of language according to Roland Barthes

a) ---Whatever the degree of culpability of the accused, there was also the spectacle of something which threatens us all, that of being judged by a power that will only understand the language in which it preaches to us. We are all Dominici in terms of power, not murderers, but the accused deprived of language, or worse, branded, humiliated, condemned by that of our accusers. To steal a man's language in the very name of language, all legal murders begin that way.

(about the Dominici affair, when an old shepherd was accused of a terrible crime)

Source: Roland Barthes Mythologies (1957)

b) ....Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply Fascist; for Fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.

Source: Roland Barthes Leçon. Leçon inaugurale de la chaire de sémiologie littéraire du Collège de France prononcée le 7 janvier 1977, Paris, Seuil, 1978, p. 14.