Dialogue is generally understood as pertaining to two or more people speaking to one another, the idea being that the people involved either speak or listen to the other people. This is the case, but this is not its only definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This blog post explores how all language can be understood as a dialogue. This also includes cases where one is alone, accompanied only by one’s own thoughts. To be more specific, this it is dedicated to elaborating dialogism<\/em>, which involves utterances <\/em>that follow and anticipate one another, in dialogue<\/em>. It also addresses speech genres<\/em> or, more simply put, genres <\/em>that set certain limits to dialogue<\/em>, defining what one is expected to say or write and what one is not expected to say or write in certain social situations, i.e., contexts<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of this blog post is to build and expand on a previous blog post that focuses largely on the same matter through texts <\/em>and intertextuality<\/em>. It is also worth noting that the contents of this blog post is likely more difficult to understand than the contents of the previous blog post. This has to do with how dialogism <\/em>is not only relevant to literary studies, but also to philosophy of language. It expands on why intertextuality <\/em>is such a big deal and, in fact, a game changer, as argued by David Bloome and Huili Hong (4873) Reading and Intertextuality’, which is included in ‘The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mikhail Bakhtin’s philosophy of language, known as dialogism<\/em>, is largely, but not wholly based on spoken language (speech) and modeled after common sense notions of dialogue. While his work deals with literature, which involves written language (writing), he tends to exemplify his views in reference to spoken language. This makes sense, considering that characters in literature do engage in dialogue with one another, just as people do in everyday life. He opposes most linguists as he considers utterance <\/em>the basic unit of language as opposed to sentence<\/em>, as elaborated by him in ‘Problems of Speech Genres’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be more specific, Bakhtin (71) is puzzled by how linguists focus solely on dividing language into smaller and smaller units, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be tempting to add here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are not, however, considered to be grammatical units and therefore adding them is dubious. There is no strict definition of sentence<\/em>, but it is fair to say that linguists generally consider it to be the largest grammatical unit, as acknowledged by Crystal (432-433) in ‘A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This kind of analysis <\/em>can be useful. The problem is rather that linguists tend to ignore synthesis<\/em>. Among linguists, Louis Hjelmslev goes against the grain. In his book ‘Prolegomena to a Theory of Language’, he (28) states no matter how you analyze language, meaning cannot be found at any of these levels:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The so-called lexical meanings in certain signs are nothing but artificially isolated contextual meanings, or artificial paraphrases of them.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (28) is very adamant about this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In absolute isolation no sign has any meaning; any sign-meaning arises in a context, by which we mean a situational context or explicit context, it matters not which, since in an unlimited or productive text (a living language) we can always transform a situational into an explicit context.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n They are all meaningless in themselves, but capable of bearing meaning. For example, something simple as grapheme ‘a’ or phoneme \/\u0259\/ can bear a meaning, inasmuch as it is thought of as part of a larger system in which it is understood as ‘one’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason why Bakhtin (71) considers utterance <\/em>to be the units of language instead of sentence<\/em>, because it is real, as opposed to being conventional. It works, no matter what. He (71) exemplifies this with a simple rejoinder:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘Ah!'”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is clearly not a sentence<\/em>, yet it can understood as functioning exactly like a sentence, in the sense that sentence is thought of as the basis for linguistic analysis. To be more particular, the problem for Bakhtin (71) is that sentences are based on utterances<\/em>, but not all utterances are thought to be sentences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Frequently the sentence is then defined as the simplest utterance and, consequently, it cannot be a unit <\/em>of the utterance.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Some linguists do agree with him on this. As noted by Crystal (433), sentence <\/em>is for some a merely theoretical unit of grammar, whereas utterance <\/em>is a concrete unit of language:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[I]n this view, utterances can be analysed in terms of sentences, but utterances do not \u2018consist of\u2019 sentences.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Many linguists oppose this view, because utterance <\/em>amounts to any stretch of language, no matter how long or short, as explained by Crystal (506). This is, however, exactly the view promoted by Bakhtin. In fact, he (71) goes as far as to argue that an utterance may also be silent and result in some non-linguistic action. The boundary of utterance is therefore not defined by its length, but by the change of subject, as noted by him (72).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To clarify the terms, or to muddle them, the way an utterance <\/em>can be long or short is analogous to the way a text <\/em>can be long or short, as noted by Crystal (506). To further clarify the terms, or to further muddle them, the way a text can be long or short is also analogous to discourse<\/em>, which can also be long or short, as also noted by Crystal (148, 481-482).