by V. N. Vološinov translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik
Harvard University Press, 1986 Paper: 978-0-674-55098-8 Library of Congress Classification B809.8.V59413 1986 Dewey Decimal Classification 401
ABOUT THIS BOOK | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
REVIEWS
Quite simply one of the best general introductions to linguistics study as a whole.
-- Fredric Jameson Style
This book is a masterpiece of theoretical thought. It anticipates the actual achievements of much of what we now call sociolinguistics. The ‘dialectic of the sign’ and of the verbal sign in particular as it is presented in the book acquires great suggestive value in the light of today’s debates about semiotics.
-- Roman Jakobson
In this one book a reader can discover the ideas of Bakhtin and his circle about language, not as a conceptual metaphor, but as that aspect of human life which is in fact the subject matter of a cumulative science. Its critical account of the state of linguistic thought in the first decades of the century is all that a sociological or Marxist critique can and should be: not a stereotyped application of received categories, but an attempt to think through from the foundation the consequence of taking social interaction; not the abstract individual speaker, as starting point… The empirical consequences developed in the course of the book…are just as valuable today as ever… Brilliant.
-- Dell Hymes
This is, in my opinion, the central corpus in the work of the Russian semiotic tradition attributed to Bakhtin’s circle.
-- Michael Cole
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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
by V. N. Vološinov translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik
Harvard University Press, 1986 Paper: 978-0-674-55098-8
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.
REVIEWS
Quite simply one of the best general introductions to linguistics study as a whole.
-- Fredric Jameson Style
This book is a masterpiece of theoretical thought. It anticipates the actual achievements of much of what we now call sociolinguistics. The ‘dialectic of the sign’ and of the verbal sign in particular as it is presented in the book acquires great suggestive value in the light of today’s debates about semiotics.
-- Roman Jakobson
In this one book a reader can discover the ideas of Bakhtin and his circle about language, not as a conceptual metaphor, but as that aspect of human life which is in fact the subject matter of a cumulative science. Its critical account of the state of linguistic thought in the first decades of the century is all that a sociological or Marxist critique can and should be: not a stereotyped application of received categories, but an attempt to think through from the foundation the consequence of taking social interaction; not the abstract individual speaker, as starting point… The empirical consequences developed in the course of the book…are just as valuable today as ever… Brilliant.
-- Dell Hymes
This is, in my opinion, the central corpus in the work of the Russian semiotic tradition attributed to Bakhtin’s circle.
-- Michael Cole
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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