Voloshinov Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

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MARXISM . AND

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

v. N. Volosinov

Translated by LADISLAV MATEJKA and I. R. TITUNIK

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

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Copyright© 1973 by Seminar Press, Inc.; Translators' Preface, 1986, t / and Author's Introduction, 1929 copyright© 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Eighth printing, 2000

This Harvard University Press paperback is published by arrangement with .Academic Press, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Voloshinov, V. N. Marxism and the philosophy of language. Translation of: Marksizm i filosofiia' Qzyka. Bibliography: p. 1. Dialectical materialism. 2. Languages

Philosophy. I. Title. B809.8.V59413 1986 40 1 85-27163 ISBN 0-674-55098-6 V

Translators' Preface, 1986 Author's Introduction, 1929 Guide to Transliteration

Contents

Translators' Introduction

PART 1: THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR MARXISM

Chapter 7 . The Study of I deologies and Ph i losophy of Language

Chapter 2. Concern ing the Rel ation of the Basis and Superstructures

Chapter 3. Phi losophy of Language and Objective Psycho logy

PART II: TOWARD A MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Chapter 7. Two Trends of Thought in Phi losophy of Language

Chapter 2. Language, S peech, and Utterance Chapter 3. Verbal I n teraction Chapter 4. Theme and Meaning i n Language

PART Ill: TOWARD A HISTORY OF FORMS OF UTTERANCE. IN LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTIONS (Study in the Application of the Soc iological Method to Problems of Syntax )

Chapter 7 . Theory of U tterance and the Problems of .

vii xii i

xvi i i

9

1 7

25

45 65 83 99

Syntax . 1 09 Chapter 2. Exposition of the Problem of Reported

Speech 1 1 5 Chapter 3. I ndi rect Discourse, D irect D iscourse, and

Their Modifi cations 1 25 Chapter 4. Quasi-D i rect D iscourse in French, German,

BOGAZi<;;i ONiVERSiTESi KUTUPHANESi

and Russian

11111 11 11 1 1 11 111111 423003 v

1 41

vi

Appendix 7. On the First Russian Prolegomena to Semiotics. 1 61 Ladislav Matejka

Appendix 2. The Formal Method and the Sociological Method (M. M. Baxtin, P. N. Medvedev, V. N. Volosinov) in

Index

Russian Theory and Study of Literature. 1 75

I. R. Titunik

201

Translators' Preface, 1986

In the early 1970s, wh�n V. N. Volosinov's book of 1929, Marksizm i fi/osofija jazyka, was translated into English and published as Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, both the book and its author were virtually unknown. Very few scholars possessed any knowledge of Volosinov's work and even fewer made any use of it. Among those rare exceptions, fortunately, was that coryphaeus of modern thought in the humanities, Professor Roman jakobson. For jakobson, Volosinov was first and foremost an insightful linguist who skillfully used a semiotic framework for the study of utterances and their dialogical exchange in verbal communication. In a letter of 1931 to Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Jakobson praised Volosinov's "superb interpretation of linguistic problems" and, in the spirit of Volosinov's book, emphasized the dialectic method as a prerequisite for an adequate understanding of historical philology.1

While Volo'S-inov's work went largely ignored in the Soviet Union, it played an important role, thanks to jakobson, in shaping the theories of the Prague Linguistic Circle. It also influenced jakobson's model of the incessant interaction between the variability of utterances and the systematic provisions of language, as developed in his trail-blazing treatise Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb. In that study, jakobson prominently cited Volosinov's key concept of the nature of reported speech, the topic to which the entire third part of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language had been devoted. Furthermore, it was jakobson's good offices that brought

1. Roman jakobson to Nikolaj Trubetzkoy, N. 5. Trubetzkoy's Letters and Notes (The HagueParis, 1975), p. 222.

vii

viii Translators' Preface, 1986

about the selection of that book in 1972 by Seminar Press for translation as the first volume in its series Studies in Language. In honor of the role he played, the translators wish to dedicate the present Harvard University Press edition of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language to the memory of Roman Osipovic Jakobson,.

With its appea,rance in English in 1973, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language began to attract considerable interest. Indeed, for many of its new readers it had the impact of a major discovery. It provided, to speak in its own terms, a welcome synthesis to replace the Humboldtian I Vosslerian thesis and the Saussurean antithesis in the theory and study of language. Volosinov is concerned above all with the social role of verbal utterances. He regards verbal utterances as social interaction, which is most typically displayed in dialogical exchanges and, by means of internalization, in inner speech and thoughts. In his view, the refraction of existence in the human consciousness originates solely in verbal communication which, by its nature, is anchored in social interaction. Consequently, for Volosinov, the study of human language cannot be detached from social existence in time and space and from the impact of socioeconomic conditions. The conceptualization of dialogue in the dialectical method is regarded by Volosinov as the only way of understanding the fundamental significance of language for all aspects of human civilization.

It was precisely the suggestive ramifications of dialectics for all fields of the humanities that made the resurreEted Marxism and the Philosophy of Language an important book for modern trends not only in linguistics but also in anthropology, psychology, and the studies of literature and culture. In his comprehensive review of Volosinov's book (in its English translation), Fredric Jameson called Marxism and the Philosophy of Language "the best general introduction to linguistic study as a whole:'2 According to Aram Yemgoyan, Volosinov's book "is a must for anthropological linguists for it moves beyond all traditional linguistic concerns and virtually predates all contemporary interests ranging from semiotics to speech act theory:'3 And in the view of the British "nee-formalist" Ann Shukman, "Volosinov's extreme contextual ism leads him to a semiotic theory that is primarily sociological, and to a theory of language that emphasizes process rather than system, function rather than essence:'4

2. Fredric Jameson, review of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Style, 1 (Fall 1974), p. 535.

3. Ararn Yemgoyan, review of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, American A nthropologist, 79, no .. 3 (1977), p. 701.

4. Ann Shukman, review of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Language and Style, 12, no. 1 (1979), p. 54.

Translators' Preface, 7986 ix

There can be no doubt that a paramount factor in the promotion of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language to international prominence was the association of this book with the name of M. M. Baxtin, whose reputation among students of the humanities around the world has reached prodigious proportions. Undoubtedly instrumental in this development was V. V. Ivanov, the distinguished Soviet semiotician and linguist who, in his contribution to the celebration of Baxtin's 75th birthday in 1973, publicly declared that certain works signed by P. N. Medvedev and V. N. Volosinov, including Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, actually belonged to the pen of M. M . Baxtin. Although he provided nv proof whatsoever, many scholars accepted Ivanov's claim as fact . Baxtin himself, then still alive, of course, had the opportunity to accept Ivanov's assertion or to deny it, but he remained silent and never made a public statement. It is known, however, that he refused to sign an affidavit concerning the alleged authorship when, shortly before his death, the official Soviet publishing agency (VAAP) urged him to sign for the sake of the copyright law.

The effect of Ivanov's declaration and its wide acceptance has been to draw into one integral and magisterial oeuvre works previously understood to have belonged to different writers and thinkers. Thus, works like Marxism and the Philosophy of Language-and indeed that work prominently among them-came to share the limelight of international attention along with the signed works of Baxtin, such as his books on Dostoevskij and Rabelais. In fact, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language became a focal point as the fundamental and most systematic exposition of the "Bakhtinian" conception of sign and language.

The merging of all the various writings into a single unified Bakhtinian recension is problematic, however. To this day, for example, no one has convincingly explained why Baxtin in 1929 would have used the name of his friend Volosinov for Marxism and the Philosophy of Language when that very same year Baxtin's book on Dostoevskij was published under his own name and was acclaimed by the Soviet critics, including the cultural commissar Lunacarskij. The seemingly simple question as to what actually happened remains unanswered, despite considerable research and inquiry, and despite the fact that some participants and witnesses-among them Baxtin himself-remained alive until fairly recently; indeed, a few are still, alive today. Instead of being clarified by concrete evidence, the problem of authorship has turned into a mystery compounded by the special Soviet penchant for secrecy.

There are also the conceptual and ideological divergencies and even contradictions among writings signed by Baxti]l, Volosinov, and Medvedev. The books and articles by Volosinov and Medvedev explicitly declare and implement a Marxist orientation. If Baxtin is to be regarded their author,

X Translators' Preface, 1986

then his relationship to Marxism must be defined-an issue of considerable controversy in itself. Some critics have explicitly denied Baxtin's Marxist sympathies or, at least, tried to minimize the Marxist character of the writings signed by Volosinov and Medvedev as "editorial re- touches;' mere "expedience;' "window-dre::;sing" meant to insure publication in the Soviet Union. Among the holders of this view are Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, the authors of the most ambitious and, in many respects, the most fascinating work on Baxtin yet published (Mikhail Bakhtin). Others, however, have hailed Baxtin precisely as an outstanding Marxist writer and thinker; this is the opinion of such authors as Frederic jameson, Marina Yaguello, and Radovan Matijasevic, among others. Quite a different tack is taken by tne German Marxist scholarHelmut Gluck, who assigns Ma�xist credentials only to Volosinov and Medvedev, denying them to Baxtin, and on that basis rejecting Ivanov's claim of Baxtin's authorship of their writings. Still other scholars, most notably Tzvetan Todorov, are inclined to see all the writings in question as belonging to one unified system whose author is Baxtin, but do, nevertheless, admit that the question of Marxism is a serious moot point. Such a variety and contradiction of informed expert opinion must give one pause, especially since identification of the overall conceptual and ideological framework is by no means a trivial matter: similar ideas in different systems of thought may well possess different values and pursue different aims.

Another point that deserves, but has not received, attention concerns what V. V. Ivanov apparently meant when he claimed that the "technical aspect" of his approach had always bee.n "a secondary matter" for Baxtin.5 Indeed, there have been many critics who have claimed that the loose, ambiguous, and contradictory nature of Baxtin's "technical aspect" has been exonerated by the "profundity of his ideas:' Such a strategy, however, flagrantly ignores the fact that there are among the works attributed to Baxtin at least two in which the technical aspect is highly developed and skillfully deployed: they are T he Formal Method in Literary Scholarship (Medvedev) and the very work presented in this volume, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. The first documents the technical expertise of the practicing professional literary critic, polemicist, and theorist in its detailed, closely argued analysis of formalism and in its elaboration of a program for "sociological poetics:' The second brings to bear, especially in its third part, the professional linguist's technical concern with "theory of the utterance" and ."problems of syntax;' specifically with the problem of "reported speech:' That these two works,

5. V. V. Ivanov, "The Significance of M. M. Bakhtin's Ideas on Sign, Utterance and Dialogue for Modern Semiotics ;' in Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from ihe Soviet Union, ed. H. Baran (White Plains, N.Y. , 1976), p. 332.

Translators' Preface, 7986 xi

technically and stylistically so different from Baxtin's signed writings, are at the same time attributed to him inevitably makes for something of a poser: if Baxtin did write these works in the technical register of their signatories as well as in their conceptual and ideological code, then the result may be viewed as an extreme case of stylization or even as a sort of intellectual forgery.

Thus there are serious grounds for reservations regarding the attribution to Baxtin of works signed by Volosinov and Medvedev. This has been acknowledged by the occasional use of the ambiguous slash in the designation of author of the works in question, that is, Voloshinov I Bakhtin, Medvedev I Bakhtin, allowing, to paraphrase Tzvetan Todorov, for the possibilities of collaboration and I or substitution and I br discussion.

We, the translators of this English version of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, aware of the new materials and information that have come to light since its first publication and aware of the arguments in the controversy over attribution, understand that certain assumptions we made and certain conclusions we drew in 1973 are now open to question. To help the reader acquaint himself with other, more recent assumptions and conclusions, we append below a selected list of titles from the current literature on the Baxtin problem in addition to the works already cited. At the same time, we stand by the main content of our analyses and arguments. Furthermore, we believe that fair-mindedness and scholarly integrity dictate that the author of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language continue to be identified as Valentin Nikolaevic Volosinov since it has not been conclusively proved otherwise. It is a common practice in countries like the Soviet Union to remake the past by fiat; we see no reason to follow suit.

RECENT LITERATURE Bah tin, Mihail, Marksizam i filozofija jezika, translated and introduced by Radovan

Matijasevic (Belgrade, 1980). Bakhtin, M. M. I P. N. Medvedev, Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Crit

ical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, translated by Albertj. Wehrle with a new introduction by Wlad Godzich (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).

Bakhtine, Mikhail (V. N. Volochinov), Le marxisme et Ia philosophie du language, translated and presented by M. Yaguello with a preface by Roman Jakobson (Paris, 1977).

·

Baxtin, M. M., Estetika slovesnogo tvorcestva, ed. with commentaries S. G. Bocarov and S. S. Averincev (Moscow, 1979).

Baxtin, M. M., V. N. Volosinov, Frejdizm: kriticeskij ocerk, reprint of 1927 original edition with new afterword by Anna Tamarchenko (New York, 1983).

Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, Mass., 1984).

xii . Translators' Preface, 1986

Holquist, Michael, "The Politics of Representation;' in Allegory and Representation, ed. S. j. Greenqlatt, Selected Papers from the English Institute, vol. 5 (Baltimore, 1979-80), pp. 163-182.