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bakhtin (68) also rejects notions that are commonly used by linguists, even to this day, such as speaker and listener, for the sole reason that language is dialogic<\/em>. By this he (68-69) simply means that all speech occurs in response to speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This benefits from further clarification. This not only means that person #1 prompts person #2 to speak, that is to say to respond to person #1, or in response to person #1, in the absence of person #1. It also means that person #1 is prompted to speak to person #2 because either person #2 said something to person #1 or someone else did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bakhtin’s colleague, and close friend, Valentin Volo\u0161inov also addresses dialogism <\/em>in his book ‘Marxism and the Philosophy of Language’. He (72) makes note of this interaction in language:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Any utterance\u2014the finished, written utterance not excepted\u2014makes response to something and is calculated to be responded to in turn. It is but one link in a continuous chain of speech performances.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Bakhtin (69) agrees with this, noting that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[A]ny speaker is … a respondent to a greater or lesser degree[,] … not … the first speaker, the one who disturbs the eternal silence of the universe.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Moreover, he (69) summarizes this in a very similar manner as Volo\u0161inov:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Any utterance is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other utterances.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Note how they both specify the way dialogue <\/em>works. Person #1 not only responds to someone, perhaps to person #2, if this imaginary example involves only two people, but what is said by person #1 to person #2 is also formulated in a certain way, in anticipation of person #2’s response to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also worth noting that response does not mean acknowledgement, nor agreement as, for Bakhtin (69-70), the purpose of language is not merely to communicate information and to verify that the other person understood it. Everyone involved plays an active role in dialogue<\/em>, regardless of whether they say something. It is they to whom others respond and\/or their responses who others anticipate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also for this reason that Volo\u0161inov (38, 72) states that while it may seem like speech, both outer speech<\/em> (speaking) and inner speech<\/em> (thinking) included, are monologic<\/em>, originating from a speaker, they are, in fact, dialogic<\/em>. It is worth emphasizing that he (38) indeed states that even thinking works this way. To be clear, there is no other person, only an imaginary person, as specified by him (85):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[I]n the absence of a real addressee, an addressee is presupposed in the person, so to speak, of a normal representative of the social group to which the speaker This happens all the time. People often think what they will say when they meet a person. In fact, it could be argued that all utterances incorporate both, considering that an utterance always responds to another utterance and anticipates another utterance. When we anticipate what someone else will say to us in response, it is an imaginary person that we are addressing and not the person who we will say it to and will be addressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, I say something to you. What I say to you is conditioned by what someone else has said. To keep this simple, that someone is you. I am therefore responding to you. At the same time, I am also thinking in anticipation of your response. This imaginary addressee can impact the dialogue considerably. If I anticipate that your response is not going to be positive, I may refrain from saying something to you. I might miss out on something, just as you might, because of the intrusion of an imaginary addressee. This is not to say that this is necessarily a problem, considering that it may well be that your response is not going to be positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That intrusion of an imaginary addressee may also be someone else, even a non-existing person. Therefore, what one says may not only be in anticipation of what one’s addressee might say in response, but also in anticipation of what someone else might say in response to it. That other person may also be present, but that does not necessarily have to be the case. One may imagine that what one is about to say to someone may end up being relayed to someone else and thus refrain from saying it. One may also do that for the exact opposite reason, in hopes of that being relayed to someone else, with or without the other person realizing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This also applies not only to speech, but also to writing. What one has read or anticipates reading may also prompt one to speak or write something, to someone. This is also the case with other modes of expression, but this is beyond the scope of blog post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This dialogue <\/em>that one engages in, with oneself (inner speech<\/em>) and with others (outer speech<\/em>), means that it is, as if, one had multiple voices, instead of just one voice, like in a monologue<\/em>. Bakhtin (220) refers to this dialogue of multiple voices as polyphony<\/em> and contrasts it with the homophony <\/em>of a single voiced monologue in ‘Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bakhtin (6) further elaborates polyphony <\/em>in his book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What unfolds in [Fyodor Dostoevsky’s] works is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses, with equal rights and each with its own world, combine but are not merged in the unity of the event.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In Bakhtin’s (6-7) view, what is remarkable about Dostoevsky’s work is that while he is the author, to whom that work is attributed to, and the writer, the person who wrote those works, his characters have voices of their own, like people, and they are not just his puppets who do his bidding, according to his grand design. He does not write a monologue<\/em>, like writing down his views, and make his characters play their part expressing this monologue. There is a plot, but the characters are not merely there, in his work, to play their parts in that plot. Instead, they interact with others, in dialogue <\/em>with another, just like people do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes a work of art, such as a novel or a video game, dialogic <\/em>and polyphonic <\/em>as opposed to monologic <\/em>and homophonic <\/em>is exactly that it functions the way everyday life functions. Bakhtin (298) clarifies this in his own notes that are included in the same book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Dostoevsky uncovered the dialogic nature of societal life, of the life of a human being. Not ready-made existence, whose meaning the writer must uncover, but open-ended dialogue with an evolving multi-voiced meaning.