Contents

[hide]

1Early life

2Career

3Works and ideas

o

3.1Toward a Philosophy of the Act

3.2Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics: polyphony and unfinalizability

3.3Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque

3.4The Dialogic Imagination: Chronotope, Heteroglossia

3.5Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

4Disputed texts

5Legacy
o

5.1Influence

5.2Bakhtin and Communication Studies

5.2.1Interpersonal Communication

5.2.2Communication and Culture

5.2.3Carnivalesque and Communication

6Bibliography

7See also

8Notes

9References

10External links

Early life[edit]
Semiotics

General concepts

Sign
(relation

relational complex)

Code
Confabulation

Connotation / Denotation

Encoding / Decoding

Lexical

Modality

Representation

Salience

Semiosis

Semiosphere

Semiotic elements and sign classes

Umwelt

Value
Fields

Biosemiotics
Cognitive semiotics
Computational semiotics

Literary semiotics
Semiotics of culture
Methods

Commutation test
Paradigmatic analysis

Syntagmatic analysis
Semioticians

Mikhail Bakhtin

Roland Barthes

Marcel Danesi

John Deely

Umberto Eco

Gottlob Frege

Algirdas Julien Greimas

Flix Guattari
Louis Hjelmslev

Vyacheslav Ivanov

Roman Jakobson

Roberta Kevelson

Kalevi Kull

Juri Lotman

Charles W. Morris

Charles S. Peirce

Augusto Ponzio

Ferdinand de Saussure

Thomas Sebeok

Michael Silverstein

Eero Tarasti

Vladimir Toporov

Jakob von Uexkll

Related topics

CopenhagenTartu school

TartuMoscow Semiotic School

Post-structuralism

Structuralism

Postmodernity

Bakhtin was born in Oryol, Russia, to an old family of the nobility. His father was the manager of a
bank and worked in several cities. For this reason Bakhtin spent his early childhood years in Oryol,
in Vilnius, and then in Odessa, where in 1913 he joined the historical and philological faculty at the
local university. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist write: "Odessa..., like Vilnius, was an
appropriate setting for a chapter in the life of a man who was to become the philosopher
of heteroglossia and carnival. The same sense of fun and irreverence that gave birth to Babel's
Rabelaisian gangster or to the tricks and deceptions of Ostap Bender, the picaro created by Ilf and
Petrov, left its mark on Bakhtin."[5] He later transferred to Petersburg University to join his brother
Nikolai. It is here that Bakhtin was greatly influenced by the classicist F. F. Zelinsky, whose works
contain the beginnings of concepts elaborated by Bakhtin.

Career[edit]
Bakhtin completed his studies in 1918. Bakhtin then moved to a small city in western
Russia, Nevel (Pskov Oblast), where he worked as a schoolteacher for two years. It was at this time
that the first "Bakhtin Circle" formed. The group consisted of intellectuals with varying interests, but
all shared a love for the discussion of literary, religious, and political topics. Included in this group
were Valentin Voloshinov and, eventually, P. N. Medvedev, who joined the group later in Vitebsk.
Vitebsk was a cultural centre of the region the perfect place for Bakhtin and other intellectuals [to
organize] lectures, debates and concerts."[6] German philosophy was the topic talked about most
frequently and, from this point forward, Bakhtin considered himself more a philosopher than a literary
scholar. It was in Nevel, also, that Bakhtin worked tirelessly on a large work concerning moral
philosophy that was never published in its entirety. However, in 1919, a short section of this work
was published and given the title "Art and Responsibility". This piece constitutes Bakhtins first
published work. Bakhtin relocated to Vitebsk in 1920. It was here, in 1921, that Bakhtin married
Elena Aleksandrovna Okolovich. Later, in 1923, Bakhtin was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a bone
disease that ultimately led to the amputation of his leg in 1938. This illness hampered his productivity
and rendered him an invalid.[7]
In 1924, Bakhtin moved to Leningrad, where he assumed a position at the Historical Institute and
provided consulting services for the State Publishing House. It is at this time that Bakhtin decided to
share his work with the public, but just before "On the Question of the Methodology of Aesthetics in
Written Works" was to be published, the journal in which it was to appear stopped publication. This
work was eventually published 51 years later. The repression and misplacement of his manuscripts
was something that would plague Bakhtin throughout his career. In 1929, "Problems of Dostoevskys
Art", Bakhtins first major work, was published. It is here that Bakhtin introduces the concept
of dialogism. However, just as this book was introduced, Bakhtin was accused of participating in
the Russian Orthodox Church's underground movement. The truthfulness of this charge is not
known, even today. Consequently, during one of the many purges of artists and intellectuals
that Joseph Stalin conducted during the early years of his rule, Bakhtin was sentenced to exile
in Siberia but appealed on the grounds that, in his weakened state, it would kill him. Instead, he was
sentenced to six years of internal exile in Kazakhstan.[7]
Bakhtin spent these six years working as a book-keeper in the town of Kustanai, during which time
he wrote several important essays, including "Discourse in the Novel". In 1936 he taught courses at
the Mordovian Pedagogical Institute in Saransk. An obscure figure in a provincial college, he
dropped out of view and taught only occasionally. In 1937, Bakhtin moved to Kimry, a town located
hundred kilometers from Moscow. Here, Bakhtin completed work on a book concerning the 18thcentury German novel which was subsequently accepted by the Sovetskii Pisatel' Publishing House.
However, the only copy of the manuscript disappeared during the upheaval caused by the German
invasion.

