Mikhail Bakhtin

Bakhtin was not exactly a Marxist, but a theorist writing in Soviet Union starting in the 1920s, and thus he was very
much aware o Marxist theories and doctrines, and how they were being im!lemented" #e was also associated with
the school known as $ussian %ormalism, a kind o !recursor to our own &merican movement 'in the 19(0s and )0s*
called +ew ,riticism" '-eter Barry, in Beginning .heory, has a good ex!lanation o $ussian %ormalism*" Bakhtin
got in trouble with Soviet regime, was exiled, and did a lot o his best work in exile/ because o his !olitical conlicts
with the Soviet Union, as well as the !roblem o translation, and o 0estern cultures getting access to his texts,
Bakhtin1s works weren1t !ublished 'or translated* till the 1920s 'ater the end o Stalinism*"
Bakhtin shares with Marxist theorists an interest in the historical and social world, an interest in how human beings
act and think 'in other words, an interest in the ormation o the sub3ect*, and an interest in language as the means in
which ideologies get articulated" %or Bakhtin, as or &lthusser, language itsel 'both structurally and in terms o
content* is always ideological" 'Bakhtin is also associated with the work o 4"+" 4olosinov, whose work Marxism
and the -hiloso!hy o 5anguage looks more directly at how language o!erates ideologically*"
5anguage, or Bakhtin, is also always material" #e would argue against Saussure and structuralist views o language
which look only at the sha!e 'or structure*, and instead would argue that you always have to examine how !eo!le
use language66how language as a material !ractice is always constituted by and through sub3ects" '.his is also
&lthusser1s second thesis in 78deology and 8deological State &!!aratuses7*"
Bakhtin1s theories ocus !rimarily on the conce!t o 98&5:;U<, and on the notion that language66any orm o
s!eech or writing66is always a dialogue" .his notion o dialogue is not the same as the Marxist notion o
98&5<,.8,, though it1s similar in ocusing on the idea o the social nature o dialogue, and the idea o struggle
inherent in it" 9ialogue consists o three elements= a s!eaker, a listener>res!ondent, and a relation between the two"
5anguage 'and what language says66ideas, characters, orms o truth, e"g"* are always thus the !roduct o the
interactions between 'at least* two !eo!le" Bakhtin contrasts that notion o dialogue to the idea o M:+:5:;U<,
or the monologic, which are utterances by a single !erson or entity"
79iscourse in the +ovel7 is an excer!t rom a longer essay with that title, ound in Bakhtin1s book .he 9ialogic
8magination" 8n this essay Bakhtin ocuses on the ?uestion o literary orms or genres as exam!les o dialogic orm"
#e ocuses !articularly on the contrast between !oetry and novels" #e says that !oetry, historically, has always been
the !rivileged orm 'and you can think o this in terms o a binary o!!osition, !oetry>iction, where !oetry is the
valued term*" 0e have seen a version o this !rivileging66or at least o the distinctions between !oetry and !rose66
throughout this semester, as a number o theorists who value the idea o !lay, !lurality, or multi!licity in language
!oint to !oetry as a !lace where language is more ree, where the signiier and signiied are the most disconnected"
Bakhtin diers rom Saussure, and rom the tradition which emerges rom Saussure, and which values the se!aration
o signiier and signiied more than the connection between the two" #e was aware o Saussurean linguistics, and o
structuralist theories in general, but Bakhtin 'unlike 3ust about all the other theorists we1ve read so ar, including
&lthusser* is not using a structuralist view o language"
Bakhtin begins his essay by !osing a !roblem= i !oetry is the more !rivileged literary orm in 0estern culture 'and
in structuralist and !oststructuralist theory*, then what can you say about how language or discourse o!erate in
+:4<5S@ ,learly language o!erates dierently, or is used dierently, in iction and in !rose than in !oetry/ these
genres have a dierent conce!tion o how meaning is created than does !oetry"
:ne answer to this ?uestion is that you can1t66or shouldn1t talk about novels at all" %or the %rench eminists
'es!ecially ,ixous*, novels are !art o a realist mode o re!resentation, which is based on trying to connect linguistic
signiiers to their reerents, to 7real7 signiieds/ this, in ,ixous1 view, links iction and realism to the attem!t to make
linear, ixed meaning 'where one signiier is associated clearly with one and only one signiied*, which is what the
%rench eminists call masculine, or !hallogocentric, writing"
%rom this !ers!ective, any orm o re!resentational language66any !rose discourse, and any orms o iction66are
!art o the eort to make language stable, unitary, and determinant" &nd that1s bad" %rom another !ers!ective,