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This applies not only to famous authors, such as Dostoevsky, and works of literature, such as Dostoevsky’s novels, but to just about everyone and everyday life, as noted by Bakhtin (3). In his (270) view, polyphony <\/em>is crucial to the way we think (inner speech<\/em>) and express ourselves (outer speech<\/em>):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This [polyphonic artistic] mode of thinking makes available those sides of a human being, and above all the thinking human consciousness and the dialogic sphere of its existence<\/em>, which are not subject to artistic assimilation from monologic positions<\/em>.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is fair to say that he is particularly adamant about the importance of polyphony<\/em>, as he (271) repeats that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[T]he thinking human consciousness and the dialogic sphere in which this consciousness exists<\/em>, in all its depth and specificity, cannot be reached through a monologic artistic approach.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It can be difficult to comprehend how creating a literary or, more broadly speaking, artistic world in which characters engage in dialogue <\/em>with one another has anything to do with how people express themselves through language in everyday life. It is therefore worth emphasizing that a work of art, such as a novel, merely exhibits how it is possible for one person to hold multiple views and speak in multiple voices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Heteroglossia<\/em>, another term coined by Bakhtin, helps us to better understand this. Nearly everyone speaks some language, which is typically understood as being a <\/em>language. These languages are often standardized languages, such as English or French. People are expected are expected adhere to them, instead of speaking and writing in some non-standard form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Bakhtin, there are kinds of tendencies when it comes to languages, as elaborated by him (67-68) in his essay in ‘From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse’. Firstly, languages tend undergo centralization and unification. This involves a normative idea that everyone speaks and writes the same way and that it is proper to do so. Secondly, languages also tend to undergo decentralization and diversification. This resists the normativity imposed by people on language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are also two related terms, monoglossia <\/em>and polyglossia<\/em>, that Bakhtin uses in connection to heteroglossia<\/em>. He (12) acknowledges in another essay, ‘Epic and Novel’, that monoglossia is treats language as being pure and therefore it manifests the first tendency. Polyglossia makes room for multiple, pure languages, but it simultaneously contradicts this purity, as noted by Bakhtin (68) in ‘From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse’. It therefore manifests the first tendency, but it also simultaneously manifests the second tendency as it reveals that there is no one pure language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heteroglossia <\/em>is, nonetheless, more crucial to Bakhtin’s conception of language than monoglossia <\/em>and polyglossia<\/em>. It manifests the second tendency as it reveals not only that there are different languages, but that none of them are ever pure, no matter how one attempts to purify them. There are these “territorial dialects, social and professional dialects and jargons, literary language”, etc., within each language, as he (12) points out in ‘Epic and Novel’. Even if we ignore this diversity and diversification, it is impossible to designate a pure state of language, as indicated by him (66) in ‘From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse’:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[O]ne’s own language is never a single language: in it there are always survivals of the past and a potential for other-languagedness that is more or less sharply perceived by the It is worth noting that this is a not mere academic matter pertaining to how one classifies something as a language, a dialect, a sociolect, a slang or a jargon. Volo\u0161inov (85) comments on this matter, noting that people do not speak the same way to everyone. Instead, the way they speak to others depends on who they speak to. To be more specific, it is one thing to speak to a member of the same social group and another thing to speak to someone who is a member of some other social group. One’s status also matters. It is one thing to speak to one’s superordinate and another thing to speak to one’s subordinate. It also matters considerably how close people are to one another, for example whether they are related to one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari comment on this matter discussed by Bakhtin and Volo\u0161inov. They state in their (94) book ‘A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia’ that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In the course of a single day, an individual repeatedly passes from language to language. He successively speaks as ‘father to son’ and as a boss; to his lover, he speaks an infantilized language; while sleeping he is plunged into an oniric discourse, then abruptly returns to a professional language when the telephone rings.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The point they make is that people are constantly switching between codes, speaking in this and\/or that way, depending on the context<\/em>. Elsewhere in the book they (7) state that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[T]here is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages. There is no ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogeneous linguistic community.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This does not, however, mean that there is nothing systematic about language, nor that it is simply subjective<\/em>. In Volo\u0161inov’s (85-86) view, we are always part of various social groups and habitually speak in ways in which we expect others to understand us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This also accounts for how anticipation is always partly imaginary, even if the people know one another really well. This has to do with how the addresser, for example me, must keep in mind that the addressee, for example you, must also be able to understand it, as noted by Volo\u0161inov (86):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A word is territory shared by both addresser and addressee[.]”