Quotations from Bakhtin (1986) Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press
___________________________________
Response to questions from Novy Mir, pp.1-10
Outsidedness: “There exists a very strong, but one-sided and thus untrustworthy, idea that in order to understand a foreign culture, one must enter into it, forgetting one’s own, and view the culture through the eyes of this foreign culture. This idea, as I said, is one-sided. Of course, a certain entry as a living being into a foreign culture, the possibility of seeing the world through its eyes, is a necessary part of the process of understanding it; but if this where the only aspect of this understanding, it would merely be a duplication and would not entail anything new or enriching. Creative understanding does not renounce itself, its own place in time, its own culture; and it forgets nothing. In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding - in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot 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.
In the realm of culture, outsideness is a most powerful factor in understanding. It is only in the eyes of another culture that foreign culture reveals itself fully and profoundly (but not maximally fully, because there will be cultures that see and understand even more). A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact with another, foreign meaning: they engage in a kind of dialogue which surmounts the closedness and one-sidedness of these particular meanings, these cultures. We raise new questions for a foreign culture, ones that it did not raise for itself; we seek answers to our own questions in it; and the foreign culture responds to us by revealing to us its new aspects and new semantic depths” (1986, p.7).
The Bildungsroman, pp.10-59
The Problem of Speech Genres, pp.60-102
Definition of speech genres
“Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres.
The wealth and diversity of speech genres are boundless because the various possibilities of human activity are inexhaustible, and because each sphere of activity contains an entire repertoire of speech genres that differentiate and grow as the particular sphere develops and becomes more complex” (p.60).
“It is especially important here to draw attention to the very significant difference between primary (simple) and secondary (complex) speech genres (understood not as a functional [end 61] difference). Secondary (complex) speech genres – novels, dramas, all kinds of scientific research, major genres of commentary, and so forth – arise in more complex and comparatively highly developed and organized cultural communication (primarily written) that is artistic, scientific, sociopolitical, and so on. During the process of their formation, they absorb and digest various primary (simple) genres that have taken form in unmediated speech communion. These primary genres are altered and assume a special character when they enter complex ones. They lose their immediate relation to actual reality and to the real utterances of others. For example, rejoinders of everyday dialogue or letters found in a novel retain their form only on the plane of the novel’s content. They enter only actual reality via the novel as a whole, that is, as literary-artistic event and not as everyday life” (pp.61-62).
“The difference between primary and secondary (ideological) genres is very great and fundamental, but this precisely why the nature of the utterance should be revealed and defined through analysis of both types” (p.62).
“To ignore the nature of the utterance or to fail to consider the peculiarities of generic subcategories of speech in any area of linguistic study leads to perfunctoriness and excessive abstractness, distorts the historicity of the research, and weakens the link between language and life. After all, language enters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and life enters language through concrete utterances as well” (p.63).
“... individual style. But not all genres are equally conducive to reflecting the individuality of the speaker in the language of the utterance, that is, to an individual style... The least favorable conditions for reflecting individuality in language obtain in speech genres that require a standard form, for example, many kinds of business documents, military commands, verbals signals in industry, and so on” (p.63).
“In essence, language, or functional, styles are nothing other than generic styles for certain spheres of human activity and communication, Each sphere has and applies its own genres that correspond to its own specific conditions... Style is inseparably linked to particular thematic unities: to particular types of construction of the whole, types of its completion, and types of relation between the speaker and other participants in speech communication (listeners or readers, partners, the other’s speech, and so forth). Style enters as one element in the generic unity of the utterance” (p.64).
The utterance as a unit of speech communication – Responsive understanding
“The fact is that when the listener perceives and understands the meaning (the language meaning) of speech, he simultaneously takes an active, responsive attitude toward it. He either agrees or disagrees with it (completely or partially), augments it, applies it, prepares for its execution, and so on. And the listener adopts this responsive attitude for the entire duration of the process of listening and understanding, from the very beginning - sometimes literally from the speaker's first word” (p.68).