however, there1s no com!arison between what novels do and what !oetry does" -oetry is meant to be an art orm, to
be 'and to create* something beautiul/ iction, on the other hand, is a kind o rhetoric, a literary orm meant to
!ersuade or to !resent an argument, not to !roduce an aesthetic eect" .hese deinitions come largely rom historical
trends= the novel does come rom the !rose traditions o !ersuasion" -oetry is not without its didactic unction,
certainly/ as many critics rom Sir -hili! Sidney on have noted, the !ur!ose o art is 7to delight and to instruct"7 But
generally !oetry has been associated with the aesthetic unction '7delight7* and novels with the didactic unction
'7instruct7*"
Bakhtin starts with this division between !oetry and !rose iction, and their social unctions, in order to
reconce!tualiAe the idea o the way stylistics has !rivileged !oetry" #e says that rhetoric66the art o using language
to !ersuade or convince !eo!le66has always been subordinated 'in 0estern culture* to !oetry, because rhetoric has a
social !ur!ose= it does something" -oetry, des!ite Sidney1s claim to the contrary, has always unctioned almost
exclusively on an aesthetic level" -oetry is like a !ainting that hangs on the wall/ !rose is like a !iece o kitchen
machinery, in Bakhtin1s view"
Because it does something, Bakhtin says, iction, as a subset o rhetoric, has !ositive ?ualities" %irst o all, it is a
socially and historically s!eciic orm o language use" & novel, Bakhtin argues, has more in common at any
!articular historical moment with other existing orms o rhetoric66with the languages used in 3ournalism, in ethics,
in religion, in !olitics, in economics66than !oetry does" 8n act, Bakhtin says, the novel is more oriented toward the
social>historical orms o rhetoric than toward the !articular artistic or aesthetic ideas !resent at any !articular
moment, while !oetry ocuses !rimarily on aesthetic concerns and only secondarily 'i at all* on other as!ects o
social existence"
Bakhtin says 'on !" BBB* that ideas about language have always !ostulated a unitary s!eaker, a s!eaker who has an
unmediated relation to 7his unitary and singular 1own1 language"7 .his s!eaker 'kind o like 9errida1s 7engineer7*
says 78 !roduce uni?ue meaning in my own s!eech/ my s!eech comes rom me alone"7 Bakhtin says this way o
thinking about language uses two !oles= language as a system, and the individual who s!eaks it" Both !oles,
however, !roduce what Bakhtin calls M:+:5:;8, language 66language that seems to come rom a single, uniied
source"
Bakhtin o!!oses monologic language to #<.<$:;5:SS8&, which is the idea o a multi!licity o languages all in
o!eration in a culture" #eteroglossia might be deined as the collection o all the orms o social s!eech, or rhetorical
modes, that !eo!le use in the course o their daily lives" 'Bakhtin calls these 7socio6ideological languages7 and
describes them on !" BBCa*" & good exam!le o heteroglossia would be all the dierent languages you use in the
course o a day" Dou talk to your riends in one way, to your !roessor in another way, to your !arents in a third way,
to a waiter in a restaurant in a ourth way, etc"
%or instance, 8 once returned a call rom a student 'who was asking or an extension on a !a!er* and got his
answering machine/ the message said 7#ey, dudes and dudettes, 81m not here cuA 81m takin1 the day o to hit the
slo!es, so catch you later"7 .he language here was clearly not directed at a student6teacher communication" $ather,
the terminology, assum!tions, and mode o ex!ressivity were all geared toward a very s!eciic audience" .his
exam!le shows one kind o language at use66one !art o the heteroglossia this student>s!eaker could have chosen to
use" 8t also shows a undamentally 98&5:;8, utterance66one oriented toward a !articular kind o listener>audience,
and im!lying a !articular relationshi! between the s!eaker and the /listeners"
Bakhtin says 'on !!" BB2 and BBC* that there are actually two orces in o!eration whenever language is used=
centri!etal orce and centriugal orce" ,entri!etal orce 'and he gets this term>idea rom !hysics* tends to !ush
things toward a central !oint/ centriugal orce tends to !ush things away rom a central !oint and out in all
directions" Bakhtin says that monologic language 'monologia* o!erates according to centri!etal orce= the s!eaker o
monologic language is trying to !ush all the elements o language, all o its various rhetorical modes 'the
3ournalistic, the religious, the !olitical, the economic, the academic, the !ersonal* into one single orm or utterance,
coming rom one central !oint" .he centri!etal orce o monologia is trying to get rid o dierences among
languages 'or rhetorical modes* in order to !resent one uniied language" Monologia is a system o norms, o one