A commemorative plaque marking a building in which Mikhail Bakhtin worked.

After the amputation of his leg in 1938, Bakhtins health improved and he became more prolific. In
1940, and until the end of World War II, Bakhtin lived in Moscow, where he submitted a dissertation
on Franois Rabelais to the Gorky Institute of World Literature to obtain a postgraduate title,[8] a
dissertation that could not be defended until the war ended. In 1946 and 1949, the defense of this
dissertation divided the scholars of Moscow into two groups: those official opponents guiding the
defense, who accepted the original and unorthodox manuscript, and those other professors who
were against the manuscripts acceptance. The book's earthy, anarchic topic was the cause of many
arguments that ceased only when the government intervened. Ultimately, Bakhtin was denied a
doctorate and granted a lesser degree by the State Accrediting Bureau. Later, Bakhtin was invited
back to Saransk, where he took on the position of chair of the General Literature Department at the
Mordovian Pedagogical Institute. When, in 1957, the Institute changed from a teachers' college to a
university, Bakhtin became head of the Department of Russian and World Literature. In 1961,
Bakhtins deteriorating health forced him to retire, and in 1969, in search of medical attention,
Bakhtin moved back to Moscow, where he lived until his death in 1975.[9]
Bakhtins works and ideas gained popularity after his death, and he endured difficult conditions for
much of his professional life, a time in which information was often seen as dangerous and therefore
often hidden. As a result, the details provided now are often of uncertain accuracy. Also contributing
to the imprecision of these details is the limited access to Russian archival information during
Bakhtins life. It is only after the archives became public that scholars realized that much of what they
thought they knew about the details of Bakhtins life was false or skewed largely by Bakhtin himself.
[10]

Works and ideas[edit]

Toward a Philosophy of the Act[edit]
Toward a Philosophy of the Act was first published in the USSR in 1986 with the title K filosofii
postupka. The manuscript, written between 19191921, was found in bad condition with pages
missing and sections of text that were illegible. Consequently, this philosophical essay appears
today as a fragment of an unfinished work. Toward a Philosophy of the Act comprises only an
introduction, of which the first few pages are missing, and part one of the full text. However,
Bakhtins intentions for the work were not altogether lost, for he provided an outline in the
introduction in which he stated that the essay was to contain four parts. [11] The first part of the essay
deals with the analysis of the performed acts or deeds that comprise the actual world; "the world
actually experienced, and not the merely thinkable world." For the three subsequent and unfinished
parts of Toward a Philosophy of the Act Bakhtin states the topics he intends to discuss. He outlines
that the second part will deal with aesthetic activity and the ethics of artistic creation; the third with
the ethics of politics; and the fourth with religion.[12]
Toward a Philosophy of the Act reveals a young Bakhtin who is in the process of developing his
moral philosophy by decentralizing the work of Kant. This text is one of Bakhtins early works

concerning ethics and aesthetics and it is here that Bakhtin lays out three claims regarding the
acknowledgment of the uniqueness of ones participation in Being:
1. I both actively and passively participate in Being.
2. My uniqueness is given but it simultaneously exists only to the degree to which I actualize
this uniqueness (in other words, it is in the performed act and deed that has yet to be
achieved).
3. Because I am actual and irreplaceable I must actualize my uniqueness.
Bakhtin further states: "It is in relation to the whole actual unity that my unique thought arises from
my unique place in Being."[13] Bakhtin deals with the concept of morality whereby he attributes the
predominating legalistic notion of morality to human moral action. According to Bakhtin, the I cannot
maintain neutrality toward moral and ethical demands which manifest themselves as ones voice of
consciousness.[14]
It is here also that Bakhtin introduces an "architectonic" or schematic model of the human psyche
which consists of three components: "I-for-myself", "I-for-the-other", and "other-for-me". The I-formyself is an unreliable source of identity, and Bakhtin argues that it is the I-for-the-other through
which human beings develop a sense of identity because it serves as an amalgamation of the way in
which others view me. Conversely, other-for-me describes the way in which others incorporate my
perceptions of them into their own identities. Identity, as Bakhtin describes it here, does not belong
merely to the individual, rather it is shared by all.[15]

Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics: polyphony and unfinalizability[edit]

During his time in Leningrad, Bakhtin shifted his view away from the philosophy characteristic of his
early works and towards the notion of dialogue. It is at this time that he began his engagement with
the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Problems of Dostoyevskys Art is considered to be Bakhtins seminal
work, and it is here that Bakhtin introduces three important concepts.
First, is the concept of the unfinalizable self: individual people cannot be finalized, completely
understood, known, or labeled. Though it is possible to understand people and to treat them as if
they are completely known, Bakhtins conception of unfinalizability respects the possibility that a
person can change, and that a person is never fully revealed or fully known in the world. Readers
may find that this conception reflects the idea of the "soul"; Bakhtin had strong roots
in Christianity and in the Neo-Kantian school led by Hermann Cohen, both of which emphasized the
importance of an individual's potentially infinite capability, worth, and the hidden soul.
Second, is the idea of the relationship between the self and others, or other groups. According to
Bakhtin, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently
no voice can be said to be isolated. In an interview with the Novy Mir Editorial Staff ('Response to a
Question from Novy Mir Editorial Staff'), Bakhtin once explained that,
In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located
outside the object of his or her creative understandingin time, in space, in culture. For one cannot
even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs
can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are
located outside us in space, and because they are others. ~New York Review of Books, June 10,
1993.
As such, Bakhtin's philosophy greatly respected the influences of others on the self, not merely in
terms of how a person comes to be, but also in how a person thinks and how a person sees him- or
herself truthfully.

Third, Bakhtin found in Dostoevsky's work a true representation of "polyphony", that is, many voices.
Each character in Dostoevsky's work represents a voice that speaks for an individual self, distinct
from others. This idea of polyphony is related to the concepts of unfinalizability and self-and-others,
since it is the unfinalizability of individuals that creates true polyphony.
Bakhtin briefly outlined the polyphonic concept of truth. He criticized the assumption that, if two
people disagree, at least one of them must be in error. He challenged philosophers for whom
plurality of minds is accidental and superfluous. For Bakhtin, truth is not a statement, a sentence or a
phrase. Instead, truth is a number of mutually addressed, albeit contradictory and logically
inconsistent, statements. Truth needs a multitude of carrying voices. It cannot be held within a single
mind, it also cannot be expressed by "a single mouth". The polyphonic truth requires many
simultaneous voices. Bakhtin does not mean to say that many voices carry partial truths that
complement each other. A number of different voices do not make the truth if simply "averaged" or
"synthesized". It is the fact of mutual addressivity, of engagement, and of commitment to the context
of a real-life event, that distinguishes truth from untruth.
When, in subsequent years, Problems of Dostoyevskys Art was translated into English and
published in the West, Bakhtin added a chapter on the concept of "carnival" and the book was
published with the slightly different title, Problems of Dostoyevskys Poetics. According to
Bakhtin, carnival is the context in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish and interact
together. The carnival creates the "threshold" situations where regular conventions are broken or
reversed and genuine dialogue becomes possible. The notion of a carnival was Bakhtin's way of
describing Dostoevsky's polyphonic style: each individual character is strongly defined, and at the
same time the reader witnesses the critical influence of each character upon the other. That is to say,
the voices of others are heard by each individual, and each inescapably shapes the character of the
other.

Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque[edit]

Main article: Rabelais and His World
During World War II Bakhtin submitted a dissertation on the French Renaissance writer Franois
Rabelais which was not defended until some years later. The controversial ideas discussed within
the work caused much disagreement, and it was consequently decided that Bakhtin be denied his
doctorate. Thus, due to its content, Rabelais and Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and
Renaissance was not published until 1965, at which time it was given the title, Rabelais and His
World.[16]
This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, the quotation is introduced
ungrammatically. Please help us clarify the section ; suggestions may be found on the talk
page. (November 2015)
A classic of Renaissance studies, in Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin concerns himself with the
openness of Gargantua and Pantagruel; however, the book itself also serves as an example of such
openness. Throughout the text, Bakhtin attempts two things: he seeks to recover sections
of Gargantua and Pantagruel that, in the past, were either ignored or suppressed, and conducts an
analysis of the Renaissance social system in order to discover the balance between language that
was permitted and language that was not. It is by means of this analysis that Bakhtin pinpoints two
important subtexts: the first is carnival (carnivalesque) which Bakhtin describes as a social
institution, and the second is grotesque realism which is defined as a literary mode. Thus,
in Rabelais and His World Bakhtin studies the interaction between the social and the literary, as well
as the meaning of the body and the material bodily lower stratum.[17]
In his chapter on the history of laughter, Bakhtin advances the notion of its therapeutic and liberating
force, arguing that in resisting hypocrisy "laughing truth... degraded power". [18]

The Dialogic Imagination: Chronotope, Heteroglossia[edit]

The Dialogic Imagination (first published as a whole in 1975) is a compilation of four essays
concerning language and the novel: "Epic and Novel" (1941), "From the Prehistory of Novelistic
Discourse" (1940), "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" (19371938), and
"Discourse in the Novel" (19341935). It is through the essays contained within The Dialogic
Imagination that Bakhtin introduces the concepts of heteroglossia, dialogism and chronotope,
making a significant contribution to the realm of literary scholarship.[19] Bakhtin explains the
generation of meaning through the "primacy of context over text" (heteroglossia), the hybrid nature
of language (polyglossia) and the relation between utterances (intertextuality).[20][21]Heteroglossia is
"the base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance."[21][22] To make an utterance
means to "appropriate the words of others and populate them with one's own intention." [21][23] Bakhtin's
deep insights on dialogicality represent a substantive shift from views on the nature of language and
knowledge by major thinkers such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Immanuel Kant.[24][25]
In "Epic and Novel", Bakhtin demonstrates the novels distinct nature by contrasting it with the epic.
By doing so, Bakhtin shows that the novel is well-suited to the post-industrial civilization in which we
live because it flourishes on diversity. It is this same diversity that the epic attempts to eliminate from
the world. According to Bakhtin, the novel as a genre is unique in that it is able to embrace, ingest,
and devour other genres while still maintaining its status as a novel. Other genres, however, cannot
emulate the novel without damaging their own distinct identity.[26]
"From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse" is a less traditional essay in which Bakhtin reveals how
various different texts from the past have ultimately come together to form the modern novel. [27]
"Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" introduces Bakhtins concept of chronotope.
This essay applies the concept in order to further demonstrate the distinctive quality of the novel.
[27]
The word chronotope literally means "time space" and is defined by Bakhtin as "the intrinsic
connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in
literature."[28] For the purpose of his writing, an author must create entire worlds and, in doing so, is
forced to make use of the organizing categories of the real world in which he lives. For this
reason chronotope is a concept that engages reality.[29]
The final essay, "Discourse in the Novel", is one of Bakhtins most complete statements concerning
his philosophy of language. It is here that Bakhtin provides a model for a history of discourse and
introduces the concept of heteroglossia.[27] The term heteroglossia refers to the qualities of a
language that are extralinguistic, but common to all languages. These include qualities such as
perspective, evaluation, and ideological positioning. In this way most languages are incapable of
neutrality, for every word is inextricably bound to the context in which it exists. [30]

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays[edit]

In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays Bakhtin moves away from the novel and concerns himself
with the problems of method and the nature of culture. There are six essays that comprise this
compilation: "Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff", "The Bildungsroman and Its
Significance in the History of Realism", "The Problem of Speech Genres", "The Problem of the Text
in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis", "From
Notes Made in 1970-71," and "Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences."
"Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff" is a transcript of comments made by
Bakhtin to a reporter from a monthly journal called Novy Mir that was widely read by Soviet
intellectuals. The transcript expresses Bakhtins opinion of literary scholarship whereby he highlights
some of its shortcomings and makes suggestions for improvement.[31]
"The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism" is a fragment from one of
Bakhtins lost books. The publishing house to which Bakhtin had submitted the full manuscript was
blown up during the German invasion and Bakhtin was in possession of only the prospectus.
However, due to a shortage of paper, Bakhtin began using this remaining section to roll cigarettes.