“Any understanding of live speech, a live utterance, is inherently responsive... Any understanding is imbued with response and necessarily elicits it in one form or another: the listener becomes the speaker... Of course, an utterance is not always followed immediately by an articulated response. An actively responsive understanding of what is heard (a command, for instance) can be directly realized in action (the execution of an order or command that has been understood and accepted for execution), or it can remain, for the time being, a silent responsive understanding..., but this is, so to speak, responsive understanding with delayed reaction. Sooner or later what is heard and actively understood will find its response in the subsequent speech or behavior of the listener” (Bakhtin, 1986, pp.68-69).
“Thus, all real and integral understanding is actively responsive, and constitutes nothing more than the initial preparatory stage of a response (in what ever form it may be actualized). And the speaker himself is oriented precisely toward such an actively responsive understanding. He does not expect passive understanding that, so to speak, only duplicates his or her own idea in someone else's mind... Rather, the speaker talks with an expectation of a response, agreement, sympathy, objection, execution, and so forth (with various speech genres presupposing various integral orientations and speech plans on the part of speakers or writers)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.69).
“...any speaker is himself a respondent to a greater or lesser degree. He is not, after all, the first speaker, the one who disturbs the eternal silence of the universe. And he presupposes not only the existence of the language system he is using, but also the existence of preceding utterances – his own and others’ – with 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). Any utterance is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other utterances” (p.69).
“For speech can exist in reality only in the form of concrete utterances of individual speaking people, speech subjects. Speech is always cast in the form of an utterance belonging to a particular speaking subject, and outside this form it cannot exist” (p.71).
Sense of utterance as a speech unit
“Each rejoinder, regardless of how brief and abrupt, has a specific quality of completion that expresses a particular position of the speaker, to which one may respond or assume, with respect to it, a responsive position... But at the same time rejoinders are all linked to one another. And the sort of relations that exist among rejoinders of dialogue - relations between question and answer, assertion and objection, suggestion and acceptance, order and execution, and so forth - are impossible among units of language (words and sentences), either in the system of language (in vertical cross section) or within utterances (on the horizontal plane)” (1986, p.72).
“The sentence as a language unit lacks all these [following] properties; it is not demarcated on either side by a change in speaking subjects; it has neither direct contact with reality (with an extraverbal situation) nor a direct relation to others' utterances; it does not have semantic fullness of value; and it has no capacity to determine directly the responsive position of the other speaker, that is, it cannot evoke a response. The sentence as a language unit is [only] grammatical in nature [not ethical]” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.74, my additions).
“This change [of speaking subjects] can only take place because the speaker has said (or written) everything he wishes to say at a particular moment or under particular circumstances. When hearing or reading, we clearly sense the end of the utterance, as if we hear the speaker's concluding dixi. This finalization is specific and is determined by specific criteria” (1986, p.76).
“The first and foremost criterion for the finalization of an utterance is the possibility of responding to it or, more precisely and broadly, of assuming a responsive attitude to it (for example, executing an order)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.76).
The choice of speech genre
“The speaker’s speech will is manifested primarily in the choice of a particular speech genre. This choice is determined by the specific nature of the given sphere of speech communication, semantic (thematic) considerations, the concrete situation of the speech communication, the personal composition of its participants, and so on” (1986, p.78).
“Thus, a speaker is given not only mandatory form of the national language (lexical composition and grammatical structure), but also forms of utterances that are mandatory, that is, speech genres. The latter are just as necessary for mutual understanding as are forms of language. Speech genres are much more changeable, flexible, and plastic that language forms are, but they have a normative significance for the speaking individuum, and they are not created by him but are given him. Therefore the single utterance, with all its individuality and creativity, can in no way be regarded as a completely free combination of forms of language, as is supposed, for example, by Saussure (and by many other linguists after him), who juxtaposed the utterance (la parole), as a purely individual act, to the system of language as a phenomenon that is purely social and mandatory for the individuum” (1986, pp.80-81).