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n By this he does not mean that the addresser does not say something, or write something, and the addressee does not hear it, or read it. Instead, what he (86) means that they must both know the words and their common use cases, which they have learned from other people, in speech or writing. Bakhtin (69) also makes note of this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[One] presupposes not only the existence of the language sys\u00adtem [one] is using, but also the existence of preceding utterances\u2014[one’s] own and others’\u2014with which his given utterance enters into one kind of relation or another (builds on them, polemicizes with them, or simply presumes that they are already known to the listener).”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n People must also know how those words relate to other words and what kinds of expectations there are related those words, as further clarified by Volo\u0161inov (86). For example, while it might be possible to get the point across by saying something to someone, it might be considered inappropriate, by that someone and\/or by someone else, because of one’s own or someone else’s background, relation to the other person or persons and\/or social standing, as also acknowledged by him (86-87).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This complicates matters considerably. One is always responding to someone (one or many; present, absent or imaginary) and in anticipation of someone’s response (one or many; present, absent or imaginary). In addition, one is also aware of the contexts<\/em>, as further specified by him (60):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances<\/em>. These we may call speech genres<\/em>.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is worth noting that while each utterance <\/em>is unique, i.e., time and space specific, and while each context <\/em>is equally unique, i.e., time and space specific, people become keenly aware of the utterances they are expected to utter in different kinds of contexts. This is what Bakhtin (60) refers to as speech genres<\/em> in ‘The Problem of Speech Genres’. Volo\u0161inov (20) also refers to them as speech genres and, more specifically, as behavioral speech genres<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To account for these speech genres<\/em>, Bakhtin (61-62) classifies them as being either primary or secondary genres. The former are more simplistic and immediate. They consist of everyday language. The latter are more complex and distanced. They consist of specialized language that is typical of, for example, arts, politics and science. Another way of explaining this is that secondary genres are composites of primary genres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In linguistics, these speech genres are more commonly referred to as genres <\/em>and registers<\/em>, as explained by John Frow (73) in his article ‘Discourse Genres’. According to Crystal (210), a genre is a variety of language that is generally by its composition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A genre imposes several identifiable characteristics on a use of language, notably in relation to subject-matter, purpose … , textual structure, form of argumentation, and level of formality.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To provide another definition, John Swales (58) defines them in his book ‘Genre Analysis: English in academic and research settings’ as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which serve some set of communicative purposes … that are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There are all kinds of genres<\/em>, such novels and poems, as noted by Crystal (210). What is common within a genre is likeness that applies to “structure, style, content and intended audience”, as explained by Swales (58).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Register <\/em>has many meanings among linguists. However, when it is used in a similar manner as genre<\/em>, it has to do with what people say or write and how they say or write it in certain social situations, as elaborated by Crystal (409) and Frow (73). It is a context dependent language variety that has recurring features, as further elaborated by Frow (73).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also worth noting that register <\/em>is often used as defined by British linguist Michael Halliday, as recognized by Crystal (409) and Frow (73). It therefore accounts for field<\/em>, i.e., the type of activity, tenor<\/em>, i.e., the people involved in the activity, and mode<\/em>, i.e., the ways in which the activity takes place, as explained by Frow (73-74).<\/p>\n\n\n\n While genres <\/em>and registers <\/em>are, perhaps, more familiar to linguists than speech genre<\/em>s, and genres are likely most familiar to most people, it is difficult to classify texts<\/em>, discourses <\/em>and utterances <\/em>in this way, no matter what term one prefers. It gets even more complex if we account for how genres can be classified as having subgenres <\/em>and how register can be classified as having subregisters<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, what matters is that no matter what one says, writes or, more broadly speaking, expresses, it is always constrained by the speech genre<\/em>, genre <\/em>or register<\/em>. One cannot say, write or express whatever one wishes, as explained by Frow (73):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The production of meaning is … always highly specified by the rules of the discourse structure in which it occurs, and the structure of the genres of discourse is directly correlated with the semiotic constraints of the speech situation.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is also how philosopher Michel Foucault defines discourse<\/em>, as acknowledged by Frow (79). In ‘The Archaeology of Knowledge’, Foucault (49) states that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[A] group of rules proper to discursive practice … define not the dumb existence of reality, nor the canonical use of vocabulary, but the ordering of objects.