So only a portion of the opening section remains. This remaining section deals primarily
with Goethe.[32]
"The Problem of Speech Genres" deals with the difference between Saussurean linguistics and
language as a living dialogue (translinguistics). In a relatively short space, this essay takes up a
topic about which Bakhtin had planned to write a book, making the essay a rather dense and
complex read. It is here that Bakhtin distinguishes between literary and everyday language.
According to Bakhtin, genres exist not merely in language, but rather in communication. In dealing
with genres, Bakhtin indicates that they have been studied only within the realm
of rhetoricand literature, but each discipline draws largely on genres that exist outside both rhetoric
and literature. These extraliterary genres have remained largely unexplored. Bakhtin makes the
distinction between primary genres and secondary genres, whereby primary genres legislate those
words, phrases, and expressions that are acceptable in everyday life, and secondary genres are
characterized by various types of text such as legal, scientific, etc.[33]
"The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in
Philosophical Analysis" is a compilation of the thoughts Bakhtin recorded in his notebooks. These
notes focus mostly on the problems of the text, but various other sections of the paper discuss topics
he has taken up elsewhere, such as speech genres, the status of the author, and the distinct nature
of the human sciences. However, "The Problem of the Text" deals primarily with dialogue and the
way in which a text relates to its context. Speakers, Bakhtin claims, shape an utterance according to
three variables: the object of discourse, the immediate addressee, and a superaddressee. This is
what Bakhtin describes as the tertiary nature of dialogue. [34]
"From Notes Made in 1970-71" appears also as a collection of fragments extracted from notebooks
Bakhtin kept during the years of 1970 and 1971. It is here that Bakhtin discusses interpretation and
its endless possibilities. According to Bakhtin, humans have a habit of making narrow interpretations,
but such limited interpretations only serve to weaken the richness of the past. [35]
The final essay, "Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences", originates from notes Bakhtin
wrote during the mid-seventies and is the last piece of writing Bakhtin produced before he died. In
this essay he makes a distinction between dialectic and dialogics and comments on the difference
between the text and the aesthetic object. It is here also, that Bakhtin differentiates himself from
the Formalists, who, he felt, underestimated the importance of content while oversimplifying change,
and the Structuralists, who too rigidly adhered to the concept of "code."[36]

Disputed texts[edit]
Some of the works which bear the names of Bakhtin's close friends V. N. Voloinov and P. N.
Medvedev have been attributed to Bakhtin particularly Marxism and Philosophy of
Languageand The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship. These claims originated in the early
1970s and received their earliest full articulation in English in Clark and Holquist's 1984 biography of
Bakhtin. In the years since then, however, most scholars have come to agree that Voloinov and
Medvedev ought to be considered the true authors of these works. Although Bakhtin undoubtedly
influenced these scholars and may even have had a hand in composing the works attributed to
them, it now seems clear that if it was necessary to attribute authorship of these works to one
person, Voloinov and Medvedev respectively should receive credit.[37] Bakhtin had a difficult life and
career, and few of his works were published in an authoritative form during his lifetime. [38] As a result,
there is substantial disagreement over matters that are normally taken for granted: in which
discipline he worked (was he a philosopher or literary critic?), how to periodize his work, and even
which texts he wrote (see below). He is known for a series of concepts that have been used and
adapted in a number of disciplines: dialogism, thecarnivalesque, the chronotope, heteroglossia and
"outsidedness" (the English translation of a Russian term vnenakhodimost, sometimes rendered into
Englishfrom French rather than from Russianas "exotopy"). Together these concepts outline a
distinctive philosophy of language and culture that has at its center the claims that all discourse is in

essence a dialogical exchange and that this endows all language with a particular ethical or ethicopolitical force.

Legacy[edit]
As a literary theorist, Bakhtin is associated with the Russian Formalists, and his work is compared
with that of Yuri Lotman; in 1963 Roman Jakobson mentioned him as one of the few intelligent critics
of Formalism.[39] During the 1920s, Bakhtin's work tended to focus on ethics and aesthetics in
general. Early pieces such as Towards a Philosophy of the Act and Author and Hero in Aesthetic
Activity are indebted to the philosophical trends of the timeparticularly the Marburg School NeoKantianism of Hermann Cohen, including Ernst Cassirer, Max Schelerand, to a lesser extent, Nicolai
Hartmann. Bakhtin began to be discovered by scholars in 1963, [39] but it was only after his death in
1975 that authors such as Julia Kristeva and Tzvetan Todorov brought Bakhtin to the attention of the
Francophone world, and from there his popularity in the United States, the United Kingdom, and
many other countries continued to grow. In the late 1980s, Bakhtin's work experienced a surge of
popularity in the West.
Bakhtins primary works include Toward a Philosophy of the Act, an unfinished portion of a
philosophical essay; Problems of Dostoyevskys Art, to which Bakhtin later added a chapter on the
concept of carnival and published with the title Problems of Dostoyevskys Poetics; Rabelais and His
World, which explores the openness of the Rabelaisian novel; The Dialogic Imagination,whereby the
four essays that comprise the work introduce the concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, and
chronotope; and Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, a collection of essays in which Bakhtin
concerns himself with method and culture.
In the 1920s there was a "Bakhtin school" in Russia, in line with the discourse analysis of Ferdinand
de Saussure and Roman Jakobson.[40]