Kozinov, V., and S. Konkin, "Mixail Baxtin, kratkij ocerk zizni i dejatel'nosti;' in Problemy poetiki i istorii literatury (Saransk, 1973), pp. 5-35.

Matejka, Ladislav, ''The Roots of Russian Semiotics of Art;' in The Sign: Semiotics around the World, ed. R, Bailey et al. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1978), pp. 146-169. ·

Medvedev, Pavel, Die formale Methode in der Literaturwissenschaft, presented and translated by Helmut GlUck (Stuttgart, 1976).

Perlina, Nina, "Bakhtin-Medvedev-Voloshinov: An Apple of Discourse;' Revue de I'Universite d'Ottawa I Ottawa University Quarterly, 53, no. 1 (1983), pp. 35-47.

Segal, D. , Aspects ofStructuralism in Soviet Philology, Papers on Poetics and Semiotics, val. 2 (Tel-Aviv, 1974), pp. 120-132.

Titunik, I. R . , "Bachtin and Soviet Semiotics (A Case Study: Boris Uspenskij's Poetika kompozicii);' Russian Literature, 10 (1981), pp. 1-16. "Bakhtin & I or Volosinov & I or Medvedev: Dialogue & I or Doubletalk?" in Language and Literature, ed. B. A. Stolz et al. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1984), pp. 535-564.

Todorov, Tzvetan, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis, 1984). Volosinov, V. N., Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, translated by I. R. Titunik and

ed. in collaboration with Neal H. Bruss (New York, 1976). Marxismus und Sprachphilosophie, translated and introduced by Samuel M. Weber (Frankfurt, 1975).

Author's Introduction, 1929

To date, there is not as yet a single Marxist work on the philosophy of language. What is more, nothing of a definitive or elaborated nature has been said about language in Marxist works devoted to other, related fields.1 For completely understandable reasons, then, our work, which is"essentially the first of its kind, can set itself only the most modest of objectives. Nothing like a systematic and conclusive Marxist analysis even of only the basic issues in philosophy of language is feasible here. Such an analysis could only come about as the product of long and collaborative effort. Here we have h�d to limit ourselves to the modest task of delineating the basic directions that genuine Marxist thinking about language must take and the methodological guidelines on which that thinking must rely in approaching the concrete problems of linguistics.

Our task has been made especially difficult by the fact that Marxist litera� ture as yet contains no conclusive and commonly accepted definitions as to the specific nature of the reality of ideological· phenomena.2 In the majority

1. The s ole Marxis t work touching on language-the recently published little book by I. Present, The Origin of Speech and Thought- has little, if anything, to do with the philosophy of language. The book examines problems of the genesis of s peech and thought, where speech is unders tood not in terms of language as a certain s pecific ideological system but in terms of "signal" in the reflexological sense. Language as a phenomenon of a s pecific type cannot under any circumstances be reduced to "signal;' and for that reason I. Present's investigations do not engage language at alL There is no direct route from his investigations to the concrete is sues of linguistics and the philosophy of language.

2. Definition of the place of ideology in the unity of s ocial life was provided by the founders of Marxism: ideology as supers tructure, the relation of the superstructure to the basis , and so on. But as far as questions connected with the material of ideological creativity and the conditions of ideological communication are concerned, those questions, as secondary matters for the overall theory of his torical materialism, did not receive concrete or conclus ive resolution.

xiii

xiv Author's Introduction, 1929

of <;ases, ideological phenomena are understood as phenomena of consciousness; that is, they are understood psychologistically. Such a conception is detrimental in the extreme to a correct approach to the specific characteristics of ideological phenomena, which under no circumstances are reducible to the character[stic features of the subjective consciousness and psyche. This also explains why the role of language as the specific material reality of ideological creativity has failed to be adequately appreciated.

Furthermore, it must be added that mechanistic categories are firmly entrenched in all those fields of knowledge untouched, or only perfunctorily touched upon, by the hands of Marxism's founders-Marx and Engels. All those fields of knowledge are still, in a fundamental sense, arrested at a stage of predialectical mechanistic materialism. An expression of this is the continued dominance, to the present day, of the category of mechanistic causality in all fields in the study of ideology. Along with mechanistic causality is the still unsurmounted positivistic conception of empirical data-a reverence for "fact'' understood not in a dialectical sense but as something fixed and stable.3 The philosophical spirit of Marxism has hardly yet made itself felt in those fields.

As a consequence of this state of affairs, we find ourselves v irtually unable in the field of philosophy of language to derive support from any definitive, positive achievements in other fields of ideological studies. Even literary scholarship, the most advanced field of ideological study thanks to Plexanov, provides us with practically nothing relevant to our topic.

The work presented here basically pursues purely scientific investigative aims. However, we have made efforts to give it as popular a character as we could.4

In the first part of our work, we attempt to substantiate the significance of the philosophy of language for Marxism as a whole. That significance, as we said, has yet to be adequately appreciated. T he fact is that the concerns of the philosophy of language stand squarely at the juncture of several paramount domains in the Marxist worldview-domains, moreover, that today enjoy wide interest at the leading edge of our society.5

In addition, issues concerning the philosophy of language have recently taken on extraordinary acuteness and fundamentality, in Western Europe as well as the U.S.S.R.6 Contemporary bourgeois philosophy may be said to

3. Positivism is essential ly a transfer of the basic categories and habits of substantialistic thought from the region of "essences;' "ideas;' "the general;' etc. to the region of individual facts.

4. Of course, in addition to a general background in Marxism, the reader wil l need some familiarity with the basics of linguistics.

5. These are such fields as literary criticism and psychology. 6. But not at all in Marxist circles. We have in mind here the awakening of interest in the

word brought about by the "formalists" and by such books as those of G. Spett (Esthetic Fragments, The Inner Form of the Word) and also Losev's book, The Philosphy of Name.

Author's Introduction, 1929 XV

have begun developing under the sign of the word, this new trend in the philosophical thought of the West still being in its very earliest stage. A vehement struggle is going on over "the word" and its place in the system, a struggle for which analogy can be found only in the medieval debates involving realism, nominalism, and conceptualism. And indeed, the traditions of those philosophical trends of the Middle Ages have, to some degree, begun to be revived in the realism of the phenomenologists and the conceptualism of the neo-Kantians.

In linguistics itself, once its positivistic aversion to the theoretical aspect of posing scientific questions had passed and with it the enmity (typical for latter- day positivism) toward all demands for taking account of the worldview, an acute awareness of the discipline's own general-philosophical presuppositions and of its ties with other fields of knowledge awakened. Together with that awareness has corne a sense of crisis which linguistics is experiencing due to its inability to meet all those new challenges.

To bring out the position that the philosophy of language occupies in the Marxist worldview-that is the objective of the first part of our book. Therefore, we do not in the first part attempt to prove anything and do not offer final solutions to any of the questions raised; what interests us here is not so much the connections between phenomena as the connections between problems.

In the second part of the book we attempt to resolve the basic problem of the philosophy of language, that of the actual mode of existence of linguistic phenomena. This problem is the axis around which turn all the major issues in modern thought on philosophy of language. Such basic problems as those of the generation of language, of verbal interaction, of understanding, and of meaning, as well as others, all converge on this one problem at their common center. Of course, as regards the solution of this problem itself, we have been able merely to map out its basic route5{.\ Numerous questions remain barely touched upon; numerous lines of inquiry brought out in our exposition are left without being followed through to the end. But that could not be otherwise in a book of small size, which attempts virtually for the first time to approach these problems from a Marxist point of view.

The final part of our work is a concrete investigation of one of the problems of syntax. The fundamental idea of our entire work- the productive role and social nature of the utterance-needs concretization; its significance needs to be shown not only on the plane of general worldview and of theoretical issues in the philosophy of language but also in issues particular and peculiar to the science of language. After all, if an idea is correct and productive, then that productivity must manifest itself from top to bottom. But the topic of the third part- the problem of the reported utterance- has in itself broad significance extending beyond the confines of syntax. The fact

xvi Author's Introduction, 1929

is that a number of paramount literary phenomena-character speech (the construction of character in general), skaz, stylization, and parody-are nothing but different varieties of refraction of "another's speech:' An understanding of this kind of speech and its sociological governance is an essential condition for the productive treatment of all the literary phenomena mentioned?

Moreover, the very question dealt with in the third part has been totally neglected in the Russian linguistic literature. 'For instance, no one has .yet pointed out and described the phenomenon of quasi-direct discourse in Russian (found already in Puskin). The considerable variety of modifications of direct and indirect discourse have been left entirely unstudied.

Thus, our work moves in the direction from the general and abstract to the particular and concrete: from the concerns of general philosophy we turn to general linguistic concerns and from there, finally, to an issue of a more specialized nature that lies on the boundary between grammar (syntax) and sty I i sti cs.

7. As a matter of fact, precisely these· phenomena are attracting the attention of literary scholars at the present time. Of course, other points of view would also have to be applied to gain a full understanding of al l the phenomena we have mentioned. However, without analysis of the forms of reported speech no productive work is possible here.

Marxism and

the Philosophy of Language

Guide to Transliteration

Russian names and words i n the transl ated text and footnotes and i n the append ices are trans l i terated in accordance with the standard scho lar ly system in wh ich the fol lowing specia l signs have the approxim'ate value� i nd i cated below:

"

soft sign, i nd i cating that the preced ing consonan t is " softened" ( i .e., palata l ized) hard sign, i nd icating that the preced ing consonant i s not palata l ized

c ts c ·ch e e, as i n egg e e, as i n egg, preceded by " j" as explained below

y i n i tia l ly (before a vowel) , termi na l ly (after a vowe l ) , med ia l ly between vowels or between hard or soft sign and a vowel� elsewhere i nd i cates that the preced ing consonant i s palatal i zed

s sh sc shch X h y i, as i n bill z zh

Compare the fol lowing examples of certain Russian names i n their common E ngl ish spe l l i ngs and their trans l i terated equivalents: Chekhov = Cexov, Dostoyevsky = Dostoevsk ij , Gogol =Gogo!', Pushk in = Puskin, To lstoy= Tolstoj, etc.

Translators' Introduction

I n h i s retrospective observations about the early stages of American structural l i ngu istics, Zel l i g Harris found it relevant to reca l l the impact Karl Marx's Das Kapital had made on Leonard B loomfie ld , the most powerfu l l eader of the structural ist school i n the U n ited States. Writes Harris:

I n the l ate Depression years, when neither admiration of Russia nor war preparations in America had yet o bscu red the scientific and social resu lts of Karl Marx, L eon ard B l oomfield remarked to me that in study ing Das Kapital he was impressed above al l with the s imi larity between Marx's treatment of social behavior and that of l ingu istics.'

I n curious contrast, B loomfie ld 's Russian contemporary, Val ent in N ikolaevic Volosi nov ( 1 895-? ) , whose Marxism and the Philosophy of Language was written in the late twenties in the U.S .S. R. , makes no reference to Das Kapita/ at al l . I nstead; i n the brief i n troduction to his work,2 Volosinov open ly dec lares that the study of lan guage was o ne of those fiel ds of k nowledge "untouched or on ly perfun ctori ly touched. u pon by the hands of Marxism's fou nders" and that such fie lds of k nowledge were sti l l, at that t ime, u nder the domination of a "predialectical, mechanistic materia l i sm" wherei n the "phi losoph ica l spirit of Marxism had hard l y yet made i tse lf felt. " I ndeed, Volosinov considered Marxism and the Philosophy of Language to be a pioneering ventu re, a first of its k ind hav i ng no direct, substantive, positive support in Marxian or Marxist writ ings.

] ..Language, 27 (1 951 ) , p. 297. 2. That introduction is included in this edition as 'Author's Introduction, 1929:'

2 Translators' Introduction

Lack ing so.urces i n Marxism itself, as he claimed, and eschewing the common exegetical techn ique of speciously coax ing needed pr inc ip les from canon ical d icta, Vo losinov found h is i nsp irat ion in the von Humboldtian concep t of the creative aspects of h u man language and proposed analyzing l anguage as "a cont inuous generative process ·i mplemented in the social-verbal i nteraction of speakers." At the same t ime, he cautions l i ngu ists against mere descri ptive cataloguing of forms and patterns, against mechan ist ic systematizat ion and; i n genera l , aga inst the temptations of a superficial empir ic ism w hich, he avers, are very powerful i n l ingui st ic science. "The study of the sound aspect of language," he says, "occup ies a d isproport ionately large p lace i n l i ngu ist ics, often setting the tone for the fie l d, and in most cases carried on outside any connection with the real essence of language as a mean i ngfu l s ign." From this basic position, h e vehemently attacks reflexology, wh ich was preoccupied w ith investigation of responses of the an imal organ ism to signal s ( st imu l i ) . "The grievous m isconceptions and ingrai ned hab its of mechanist ic thought, " Volosinov asserts, " are alone respons ib le for the attempt to take these ' s ignals' and very near ly make of them the key to the u nd erstand ing of language and the h uman psyche."

