Your linguistic alternate history is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Linguistic constructivism and at the far edge of the spectrum linguistic idealism do exist as serious academic positions within the Structuralist and Post-Structuralist schools of linguistics. Those two positions incorporate alot of postmodern philosophy so I'd have to warn you about jumping into the river if you're thinking about it. I'll warn you about this much: If a person argued that writing and langauge are inherently arbitrary (which it us) and by nature chaotic, in order for him to argue such and speak and write anything, he would have to act out what he is arguing. If you think the results of holding such a position would render reading a thinker's works very difficult, if not impossible, you're very much correct. That is my warning.
Of course the reason why you've never heard of such people is because Anglophone linguists and philosophers generally tend to dismiss their counterparts who hold such positions. American linguistics is generally more "scientific," which is why they do so.
It's all great stuff though. To give you just a taste of it, I know of one author who wrote a book on the history of ideas that talked about the gradual sociolinguistic formation of the concept of 'man' and 'humanity' in the social sciences and the physical sciences. At the end of the work he suggests that the concept of 'man' is outdated and might die soon. It's interesting to say the least.
Here's some other suggestions for a more low-brow linguistic alternate history ... I'm not too familiar with foreign languages so my terminology might not be fully correct, but should suffice.
In German there are three different forms of the English word "The" -- 'Das', 'Der', and 'Die'. The second signifies a male object, the third, a female object, and the first, a neutral object. If you were to refer to a woman in German you would say "'die' mother" whereas in English you'd simply say "The Mother." Many of the other European langauges make these sexist distinctions, though to what extend I don't know.
Anyways one could invent an linguistic alternate history where this gender thing is much more pervasive in society, to the point where certain attitudes have genders. One could associate freedom with femininity and order with masculinity. Now one could then go on to construct a alternate history narrative describing a world where these associations cause very visible social, cultural, and even political differneces.
To give an example, imagine with the scenario I mentioned. In a given male-dominated society, there is totalitarianism and order. Now, because males are naturally brought up to be embrace order, and females to be more free, one could imagine there being a female revolt against male order and authority and the creation of a female republic.
So there's my two cents. Interesting stuff though.