Influence[edit]
He is known today for his interest in a wide variety of subjects, ideas, vocabularies, and periods, as
well as his use of authorial disguises, and for his influence (alongside Gyrgy Lukcs) on the growth
of Western scholarship on the novel as a premiere literary genre. As a result of the breadth of topics
with which he dealt, Bakhtin has influenced such Western schools of theory as NeoMarxism, Structuralism, Social constructionism, and Semiotics. Bakhtin's works have also been
useful in anthropology, especially theories of ritual.[41] However, his influence on such groups has,
somewhat paradoxically, resulted in narrowing the scope of Bakhtins work. According to Clark and
Holquist, rarely do those who incorporate Bakhtins ideas into theories of their own appreciate his
work in its entirety.[42]
While Bakhtin is traditionally seen as a literary critic, there can be no denying his impact on the
realm of rhetorical theory. Among his many theories and ideas Bakhtin indicates that style is a
developmental process, occurring both within the user of language and language itself. His work
instills in the reader an awareness of tone and expression that arises from the careful formation of
verbal phrasing. By means of his writing, Bakhtin has enriched the experience of verbal and written
expression which ultimately aids the formal teaching of writing. [43] Some even suggest that Bakhtin
introduces a new meaning to rhetoric because of his tendency to reject the separation of language
and ideology.[44] As Leslie Baxter explains, for Bakhtin, Because all language use is riddled with
multiple voices (to be understood more generally as discourses, ideologies, perspectives, or
themes), meaning-making in general can be understood as the interplay of those voices. [45]

Bakhtin and Communication Studies[edit]

Bakhtin's communication legacy reaches beyond rhetoric, social constructionism and semiotics as
he has been called "the philosopher of human communication." [46] Bakhtin concentrates heavily on
language and its general use."[47] Leslie Baxter observes: Communication scholars have much to

gain from conversing with Bakhtins dialogism."[48] Kim argues that theories of human communication
through verbal dialogue or literary representations such as the ones Bakhtin studied will apply to
virtually every academic discipline in the human sciences."[49]Bakhtin's theories on dialogism
influence interpersonal communication research, and "dialogism represents a methodological turn
towards the messy reality of communication, in all its many language forms. [50] In order to
understand Bakhtin as a communication scholar one must take all forms of communication into
account. While Bakhtins works focused primarily on text, interpersonal communication is also key,
especially when the two are related in terms of culture. Kim states that culture as Geertz and
Bakhtin allude to can be generally transmitted through communication or reciprocal interaction such
as a dialogue.[51]
Interpersonal Communication[edit]
Any concrete utterance is a link in the chain of speech communication of a particular sphere. The
very boundaries of the utterance are determined by a change of speech subjects. Utterances are not
indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one
another... Every utterance must be regarded as primarily a response to preceding utterances of the
given sphere (we understand the word response here in the broadest sense). Each utterance
refutes affirms, supplements, and relies upon the others, presupposes them to be known, and
somehow takes them into account... Therefore, each kind of utterance is filled with various kinds of
responsive reactions to other utterances of the given sphere of speech communication." [52] This is
reminiscent of the inter-personal theory of communication turn-taking. This means that every
utterance is related to another utterance, true to turn-taking in which the conversational norms are
followed in order for a conversation to have a cohesive flow in which individuals respond to one
another. If, for example, an utterance does not pertain to a previous utterance then a conversation is
not occurring. However, the utterance will likely pertain to an utterance that the individual once
heard- meaning it is, in fact, interrelated, just not in the context of that particular conversation. As
Kim explains, the entire world can be viewed as polyglossic or multi-voiced since every individual
possesses their own unique world view which must be taken into consideration through dialogical
interaction."[53] This world view must be considered when a conversation is occurring in order to
better understand its cultural and communicative significance.
Communication and Culture[edit]
Bakhtins life work can be understood as a critique of the monologization of the human experience
that he perceived in the dominant linguistic, literary, philosophical, and political theories of his
time."[54] True to his roots of social constructionism and post-modernism Bakhtin was critical of
efforts to reduce the unfinalizable, open, and multivocal process of meaning-making in determinate,
closed, totalizing ways."[54] According to Bakhtin, the meaning found in any dialogue is unique to the
sender and recipient based upon their personal understanding of the world as influenced by the
socio-cultural background. Bakhtins dialogism opens up space for communication scholars to
conceive of difference in new ways meaning they must take the background of a subject into
consideration when conducting research into their understanding of any text as a dialogic
perspective argues that difference (of all kinds) is basic to the human experience." [54] Kim argues that
his ideas of art as a vehicle oriented towards interaction with its audience in order to express or
communicate any sort of intention is reminiscent of Clifford Geertzs theories on culture."[53] Culture
and communication become inextricably linked to one another as ones understanding, according to
Bakhtin, of a given utterance, text, or message, is contingent upon their culture background and
experience.
Carnivalesque and Communication[edit]
Sheckel's contends that "what [... Bakhtin] terms the canivalesque is tied to the body and the public
exhibition of its more private functions [...] it served also as a communication event [...] anti-authority
communication events [...] can also be deemed canivalesque. [55] Essentially, the act of turning
society around through communication, whether it be in the form of text, protest, or otherwise serves