In the 1 920s, accord ing to Volosinov's account, the most influential book among the l ead i ng Russian l i ngu i sts was Ferd i nand de Saussu re's Course in General Linguistics. I t i s obvious that Volosinov h im se lf was strongly impressed by Saussu re, although he approaches h im critical l y and often uses l engthy quota· t ions from the Course as antitheses to h i s own views. He is part icu lar ly chal l enge by the Saussurian d ichotomy between Ia langue ( language system) and Ia parole ( speech act/utterance) , and he serious ly questions the conceptual separation of synchrony from d iachrony i n the investigation of verbal commun ication. I n Volos inov 's view, the very fou ndations of the Saussure school represent an intel lectual her itage or ig inating from Le ib n iz's conception of un iversal grammar and, above a l l , from the Cartesian ism and rationa l i sm of the 1 7th and 1 8th centuries.

Here are h i s own words:

T he idea of the conventiona l ity , the arbitrariness, of language is a typical one for ra· tional ism as a who le; and no less ty pica! is the co mparison of language to the system of mathema.tical s igns. W hat interests the mathematica l ly m inded rational ists is not the relationsh ip of the sign to the actual rea l i ty it ref lects or to the individual who is its originator, but the relationsh ip of sign to sign within a closed system a lready ac· cepted and authorized. In other words, they .are interested only in the inner logic of the system of signs itself, taken, as in a lgebra, co mplete ly independently of the mean· ings that g ive signs their content.

Accord ing to Volo�inov's i n terpretation, a verbal sign i s a speech act that necessari ly inc ludes as i nseparable components the active partic ipation of the speaker (writer) on the one hand, and the h earer ( reader) on the other. " I ts

Translators ' Introduction 3

s pecific ity," as he puts it , "cons ists prec i se l y i n its b eing located between organ ized i nd ividua l s, i n its being the med ium of their communication. " Convinced that the verbal sign i s the purest and most sensit ive med i um of social i ntercourse, Yolosinov promotes the study of signs to the primary task of l i ngu istic i nvestigat ion. Consequently, in sp ite of its t it le, Volosi nov's book is chiefly concerned w ith the s ign and with the l aws governing the systems of signs in their deployment with in human society. In certain respects, therefore, Volosinov's p ivotal i nterests overlap with questions that had cha l lenged the profound i nquis itiveness of Charles Sanders Peirce and had st imu Ia ted his epoch-mak ing contribut ion to the general theory of signs.

Among various s ign systems, Volosinov considers h uman language the most fundamental and the most characteristic of that wh ich is human about man.as a species. For that reason, Vo losinov suggests that the analysis of the speech act as a verbal i n teraction can i l l uminate not on ly the myster ies of the hu man psyche, but a l so that complex phenomenon cal l ed "social psychology" in Marx ism and considered by the majority of Marx i sts as the l i n k between the material basis and the mental creativity of man. He does not hesitate to assert that the Marxist " social psychology," removed from the actual process of verbal i nteraction, risks turning i nto the metaphysical or mythic concept of "col l ective sou 1," "col lective i nner psyche," or "spir it of the people." In short, the speech act and the ru les that govern its systematic u sage in society were recogn ized by Volosinov as the dominant characteristic of h uman behavior and assigned a central role in the framework of Marxism itse lf. In th is way, the science of signs; wh ich cou ld be traced back to the ancient phi losophers, which had i nspired St. Augustine, and wh ich, in the M iddle Ages, had chal l enged the scholasti cs, became an important i ssue of d ialectical material ism as conceived by Volosinov. The most dec isive impul ses for such a revis ion of Marxism came, no doubt, from Saussu re, from the Amer ican pragmatists, and from the Vosslerian rein terpretation of von H umboldt, a l l critica l ly transformed in the i ntel l ectual c l imate of Len ingrad in the late 1 920s.

The ph i losophy of language, for Volosinov, is the ph i losophy of sign. Among numerous systems of signs, he held the verbal sign, i mp l emented i n an utterance, to be the most reveal i ng object of semiotic studies. Vo losinov views every sign operation, includ ing the utterance, as a b inary arrangement inseparab ly associating the physical properties with the meaning they stand for and necessarily i nvolv ing the b inary participation of those who enter i nto the meaningfu I process of communication. " Utterance," as Volosinov puts it, " i s constructed between two socia l ly organ ized persons and, in the absence of a real addressee, an addressee is presupposed in the representative of the socia l group to which the speaker belongs ." Volosinov, of course, recog'n izes the fact that every word as a sign has to be selected from the inventory of avai lab le s igns, but he emphas izes that the i ndividual man ipu lation of th is social sign i n a concrete utterance i s

4 Translators' Introduction

regu lated by social re l ations. I n h i s words, "The immed iate social s ituation and the broader social m i l ieu whol l y determine-and determine from with in, so to speak-the structure of a n u tterance."

I t fol lows natura l ly that, for Volosinov, d ia logue is the basic mode l of reciproca l re lations in verbal communication. "Dialogue," Volosinov asserts, "can be understood in a broader sense, mean i ng not on ly d irect, face-to-face, vocalized verbal commun ication between persons, but a l so verbal communication of any type whatsoever." He impl ies that actually every cu ltural pattern can be derived from the conceptua l framework of human dia logue; hence d i alogue assumes the character of a pr imordial source of social creativity in general. I n strik ing paral le l to the Peircian interpretation of i nner speech, Volosinov suggests that closer analysis reveal s that the u n its of i nner speech join and a l ternate in a way that resembles an exchange in dialogue. "The understand ing of a sign," Volosinov claims, "is an act of reference between the sign apprehended and other a l ready known s igns: understanding i s a response to a sign w ith s igns:' Thus the underly ing operation is v iewed as a creative activity match ing another creative activity and u nderstandab le only in that relationsh i p; si nce, "a generative p rocess can only be grasped with the aid of another generative process. "

I n h is book on psychoanalys is, pu bl ished i n 1 928 u nder the t it le Freudianism, Volosinov was even incl i ned to recognize the therapeutic effects of dia logue i n its role of verbal ization of h idden mental complexes. As a matter of fact, Volosinov felt that Freud's attention to the role of language in psychoanalysis was a major asset, wh i le, at the same time, fundamenta l l y d isagreeing w it h the i deo logical aspects of Freud ian ism.

I n connectio n with d ialogue, Vo losinov brings into focu s the problem of defin i ng the elementary l ingu i st ic u n its in their relationsh ip to the form of the utterance as a who le. He seems to be convinced that l ingu ist ic analysis, w hich proceeds from the constitu tive parts to the structural who le and not v ice versa, cannot adequate ly hand le the structural characteristics of d ialogue and their relevance to sem iotic commun ication. "As long as the utterance in its wholeness remains terra incognita for the l ingu ist," Volosinov asserts, " it i s out of the question to speak of a gen uine, concrete, and not a scho lastic kind of u nderstanding of syntactic forms." Accord i ng to Volosinov, most linguists, being sti l l u nder the impact of 1 9th-century comparative I ndo-European stud i es, have continued to th ink i n terms of p honetic and morphologica l categories and have tried to approach syntax by morphologization of syntactic problems. I n Volosinov's v iew, syntactic forms come closer to the real condition s of d i scourse than do p honetic and morpho logical ones. "Therefore," he insi sts, "our point of view, wh ich deals with the l iv ing phenomena of l anguage, must give precedence to syntactic forms over morpho logical or phonet ic ones."

To i l l u strate his approach to syntax, Volosinov devotes a third of h is book to the problem of reported speech conceived as " speech within speech, u tterance

Translators' Introduction 5

within utterance and, at the same time, as speech about speech and utterance about utterance." In th i s crucial verbal operation, an utterance, removed from its original context, becomes a 'part of another utterance with in another context, so that two different contexts, imp ly ing two d ifferent t ime-space pos itions, appear in an interaction with i n a single un ify i ng syntactic structure. Such a structure has to prqvide for two sets of speech participants and, consequently, for two sets of grammatical and styl istic ru l es. In th i s way, two d ist inct d ialects, whether cu l tural or regional , or two d istinct styl i stic variants of the same d ialect, can interact with in a s ingle sentence.

In such an arrangement, one utterance reports wh i l e the other u tterance is reported, either as a c itation (repetition ) , a paraphrase (transformation) , or as an interaction of repetition and transformation. Thus the resu lt ing construction brings into contrast the products of two d i stinct speech acts and their contextual imp l icatio ns. Actual ly, each reported utterance can be at the same time a reporting utterance so that, theoretical l y, the resu lti ng structure can consist of the interaction of an un l imited number of dia lects or d ial ectal variants; it appears as a system of systems i n tegrated by the structural properties of the syntactic whole. S ince the usage of reported speech, as Volosinov shows, i s very typ ical for verbal communication, the problems of citation and of paraphrase are revea led as crucial operations in the generative p rocesses of verbal sign. Volosi nov suggestively ind icates that an adequate analysis of reported speech, which he considers i ntrinsica l l y related to the problems of d ia logue, can i l l um inate all aspects of verbal commun ication , i nc lud ing verbal art. H is book, in effect, impl i es that such an analysis can be direct ly relevant to the study of ideological va.l u es and of the human m i nd in general.

Although V. N. Vo losinov professed h imself to be a Marx i st theorist of the phi losophy of language and set h i mself the task, as he specifi es i n the introduction to Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, of "marking out the basic direction wh ich genuine Marxist th i nk i ng about language must take . . . in approach ing the concrete problems of l i ngu istics," h i s work ran afou l of the Party l i ne version of Marxism then in force in the U .S .S .R. A long w ith a great many other outstanding intel lectual and creative personal ities, he became the v ictim of the Sta l i n ist purges of the 1 930s, and he and h i s work were consigned to obl ivion. For decades no mention of Volosinov was to be found. H is own personal fate remains a mystery to the p resent day.

Only outside the Soviet Un ion d id Volosinov's ideas find acknowledgment and productive treatment. I n the 1 930s and 1 940s, members of the Prague Lingu i stic Circle open ly continued to deve lop various aspects of Yolosinov's stimu lating outl ine of the ph i losophy of language. Volosi nov's suggestions contributed greatly to the semiotic stud ies of Petr Bogatyrev, jan Mukarovsky, and Roman jakobson.

6 Translators ' Introduction

trail-bl azing treatise, Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb (first pub lished by the H arvard U niversity S lavic Department in 1 957 ) .

Recently, thanks to the current p henomenal renaissance of semiotics in the Soviet Union, n ew and intriguing information has come to light concerning a whole school of semioticians o perating during the period of the late 1 920s a nd earl y 1 930s. M. M. Baxtin, whose masterworks on Dostoevskij and Rabelais have now achieved international accfaim, has been identified as the leader of t his school and V. N. Volosinov as his clo sest fol lower and col laborator.3

The Russian origina l , Marksizm i filosofija jazyka: osnovnye problemy sociologiceskogo metoda v nauke o jazyke [Marxism and the Ph i losophy of

. Language: Basic Problems of the Socio logical Method in the Study of Language], appeared in Len i ngrad in two editions, 1929 and 1930 respectively, in the series Voprosy metodologii i teorii jazyka i literatury [Problems of the Methodology and Theory of Language and Literature]. The translation presented here is based on the second edition. I nsofar as could be ascertained by comparin-g the two editions, they differ on ly with respect to a few minor discrepancies. The tran sl ators wil lingly acknowledge the difficulty of the transl ated text and their frequent recourse to English locution s and terms whose special techn ical meanings have to be grasped from the context of the argument itself. While not wishing to excuse errors and m isunderstandings of which they may wel l be guilty, the trans lators shou ld like to bring to the reader's attention the fact that Volo�inov himself had to contend with the formidab l e prob lem of finding suitab le expression for ideas and concepts that lacked any estab lished vocabu lary in Russian.

In an appendix fol lowing the translated text, the reader will find essays by the translators that attempt to clarify and comment on certain key aspects of the inte l lectua l trend in Russia represented by V. N. Volo�inov with regard to the stud ies of language and l iterature.

Thanks are due to the Ed i tors of the M IT Press for permission to u tilize the Trans lators' ear lier version of Part I l l , Chapters 2 and 3 , of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, wh ich appeared in Readings in Russian Poetics (Formalist and Structuralist Views), edited by Ladis lav M atejka, and Krystyna Pomorska, M IT Press, Cambridge, M assachusetts, 1 971 , pp . 1 49-1 79 . Omission s in the earlier translation have been restored in t he p resent one and a few minor changes and corrections made.

3. Voprosy jazykoznani]a, 2 (1971), p . 1 60.

P A R T I

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR MARXISM

C H A P T E R 1

The Study of Ideologies and Philosophy of Language

The problem of the ideological sign. The ideological sign and consciousness. The word as an ideological sign par excellence. The ideological neutrality of the word. The capacity of the word to be an inner sign. Summary.