standard language, or an 7oicial7 language, a standard language that everyone would have to s!eak 'and which
would then be enorced by various mechanisms, such as &lthusser1s $S&s and 8S&s*"
#eteroglossia, on the other hand, tends to move language toward multi!licity66not, as with the other !oststructuralist
theorists, in terms o multi!licity o meaning or individual words or !hrases, by disconnecting the signiier and the
signiied, but by including a wide variety o dierent ways o s!eaking, dierent rhetorical strategies and
vocabularies"
Both heteroglossia and monologia, both the centriugal and centri!etal orces o language, Bakhtin says, are always
at work in any utterance" 7<very concrete utterance o a s!eaking sub3ect serves as a !oint where centriugal as well
as centri!etal orces are brought to bear7 'BBCa*" 5anguage, in this sense, is always both anonymous and social,
something ormed beyond any individual, but also concrete, illed with s!eciic content which is sha!ed by the
s!eaking sub3ect"
-oetic language, Bakhtin argues, has been conce!tualiAed historically as centri!etal, and novelistic language as
centriugal" +ovelistic language is dialogic and heteroglossic, Bakhtin says, and as such it exists as a site o struggle
to overcome 'or at least to !arody* the univocal, monologic utterances that characteriAe oicial centraliAed language"
Bakhtin wants to ind alternatives to a strict ormalist or structuralist a!!roach, because these ways o looking at
literature tend to examine a literary work 7as i it were a hermetic and sel6suicient whole, whose elements
constitute a closed system !resuming nothing beyond themselves, no other utterances7 'BBCb*"
8n the section on discourse in !oetry and discourse in the novel 'which starts on !" BB9*, Bakhtin argues that !oetry
is undamentally monologic, and o!erates as i it were a 7hermetic and sel6suicient whole7 'which is why
ormalist critics, like the &merican +ew ,ritics, mostly studied !oetry, not iction*" .he !oetic word, according to
Bakhtin, acknowledges only itsel, its ob3ect 'what it re!resents*, and its own unitary and singular language '!"
B20a*/ the word in !oetry encounters only the !roblem o its relation to an ob3ect, not its relation to another1s word"
8n other words, words used !oetically reer to language itsel, to idea o centraliAed>unitary !oetic language, and
!erha!s to an ob3ect re!resented66but not to non6!oetic language, to other languages in the culture"
!oetic word66Bakhtin calls it 7autotelic7' which means coming rom itsel, reerring to itsel*, or image6as6tro!e66has
meaning only in itsel, or in relation to an ob3ect 'as signiier or in relation to a signiied* and nowhere else" &s
Bakhtin !uts it, all the activity o the !oetic word is exhausted by the relation between word and ob3ect/ !oetry is
thereor the use o words without reerence to history" 7it !resumes nothing beyond the borders o its own context
'exce!t, o course, what can be ound in the treasure6house o language itsel7 '!" B21a*" .he !oetic word means
only itsel as word, or it can include all its connotative and denotative meanings 'the 7treasure6house o language*/
when it reers to an ob3ect, that ob3ect is cut o rom any social or historical s!eciicity" 8n other words, a !oetic
word is only a signiier, or when it1s connected to a signiied, that signiied is always an abstraction" So in a !oem
the word 7bottle7 will reer only to itsel, or to the idea o 7bottle,7 rather than to a s!eciic bottle 'like the !lastic
water bottle here in ront o me*"
5et1s look at how this works in a s!eciic instance" 0hen 8 write 7.wo !ounds ground bee, seedless gra!es, loa
bread7 you can read this two ways" 0e can do a 7!oetic7 reading, where the words reer to abstract ideas, or to other
words, or to !oetry itsel" Such a reading might ocus on the irst word, 7.wo,7 as im!lying a undamental duality,
but that duality is undermined by the orm o the verb 7!ounds,7 which is singular" .he idea o 7!ounds7 as verb
brings u! an image o violence, that the 7two7 in the irst word might be in some kind o struggle" .hat struggle
might be against the 7ground,7 the third word, which connotes an image o violence66something being 7ground"7 8t
also rhymes with 7!ound766so the 7two7 who are also 7one7 'singular in the verb* are !ounding the ground in some
kind o anger" 0hat1s the ground@ .he ground o their being, the ground they stand on, the ground that divides them
as one>two beings@ '0hy not@* .hen 7bee766well, 7bee7 can mean meat66the basic substance o human lesh6or it
can mean 7argument,7 which its with the image o the two !ounding the ground 'or each other* in this ury" .he
next line gives us the reason or their anger" +ot only are they divided, not ?uite one and not ?uite two, but they are
7seedless766no os!ring, no ertility, no re!roduction" .his is !erha!s the source o the violence in the irst line" .he
