a text? -- Nietzsche, Saussure and Derrida on language -- Language and relativism in Gramsci -- Foucault, language and power -- Power in Gramsci and Foucault -- New social movements and discourse: Laclau and Mouffe -- Laclau and Mouffe's linguistically informed 'Hegemony' -- Globalization -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.