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In Foucault’s (49) view, words do not merely refer to objects, nor to other words. Instead, for him (49), discourse <\/em>is all about the linguistic “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Volo\u0161inov further specifies this matter. In his view, there is no distinction between experience and semiotic expressions, of which linguistics expressions (text <\/em>or discourse<\/em>) are particularly important. He (26) states that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The reality of the inner psyche is the same reality as that of the sign<\/em>.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (26) also reiterates this as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Psychic experience is the semiotic expression of the contact between the organism and the outside environment”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (21) further specifies this in another book, ‘Freudianism: A Marxist Critique’, noting that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n “[W]e do, after all, think and feel and desire with the What might come as a surprise to you, he (21) as far as to state that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This process of inner speech is just as material as is outward speech.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It may take some getting used to, but he indeed states this. Not only is language and psyche more or less one and the same thing to us, as this is how we comprehend ourselves, and others, but also that thinking is an equally material act as speaking or writing, or expressing ourselves in any other way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this is not to say that this is all there is to humans. He (26, 29) acknowledges in ‘Marxism and the Philosophy of Language’ that there are all kinds of “physiological processes” and “processes in the nervous system”. It is rather that psyche, what we may also call subjectivity<\/em>, is not reducible to physiology, nor something that exists separate from the way we make sense<\/em> of the world, as explained by him (26). Physiology is also something that he (29) considers necessary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[A]nything and everything occurring within the organism can become the material of experience, since everything can acquire semiotic significance … [and] can become expressive<\/em>.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is also worth noting that he (28) recognizes the importance of other semiotic modes, such as facial expressions. However, when it comes to psyche, or subjectivity<\/em>, he (29) gives primacy to language:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “[I]t is the word that constitutes the foundation, the skeleton of inner life. Were it to be deprived of the word, the psyche would shrink to an extreme degree: deprived of all other expressive activities, it would die out altogether.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is also worth noting that, for both Bakhtin and Volo\u0161inov, even the way we think is dialogic<\/em>. The latter (34) explicitly rejects the view that psyche is individual and while the groups that consist of individuals is social:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The individual, as possessor of the contents of his own consciousness, as author of his own thoughts, as the personality responsible for his thoughts and feelings,\u2014such an individual is a purely [social] phenomenon.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He also (34, 36-37) mentions multiple times that there are no signs that exist in isolation and that are not shared with others, no matter whether they involve thinking (inner speech) or speaking (outer speech), as they cannot be separated from the social situations, i.e., the contexts<\/em>, in which people find themselves. The way we make sense<\/em> of the world is therefore not objective<\/em>, nor subjective<\/em>, but rather collective<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make sure that people understand his stance, he (88) states that while it is possible to imagine experiences that individual, something unique only to ourselves, they make no sense to others as they amount to physiological reactions. For example, that could be pain or vertigo, but even then they are marked by something that makes sense to others, such as the associated grimace or attempts to secure oneself and not fall over. In practice, all experience is therefore collective<\/em>, as explained by him (88). Even the idea of an autonomous self that engages with the world and has unique experiences is collective, a particular bourgeois belief, as specified by him (89):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The structure of the conscious, individual personality is just as social a structure as is the collective type of experience. It is a particular kind of interpretation, projected into the individual soul, of a complex and sustained socioeconomic situation.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is simply just a way of thinking about oneself that happens to be popular these days. It is something that one has learned from others, in dialogue with them. This is how it works, all the time, as he (90) goes on to elaborate:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Thus the personality of the speaker, taken from within, so to speak, turns out to be wholly a product of social interrelations. Not only its outward expression but also its inner experience are social territory.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This explains why language is dialogic <\/em>for Bakhtin and Volo\u0161inov. There is no getting outside it, as the latter (90) specifies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Consequently, the whole route between inner experience (the ‘expressible’) and its outward objectification (the [‘expression’]) lies entirely across social territory.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Simply put, what and how we say, write or more broadly speaking express something, even just to ourselves, in our heads, depends on the linguistic <\/em>and non-linguistic context<\/em>. In fact, we express the expressible in response and anticipation of the specific context<\/em>, as further specified by him (90):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “When an experience reaches the stage of actualization in a full-fledged utterance, its social orientation acquires added complexity by focusing on the immediate social circumstances of discourse and, above all, upon actual addressees.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This simply means one does not experience the world the way one does, often differently from others, because there is something unique about a person to begin with. This does not, however, mean that one’s experience it or interpret its events like everyone else who happens to belong to a certain group of people, as cautioned by him (88):<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Th[is] ‘we-experience’ is not by any means a nebulous herd experience; it is differentiated.