Bakhtin in Dialogue, with Richards, Weaver, Burke, Foucault...

Aimee's Bakhtin

	Richards	Weaver	Burke	Foucault
Bakhtin (Similarities)	Language as a sign system	Rhetorical intention in every use of speech. Motivations in every utterance.	Interested in motivations and human interactions involved in rhetoric	Knowledge is made through discourse
Bakhtin (Differences)	Words are not neutral. Interpretation is internal.	Words are not neutral. Ethics is the central concern of rhetoric.	There are inevitable ambiguities and inconsistencies among motives.	Focuses on Power relationships

For Bakhtin, rhetoric expands to every act of speech or writing. Language is made up of utterances (oral and written words and sentences) that reflect the specific conditions and goals of various areas of human activity (1227). A sentence on its own is not a unit of speech communication because it is “not demarcated on either side by a change of speaking subjects; it has neither direct contact with reality nor a direct relation to other utterances; and it has no capacity to determine directly the responsive position of the other speaker, that is, it cannot revoke a response” (1236). The utterance, therefore, is a finalized, whole mode of communication that invites a dialogic response. Thematic content, style, and compositional structure are linked to the whole of the utterance (1227). Each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of utterances, which Bakhtin terms speech genres (1227). Most speech genres do not allow the reflection of the individual speaker’s style. The most conducive genres for individual style are those of artistic literature. Bakhtin’s view on language would differ from Foucault who focuses on statements, not utterances, and how relationships communicated in statements allow for meaning to be made, but also allow for a certain level of ambiguity that allows for multiple possibilities of reality. Foucault also focuses on the relationships of power and communication in discourse, which controls knowledge. Bakhtin does not address power relationship and instead discusses the relationship between speaker, listener, and context in a pretty balanced way.

Like Aristotle, Bakhtin is concerned with the relationship between the speaker and the audience, but differs in his views of this relationship. Bakhtin says that the relationship of active speaker and passive listener is a fiction that produces “a completely distorted idea of the complex and multifaceted process of active speech communication” (1232).  Instead when the listener perceives and understands the meaning of speech, the listener becomes an active participant throughout the duration of the utterance. There is a dialogical method involved between the speaker’s or writer’s rhetorical intentions and the audiences active role in interpreting and responding to the speaker or writer. Bakhtin seems to align closely with Burke in regards to the interaction involved in rhetoric. In both cases, the scholars look at the motivations of the speakers and how audiences respond to these motivations.

In regards to language, Bakhtin argues that it is not a stable system, but instead a “continuous generative process implemented in the social-verbal interaction of speakers” (1223). Words do not have inherent meaning because a word is “the product of a reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee” (1215). This idea seems to agree with Richards’s thoughts on the meaning of words as sign systems. Richards says that words mean nothing by themselves, and “it is only when a thinker makes use of them that they stand for anything, or, in one sense, have ‘meaning’” (1274). However, Bakhtin says that words are neutral in that they don’t express a specific ideological function. Instead they can carry out any ideological function—scientific, aesthetic, ethical, religious (1213). According to Bakhtin, “the neutral meaning of the word applied to a particular reality under particular real conditions of speech communication creates a spark of expression” (1243). Whereas Richards and Weaver argue that words are not neutral. Weaver says, “Language is a system of imputation, by which values and precepts are first framed in the mind and are then imputed on things” (1359). Richards says words do not have literal meanings, but meaning is shaped through the contexts in which language has been used. Bahktin views words as social signs, that are part of a material reality imbued with ideological meaning by their use in social situations; whereas, Richards and Weaver appear to view meaning making as an internal, individualized mental process.

Jie’s Bakhtin

There are many interesting things we can talk about Bakhtin. Just take a look at the list of his key terms: ideology, dialogue, consciousness, utterance, sentence, word, meaning, theme, inner speech, speech genres, actively responsive understanding… and they are connected with each other in different ways. Bakhtin’s theory is so rich and complex that it is not enough to discuss his rhetoric and compare him with other theorists in one short paper. Here I just want to concentrate on one important contribution Bakhtin makes to the study of rhetoric: redefining language.