idea o the ight is echoed then in the word 7gra!es,7 which brings u! 7sour gra!es,7 eeling resentul or something
you can1t have, as well as echoing the word 7gri!e,7 which, like 7bee,7 gives the idea o a ?uarrel" 7Seedless gra!es7
is also an oxymoron, a !aradox, like 7two !ounds/7 gra!es are ruit, hence a symbol o natural abundance, yet they
are seedless, sterile" .he last line, 7loa bread,7 reinorces the idea o a ruitless re!roduction causing violence/ the
word 7bread7 echoes the word 7bred,7 associated with re!roduction again, and 7loa7 im!lies laAiness or inability,
which stands in contrast to the action o 7!ound7ing in the irst line" So the laAy loaers are the ones who have
bread>bred, who have engaged successully in re!roduction, while the ighters, who struggle, are the sterile ones66
and their sterility is a !roduct o their lack o dierentiation, their inability to decide whether they are one or two,
the same or dierent"
Silly, o course" But !ossible" .his, Bakhtin would say, is how !oetry is monologic= i we assume these words are a
!oem, we read them ?uite dierently than i we assume these words are a grocery list" .he writer or critic interested
in seeing the heteroglossia in language would read these words as embedded in social relations/ such a critic would
!robably read them as a grocery list, as writing with a distinct social !ur!ose, rather than as abstractions"
But Bakhtin would also say that the 7!oetic7 reading o the grocery list also has validity/ the words on the !age
never mean only the ob3ect they signiy" 8n !oetry, the social meaning is almost entirely erased, but in iction the
social meaning and the abstract meaning 'the 7autotelic7 meaning* are both !resent" +ovelists might show someone
writing this grocery list, and on one level that list would sim!ly be an itemiAation o oods the character will buy, but
there might also be a symbolic level, where these !articular oods have signiicance or resonance beyond the merely
literal" &s Bakhtin says, '!" B21* the !rose artist 7elevates the social heteroglossia surrounding ob3ects into an image
that has inished contours, an image com!letely shot through with dialogiAed overtones"7
:n !!" B22'c*B2E, Bakhtin discusses urther the idea o dialogue, or the dialogic, arguing that all words or utterances
are directed toward an answer, a res!onse" 8n everyday s!eech, words are understood by being taken into the
listener1s own conce!tual system, illed with s!eciic ob3ects and emotional ex!ressions, and being related to these/
the understanding o an utterance is thus inse!arable rom the listener1s res!onse to it" &ll s!eech is thus oriented
toward what Bakhtin calls the 7conce!tual horiAon7 o listener/ this horiAon is com!rised o the various social
languages the listener inhabits>uses" 9ialogism is an orientation toward the interaction between the various
languages o a s!eaker and the languages o a listener" .his is why Bakhtin says ' on !" B2Eb* that 7discourse lives
on the boundary between its own context and another, alien, context"7
:n B2(a, Bakhtin argues that the sense o boundedness, historicity, and social determination ound in dialogic
notions o language is alien to !oetic style" .he writer o !rose 'B2)a* is always attuned to his>her own language's*
and alien languages 'i"e" the languages o listeners*, and uses heteroglossia66 em!loys a variety o languages66to
always be entering into dialogue with readers" .he iction writer is always directing his>her 7s!eech7 'i"e" writing*
toward the !ossible res!onses o readers, and is always trying to ind more things to say, more ways to say it, so that
readers can understand the message's*"
.his diversity o voices which is heteroglossia is the undamental characteristic o !rose writers, and o the novel as
a genre"
& good exam!le o a heteroglossic novel is Melville1s Moby 9ick, which uses a huge variety o 'socio6ideological*
languages= the language o the whaling industry, the language o ,alvinist religion, the language o the
domestic>sentimental novel, the language o Shakes!earean drama, the language o !latonic !hiloso!hy, the
language o democracy, etc" 8n using all these languages, Melville ho!es to increase the !otential siAe o his
readershi!, as the novel !robably contains some kind o language which every reader has as !art o his>her existing
vocabulary or 7horiAon"7
&ll materials on this site are written by, and remain the !ro!erty o, 9r" Mary Flages, &ssociate -roessor o
<nglish, University o ,olorado at Boulder" Dou are welcome to ?uote rom this lecture, or link this to your own
site, with !ro!er citation and attribution" %or more inormation, see ,iting <lectronic Sources
5ast revision= +ovember 1E, 2001
%or comments, send mail to .he ,ourse <mail 5ist or Mary Flages
$eturn to <nglish 2010, %all 2001 #ome -age
$eturn to <nglish 2010, %all 1992 #ome -age