I'm rolling with a paper final paper idea

My first paper was about signs and signification.  I study Bakhtin's heteroglossia and "The plurality of voices present in a literary work" (Bedford 224).  I compared it to Locke and expanded upon his theories of signs and signification and "mixed modes" as a form of heteroglossia.  Essentially I drew the conclusion that the "signs" which create language actually only create the ideas behind language.

So...here's what I was thinking.  I want to find a connection between the way language works with the way Gates make race work.  He claims that the way in which we categorize race "Are arbitrary constructs...But language is not only the medium of this often insidious tendency; it is it's sign" (6). So it's race as sign.  There are a lot of parallels here between Locke and Gates.  The "arbitrary construct" of race follows the "arbitrary imposition of men" that Locke discusses; especially when thinking about "mixed modes."  We might even look at race as a heteroglossic form categorizing.  Baktihn discusses the language of the lawyer--but not I'm thinking in terms of the language of the black man, or white man--all dependent upon the way in which they interpret each other's discourses.

Gates even says, "The word in language is half someone else's" (1).  So it goes back to the what we say, how they take it argument and can even apply it to Spivak's subaltern...but I'm still working it out.  Lemme know if anyone has any suggestions. :-)