Expression of evaluative attitude: the point of contact
“Any utterance is a link in the chain of communication. It is the active position of the speaker in one referentially semantic sphere or another. Therefore, each utterance is characterized primarily by a particular referentially semantic content... This is the first aspect of the utterance that determines its compositional stylistic and features. The second aspect... is the expressive aspect, that is, the speaker's subjective emotional evaluation of the relation semantic content of his utterance... There can be no such things as an absolutely neutral utterance. The speaker's evaluative attitude toward the subject of his speech (regardless of what it may be) also determines the choice of lexical, grammatical, and compositional means of the utterance... One of the means of expressing the speaker's emotionally evaluative attitude toward the subject of his speech is expressive intonation, which resounds clearly in oral speech... In a particular situation a word can acquire a profoundly expressive meaning in the form of an exclamatory utterance: 'Thalassa, Thalassa!' [The sea! The sea!] (exclaimed 10,000 Greeks in Xenophon)... expressive intonation belongs to the utterance and not to the word” (1986, pp.84-86).
“There can be no such thing as an absolutely neutral utterance. The speaker's evaluative attitude toward the subject of his speech (regardless of what his subject may be) also determines the choice of lexical, grammatical, and compositional means of the utterance” (1986, p.84).
“One of the means of expressing the speaker’s emotionally evaluative attitude toward the subject of his speech is expressive intonation, which resounds clearly in oral speech... It does not exist in the system of language as such, that is, outside the utterance” (p.85).
“Here the meaning of the word pertains to a particular actual reality and particular real conditions of speech communication. Therefore here we do not understand the meaning of a given word simply as a word of a language; rather, we assume an active responsive position with respect to it (sympathy, agreement or disagreement, stimulus to action). Thus, expressive intonation belongs to the utterance and not to the word” (p.86).
“We repeat, only the contact between the language meaning and the concrete reality that takes place in the utterance can create the spark of expression. It exists neither in the system of language nor in the object reality surrounding us.
Thus, emotion, evaluation, and expression are foreign to the word of language and are born in the process of its live usage in concrete utterance ” (pp.86-87, my emphasis).
“A speech genre is not a form of language, but a typical form of utterance; as such the genre also includes a certain typical kind of expression that inheres in it. In the genre the word acquires a particular typical expression. Genres correspond to typical situations of speech communication, typical themes, and, consequently, also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances. Hence also the possibility of typical expressions that seem to adhere to words. Thus typical expression (and the typical intonation that corresponds to it) does not have the compulsoriness that language forms [“social languages”] have, the generic normative quality is freer” (1986, p.87).
“Neutral dictionary definitions of the words of a language ensure their common features and guarantee that all speakers of a given language will understand one another, but the use of words in live speech communication is always individual and contextual in nature. Therefore, one can say that any word exists for the speaker in three aspects: as a neutral word of a language, belonging to nobody; as an other's word, which belongs to another person and is filled with echoes of the other's utterance; and finally, as my word, for, since I am dealing with it in a particular situation, with a particular speech plan, it is already imbued with my expression. In both the latter aspects, the word is expressive, but, we repeat, this expression does not inhere in the word itself. It originates at the point of contact between the word and actual reality, under the conditions of that real situation articulated by the individual utterance. In this case the word appears as an expression of some evaluative position of an individual person (authority, writer, scientist, father, mother, friend, teacher, and so forth)...” (p.88, my emphases).
Utterances as a unit again
“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” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.91).
“The utterance is filled with dialogic overtones, and they must be taken into account in order to fully understand the style of the utterance. After all, our thought itself – philosophical, scientific, artistic – is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others’ thought, and this cannot but be reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as well” (p.92).
“Others’s utterances and others’ individual words – recognized and singled out as such and inserted into the utterance – introduce an element that is, so to speak, irrational from the standpoint of language as system, particularly from the standpoint of syntax” (p.92).
“But the utterance is related not only to preceding, but also to subsequent links in the chain of speech communication... But from the very beginning, the utterance is constructed while taking into account possible responsive reactions, for whose sake, in essence, it is actually created. As we know, the role of the others for whom the utterance is constructed is extremely great... From the very beginning, the speaker expects a response from them, an active responsive understanding. The entire utterance is constructed, as it were, in anticipation of encountering this response” (p.94 - the lure of the future - Crites).
