Speech Genres and Other Late Essays by M. M. Bakhtin

Author:M. M. Bakhtin
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 1986-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. “National unity of language” is a shorthand way of referring to the assemblage of linguistic and translinguistic practices common to a given region. It is, then, a good example of what Bakhtin means by an open unity. See also Otto Jesperson, Mankind, Nation, and Individual (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964).

2. Saussure’s teaching is based on a distinction between language (la langue)—a system of interconnected signs and forms that normatively determine each individual speech act and are the special object of linguistics—and speech (la parole)—individual instances of language use. Bakhtin discusses Saussure’s teachings in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language as one of the two main trends in linguistic thought (the trend of “abstract objectivism”) that he uses to shape his own theory of the utterance. See V. N. Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, tr. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), esp. pp. 58–61.

“Behaviorists” here refers to the school of psychology introduced by the Harvard physiologist J. B. Watson in 1913. It seeks to explain animal and human behavior entirely in terms of observable and measurable responses to external stimuli. Watson, in his insistence that behavior is a physiological reaction to environmental stimuli, denied the value of introspection and of the concept of consciousness. He saw mental processes as bodily movements, even when unperceived, so that thinking in his view is subvocal speech. There is a strong connection as well between the behaviorist school of psychology and the school of American descriptive linguistics, which is what Bakhtin is referring to here. The so-called de-scriptivist school was founded by the eminent anthropologist Franz Boas (1858—1942). Its closeness to behaviorism consists in its insistence on careful observation unconditioned by presuppositions or categories taken from traditional language structure. Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) was the chief spokesman for the school and was explicit about his commitment to a “mechanist approach” (his term for the behaviorist school of psychology): “Mechanists demand that the facts be presented without any assumption of such auxiliary factors [as a version of the mind]. I have tried to meet this demand… .” (Language [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1933], p. vii). Two prominent linguists sometimes associated with the descriptivists, Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941), differ from Bloomfield insofar as behaviorism plays a relatively minor role in their work.

“Vosslerians” refers to the movement named after the German philologist Karl Vossler (1872–1949), whose adherents included Leo Spitzer (1887–1960). For Vosslerians, the reality of language is the continuously creative, constructive activity that is prosecuted through speech acts; the creativity of language is likened to artistic creativity, and stylistics becomes the leading discipline. Style takes precedence over grammar, and the standpoint of the speaker takes precedence over that of the listener. In a number of aspects, Bakhtin is close to the Vosslerians, but differs in his understanding of the utterance as the concrete reality of language life. Bakhtin does not, like the Vosslerians, conceive the utterance to be an individual speech act;

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