Prob lems of the ph i losophy of languagtfhave in recent t imes acquired excep� tiona! p��)L:l'(Et,RCe and importance f?r Marx ism . Over a wide range of the most vital sectors In i ts scientific advance, the Marxist method bears d irectly u pon these prob lems and cannot .continue to move ahead productivel y w ithout special provis ion for their i nvestigation and solution.

F irst and foremost, the very foundations of a Marx ist t heory of ideologiesthe bases for the stud i es of scientific knowledge, l i terature, re l ig ion , eth ics, and so forth-are closely bound up with problems of the ph i losophy of language.

Any i deo logical product is not only itse lf a part of a real ity ( natural or socia l ) , just a s i s any physical body, any i nstrument of production, or any product for consumption, i t al so, i n contradisdnction to these other p henomena, reflects and refracts another real i ty outside itself. Everyth ing ideological possesses meaning: i t represen ts, depicts, or stands for someth i ng ly ing outside i tself. I n other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is no ideology. A physical body equal s itself, so to speak; it doe s not s ign ify anyth i ng but who l ly coi ncides w ith its particu lar, given natu re. I n th i s case there is no question of ideology.

However, any p hysical body may be perceived as an image; for i nstance, the image of natural i nertia and necessity embodied in that particu lar th ing. Any such artistic-symbo l i c image to wh ich .a particular physical object gives r i se is already an ideo logica l product. The physical object is converted i nto a s ign. Witho ut. ceas ing to be a part of material real ity, such an object, to some degree, reflects and refracts another rea l i ty.

9

1 0 Philosophy of Language [Part I

The same is true of any instrument of production. A too l by itse lf is devoid of any special meani ng; it commands on ly some designated function-to serve th is or that p urpose jn production. The tool serves that purpose as the particu lar, given thing that it i s, without reflecting or stand ing for anyth ing e l se . However, a tool a l so may be converted ·i nto an ideological sign. S uch, for in stance, is the hammer and s ick le insignia of the Soviet U nion . In this case, hammer and s ick le possess a purely ideological mean i ng. Additional ly, any instrument of production may be ideological l y decorated . Tools used by prehistoric man are covered with pictures or des igns-that i s, w ith s igns. So treated, a tool stil l doe s not, of course, itse l f become a sign.

It is further poss i b le to enhance a too l arti stica l ly , and in such a way that its art istic shape l iness harmonizes with the purpose it is meant to serve in p rodu ction. I n th is case, someth ing l i ke maximal approx imation , almost a coalescence, of s ign and too l comes about. B ut even h ere we sti l l detect a d istinct conceptual d iv id ing l i ne : the too l , as such , does not become a sign; the s ign, as such , doe s not become an instrument of produ ction .

Any consumer good can l i kewise be m ade an ideological s ign . Fo r instance, b read and wine become re l igious symbols in the Christian sacrament of commun ion. But the consumer good, as such, is not at al l a s ign. Consumer goods, j ust as too l s, may be comb ined with ideological s igns, but the d i st inct conceptual d iv iding l i ne between them is not erased by the combination. B read is made in some particular shape; this shape is not warranted sole ly by the bread 's fun ction as a consumer good; it a lso h as a certain , if pr imiti ve, value as an ideological sign (e.g., bread in the shape of a figure e ight (krendel} or a rosette) .

Thu s, s ide by side w ith the natural p henomena, with the equ ipment of techno logy, and w ith artic les for consumption, there exists a special world-the world of signs.

>Ji igns also are part icu lar, mater ial th ings; and, as we have seen , any item of nature, technology, or consumption can become a sign, acquir ing in the process a mean ing that goes beyo"nd its g iven part icu larity>A sign does not s imp ly exist as a part of a real i ty-it reflects and refracts another real ity. Therefore, it may d i stort that rea l i ty or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special po int of view, and so forth. Every sign i s s ubject to the criter ia of ideological evaluation ( i .e. , whether it is true , false, correct, fai r, good, etc.) . The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. T hey equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too . Everything ideological possesses semiotic V{/IUe.

W ithin the domain of signs-i .e ., w ith in the ideologica l sphere-profou nd d ifferences exist : it is, after all, the domain of the artistic image, the rel i gious symbol, the scientific formu la, and the jud icial ru l i ng, etc. Each fie ld of ideological creativity has its own kind of orientation toward rea l i ty and each refracts real i ty in its own way. Each fie ld commands its own special function with in the un ity

Chap, 7 ] Study o f Ideologies 1 1

of social l ife. But it Is their semiotic character that places all ideological phenomena under the same general definition.

Every ideological s ign is not on ly a reflection, a shadow, of real ity, but is also itself a material segment of that very real ity. Every phenomenon function i ng as an ideo logical s ign has some k ind of materia l embodiment, whether in sound, physical mass, color, movements of the body, or th e l ike . I n th is sense, the real ity of the sign is fu l ly objective and lends i tself to a u n i tary, mon istic, objective method of study. A sign is a phenomenon of the external wor ld . Both the s ign itself and a l l the effects it produces (a l l those action s, reactions, and new signs it e l ic its in the surrounding social m i l ieu) occur in outer experience.

Th i s is a point of extreme importance . Yet, e lementary and self-evident as it may seem, the study of ideo logies h as sti l l not drawn a l l the concl usions that fo l low from it.

The ideal ist ic ph i losophy of cu lture and psycho logistic cultural studies locate ideology in the consciousness.1 I deo logy, they assert, is a fact of conscio usness; the external body of the sign is merely a coating, merely a technical means for the real i zation of the i nner effect, wh ich i s understanding.

Idea l i sm and psycho logism a l i ke overlook the fact that understanding itself can come about only within some kind of semiotic materia l (e.g., inner speech ) , that sign bears u pon sign, that consciousness itself can arise and become a viable fact only in the material embodiment of signs. The understanding of a s ign is, after a l l , an act of reference between the s ign apprehended and other, al ready known s igns; in other words�.. understanding i s a response to a sign with s igns. And this chain of ideo logical creativity and understanding, moving from sign to s ign and then to a new sign; is perfectly consistent and cont inuous : from one l ink of a sem iotic nature (hence, also of a mater ial nature) we proceed un i n terrupted ly to another l i nk of exactly the same nature. And nowhere is there a brea k in the chain, nowhere does the chain p lunge into i nner be ing, nonmateria l in nature and unembod ied in signs.

Th i s ideological chain stretches from ind ividual consc iousness to indiv idual consciousness, connecting them together. S igns emerge, after all, only in the process of in teraction between one i ndiv idua l consciousness and another. And the ind iv idual consciousness itse lf is fi l led w ith signs. Consciousness becomes consciousness only once it has been fi l led with ideo logical ( semiotic) content, consequently, only in the process of social interaction.

1 . 1 t shou ld be noted that a ch ange of out look i n th is regard can b e detected in modern neo-Kant ianism. We have in mind the l atest book. by E rnst Cassi rer , Phi!osophie der symbolischen Formen, Vol. 1 , 1 923 . Wh i l e remaining on the grounds of consciousness, Cassirer considers i ts dominant trait to be representatio n . Each e lement of consciousness represents something, bears a symbolic function . The whole exists in its parts, but a part is comprehensible on l y in the whole. According to Cassirer, an idea is j u st as sensory as matter; the sensoriness i nvolved, however, is that of the symbo l i c sign, i t is representative sensoriness.


Despite the deep methodolog ica l d ifferences between them, the idea l i st ic ph i loso phy of cu lture and psychologistic cultural stud ies both commi t the same fundamental error. By local iz ing ideology in the consciousness, they transform the study of ideo logies into a study of consciousness and its laws; it makes no d ifference whether th is is done in transcendental or in empir ica l-psycho logica l terms. This error i s respons ib le not on ly for methodological confus ion regard i ng the interrelation of d isparate fie lds of knowledge, b ut for a rad ical d i stortion of the very real ity under study as we l l . I deological creativ ity-a material and social fact-i s forced into the framework of the ind ividual consciousness. The ind ividual con sciousness, for its part, i s deprived of any support i n real ity. It becomes either al l or noth i ng. " For ideal i sm it has become al l : its locus is somewhere above existence and i t determines the latter. I n actual fact, however, th is sovereign of the u niverse i s merely the hypostatization in ideal ism of an abstract bond among the most general forms and categories of ideological creativity.

For psychological positivism, on the contrary, consciousness amounts to noth ing : it i s just a conglomeration of fortuitous, psychophysiological reactions which , by some m iracle, resu lts i n mean ingful and u nified ideolog ical creativity.

The objective social regu latedness of i deological creativity, once m isconstrued as a conformity with laws of the indiv idual consciousness, m ust inevitab ly forfeit its real p lace i n e xistence and depart e ither u p into the s uperexistential empyrean of transcendental ism or down into the presocial recesses of the psychophysica l , b iological organism.

However, the ideo logica l , as such, cannot poss ib ly be exp lained in terms of e ither of these superhuman or subhuman, animal ian, roots. Its real p lace in existence is in the specia l , social material of signs created by man. I ts specificity cons ists precisely in its being located between organ ized ind iv id uals, i n its being the medium of their commun ication .

,.�] __ ,?igns can ari,se on ly on interindividual t(!rritory. I t i s territory that cannot be cal led "natural" in the d i rect sense of the word : 2 s igns do not arise between any two members of the species Homo sapiens. I t i s essential that the two i nd i viduals be organized socially, that they compose a group ( a socia l u n it) ; o n ly then can the mediu m of signs take shape between them. The ind iv idua l consciousness not on ly cannot be used to explain anyth ing, b ut, on the contrary, is i tse lf in need of explanation from the vantage point of the socia l , ideological medi um .

The individual consciousness is a social-ideological fact. Not unt i l t h i s point is recogn ized with due provision for al l the consequences that fol low from it w i l l it b e possib le to construct either an objective psychology or an objective study of ideologies.

·

2. Society , of course, is also a part of nature, but a part that is qua l itatively separate and distinct and possesses its own specific systems of laws.

Chap. 7] Study of Ideologies 1 3

I t is precise l y the prob lem of consciou sness t hat has created the major d iffi· cu lties and generated the formidable confusion encountered in a l l issues associated with psychology and the study of i deologies a l i ke. By and large, consciousness has become the asylum ignorantiae for a l l ph i losoph ica l constructs. It has been made the p lace where al l unresolved prob lems, a l l objectively irred uc i ble residues are stored away. I nstead of try ing to fi nd an objective defin ition of consciousness, thin kers h ave begun us ing it as a means for rendering a l l hard and fast objective defin itions s ubjective and f lu id .

The on ly possib le objective defin ition of consciousness is a sociological one. Consciousness cannot be derived d irect ly from nature, as h as been and sti l l is being attempted by na ive mechanist ic materia li sm and contemporary objective psychology (of the b io logical, behaviori st ic, and reflexological varieties) . I deology cannot be derived from consciousness, as is the practice of ideal ism and psychologistic positivism. Consciousness takes shape and being i n the material of s igns created by an organ ize d group in the process of its social i ntercourse. The i nd ividual consciousness is nurtured on s igns; it derives its growth from the m ; it reflects their logic and laws. T he logic of consciousness is the logic of ideo logical commun ication, of the semiot ic interaction of a socia l group. I f we deprive consciousness of its semiotic, ideologica l content, i t would have absol u te ly noth ing left. Consciousness can harbor on ly in the image, the word, the meaningfu l gesture, and so forth. O utside such materia l , there remains the sheer physio logical act uni l l uminated by consciousness, i .e . , without having l ight shed on it, w ithout having meaning given to it, by signs.

A l l that has been said above leads to the fol lowing metnodological con cl us ion : the study of ideologies does not depend on psychology to any extent and need hot be grounded in it. As we shal l see in greater detai l in a l ater chapter, it is rather the reverse : objective psychology must be grounded in the study of ideologies. The real ity of ideological phenomena is the objective real ity of soc ia l signs. The l aws of th i s rea l i ty are the l aws of semiotic communication and are d i rectly determined by the total aggregate of social and economic l aws. I deologica l rea l ity is the immediate superstructure over t he economic basis. I n d ividual consciousness is not the archi tect of the ideological superstructure, but on ly a tenan t lodging i n the social ed ifice o f ideological signs.

With our prel iminary argument d i sengaging i deological phenomena and their regu latedness from ind iv idua l consciousness, we tie them in al l the more firmly with conditions and forms of social communication . The real ity of the s ign is whol ly a matter determined by that communication . After a l l , the existence of the sign is nothing but the mater ia l izatio n of that communication . Such is the nature of al l ideological signs.

But nowhere does this semiotic qua l ity and the continuous, comprehensive ro le of social commun ication as condit ioning factor appear so clearly and fu l ly expressed as in language. The word is the ideological phenomenon par excellence.


The enti re real ity of the word is wh ol ly absorbed in. its fu nction of being a sign . A word conta ins noth ing that is indifferent to th i s function, noth ing that wo u l d not have been engendered by it. A word i s the p urest and most sen si tive medi u m of social intercourse.