“An essential (constitutive) marker of the utterance is its quality of being directed to someone, its addressivity... Each speech genre in each area of speech communication has its own typical conception of the addressee, and this defines it as a genre” (1986, p.95).
“Finer nuances of style are determined by the nature and degree of personal proximity of the addressee to the speaker’s various familiar [end 96] speech genres, on the one hand, and in intimate ones, on the other. With all the immense differences among familiar and intimate genres (and, consequently, styles), they perceive their addressees in exactly the same way: more or less outside the framework of the social hierarchy and social conventions, “without rank,” as it were” (pp.96-97).
“In intimate speech styles this is expressed in apparent desire for the speaker and addressee to merge completely. In familiar speech, since speech constrains and conventions have fallen away, one can take a special unofficial, volitional approach to reality... Intimate genres and styles are based on a maximum internal proximity of the speaker and addressee (in extreme instances, as if they had merged). Intimate speech is imbued with a deep confidence in the addressee, in his sympathy, in the sensitivity and goodwill of his responsive understanding. In this atmosphere of profound trust, the speaker reveals his internal depths” (p.97).
“Thus, addressivity, the quality of turning to someone, is a constitutive feature of the utterance; without it the utterance does not and cannot exist” (p.99, my emphasis)... cf. LW. 455-1 We want to say: "When we mean something, it's like going up to someone, it's not having a dead picture (of any kind)." We go up to the thing we mean.
The problem of the text in linguistics, philology, and the human sciences: an experiment in philosophical analysis, pp.103-131.
The repeatable and the unrepeatable
“Two poles of the text [the repeatable and the unrepeatable]. Each text presupposes a generally understood (that is, conventional within a given collective) system of signs, a language (if only the language of art). If there is no language behind the text, it is not a text, but a natural (not signifying phenomenon, for example, a complex of natural cries and moans devoid of any (signifying) repeatability... And so behind each text stands a language system... But at the same time each text (as an utterance) is individual, unique, and unrepeatable, and herein lies its entire significance (its plan, the purpose for which it was created). This is the aspect that pertains to honesty, truth, goodness, beauty, history. With respect to this aspect, everything repeatable and reproducible proves to be material, a means to an end... The second aspect (pole) inheres in the text itself, but is revealed only in a particular situation and in a chain of texts (in the speech communication of a given area). This pole is linked not with elements (repeatable) in the system of the language (signs), but with other texts (unrepeatable) by special dialogic (and dialectical, when detached from the author) relations... This second pole is inseparably linked with the aspect of authorship and has nothing to do with natural, random, single units...” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.105).
Gesture: “The natural gesture acquires a signifying quality in the actor’s performance...” (p.106).
The dialogical
“The event of the life of the text, that is, its true essence, always develops on the boundary between two consciousnesses, two subjects” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.106).
“The utterance as a whole is shaped as such by extralinguistic (dialogic) aspects, and it is also related to other utterances. These extralinguistic (dialogic) aspects also pervade the utterance from within” (p.109).
Feeling the author: “We find the author (perceive, understand, sense, and feel him) in any work of art. For example, in painting we always feel its author (artist), but we never see him in the way we see images he has depicted. We feel him in everything as a pure depicting origin (depicting subject), but not as a depicted (visible) image. Even in a self-portrait, of course, we do not see its depicting author, but only the artist’s depiction. Strictly speaking, the suthor’s image is a contradictio in adjecto. The so-called author’s image is, to be sure, a special type of image, distinct from other images in the work, but it is an image and it has its own author who created it. The image of the narrator in a story is distinct from the I, the image of the hero of an autobiogrpahical work (autobiography, confessions, diaries, memoirs, and so forth), the autobiographical hereo, the lyical hero, and so forth” (p.109).
“To see and comprehend the author of a work means to see and comprehend another alien consciousness and its world, that is, another subject (‘Du’)” (p.111).
“The essential responsiveness of any understanding...” (p.112).
“No natural phenomenon has ‘meaning’, only signs have meaning (including words) have meaning. Therefore, any study of signs, regardless of the direction in which it may subsequently proceed, necessarily begins with understanding” (p.113).
