At 11:17 PM 7/20/96 -0500, you wrote:
>The notion of social langauges seems to be at a level comparable to current
>notions of speech communities or discourse communities. One of the problems
>I see is that these notions typically reinscribe structuralism (or
>abstract-objectivism) in smaller social units than the nation and in
>relation to rules of use as well as form (kind of mini-langues with
>increased scope for rules). I think where Bakhtin was heading was to a
>notion of langauge as something other than words plus rules (the
>metaphorical dictionary and grammar book, even with style and etiquette
>manuals added in for commuicative competence), to a notion of language as
>what we get from other people's mouths (and their written texts), from our
>experience of others' embodied ways of being in the world and their many
>artifacts.
>
Bakhtin was constructing a completely dialogic model of meaning - and within
that notion, he was constructing a view in which meaning is a situated
bi-lateral act.
In "Marxism and the Philosophy of Languge" he says:
"Orientation of the word toward the addressee has an extremealy high
significance. In point of fact, word is a two-sided act. It is determined
equally by *whose* word it is and for *whom* it is meant. As word, it is
precisely *the product of the reciprocal relationship between speaker and
listener, addresser and addressee*. Each and every word expresses the "one"
in relationship to the "other". ... A word is a bridge thrown between
myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me, then the other
depends on my addressee. A word is a territory shared by both addresser and
addressee, byt the speaker and his interlocutor." (Emphasis author's) - p. 86
There are also other passages in which it becomes clear that Bakhtin
consideres speach (language) as a form of action or activity by which social
relatiosnhips are constantly being created and recreated.
As I understand CHAT (Cultural historical Activity Theory) - Bakhtin's
philosophy of language and his semantic theory embody the basic CHAT
principles and beliefs about the nature of linguistic communication.
1. Language is fully socially situated in concrete social situations
2. Language is realized through dialogic, communicative acts of creating a
particular social relationship within a socially and historically determined
situation.
Ana
V.N. Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Harvard University
Press, 1986
-- also published under the name of M. Bakhtin in Serbo-Croatian adn French**
** There is a considerable controversy as to the authorship of this book,
but one thing seems to be certain: Conceptually it belongs to other books
signed by Bakhtin, and one could probably safely assume that Bakhtin and his
friends - Voloshinov and Medvedev - had been mutually influenced by each
other and that maybe they had even written books together and then published
them sometimes under one's and sometimes another's name. (See the preface to
Marxism and the philosophy of Language)