T h i s ind icatory, representative power of the word as an i deological phenomenon and the exceptional d isti nctiveness of its semiotic stru cture wou ld already furn ish reason enough for advancing the word to a pr ime position in the study of ideologies. It i s precisely in th e material of the word that the basic, general-ideological forms of sem iotic co mmunication cou ld best be revealed.

But that is by no means al l . The word i s not on ly the purest, most ind icatory sign b ut is, in additio n , a neutral sign. Every other k ind of semiotic m ateria l i s special i zed for some particu lar fie l d of ideological creativity. Each fie l d possesses its own ideological m aterial and form u l ates signs and symbols specific to itself and not appl i cabl e in other fie lds . In these instances, a sign i s created by some specifi"c ideo logical function and remai ns inseparab le from it. A word , in contrast, i s neutral with respect to any specific ideolog ica l function . It can carry out ideo logical functions of any k ind -scientific, aesthetic, eth ical, rel igio us .

Moreover, there i s that immense area of ideological communication that cannot be pinned down to any one ideolog ica l sphere: the area of communication in human life, human behavior. This k ind of communication is extraord i nari ly rich and i mportant. O n one side, it l inks up d i rectly with the processes of p rod u ction ; on the other, it is tangent to the spheres of the various specia l i zed and ful l y fledged ideo logies. In the fo l lowing chapter, we sha l l speak in greater deta i l of this special area of behavioral, or l ife, ideology. For the time being, we shal l take note of the fact that the m aterial of behavioral com munication i s preem inently the word. The locale of so-cal led conversational l anguage and i ts forms is precisely here, in the area of behavioral ideology.

One other property belo ngs to the word that is of the h ighest o rd e r of i mportance and is what makes the word the pri mary med i u m of the ind ivid ual consciousness. A lthough the rea l i ty of the word, as i s true of any sign, resides between indiv idual s, a word, at the same time, i s prod uced by the indiv i d ual organ ism's own means without recourse to any eq u i pment or any other kind of extracorporeal material . This h as determined the role of word as the semiotic material of inner life-of consciousness ( inner speech) . I n deed, the consciousness co u l d have developed only by having at its d isposal materia l that was p l i ab l e and express ib le by bod i l y means. And the word was exact ly that kind of m ateria l . The word is avai lable as the s ign for, so to speak, inner e m p loyment: i t can function as a sign in a state short of o utward expression. For th is reason, the problem of ind ividual consciousness as the inner word (as an inner sign in general ) becomes one of the most vital problems in ph i losophy of language.

It i s c lear, from the very start, that th is problem can not be properl y approached by resorting to the usual concept of word and l anguage as worked out

Chap. 7} Study of Ideologies 1 5

i n nonsocio logica l l i nguist ics and ph i losophy of language. What i s needed is profound and acute analys i s of the word as social sign before its function as the medium of consciousness can be understood.

It is owing to th is exclus ive role of the word as the medium of consciousness that the word functions as an essential ingredient accompanying all ideological creativity whatsoever. The word accompanies and comments on each and every ideological act. The processes of understand ing any ideo logica l phenomenon at a l l (be it a p icture, a piece of music, a r itual , or an act of human cond uct) cannot operate without the part ic ipation of in ner speech . All manifestations of ideo!· ogica l creativity-al l other nonverbal signs-are bathed by, suspended in, and cannot be entirely segregated or d i vorced from the e lement of speech .

This does not mean, of course, that the word may supp lant any other ideologica l s ign . None of the fundamenta l , s pecifi c ideological signs is replacab le who l ly by words. I t is u lt imately impossib le to convey a musica l composition or pictorial image adequately i n words. Words cannot who l ly substitute for a rel i gious ritual; not i s there any rea l ly adequate verbal substitute for even the s imp lest gesture in h u man behavior. To deny th is would lead to the most banal rational ism and s imp l isticism. Nonethe less, at the very same time, every s ingle one of these ideo logical signs, though not su pplantable by words, has support in and is accompanied by words, just as is the case with s i ngi ng and i ts musica l accompan iment.

No cultural sign, once taken i n and given meaning, remains i n isolation : it becomes part of the unity of the verbally constituted consciousness. I t i s in the capacity of the consciousness to find verbal access to it. Thus, as it were, spread- · ing r ipples of verbal responses and resonances form around each and every ideological sign. Every ideological refraction of existence in process of generation, no matter what the nature of its sign ificant material, is accompanied by ideological refraction in word as an ob l igatory concom inant phenomenon . Word is present in each and every act of understand i ng and in each and every act of i nterpreta-tion.

·

Al l of the properties of word we have exam ined-its semiotic purity, its ideological neJtrality, its involvement in behavioral communication, its ability to become an inner word and, finally, its obligatory presence, as an accompanying phenomenon, in any conscious act-a l i these properties make the word the fundamental object of the study of ideologies. The laws of the ideological refraction of ex istence in signs and in con sciousness, its forms and mechan ics, must be studied in the material of the word, first of al l . The on ly possib le way of b ri nging the Marx ist socio logical method to bear on

' al l the profundities and subt let ies of

" immanent" ideological structures is to o perate from the basis of the ph i losophy of language as the philosophy of the ideological sign. And that basis must be dev ised and e laborated by Marxism itself.

C H A P T E R 2

Concerning the Relat ionship of

the Basis and Superstructures

Inadmissibility of the category of mechanistic causality in the study of ideologies. The generative process of society and the generative process of the word. The semiotic expression of social psychology. The problem of behavioral speech genres. Forms of social intercourse and forms ofsigns. The theme of a sign. The class struggle and the dialectics of signs. Conclusions.

The problem of the relationship of basis and superstructures-one of the fundamental problems of Marxism-is closely l i nked with questions of phi losophy of language at a number of crucia l points and cou ld benefit con siderab ly from a so lution to those questions or even j u st from treatment of them to some appreciable extent and depth.

When the question is posed as to how the basis determ i nes ideology, the answer given i s : causally; which i s true enough, but a l so far too general and therefore ambiguous.

If w hat is meant by causal ity is mechan ica l causal ity (as causal ity has been and st i l l is understood and defined by the positivistic representatives of natural scientific thought) , then th is answer would be essent ia l ly incorrect and contradictory to the very fundaments of dialectal materia l ism.

The range of app l i cation for the categories of mechanical cau sa l ity i s extremel y narrow, and even w ith in the natura l sciences themselves it grows constantly narrower the further and more deeply d ia lectics take.s hold in the basic principles of these sciences. As regards the fu ndamental prob lems of h i storica l ma: teria l i sm and of the study of ideologies altogether, the app l icab i l ity of so inert a category as that of mechanica l causa l ity is s imply out of the quest ion.

No cognitive value whatever adheres to the estab l ishment of a connection between the basis and some isolated fact torn from the u n ity and integr ity of its

1 7

1 8 Philosophy of Language (Part I

ideological context. I t i s essentia l above a l l to determine the meaning of any, given ideological change in the context of ideology appropriate to it, see ing that every domain of ideo logy is a u n ified whole which reacts with its ent i re con stitution to a change i n the basis . T herefore, any explanation mu st preserve all the qualitative differences between i nteracting domain s and mu st trace a l l the various stages through which a change travels . On ly on th i s cond it ion w i l l analys is resu lt, not in a mere outward conjunction of two adventitiou s facts be longing to different leve ls of th i ngs, but i n the process of the actual d ia lectical generat ion of society, a process which emerges from the basi s and comes to comp letion i n the superstructures.

If the specifi c nature of the semiotic-ideological mater ia l is ignored, the ideological phenomenon studied u ndergoes s imp l ification . Either on ly its rationali st i c aspect, its content side, i s noted and explained (for example, the d irect, referential sen se of an artistic image, such as "Rud i n as superflous man") , and then that aspect is correlated with the bas i s (e .g . , the gentry class degenerates; hence the "superflous man" in l iteratu re) ; or, opposite ly, on l y the o utward, techn ica l aspect of the ideolog ical phenomenon i s s ingled out (e.g., some techn ical i ty in bu i l ding construction or in the chem i stry of color ing materia l s) and then this aspect i s derived direct ly from the techno logica l level of production .

Both these ways of deriv ing ideology from t h e basis m iss t h e real e ssence of an ideological phenomenon. Even if the correspondence establ ished is correct, even if it is true that "superfl u ou s men" d id appear in l i terature in connection with the breakdown of the economic structure of the gentry , st i l l , for one th ing, it does not at al l fo l low that related economic u psets mechanica l ly cau se " superfl uous men" to be produced on the pages of a novel ( the absurdity of such a c la im is perfect ly obvious) ; for another th ing, the correspondence estab l ished i tse l f remain s without any cogn itive val u e u nti l both the specific role of the "superfluous man ': i n the artistic structure of the n ovel and the specific role of the novel i n social l ife as a whole are e lucidated.

Surely i t must be c lear that between changes i n the economic state of affai rs and the appearance of the "superfl uous man" i n the novel stretches a long, long road that crosses a n umber of qual itati ve ly d ifferent domain s, each w ith its own specific set of l aws and its own specific character ist ics. Sure ly i t m u st be c lear that the "superfl uou s man" d id not <;�ppear in the novel in any way i ndependent of and u nconnected with o ther e lements of the nove l , but that, on the contrary, the whole n ovel, as a s ingle organ ic u nity subject to its own specific laws, u nderwent restructuring, and that, consequently, a l l its other e lements-its composition, style, etc.-al so underwent restructuring. And what i s more, this organ ic restructuring of the novel came about i n c lose connection with changes i n the whole fie ld of l iterature, as wel l .

Th e problem o f t h e i nterre lat ionsh ip o f the basis a nd superstructures-a problem of exceptional complexity, requ i r ing e normou s amounts of pre l im i nary data

Chap. 2) Basis and Superstructures

for its productive treatment-can be e lucidated to a sign ificant degree through the mater ial of the word .

1 9

Looked at from the angle of our concerns, the essence of th i s prob lem comes down to how actual ex i stence {the basis) determi nes sign and how sign reflects and refracts existence in its process of generat ion.

The properties of the word as an ideological sign {properties d iscussed i n the preceding chapter) are what make the word the most su itable materia l for viewing the whole of th i s problem in basic terms . What is important about the word in th is regard is not so m uch its sign purity as its social ubiquity. The word is impl icated in l itera l ly each and every act or contact between peop le:..in col laboration on the job, in ideolog ical exchanges, in the chance contacts of ord inary l ife, in pol it ica l relat ionships, and so on . Countless ideological threads r unn ing through a l l areas of social i ntercourse register effect in the word. It stands to reason, then, that the word is the most sensit ive index of social changes, and what i s more, of changes still i n the process of growth, st i l l without defin it ive shape and not as yet accomodated into a l ready regu larized and fu l ly defined ideological systems. The word i s the med i um in wh ich occur the s low quantitative accretions of those changes wh ich have not yet achieved the status of a new ideological qual ity, not yet produced a new and fu l ly-fledged ideological form. The word has the capacity to register al l the transitory, de l icate, momentary phases of social change.

That wh ich has been termed "social psycho logy" and is considered, accord ing to Plexanov's theory and by the majority of Marxists, as the transit ional l i nk between the sociopol it ical order and ideology in t h e narrow sense {science, art, and the l i ke) , i s, i n . its actual, mater ial exi stence, verbal interaction. R emoved from th i s actual process of verbal commun ication and interaction {of sem iotic communication and interaction in genera l ) , social psychology would assume the gu i se of a metaphysica l or mythic concept-the "col lective sou l" or "co l lective inner psyche," the "spir it of the people," etc.

Soc ial psychology in fact is not located anywhere w ith in {in the " sou Is" of commun icating subjects) but entirely and comp letely without-in the word, the gesture, the act. T here is noth i ng left unexpressed in it, noth ing " i nner" about it-it is whol ly on the outside, who l ly brought out in exchanges, who l ly taken up in material , above all in the material of the word.

Production relations and the sociopo l i t i ca l order shaped by those relations determine the fu l l range of verbal contacts between peop le, a l l the forms and means of their verbal commun ication-at work, i n po l itical l ife, in ideo logical creativity. I n turn, from the conditions, forms, and types of verba l commun icat ion derive not on ly the forms but a l so the themes of speech performances.

Social psychology is first and foremost an atmosphere made up of m u lt i far ious speech performances that engulf and wash over a l l persistent form s and k inds of ideological creativity : unofficial d iscuss ions, exchanges of op in ion at

20 Philosophy of Language [Part I

the theater or a concert or at var iou s types of social gather ings, purely chance exchanges of word s, one's manner of verbal reaction to happen ings in one 's l ife and da i ly ex i stence, one's i nner-word manner of ident ify ing onese lf and identifying one's position in society, and so on . Social psychology ex ists pr imar i l y i n a wide var iety o f form s o f th'e "utterance, " of l itt le speech genres of i nternal and external k inds-things left completely u n studied to the present day. A l l these speech performances, are, o f course, jo ined with other types o f semiotic manifestation and interchange-with m iming, gestur i ng, act ing out, and the l ike.

