V. N. Vološinov’s important work, first published in Russian in 1929, had to wait a generation for recognition. This first paperback edition of the English translation will be capital for literary theorists, philosophers, linguists, psychologists, and many others.

Vološinov is out to undo the old disciplinary boundaries between linguistics, rhetoric, and poetics in order to construct a new kind of field: semiotics or textual theory. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik have provided a new preface to discuss Vološinov in relation to the great resurgence of interest in all the writing of the circle of Mikhail Bakhtin.

• Contents 
• Translators' Preface, 1986
• Author's Introduction, 1929
• Guide to Transliteration
• Translators' Introduction
• PART I: 
• THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR MARXISM
• Chapter 1. 
• The Study of Ideologies and Philosophy of Language
• Chapter 2. 
• Concerning the Relation of the Basis and Superstructures
• Chapter 3. 
• Philosophy of Language and Objective Psychology
• PART II: 
• TOWARD A MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
• Chapter 1. 
• Two Trends of Thought in Philosophy of Language
• Chapter 2. 
• Language, Speech, and Utterance
• Chapter 3. 
• Verbal Interaction
• Chapter 4. 
• Theme and Meaning in Language
• PART III: 
• TOWARD A HISTORY OF FORMS OF UTTERANCE IN LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTIONS (Study in the Application of the Sociological Method to Problems of Syntax)
• Chapter 1. 
• Theory of Utterance and the Problems of Syntax
• Chapter 2. 
• Exposition of the Problem of Reported Speech
• Chapter 3. 
• Indirect Discourse, Direct Discourse, and Their Modifications
• Chapter 4. 
• Quasi-Direct Discourse in French, German, and Russian
• Appendix 1. 
• On the First Russian Prolegomena to Semiotics
• Matejka, Ladislav
• Appendix 2. 
• The Formal Method and the Sociological Method (M. M. Baxtin, P. N. Medvedev, V. N. Vološinov) in Russian Theory and Study of Literature
• Titunik, I. R.
• Index