“Dialogical relations among utterances that also pervade individual utterances form within fall into the realm of metalinguistics” (p.114).
“To see something for the first time, to realize something for the first time, already means to assume an attitude toward it: it exists neither within itself nor for itself, but for another (already two correlated consciousnesses). Understanding is a very important attitude (understanding is never a tautology, for it always involves two and a potential third). The condition of not being heard and not being understood...” (pp. 115-116).
“Dialogic relations have a specific nature: they can be reduced neither to the purely logical (even if dialectical) nor to the purely linguistic (compositional-syntactic). They are possible only between complete utterances of various speaking subjects (dialogue with oneself is secondary, and, in the majority of cases, already played through). We are not concerning ourselves here with the origin of the term ‘dialogue’... Dialogic relations (semantic) among utterances in speech communication. Any two utterances, if juxtaposed on a semantic plane (not as things and not as linguistic examples), end up in a dialogical relationship... ‘Hunger, cold!’ - one utterance of a single speaking subject. ‘Hunger!’ - ‘Cold!’ - two dialogically correlated utterances of two different subjects: here dialogic relations appear that did not exist in the former case. The same thing with two developed sentences (think of a cogent example)” (1986, pp.117-118).
“With respect to real utterances and real speakers, the system of a language is purely potential” (p.118).
The given and the new
“The given and the created in a speech utterance. An utterance is never just a reflection or an expression of something already existing and outside it that is given and final. It always creates something that never [end 119] existed before, something absolutely new and unrepeatable, and, moreover, it always has some relation to value (the true, the good, the beautiful, and so forth). But something created is always created out of something given (language, an observed phenomenon of reality, an experienced feeling, the speaking subject himself, something finalized in his world view, and so forth). What is given is completely transformed in what is created” (Bakhtin, 1986, pp.119-120).
“It is much easier to study the given in what is created (for example, language, ready-made and general elements of world view, reflected phenomena of reality, and so forth) than to study what is created. Frequently the whole of scientific analysis amounts to a disclosure of everything that has been given, already at hand and ready-made before the work has existed (that which is found by the artist not created by him). It is as if everything given is created anew in what is created, transformed in it” (p.120).
Voices in words: “... the layering of meaning upon meaning, voice upon voice, strengthening through merging (but not identification), the combination of many voices (a corridor of voices) that augments understanding, departure beyond the limits of the understood, and so forth. These special realtions can be reduced neither to the purely logical nor to the purely thematic. Here one encounters integral positions, integral personalities (the personality does not require extensive disclosure – it can be articulated in a single sound, revealed in a single word), precisely voices” (p.121).
The word outside in the world
“A word (or in general any sign) is interindividual. Everything that is said, expressed, is located outside the 'soul' of the speaker and does not belong only to him [or her]. The word cannot be assigned to a single speaker. The author (speaker) has his own inalienable right to the word, but the listener has his rights, and those whose voices are heard in the word before the author comes upon it also have their rights (after all, there are no words that belong to no one). The word is a drama in which three characters participate (it is not a duet, but a trio). It is performed outside the author, and it cannot be introjected into the author” (Bakhtin, 1986, pp.121-122).
Dialogic relations again
“If we anticipate nothing from the word, if we know ahead of time everything it can say, it departs from the dialogue and is reified” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.122).
“The dialogical meeting of two consciousness in the human sciences. The [theoretical] framing of another’s utterances with a dialogizing context. For even when we give a causal explanation of another’s utterance, by that very gesture we refute it... If the utterance is understood as a mechanical reaction and dialogue as a chain of reactions (as in descriptive linguistics or by the behaviorists), then this understanding includes equally both true and false utterances, both works of genius and those lacking talent (the differences will be only in the mechanically understood effects, utility, and so forth). This point of view, which is relatively valid as is the linguistic point of view..., does not touch upon the essence of the utterance as a semantic whole, a semantic point of view, a semantic position, and so forth. Every utterance makes a claim to justice, sincerity, beauty, and truthfulness (a model utterance) and so forth. And these values of utterances are defined not by their relation to that language (purely as linguistic system), but by various forms of relation to reality, to the speaking subject and to other (alien) utterances (particularly to those that evaluate them as sincere, beautiful, and so forth)” (p.123).