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The key term here is differentiation<\/em>. It is what makes our experience unique, albeit only to a certain, limited extent. It is also worth noting that this may appear, at first, as counter-intuitive. In his (88) view, we do not start unique and then become more alike when we spend more time with more people, but rather the opposite. We become less alike and thus unique by spending more time with more people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His (88-89) example of differentiation <\/em>should be fairly easy to comprehend, even if it is somewhat dated. Hunger is physical. If we go hungry, our stomach starts to grumble. However, that is not all there is to hunger. A poor loner, such as a homeless person, has certainly met others, but the experience of hunger is only ever associated with feelings that are tied to that person. The person experiences hunger as a shameful personal failure. In contrast, people who have little, but rely on one another, such as peasants, experience hunger more collectively than a poor loner. For them, this is not a personal failure and there is nothing to be ashamed off, but there is also very little they feel that they can do about it as they are disorganized as a collective. This is also different from people who also have little, but happen to be far more organized, such as factory workers. Similar to peasants, they do not see hunger as a personal failure, but they are more willing and also better organized to do something about the issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be clear, he (88-89) does not mean that all poor loners, peasants or factory workers think the same way. It is important to acknowledge who they are and where they live. Historically, it is also important to address where they lived and when they lived. He (89) summarizes this by noting that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The social situation in all cases determines which term, which metaphor, and which form may develop in an utterance expressing hunger out of the particular intonational bearings of the experience.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is also important to realize that this social situation, what me might also call context<\/em>, is not reducible to addressing people’s socioeconomic status. For example, poor but hardworking people may well feel aggrieved by hunger and seek to take action with others who share the same fate, only to tell their children that it is important to learn to come to terms with the hardship of life as they do not want to come across as weak in front of their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In practice, this sets certain limits to interpretation. The way one experiences something is always conditioned by prior experiences, which are always collective<\/em>, as argued by Volo\u0161inov (88-89). In other words, the way in which one experiences the world cannot be separated from language, which one has acquired and learned from other people, who have also acquired and learned it from other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be clear, this does not mean that one experiences or interprets a text <\/em>the same way as everyone else, nor that one experiences or interprets it the same way as people who are considered part of a same group of people. It is, of course, only likely that people who grew up in a certain society and, more specifically, as part of a specific social group experience and interpret a certain text in a very similar way, because they were exposed to and made to expose themselves to certain texts. One must, however, be very sensitive about this matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To expand on this, I cannot claim to know what it was like to grow up in the society that I grew up in, but under very different circumstances. My schooling was in Finnish. I can elaborate on that. I would, however, suggests consulting someone else to explain how it was for people whose schooling was in Swedish. That could also be contrasted with the experiences of people whose parents spoke some other language and had to learn the language in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then again, many of our experiences are otherwise bound to be very similar, inasmuch as we grew up in similar socioeconomic conditions. Even if we were find ourselves disagreeing with one another on matters concerning Finland, or its education system, due to our different backgrounds, we might nonetheless agree on many other matters. For example, we might interpret foreign texts, such as novels, films, television series or video games, in a similar way due to our similar educational background, having been exposed to the same texts, as mandated by our teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dialogue is generally understood as pertaining to two or more people speaking to one another, the idea being that the people involved either speak or listen to the other people. This is the case, but this is not its only definition. This blog post explores how all language can be understood as a dialogue. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3554,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[32,20,19,31,30,29,21,28,27],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theory","tag-bakhtin","tag-bloome","tag-crystal","tag-foucault","tag-frow","tag-hjelmslev","tag-hong","tag-swales","tag-volosinov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/virtualandactual\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Utterances<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Dialogue<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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belongs.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n
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working literary and language consciousness.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n
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Genres<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Collectivity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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help of words; without inner speech we would not become conscious of anything in ourselves[.]”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n
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Interpretation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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