as a communicative form of carnival, according to Bakhtin. Steele furthers the idea of canivalesque
in communication as she argues that it is found in corporate communication. Steele states that
ritualized sales meetings, annual employee picnics, retirement roasts and similar corporate events fit
the category of carnival.[56] Carnival cannot help but be linked to communication and culture as
Steele points out that in addition to qualities of inversion, ambivalence, and excess, carnivals
themes typically include a fascination with the body, particularly its little-glorified or lower strata
parts, and dichotomies between high or low..[57] The high and low binary is particularly relevant in
communication as certain verbiage is considered high, while slang is considered low. Moreover,
much of popular communication including television shows, books, and movies fall into high and low
brow categories. This is particularly prevalent in Bakhtins native Russia, where postmodernist
writers such as Boris Akunin have worked to change low brow communication forms (such as the
mystery novel) into higher literary works of art by making constant references to one of Bakhtins
favorite subjects, Dostoevsky.

Bibliography[edit]

Bakhtin, M.M. (1929) Problems of Dostoevsky's Art, (Russian) Leningrad: Priboj.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1963) Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, (Russian) Moscow:

Khudozhestvennaja literatura.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1968) Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hlne Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1975) Questions of Literature and Aesthetics, (Russian) Moscow: Progress.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1979) [The] Aesthetics of Verbal Art, (Russian) Moscow: Iskusstvo.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans.
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics. Ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin,
Tx: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1990) Art and Answerability. Ed. Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov.
Trans. Vadim Liapunov and Kenneth Brostrom. Austin: University of Texas Press [written 1919
1924, published 1974-1979]

Bakhtin, M.M. (1993) Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Ed. Vadim Liapunov and Michael
Holquist. Trans. Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (19962012) Collected Writings, 6 vols., (Russian) Moscow: Russkie slovari.

Bakhtin, M.M., V.D. Duvakin, S.G. Bocharov (2002), M.M. Bakhtin: Conversations with V.D.
Duvakin (Russian), Soglasie.

Bakhtin, M.M. (2004) Dialogic Origin and Dialogic Pedagogy of Grammar: Stylistics in
Teaching Russian Language in Secondary School. Trans. Lydia Razran Stone. Journal of
Russian and East European Psychology 42(6): 1249.

Bakhtin, M.M. (2014) Bakhtin on Shakespeare: Excerpt from Additions and Changes
to Rabelais. Trans. Sergeiy Sandler. PMLA 129(3): 522537.

See also[edit]

Dialogical Self

Hubert Hermans

Lev Vygotsky

Menippean satire

Nikolai Marr

Pavel Medvedev

Voskresenie

Notes[edit]
1.

2.
3.

4.

Jump up^ Y. Mazour-Matusevich (2009), Nietzsche's Influence on Bakhtin's Aesthetics of

Grotesque Realism, CLCWeb 11:2
Jump up^ "Bakhtin". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
Jump up^ Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson,Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics,
Stanford University Press, 1990, p. xiv.
Jump up^ Maranho 1990, p.197

5.

Jump up^ Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist,Mikhail Bakhtin (Harvard University Press,
1984: ISBN 0-674-57417-6), p. 27.

6.

