And Ellice asked, "Can you provide some references for that position--in
addition to Lotman? Did you find some of these ideas in Bakhtin (in his
distinction between
monologic and heteroglossic texts) or elsewhere?"
One place Bakhtin writes about this sort of distinction is in his essay
"Discourse in the Novel" in the Dialogic imagination, in his distinction
between "authoritative discourse" and "innerly-persuasive discourse":
"The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our
own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us
internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused to it" (Bakhtin,
1981, p. 342).
It is quite different from the kinds of "transformative" or "dialogic"
functions of texts that might characterize Function II in Lotman's analysis.
In fact, authoritative discourse precludes change and play in discourse:
"authoritative discourse permits no play with the context framing it, no play
with its borders, no gradual and flexible transitions, no spontaneously
creative stylizing variants on it" (1981, p. 343).
Ref.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). _The dialogic imagination_. Ed. M. Holquist, Trans.
C. Emerson & M. Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P.
Bill Penuel
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