Bakhtin’s understanding of language seems complicated. He finds it unsatisfying to simply treat language as an abstract system of signs. Unlike some linguists, Bakhtin does not believe that language consists of words and sentences with fixed, stable meanings. That is a system related to grammar and dictionary, reflecting a mechanic understand of language. However, it seems that he does not simply deny the value of a system of signs, as he takes care to distinguish utterance from sentence and meaning from theme. Moreover, in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, he uses the concept of sign to show the ubiquity of ideologies, claiming that “The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another” (1211). In fact, Language is full of ideologies. Bakhtin states that “The linguistic form and its ideological impletion are not severable” while “Each and every word is ideological and each and every application of language involves ideological change” (1220). Because language is immersed in different values and ideas, each form of speaking or writing can be rhetorical. Here we can see something similar to Weaver’s and Burke’s theory. Both of them realize that language is not neutral. Weaver believes that “Every use of speech, oral and written, exhibits an attitude, and an attitude implies an act” and language is “subjectively born, intimate, and value-laden vehicle” (1359). Burke points out that terminologies serve as “terministic screens” (1341), directing people’s attention to certain things. However, both of them also understand language differently. Weaver’s rhetoric is based on “intellectual love of the Good” (1371) as he believes in absolute truth and “ultimate good” (1368). Accordingly, language is “sermonic” (1359), and he supports a hierarchy of words: “All of the terms in a rhetorical vocabulary are like links in a chain stretching up to some master link which transmits its influence down through the linkages” (1370). While Bakhtin believes that themes of utterances come from social interaction and social situation, Weaver thinks that ideas and thoughts rise from individuals’ inside by seeing language as “a system of imputation, by which values and precepts are first framed in the mind and are then imputed to things” (1359). Burke is different in that he views language as symbolic action, and while Bakhtin places language in reality against treating language as an abstract system, Burke questions the existence of reality: “how fantastically much of our ‘Reality’ could not exist for us, were it not for our profound and inveterate involvement in symbol systems” (1342). In other words, when terminologies lead to “a selection of reality” (1341), in a certain sense a significant part of reality may be even a product of symbol systems.

Bakhtin’s rhetoric, on the other hand, is based on the social nature of language. He first rediscovers the alive, actual, concrete language used in reality. “Language acquires life and historically evolves precisely here, in concrete verbal communication, and not in the abstract linguistic system of language forms, not in the individual psych of speakers.” (1222) Consequently he emphasizes the functional utterance and theme instead of word and meaning, which belongs to the abstract system of language. More importantly, this focus on verbal communication (dialogue) reveals the social aspect of language. In Bakhtin’s view, speakers or writers can never be individuals staying outside the society. The so-called individual style is always shaped and determined by speech genres, relatively stable types of utterances, while individual speeches are born in particular social situations by individuals with certain social orientations. Studying actual, concrete language, Bakhtin also highlights the audience (addressee). In reality, the addressee is never a passive being that can be ignored, and “Any true understanding is dialogic in nature” (1226). Understanding is always active, responsive, and language is a generative process. To a certain extent, Bakhtin’s awareness of social nature of language and social situations generating verbal communication is similar to Foucault’s rhetoric. However, while Bakhtin still sees individuals in society and discusses speakers/writers or audience, it seems that Foucault takes a step further and concentrates on social conditions, relations, and positions constraining communication. In Foucault’s theory, individuals disappear while functions emerge. He makes it clear that the discourse he examines is not about “the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined” (1444). He is more interested in the position of subject and the function of author than individuals. Besides, though Richards is also concerned about language, signs, and communication, he is radically different from Bakhtin in that he tends to treat language as an abstract system of signs and ignores its social nature. In his triangle of symbol, thought (reference), and thing (referent), though he also implies that language is value-laden (thoughts between language (symbol system) and reality (things)), what Baktin values, including the active role of audience and speech genres that are derived from social situation and shape speeches, is nowhere to find. Believing that rhetoric can also be exposition, Richards sticks to “the strict scientific or ‘rigid’ end of this scale of dependent variabilities” (1289). Although he also talks about contexts and the interinanimation of words (the meaning of a particular word depends on special situations and other words), because he works on a different system of language, his understanding of context, word, meaning is essentially different from Bakhtin’s.