“The relations of utterances to reality, to the real speaking subject, and to other real utterances – relations that first make utterances true or false, beautiful, and so forth – can never [end 123] be the subject of linguistics” (pp.123-124).
“On the problem of dialogic relations. Theses relations are profoundly unique and cannot be reduced to logical, linguistic, mechanical, or any other natural relations. They constitute a special type of semantic relations, whose members can only be complete utterances (either regarded as complete or potentially complete), behind which stand (and in which are expressed) real or potentially real speech subjects, authors of given utterances. Real dialogue( daily conversation, scientific discussion, political debate, and so forth). The relations among rejoinders of such dialogues are simpler and more externally visible kind of dialogic relations. But dialogic relations, of course, do not in any way coincide with relations among rejoinders of real dialogue - they are much broader, more diverse, and more complex. Two utterances, separated from one another both in time and in space, knowing nothing of one another, when they are compared semantically, reveal dialogic relations if there is any kind of semantic convergence between them (if only a partially shared theme, point of view, and so forth)... [end 124] One cannot... understand dialogic relations simplistically or unilaterally, reducing them to contradiction, conflict, polemics, or disagreement. Agreement is very rich in varieties and shadings. Two utterances that are identical in all respects (“Beautiful weather!” - “Beautiful weather!”), if they are really two utterances belonging to different voices and not one, are linked by dialogic relations of agreement. This is a definite dialogic event, agreement could also be lacking (“No, not very nice weather,” and so forth).
Dialogic relations are thus much broader than dialogic speech in the narrow sense of the word. And dialogic relations are always present, even among profoundly monologic speech works” (1986, pp.124-125).
The utterance
“The whole utterance is no longer a unit of language (and not a unit of the ‘speech flow’ or the ‘speech chain’), but a unit of speech communication that has not mere formal definition, but contextual meaning (that is, integrated meaning that relates to value - to truth, beauty, and so forth - and requires a responsive understanding, one that includes evaluation). The responsive understanding of a speech whole is always dialogic by nature” (1986, p.125).
Understanding a part of dialogic relations
“The person who understands (including the researcher himself) becomes a participant in the dialogue, although on a special level (depending on the area of understanding or research)... The observer has no position outside the observed world, and his observation enters as a constituent part into the observed object.
This pertains fully to entire utterances and relations among them. They cannot be understood from outside. Understanding itself enters as a dialogic element in the dialogic system and somehow changes its entire sense” (pp.125-126).
The superaddressee
“The person who understands ineveitably becomes a third party in the dialogue (of course, not in the literal sense, arithmetical sense, for there can be , in addition to a third, an unlimited number of participants in the dialogue being understood, but the dialogic position of this third party is quite a special one. Any utterance always has an addressee (of various sorts, with varying degrees of proximity, concreteness, awareness, and so forth). This is the second party (again not in an arithmetical sense). But in addition to this addressee (the second party), the author of the utterance, with greater or lesser awareness, presupposes a higher superaddressee (third), whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed, either in some metaphysical distance or in distant historical time (the loophole addressee). In various ages and with various understandings of the world, this superaddressee and his ideally responsive understanding assume various ideological expressions (God, absolute truth, the court of dispassionate human conscience, the people, the court of history, science, and so forth)” (p.126).
“The author can never turn over his whole self and his speech work to complete and final will of addressees who are on hand or nearby (after all, even the closest descendants can be mistaken), and always presupposes (with a greater or lesser degree of awareness) some higher instancing of responsive understanding that can distance itself in various directions. Each dialogue takes place as if against the background of an invisibly present third party who stands above all the participants in the dialogue (partners)” (p.126).