Al l these forms of speech i n terchange operate in extremely close connection with the condit ions of the social situation in which they occur and exh ib i t an extraord inary sensit iv ity to al l flu ctuations in the social atmosphere . And it is here, i n the inner wor kings of th i s verbal ly mater ia l ized social psychology, that the bare ly noticeab le sh ifts and changes that w i l l later f ind expr ession i n fu l ly fledged ideo logical products accumu late.

F rom what has been said, i t fo l lows that socia l p sycho logy must be stu d ied from two d ifferent v iewpo ints : f irst, from the v iewpo int of content, i.e., the themes pert inent to i t at th i s or that moment in t ime; and second, from the viewpoint of the forms and types of verbal commun icat ion in w h ich the themes in q uestion are imp lemented ( i .e . , d iscussed, expressed, q uestio ned, pondered over , etc . ) . .

Up ti l l now the study of social psycho logy has restr icted its task to the f ir st v iewpoint only, concern ing itse lf exclu sively with d efin it ion of its t hematic makeup. Such being the case, the very question as to where documentation�the concrete expressions-of th i s socia l psycho logy cou l d be sought was not posed w ith fu l l c lar i ty. Here, too, concepts of "consciousness," "p syche," and " inner l i fe" p layed the sorry role of re l ieving one of the necessity to try to d iscover · clear l y de l ineated mater ial form s of expression of social psycho logy.

Meanwhi le, this issue of concrete form s has sign ificance of the highest order. The po int here has to do, of course, not w ith the sources of our k now ledge .about social psychology at some part icu lar per iod (e .g., memoirs, l etters, l iterary works) , nor w ith the sources for our understanding of the "sp ir i t of the age"-the point here has to do with the forms of concrete imp lementat ion of this sp ir it, that i s, precisely with the very form s of semiotic commun i cation in human behavior .

A typology of these forms i s one of the urgent tasks of Marx ism. Later on, i n connection with the problem o f the utterance a nd d ia logue, we sha l l agai n touch upon the problem of speech genres. For the time being, l et us take note at least of the fo l lowing.

Each per iod and each socia l group has had and h as its own repertoire of speech forms for ideological commun ication in h uman behavior. Each set of cognate forms, i.e., each behavioral speech genre, has its own corresponding serof themes.

An i nter l ocking organic u n ity jo ins the form of commun icat ion (for example , on-the-job commun ication of the str i ct ly techn ical k ind ) , the form of the utter-

Chap. 2} Basis and Superstructures 2 1

ance (the concise, businessl ike statement) aAd its theme. Therefore, classification of the forms of utterance must rely upon classification of the forms of verbal communication. T he latter are entirely determi ned by prod uction relations and the sociopo l it ical order. Were we to apply a more detai led analysis, we would see what e normous significance belongs to the hierarchical factor in the processes of verbal interchange and what a powerfu l influence is exerted on forms of utterance by the h ierarchical organization of communication. Language etiquette, speech tact, and other fo rms of adjusting an utterance to the h ierar'ch ica l organization of society have tremendou s importance in the process of devising the basic behavioral genres.1

Every sign, as we know, is a construct between socia l ly organized persons in the process of their interaction . T h erefore, the forms of signs are conditioned above all by the social organization of the participants involved and also by the immediate conditions of their interaction. When these forms change, so d oes s ign. And it should be one of the tasks of the stu dy of id eologies to trace this social l ife of the verbal s ign. On ly so ap proached can the problem of the relationship between sign and existence find its concrete expression ; on ly then w i l l the process of the causal shaping of the sign by existence sta n d out as a process of genuine existence-to-sign transit, of gen ui ne d ia lectical refractio n of existence in the sign.

To accompl ish th is task certain basic, m ethodological prereq uis ites m u st be respected :

1 . Ideology may not be divorced from the material reality of sign ( i .e . , by l ocating it in the " consciou sness ' ' or other vague and e l usive regions) ;

2. The sign may not be divorced from the concrete forms o f social intercourse (seeing that the sign is part of organized social i ntercourse and cannot exist, as such, o utside it, reverting to a mere physical artifact) ;

3. Communication and the forms of communication may not be divorced from the material basis.

Every ideological sign-the verbal sign included-in coming about thro ugh the process of social intercourse, i s defined by the social purview of the given time period and the given social group. So far, we have been speaking about the form of the sign as shaped by the forms of social interaction. N ow we shal l deal with its other a spect-the content of the sign and the eval uative accentuation that accompanies all content.

Every stage in the developmen t of a society has its own special and restricted circle of items which alone have access to that society's attention and w h ich are

1 . The problem of behavioral speech genres has only very recently become a topic of discussion i n l inguistic and ph i losoph ica l scholarsh ip . One of the first serious attem pts to deal w ith these genres, though, to be sure, w ithout any clearly defined sociological orientation, is Leo Sp itzer's ltalienische Umgangssprache, 1 922. More w i l l be said about S pitzer, h is predecessors, and colleagues later on .


endowed w ith eva luative accentuation by that attention. On ly ite m s with in that c irc le w i l l ach ieve sign formation and become objects in sem iotic co m m u n ication. W hat determines t h is circle of items endowed with va l ue accents?

I n order for any item, from whatever d omain of rea l ity it may come, to enter the social purview of the grou p and e l i cit i deological sem iotic reaction, it must be associated with the vita l socioeconomi c prerequ is i tes of the part icu lar group's ex istence ; i t m u st somehow, even if only obl iquely, make contact with the bases of the group's mater ial l ife.

I nd ivid ual choice u nder these circumstances, of course, can have no meaning at a l l . The sign i s a creation between ind ivid uals, a creation w ith in a social m i l ie u . T herefore the item i n question m u s t first acq u ire i nter ind ividual sign ificance, and ori ly then can it become an object for sign formation. I n other words, only that which lias acquired social value can enter the world of ideology, take shape, and establish itself there.

For this reason, a l l ideologica l accents, despite their being produced b y the ind ividual voi ce (as i n the case of word) or, in any event, by the ind ivid ual organ ism-a l l i deological accents are soc ia l accents, o nes with claim to social recognition and, on ly thanks to that recognition, are made outward u se of in ideological material .

Let us agree to cal l the entity wh ich becomes the o bject of a sign t he theme of the sign. Each ful ly fledged sign has its theme. A n d so, every verbal performance has its theme.2

A n. ideologica l theme i s a lways social ly accentuated. Of course, al l the social accents of ideo logical themes make their way a lso into the ind ivid ua l consc iousness (which, as we know, is ideologica l through and through) and there take on the semblance of i n d ividual accents, s ince the ind iv idual con sciousness ass imilates them as its own. However, the source of these accents is not the ind ividual con sciousness. Accent, as such , i s inter ind ividual . The animal cry, the pure response to pain in the organ ism, is bereft of accent; it is a purely natural p henomenon. For such a cry, the social atmosphere is irrelevant, and therefore it does not contain even the germ of sign formation.

The theme of an ideo logical s ign and the form of an ideo logical s ign are inextricably bound together and are separable only i n the abstract. U lt i mately, the same set of forces and the same materia l prerequ isites bring both the one and the other to l ife.

I ndeed, the economic co nd itions that i naugurate a new e lement of real ity into the socia l p urview, that make it social ly mea n ingfu l and " interesting," are exactly the same conditions that create the forms of i deo log ica l com m u n ication

2. The relationsh i p of theme to the semantics of individual words shall be d ealt with i n greater detail i n a later section o f o u r stu dy.

Chap. 2/ Basis and Superstructures

(the cognitive, the artistic, the rel igious, and so on) , wh ich i n turn shape the forms of semiotic expression. ,

Thus, the themes and forms of ideo logical creativity emerge from the same matrix and are in essence two sides of the same thi ng.

23

The process of incorporation i nto ideology-the birth of theme and b i rth of form-is best fol l owed out in the material of the word . Th is process of ideo logical generation is reflected two ways i n language : both in its large-scale, u n iversal-historical d i mensions as studied by semantic paleonto logy, wh i ch has d i sclosed the incorporation of undifferentiated chunks of real ity into the social purview of prehistori c man, and i n its small-scale d i mens ions as constituted within the framework of contemporaneity, s ince, as we know, the word sen si t ively reflects the s l ightest variations in social existence.

Existence reflected in sign is n ot merely reflected b ut refracted. How is this refraction of existence in the ideo logical sign determined? By an interse cting of d ifferently oriented social interests within one and the same sign com m u n i ty, i.e., by the class struggle.

Class does not coincide with the sign commun ity, i .e. , with the com m u n ity which is the tota l i ty of u sers of the same set of signs for ideological com m u nicat ion. Thus various d ifferent classes w i l l use one and the same language. A s a result, d ifferently oriente d accents intersect in every ideological sign. S ign becomes an arena of the class struggle.

Th i s social multiaccentuality of the ideo logical s ign is a very crucial aspect. By and large, it is than ks to this intersecting of accents that a sign maintai n s its vita l ity and dynamism and the capacity for further deve lopment. A sigri that has been withd rawn from the pressures of the social struggle-which, so to speak, crosses beyond the pale of the class strugg le-inevitably loses force, degenerating into a l l egory and beco m i ng the object not of l ive social inte l l ig ib i l ity but of ph i lological com prehension. The h istorical memory of mankind is fu l l of such worn out ideological s igns i ncapab le of serving as arenas for the c lash of l ive social accents. However, i nasmuch as they are remembered by the ph i lo logist and the h i storian, they may be said to retain the last g l immers of l ife.

The very same th ing that makes the ideological sign vital and m utab le i s a l so, however, that wh i ch makes it a refracting and d i stort ing medium. The r u l i ng class strives to im part a supra class, eternal character to the ideological s ign , to extingu ish or d rive inward the strugg le between social va l ue judgments wh ich occurs i n it, to make the sign u n iaccentual .

I n actual fact, each l iv ing ideological sign has two faces, l ike J anus. A n y current curse word can become a word of praise, any current truth must inevitab ly sound to many other people as the greatest l ie. T h i s inner dialectic quality of the sign comes out fu l ly in the open o n ly in times of social crises or revolutionary changes. I n the ordinary cond itions of l ife, the contradiction embedded in every i deological sign cannot emerge fu l l y because the id eological sign in an estab l i shed,


dominant ideo logy i s always somewhat reactionary and tries, as it were, to stab i l ize the preceding factor i n the d ia lectical f lux of the social generative process, so accentuating yesterday's truth as to make it appear today' s. And t hat is what is respons ib le for the refracting and d i storting pecu l iarity of the ideological sign w ithin the dominant ideology.

T his, then, i s the p icture of the problem of the re lation of the basis to superstructures. Our concern with i t has b een l imited to concretization of certain of its aspects and e luc idation of t he d i rection an d routes to be fo l l owed in a prod u ctive treatment of it. We made a specia l po int of the p lace phi losophy of language has in that treatment. T he material of the verbal sign a l lows one most fu l l y and easi l y to fol l ow o u t the co ntinu ity of t h e d ia lectical process o f change, a process which goes from the bas i s to superstructures. The category of mechanical causal ity in explanations of ideo logica l phenomena can most easi l y b e surmounted o n the grou nds of ph i losophy of language.

C H A P T E R 3

Philosophy of Language and Objective Psychology

The task of defining the psyche objectively. Dilthey 's notion o f an "understanding and interpreting" psychology. The semiotic reality of the psyche. The point of view of functional psychology. Psychologism and antipsychologism. The distinctive quality of inner sign (inner speech). The problem of introspection. The socioideological nature of the psyche. Summary and conclusions.

One of Marx ism's fundamental and most urgent tasks i s to construct a genu i ne ly object ive psycho logy, wh ich means a psycho logy based on sociological, not phys iological or b iological , pri nciples. As part and parcel of that task , Marxism faces the d ifficu lt prob lem of find ing an object ive-but a lso subt le and flexib le-approach to the conscious, subjective human psyche over wh ich, o rd inari ly, methods of introspection claim j u risdiction.

This is a task wh ich neither b io logy or physiology is equi pped to cope with : the conscious psyche i s a socioideological fact and, as such, beyond the scope of physiological methods or the methods of any other of the natura l sciences. The subjective psyche i s not someth ing that can be reduced to processes occurr ing w ith in the confines of the natura l , an imal ian organ ism. The processes that basica l ly define the content of the psyche occur not ins ide b ut outside the ind ividual organ ism, although they involve its part ic ipation.

The subjective psyche of the human being is not an object for natura l-scientific analysi s, as wou ld be any item or p rocess in the natural wor ld ; the subjective psyche is an object for ideological understanding and socioideological interpretation via understanding. Once understood and interpreted, a psychic phenomenon

25

26 Philosophy of Language {Part I

becomes explainable so le ly i n terms of the social factors that shape the concrete l ife of the i n dividual i n the cbn dit ions of h i s social environment.1

The first issue of fundamental i m portance that arises once we move in th is d irection i s that of defi ning " inner experience" objectively. Such a defin it ion m u st inc lude inner experience within the u n ity of o bjective, outer experie nce.