Jump up^ "Mikhail Bakhtin (Russian philosopher and literary critic) - Britannica Online
Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. 1975-03-07. Retrieved 2013-03-23.

7.

^ Jump up to:a b ". " (in Russian). polit.ru. Retrieved 26

November2015.

8.

Jump up^ Holquist Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World p.10

9.

Jump up^ Holquist xxi-xxvi

10.

Jump up^ Hirschkop 2

11.

Jump up^ Liapunov xvii

12.

Jump up^ Bakhtin 54

13.

Jump up^ Bakhtin 41

14.

Jump up^ Hirschkop 12-14

15.

Jump up^ Emerson and Morson

16.

Jump up^ Holquist xxv

17.

Jump up^ Clark and Holquist 297-299

18.

Jump up^ Iswolsky 1965, p. 92f.

19.

Jump up^ Holquist xxvi

20.

Jump up^ Maranho 1990, p.4

21.

^ Jump up to:a b c James V. Wertsch (1998) Mind As Action

22.

Jump up^ Holquist and Emerson 1981, p. 428

23.

Jump up^ Bakhtin

24.

Jump up^ Holquist, 1990

25.

Jump up^ Hirschkop, Ken; Shepherd, David G (1989), Bakhtin and cultural theory,
Manchester University Press ND, p. 8,ISBN 978-0-7190-2615-7, retrieved2011-04-26 Unlike Kant,
Bakhtin positions aesthetic activity and experience over abstraction. Bakhtin also clashes with
Saussure's view of "langue is a 'social fact'", since Bakhtin views Saussure's society as a "disturbing
homogenous collective"

26.

Jump up^ Holquist xxxii

27.

^ Jump up to:a b c Holquist 1981, p. xxxiii

28.

Jump up^ Bakhtin 84

29.

Jump up^ Clark and Holquist 278

30.

Jump up^ Farmer xviii

31.

Jump up^ Holquist xi.

32.

Jump up^ Holquist xiii.

33.

Jump up^ Holquist xv.

34.

Jump up^ Holquist xvii-xviii.

35.

Jump up^ Holquist xix.

36.

Jump up^ Holquist xx-xxi.

37.

Jump up^ Bota and Bronckart.

38.

Jump up^ Brandist The Bakhtin Circle, 1-26

39.

^ Jump up to:a b Holquist Dialogism, p.183

40.

Jump up^ Peter Ludwig Berger Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human
Experience (1997) p.86

41.

Jump up^ Lipset, David and Eric K. Silverman (2005) "Dialogics of the Body: The Moral and
the Grotesque in Two Sepik River Societies." Journal of Ritual Studies 19 (2) 17-52.

42.

Jump up^ Clark and Holquist 3.

43.

Jump up^ Schuster 1-2.

44.

Jump up^ Klancher 24.

45.

Jump up^ Baxter, Leslie (2006). Communication as...: Perspectives on theory. Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE. p. 101.

46.

Jump up^ Danow, David (1991). The Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin: From Word to Culture. New
York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 34.

47.

Jump up^ Gary, Kim (2004). "Mikhail Bakhtin: The philosopher of human
communication".The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology 12 (1): 5362 [54].

48.

Jump up^ Baxter, Leslie (2011). Voicing relationships: A dialogic perspective. Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, Inc. p. 35.

49.

Jump up^ Kim, Gary. "Mikhail Bakhtin: The philosopher of human communication" (54).". The
University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology 12 (1): 5362.

50.

Jump up^ White, E.J. "akhtinian dialogism: A philosophical and methodological route to
dialogue and difference?" (PDF).

51.

Jump up^ Kim, Gary (2004). "Mikhail Bakhtin: The philosopher of human
communication.".The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology 12 (1): 5362 [54].

52.

Jump up^ Bakhtin, Mikhail (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Texas: University of
Austin. p. 91.

53.

^ Jump up to:a b Kim, Gary (2004). "Mikhail Bakhtin: The philosopher of human
communication". The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology 12(1): 5362 [54].

54.

^ Jump up to:a b c Baxter, Leslie (2006).Communication as...:Perspectives on theory. Thousand

Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, Inc. p. 102.

55.

Jump up^ Sheckels, T.F. (2006). Maryland politics and political communication: 1950-2005.
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. p. 35.

56.

Jump up^ Goodman, M.B. (1994). Corporate communication: Theory and Practice. Albany:
SUNY. p. 242.

57.

Jump up^ Goodman, M.B. (1994). Corporate communication: Theory and Practice. Albany:
SUNY. p. 249.

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