“Each dialogue takes place as if against a background of the responsive understanding of an invisibly present third party who stands above all the participants in the dialogue (partners). (Cf, the understanding of the Fascist torture chamber or hell in Thomas Mann as absolute lack of being heard, as the absolute absence of a third party.) The aforementioned third party is not any mystical or metaphysical being (although, given a certain understanding of the world, he can be expressed as such) - he is a constitutive aspect of the whole utterance, who, under deeper analysis, can be revealed in it... For the word (and, consequently, for a human being) there is nothing more terrible than a lack of response. Even a word that is known to be false is not absolutely false, and always presupposes an instance that will understand and justify it, even if in the form: ‘anyone in my position would have lied, too’ ... the word moves ever forward in search of responsive understanding” (pp.126-127).
“Being heard is already a dialogic relation” (p.127).
From notes made in 1970-71, pp.132-158
“Violence does not know laughter... Seriousness burdens us with hopeless situations, but laughter lifts us above them and delivers us from them. Laughter does not encumber man, it liberates him [end 134].... Indignation, anger, and dissatisfaction are always unilateral: they exclude the one toward whom they are directed, and so forth; they evoke reciprocal anger. They divide, while laughter only unites; it cannot divide. Laughter can be combined with profoundly intimate emotionality... Everything that is truly great must include an element of laughter” (pp.134-135).
“The witness and the judge. When consciousness [con-scientia=a dialogical knowing along with others] appeared in the world... the world (existence) changed radically. A stone is still stony and the sun still sunny, but the event of existence as a whole (unfinalized) becomes completely different because a new and major character in this event appears for the first time on the scene of earthly existence - the witness and the judge... This cannot be understood as existence (nature) beginning to be conscious of itself in man, beginning to reflect itself... No, something absolutely new has appeared, a supra-existence has emerged. And there is no longer just a kernel of existence in this supra-existence; all existence exists in it and for it” (p.137, my addition).
“What we foreground is the ready-made and finalized. Even in antiquity we single out what is ready-made and finalized, and not what has originated and is developing. We do not study literature’s preliterary embryos (in language and ritual). The narrow ( ''specialists”) understanding of specifics. Possibility and necessity. It is hardly possible to speak about necessity in the human sciences. Here it is scientifically possible only to disclose possibilities and the realization of one of them. The repeatable and unrepeatability” (p.139).
“Semiotics deals primarily with the transmission of ready-made communication using a ready-made code. But live speech, strictly speaking, communication is first created in the process of transmission, and there is in essence no code” (p.147).
“Dialogue and dialectics. Take a dialogue and remove the voices (the partitioning of voices), remove the intonations (emotional and individualizing ones), carve out abstract concepts and judgments from living words and responses, cram everything into one abstract consciousness - and that’s how you get dialectics” (p.147).
“Context and code. A context is potentially unfinalized; a code must be finalized. A code is only a technical means of transmitting information; it does not have cognitive, creative significance. A code is a deliberately established, killed context” (p.147)
“My love for variations and for a diversity of terms for a single phenomenon. The multiplicity of focuses. Bringing distant things closer without indicating the intermediate links” (p.155).
Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences, pp.156-172
“A work's author is present only in the whole of the work, not in one separate aspect of this whole, and least of all in content that is severed from the whole. He is located in that inseparable aspect of the work where content and form merge inseparably, and we feel his presence most of all in form. Literary scholarship usually looks for him in content excised from the whole. This makes it easy to identify him with that author who is a person of a particular time with a particular biography and a particular world view. Here the image of the author almost merges with the image of a real person” (p.160).
“The event-potential of dialogic cognition...” (p.160).
“But I hear voices in everything and dialogic relations among them. I also perceive the principle of argumentation dialogically” (p.169).
“There is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the 'dialogic context (it extends into the boundless past and boundless future). Even past meanings, that is those born in the dialogue of past centuries, can never be stable (finalized, ended once and for all) - they will always change (be renewed) in the process of subsequent, future development of the dialogue. At any moment in the development of the dialogue there are immense, boundless masses of forgotten contextual meanings, but at certain moments of the dialogue's subsequent development along the way they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context). Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival. The problem of great time” (p.170).
References:
Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans.by Vern W. McGee. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press.