Mikhail Bakhtin 1895 1975 http www iep utm

Mikhail Bakhtin, 1895 -1975 http: //www. iep. utm. edu/b/bakhtin. htm See link to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for background info on Bakhtin (“The Bakhtin Circle”)

Bakhtin’s ideas today • http: //www. uwo. ca/french/bakhtin/ • Ongoing discussion of the relevance of his ideas to our understandings of language and literature • Widely cited in theories of language learning • Most famous for his theory of dialogism

“not a neutral medium” Language, Bakhtin (1981) says, “is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated— overpopulated—with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process” (p. 294).

Where do the words we learn come from? “The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his [sic] own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293 -4).

‘taking others’ words and making them our own’ • Speakers appropriate words from ‘other people’s mouths’ and other people’s contexts • Speakers struggle to ‘accent’ these words with their own intentions • But every word is “furrowed from within” with the speech of others • Each word carries the history of its use

Bakhtin’s concept of the utterance • “[l]anguage is realized in the form of individual concrete utterances (oral and written) by participants in the various areas of human activity” (1986, p. 60). • The utterance, not the sentence, is the unit of analysis • The utterance ties thinking and speech together, places language in the mouths of people talking to each other, within particular situations. • Every utterance is “a link in the chain of speech communion” (1986, p. 84).

Dialogic nature of language use • Every utterance “must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding utterances … (we understand ‘response’ here in the broadest sense)” (Bakhtin 1986, p. 91, italics in original). • The utterance is by its nature dialogic • The utterance is filled with “dialogic overtones, ” with “echoes and reverberations of other utterances” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 92).

Dialogism In the concrete instance of utterance: ü traces and echoes of previous uses, ü the speaker’s plan as she anticipates response, ü the particular conditions of production all intersect.

Addressivity • The understanding that all language is addressed (to someone, for an occasion …) Within an utterance (written or spoken): “traces of addressivity and the influence of the anticipated response, dialogical echoes from others’ preceding utterances, faint traces of changes of speech subjects that have furrowed the utterance from within” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 99).

heteroglossia This ‘overpopulation’ of the utterance with the voices of others is described in Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia. The speaker actively participates in the “living heteroglossia” by imprinting her utterance with her situated intent, and by appropriating and ventriloquating words from others’ mouths (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 272).

Language • Is not a “neutral medium” (Bakhtin!) • Is not an isolated system, but a dynamic, social activity • Is a site of struggle over meanings • Is dialogic (filled with previous meanings; anticipating response; influenced by contexts of use)

Baktin’s ideas about language • In your own words, describe Bakhtin’s view of language and/or define of his ideas. • How might these ideas about language change the way we think about teaching languages?