What sort of rea l ity pertains to the subjective psyche? The reality of the inner psyche is the same reality as that of the sign. O utside the material of signs there i s no psyche; there are p hysiological processes, processes in the nervou s system, but no su bjective psyche as a special existential qual ity fundamenta l ly d i st inct fro m both the physio logical processes occurring withi n the organism and the real ity encompassi ng the organism from outs ide, to w h ich the psyche reacts and w hich one way or another i t reflects. By its very existentiai nature, the subjective psych e is to be local ized somewhere between the organism and the outside world, on the borderline separating these two spheres of rea l i ty . It i s here that an encou nter between the organism and the o utside wor l d takes p lace, b u t the e ncou nter is not a physica l one: the organism and the outside world meet here in the sign. Psychic experience i s the sem iotic expression of the contact between the organ ism and the outside environment. T hat is why the inner psyche is not analyzab/e as a thing but can only be understood and interpreted as a sign.

The idea of an "understand ing and interpreting" psychology is a very o ld one and has an instructive h i story. S y mptomatica l ly , in modern times it has found its greatest substantiation i n connection with the methodological requ irements of the h u manLties, i .e., the i deological sciences.

The most astute and wel l -grounded advocate of th is idea in modern t imes was Wi lhe lm D i lthey. For D i lthey, it was not so much a matter that subjective psychic ex perience ex isted, the way a thing may be said to exist, as that it had meaning. When d isregard ing th is meaning in the attempt to arrive at the pure rea lity of experience, we fi nd ourselves, according to D i lthey, confronting in actual fact a physiological process i n the organ ism and losing sight of the experience in the meantime-j u st as, when d i sregarding the meaning of a word, we lose the word itself and confront its sheer p hysica l sound and the physio logical process of its articulation. What makes a word a word i s its meaning. What makes an experience an experience i s a l so its meani ng. And only at the expense of losing the very essence of inner, psych ic l ife can mean ing be d isregarded. Therefore, psychology cannot pursue tasks of explaining experiences causal ly, as if they were analogous to physical or physiological processes. Psychology m u st pursue the task of u nderstand ing, descr i bing, segmenting, and interpreting psych ic l ife, j ust as if it were a document u nd e r phi lo logical analysis. On ly that k ind of des-

1. A popular sketch of the modern problems of psychology is given in our book Frejdizm (krfticeskt} ocerk) [ F reudianism (A Critical Outl ine) ] {Leningrad, 1 927) . See Chapter 2 , "Two Tren ds in Contemporary Psychology."

Chap. 3} Objective Psychology 27

cri ptive and i n terpretive psychology i s capab le, accord ing to Di lthey, of serving as the basis for the h u manities, or as he cal ls them, the 1 1 spiritual sciences" (Geisteswissenschaften}. 2

D i lthey's ideas have proved to be very fecund and, to the present day , continue to fi nd many su pporters among representatives of the human ities. I t cou l d be c la imed that v i rtua l ly a l l contem porary German h u man ist scho lars w ith a phi losophical bent are to a greater or lesser degree dependent u pon the i deas of Wi lhe l m D i lthey.3

D i l they's conception grew from idea l istic grounds and i t is o n these same grounds that his fol l owers remain . T he idea of a n understanding and i nterpret ing psychology i s very close ly con nected with certai n presuppositions of ideal istic thought and in many respects may be said to be a specifical ly idea l istic idea.

I ndeed, in the form i n which i t was first estab l i shed and has conti n ued to develop to the present day, i nterpretive psychology is ideal i stic and untenable from the standpoint of dialectical material ism.

What i s u ntenable above al l i s the methodological precedence of psychology over ideology. After a l l , D i lthey and other representatives of interpretive psychology wou ld have it that their psychology must provide the basis for the human ities. I deology i s expla ined i n terms of psychology-as the expression and incarnation of psychology-and not the other way around . True, the psyche and ideology are said to coi ncide, to share a common denomi nator-mean ing-by virtue of wh ich both the one and the other are a l i ke d i st inguished from a l l the rest of real ity. But it is psychology, not ideology, that sets the tone.

F urthermore, the ideas of D i lthey and his fo l lowers make no provision for the social character of meaning.

Fina l l y-and th is i s the proton pseudos of the i r whole conception -they have no notion of the essential bond between meaning and sign, no notion of the specific n ature of the sign.

I n point of fact, the comparison D i lthey makes between experience and word means nothing more to him than a s imple analogy, an exp lanatory figu re-a rather rare occurrence i n D i l they's works, at that. He i s far from d rawing the co nclus ions that shou l d fol low from that comparison. What is more, h e is inte rested i n expla in ing not the psyche through the agency of the ideological sign but, j u st l i ke any other idea l i st, the s ign through the agency of the psyche: a sign becomes a sign for D i lthey on ly i nsofar as it serves as the m eans of expression for i n ner l ife. And the latter, he maintain s, confers its own proper meaning u pon the s ign. I n this respect D i lthey's postu lation carries o n the common tendency of a l l i deal i s m :

2 . A n account o f D i lthey i n Russian can b e found i n Frisejzen-Keler's article i n Logos, 1 -1 1 , 1 9 1 2-1 9 1 3.

3. D i l they's trend-setting infl uence has been ack nowledged by (to mention on ly names of the most distinguished mem bers of the human ities in present-day Germany} Oskar Walze l , Wi lhe lm G u ndolf, E m i l E rmatinger, a n d others.


to remove all sense, all meaning from the material world and to locate it in atemporal, a-spatial Spirit.

I f experience does have mean i ng and i s not mere ly a part icu lar p iece of real ity (and i n th i s content ion D i lthey i s correct) , then surely experience cou ld hardly come about other than in the material of signs. After all, meaning can belong on ly to a sign; meaning outside a sign i s a fict ion .. Meaning is the expression of a semiotic relationsh ip between a part icu lar p iece of real ity and another kind of real ity that it stands for, represents, or depicts. Mean ing i s a function of the s ign and is therefore inconce ivab le ( s ince mean ing is pure relation , or funct ion) outs i de the s ign as some parti cu lar, i ndependently exist ing th ing. I t w ou l d be j ust as absurd to maintain such a notion as to take the mean ing of the word "horse" to be th i s particular, l ive animal I am point ing to . W hy, if that were so, then I cou ld cla im, for i n stance, that having eaten an apple , I have consumed not an apple but the mean ing of the word "app le ." A s ign i s a part icu lar mater ia l th ing, but mean ing is not a th ing and cannot be i so lated from the sign as if i t were a p iece of real ity ex i st ing on its own apart from the s ign. Therefore, if exper ience does have mean ing, if i t i s suscept ib le of being u nderstood and i nterp reted, then i t must have its ex i stence in the material of actual , real s igns.

Let us emphas ize th i s point: not only can experience be outwardly expressed through the agency of the sign (an experience can be expressed to others variously- by word, by facial expression, or by some other means) , but a lso, aside from th i s outward expression (for others) , experience exists even for the person undergoing it only in the material of signs. Outs ide that material there i s no experience as such. I n th is sense any experience is expressible, i .e . , i s potential expression. Any thought, any emotion, any w i l led act iv ity i s expressib le. Th i s factor of expressivity cannot be argued away from experience without forfe it ing the very nature of exper ience.4

Thus there i s no l eap i nvolved between inner exper ience and its expression, no crossing over from one qual itative realm of real ity to another. The trans i t from experience to its outward expression occurs with i n the scope of the same qual itative rea lm and i s quantitative i n nature. True, i t often happens that in the process of outward expression a trans it from one type of semiotic mater ia l (e .g., m imetic) to another (e .g., verbal ) occurs, b ut nowhere in its entire course does the process go outside the mater ia l of s igns.

What, then, i s the sign material of the psyche? A ny organic activity or process: b reathi ng, b lood c ircu lat ion, movements of the body, articu lation , inner speech, m imetic motions, reaction to external stimu l i (e.g., l ight stimu l i) and so forth.

4. The notion of the expressivity of al l phenomena of consciousness is not fore ign to neo·Kantian ism. Besides the book by Cassirer a l ready c ited , H erman Cohen , i n the th ird section of h is system , A esthetik des reinen GefiJh!s, h as w ritten on the expressive character of consciousness. However, the idea as expounded the re least of all a l lows of the p roper conclu si ons. The essence of consciousness continues to rem a in beyond the pale of existence.

Chap. 3} Objective Psychology 29

I n short, anything and everything occurring within the organism can become the material of experience, s ince everything can acqu i re semiotic sign ificance, can become expressive.

To be sure, all th i s material is far from standing on the same level of importance. Any psyche that has reached any degree of deve lopment and d ifferentiation must have subtle and p l iab le semiotic m aterial at its d isposal, and semiotic mater ia l of a kind that can be shaped, refined, and d ifferent iated in t h e extracorporeal social m i l ieu in the process of outward express ion. Therefore, the semiotic materia l of the psyche is preeminent ly the word-inner speech. I n ner speech, it is true, is intertwined w ith a mass of other motor reactions h aving semiotic value. But a l l the same, i t i s the word that constitutes the fou nd ation, the skeleton of i nner l ife. Were i t to be depr ived of the word, the psyche wou ld shr ink to an extreme degree; deprived of a l l other expressive activ ities, i t wou ld d ie out a ltogether.

If we disregard the sign function of inner speech and of a l l the other expres: s ive act iv ities that together make up the psyche, we wou l d turn out to be confronting a sheerly physiological p rocess tak ing p lace with in the confines of the i ndiv idual organism. Abstraction of that k ind is perfectly legitimate and n ecessary for the physiologi st : a l l he needs is the physio logical p rocess and its mechanics.

Yet, even for the physio logist, in h i s capacity as b io logist, there is good reason to take i nto account the expressive sign funct ion ( i .e., socia l funct ion) of the var ious physio logical processes i nvo l ved. Otherwise h e w i l l not grasp their b iological position in the overal l economy of the organ ism. The biologist, too, in th is respect, cannot afford to ignore the socio logical point of view, cannot afford to discount the fact that the human organ i sm does not belong to the abstract realm of nature but forms part of a specifica l ly social rea lm. Bu t when he has taken into account the sign funct ion of the various p hysiological processes i nvolved, the physiologist proceeds to invest igate the i r pure ly physio logical mechanism (for example, the mechan i sm of the cond i tioned reflex) and complete ly d i sregards the ideological values i nherent i n t hese p rocesses that are var iab le and subject to their own socioh istorical laws. I n a word, the content of the p syche does not concern h im.

But it is precise ly th i s content of the psyche, taken w i th regard to the individual organism, that is the object for psycho logy. No science worthy of the n ame psycho logy has or can have any object of interest other than th i s.

I t has been asserted that the content of the psyche is not the object of psychology but, rather, on ly the funct ion that th i s content has in the ind ividual psyche. Such is the point of v iew of so-ca l led functional psychology. 5

5. The major representatives of functional psychology are S tumpf, Meinong, e t a/. The foundations for functional psychology were laid down by F ranz B rentano. Functional psychology is unquestionably at th is moment the dominant movement in German psychological though t, a l though not, to be su re, in its pure, classical form.


According to the doctrine of t h is school, "experience" is composed of two factors. O ne factor is the content of experience. I t i s not psychic i n nature. What i s involved is e ither a physical phenomenon on w h i ch the experience focuses (e .g., an o bj ect of perception} or a cognitive concept hav i ng its own logical governance or an ethical valu e, etc. T h is content-oriented, referential aspect of experience is a property of nature, cu lture, or h istory and, consequently, pertains to the competence of the appropriate scientific discipl ines and is of no concern to the psychologist.

Th e other factor in experience is the function of any particular referential content within the closed system qf individual psychic life. And i t is p recisely thi s experienced-ness or experientiality of any content o utside the psyche that is i n fact the object of psychology. Or, to put it another way, the object of functional psychology is not the what of experience b ut its how. So, for example, the content of any thought process-its what-is nonpsychic an d pertains to the com petence ofthe logic ian, e p istemologist, or mathematician ( if the kind of th in king i nvolved i s mathematical th inking) . The psychologist, i n contrast, studies only how thought processes with various objective contents ( logical, mathematical, or other) come about uhder conditions su pp l ied by any given individual subjective psyche.

We shall not delve i nto the details of this psychological conception, a nd we shall skip certain, sometimes very apposite, d i st i nctions regarding psychic function such as can be found in the writings of representatives of th i s school and of other related movements in psychology. For our pu rposes, the basic p ri n ciple of fu nctional psychology, a lready set forth, wi l l be suffi cient. l t w i l l he lp us to express i n more precise terms our own conception of the psyche and of the signifi cance that belongs to the p h i losophy of the sign (o r the p h i loso p hy of language) in the solut ion of the prob lem of psychology.

F u n ctional psychology also grew and took shape on the grounds of idealism. Yet, in certain respects, it exhib its a tendency diametri cal ly opposite to the interpretive psychology of the D i lthey type.

I n point of fact, while D i lthey would seem i ntent on b ringing the psyche and i deology down to one common denominator-meaning-functional psychology makes the opposite effort of drawing a fundamental and rigorous borderline between the psyche and ideology, a borderl ine that seem s to cut through the psyche itself. As a result, everyth ing regarded as meani n g ends u p being excluded without a trace from the scope of the psyche, w h i le everyth ing regarded as pertai n ing to the psyche ends up amounting to the sheer fun ctioning of separate referential contents arranged i n some sort of i nd ividual constellation cal led the " i n d ividual sou l." Thus functional psychology, as d istingu ished from interpretive psychology, gives precedence to i deology over t he psyche.

One m ay ask at this point : How does the psyche fun ction, and what i s the nature of its existence? This is a question for which we cannot find a clear-cut,

Chap. 3} Objective Psychology 3 1

satisfactory answer in t h e writ i ngs o f t h e representatives o f functional psychology. There i s no c lear i dea, no agreement, no unan imity among them on th i s issue. However, there i s one po int on which they a l l agree: the functioning of the psyche is not to be identified with any physiological process. Thus the psych ic is sharp ly de l im ited from the p hysiologica l . Bu t what sort of entity th i s new qual ity, the psychic, i s-that remains unc lar ified.

S im i lar ly, the prob lem of the rea l i ty of an ideological phenomenon remains equal ly u nc lear i n functional psychology.

The o n ly instance where the fun ctiona l i sts provide a c lear answer is t he case of an experience d irected toward some object i n nature. Here they draw an opposition between psych ic function ing and natural, p hysical being-th i s tree, earth, stone, and the l ike.

But what sort of opposit ion obtains between psychic function ing and ideological being-a l ogical concept, an eth ica l value, an artistic image, etc.?

On th i s i ssue the majority of representatives of functional psychology adhere to commonly he ld idea l istic, main ly Kantian, views.6 I n addit ion to the i nd ividua l psyche and the indiv idua l subjective consciousness, they make a provision for a "transcendental consciousness," "consciousness per se," or "pure ep i stemo logical subject," and the l i ke . And into that transcendental rea lm t hey p lace the ideologica l phenomenon in its o pposition with ind iv idua l psychic function.7

Thus the prob lem of the real ity of ideology remains without a solut ion on the grounds of functiona l p sychology.

Fa i lure to understand the ideological s ign and its specific mode of being is, consequent ly, what is respons ib le , b oth in this and in a l l other instances, for the i nsolub i l ity of the prob lem of the p syche.

The prob lem of the psyche w i l l never f ind a sol u tion u nti l the prob lem of ideology i s so lved. These two prob lems are inextricab ly bound together. The who le h i story of psychology a nd the who le h i story of the i deological scienceslogic, epi stemol ogy, aesthetics, the human ities, etc.-is a h i story of incessant struggle i nvolv ing mutual de l im i tation and mutual assim i l ation between these two cogn itive d iscip l i nes.

A sort of pecu l iar period ic a l ternation seems to take p lace between an e lemental psychologism, w hich subj ects a l l the ideological sciences to inundation, and a sharply reacting ant ipsychologism, wh ich deprives the psyche of a l l its content, relegat ing it to some empty, formal status (as in functional p sychology) or to sheer physiologism . As for ideo logy, once a consistent antipsychologism has taken away its normal p lace i n ex i stence (which p lace is precise ly the psyche) ,

6. At the present time, the phenomenologists, too, take their stand on the grounds of functional psychology, associated , as they are , w ith F ranz B rentano (an association that exten ds to their overall ph ilosophica l outlook) .

7. As for the phenomenologists, they ontologize ideological notions, provid ing them w it h a n autonomous sphere o f ideal being.


it i s left with no p lace at a l l and is ob l iged to exit from real ity and to take to the transcendental , or even l itera l l y ascend to the transcendent.

At the beg inn ing of the 20th century, we experienced one of those strong waves of antipsychologism {by no means the first i n h i story, to be sure) . The trend-setting works of Hus s�r l ,8 the main representative of modern antipsychologism; the works of h is fol lowers, the intentionalists ( "phenomeno logists"); the sharp ly antipsycho logistic turn taken by representatives of modern neo-Kantian i sm of the Marbu rg and Fre iburg schoo l ;9 and the banishment of p sycho logism from a l l f ie l d s of k nowledge and even from psycho logy itse lf ! -a l l these th ings constituted an event of paramount ph i losoph ica l and methodo logica l importance in the first two d ecades of our century.

Now, in the th ird decade of the century, the wave of antipsycho logism has begun to abate. A new and ev ident ly very powerfu l wave of psycho logism is com ing to take its p lace. A fashionable form of psychologism i s the "ph i lo sophy of l ife." Under that trade name, p sycholog ism of the most u nbr id led k ind once again, w ith extraord inary speed, has occupied a l l the positions in a l l the branches of ph i losophy and ideological study that i t had so recently abandoned . 10

The approaching wave of psycho logism carries w ith it no fresh ideas about the fundamenta l s of psych ic rea l ity. In contrast to the preceding wave of p sychologism (the posit iv ist ic-empir ical psychologism of the second half of the 1 9th century whose most typ ical representative was Wundt) , the new p sycho logism is inc l ined to interpret i nner being, the "e lemental phenomenon of experience," in metaphysica l terms.

Thus no d ia lectfcal synthes is has resu l ted from th i s d ia lectical f lux of psycho !: ogism and ant ipsycho logism. N either the prob lem of psychology nor the prob-

8 . See Vo lume 1 of h is Logische Untersuchungen (a R ussian translation w as made in 1 9 1 0 ) . The work has become something of a b ib le of contemporary antipsychologism. See, also, his article ( Russian translation ) , "Ph i losophy as an Exact Science," Logos, I, 1 9 1 1 -1 9 1 2.

9. See, for example , the instructive s tudy by H ein r ich R ickert, the h ead of the F re iburg school , (Russian translation) "Two Paths in the Theory of Knowledge," No vye idei v filosofii [ N ew I deas in P h i l osophy ] , V I I, 1 9 1 3. In th is study, R ickert, u nder H usse r l 's i nf luence, translates h is orig ina l ly somewhat psychologistic concept of theory of knowledge i nto antipsychol ogistic terms. The article is very characteristic for the attitude taken by neo-Kantianism toward the ant ipsychologistic movement.

1 0. A genera l su rvey of contemporary ph i losophy of l i fe, though a ten den tious and somewhat out-dated one, can be fou nd i n R ickert's book, ( Russian translation) The philosophy of Life, "Academia," 1 92 1 . Very considerable infl uence o n the humani ties was exerted by E. Sp ranger's book, Lebensformen. Al l t h e major representatives of t he f ie l d s of l i terary and l i ngu istic stu dies in G ermany are to greater or lesser degrees u nder the influence of the ph ilosophy of l ife at the presen t t ime. Let us mention: Ermatinger (Das dichterische Kunstwerk, 1 92 1 ) , Gundolf ( books about Goethe and George, 1 9 1 6-1 925 ) , Hefele (Das Wesen der Dichtung, 1 923 ) , Walzel (Gehalt und Gestalt im dichterischen Kunstwerk, 1 923 ) , Vossler and the Vossleri tes, and many others. Abou t certain of these scholars we shall h ave someth i ng to say l ater on.

Chap. 3] Objective Psychology

l em of ideology has to th i s very day fou nd i ts proper sol u tion i n bourgeois ph i losophy.

The bases for the treatment of both problems must be estab l i shed s imu l taneous ly and i n tercon nected ly . We are suggesting that one and the same key

33

opens objective access to both spheres. That key i s the philosophy of sign ( the ph i losophy of the word a s the ideological sign par exce l l ence). The ideological s ign is the common territory for both the psyche and for ideology, a territory that is mater ia l , sociological , and meaningfu l . It is on th i s very terri tory that a de l imitation between psychology and ideology shou ld be worked out. The p syche need not be a dup l icate of the rest of the world ( the i deological wor ld above a l l ) , and the rest of the worl d need not be a mere material remark to the monologue of the psyche.

But if the nature of the psyche 's rea l ity is the same as that of the s ign 's real ity , how can one draw a d iv id ing l ine between the i nd ividual su bjective psyche and ideology, i n the exact sense of the word, which is l i kewise a semiotic entity ? We have so far on ly pointed out the general terr i tory; now we must draW the appropriate boundary with i n it .

The kerne l of th is i ssue amounts to a defin i tion of i nner ( i n tracorporea l ) sign which, in i ts immed iate real ity, i s accessib le to i n trospection .

Between the psyche and ideology no boundaries do or can exist from the poi nt of view of i deological content itself. Al l ideological content, without exception, no matter what the semiotic material embodying i t may be, i s su sceptib le of being Ufl_derstood and, consequently, of being taken i nto the psyche, i .e., of being reproduced i n the material of i nner signs. On the other hand , any i deological phenomenon in the process of creation passes through the psyche as an essentia l stage of that process. We repeat: every outer ideological sign, of whatever k ind , is engu lfed in and washed over by inner signs-by the consciousness. The outer sign originates from th is sea of i nner signs and continues to ab ide there, s ince its l ife is a process of renewal as someth ing to be understood , experienced , and ass imi lated , i .e . , its l i fe consists i n its being engaged ever anew into the i nner context.

Therefore, from the standpoint of content, there is no basic division between the psyche and ideology; the difference is one of degree only. The ideologeme is a vague enti ty at that stage of its i nner development when it is not yet embodied in outer ideological mater ial ; i t can acqu i re defin i tion, d ifferen tiation, fixity only in the process of ideological embod imen t. I ntention i s always a lesser th ing than creation-even u nsuccessful creation. A thought that as yet ex i sts only In the context of my consciousness, w ithout embodiment in the context of a d i sci p l i ne constituting some un ified ideological system, remai ns a d im , u nprocessed though t. But that thought had come into ex i stence i ri my consciousness a l ready with an orientation toward an ideological system, and it i tse l f had been engendered by the i deological s igns that I had absorbed earl ier. We repeat,


there is no qual i tative difference h ere i n any fu n damental sense. Cogn i tion with respect to books and to other people 's words and cogn ition i ns ide one's head be l ong to the same sphere of rea l i ty, and such d ifferences as do exist between the head and book do not .affect the content of cog n ition.

What mostly com p l icate� our problem of de l imiti ng p sy che and ideology i s the concept of " ind iv idual i ty." The "socia l " i s u sua l ly thought of i n b inary opposition with the " i ndiv idua l ," and hence we have the notion that the psyche i s i nd iv idual wh i le ideology is socia l .

Notions o f that sort are fu ndamenta l ly false. T h e correl ate o f t h e socia l i s the "natura l " and thus " i nd iv idua l" i s not meant i n the sense of a person, b u t " i nd ividual " a s natural , b io logical speci men. T h e i n d iv idual , a s possessor of the contents of his own consciousness, as author of h i s own thoughts, as the persona l i ty responsible for h is though ts and feel i ngs,-such an individual i s a purely socioideological phenomenon. Therefore, the con tent of the " i nd iv idua l" p syche i s by i ts very nature j ust as social as i s ideology, and the very degree of consciousness of one's i ndiv idual i ty and i ts i n ner rights and pr iv i l eges i s ideo logical , h istorical , and whol ly conditioned by sociological factors. 1 1 Every sign as sign i s socia l , and this is no l ess tru e for the inner s ign than for the outer sign .

To avoid misu n derstand ings, a rigorous di stinction must always be made between the co ncept of the i ndiv idual as natu ral specimen without reference to the social world ( i .e., the i n dividual as obj ect of the biologist's knowledge and study) and the concept of i ndiv id ual ity which has the status of an ideologicalsem iotic su perstructure over the natural i n div idual and wh ich, therefore, i s a social concept. These two meani ngs of the word. " ind iv idual " (the natural specimen and the person) are commonly confused, with the resu l t that the arguments of most p h i l osophers and psychologists constantly exh ib it quaternio terminorum: now one concept is i n force, now the other takes i ts p l ace.

I f the content of the ind ividual psyche i s just as socia l as i s i deol ogy, then, on the other hand, ideologi cal phenomena are j ust as i ndividual ( in the ideological meaning of the word) as are psychological phenomena. Every i deological product bears the i mpri nt of the individual i ty of its creator or creators, but eve n this imprint i s j u st as social as are al l the other properties and attributes of ideologica l phenomena.

Thus every sign, even the sign of i ndiv idual ity, i s socia l . In what, then, does the difference between i nner and outer sign, between psyche and i deology, consist?

Meaning i mpl emented i n the materia l of i nner activ ity i s mea n i ng turned toward the organ ism, toward the particular ind iv idua l ' s self, and i s determined

1 1 . In the last section of our study, we shall see how relative and ideological the conce pt of verbal authorsh ip , of "property r ight to the word ," real ly is and how l ate in appearance is the development in language of a d istinct sense of ind ividual prerequisites of speech .

Chap. 3] Objective Psychology 35

first of all in the context of that self's particu lar l ife. I n th is respect, a certain element of truth does adhere to the views held by representatives of the fu nctional school . The psyche does possess a special u n i ty d istinguishable from the u n ity of ideologi cal systems, and to ignore that u n i ty is i nad missable. The special nature of this psych ic u n ity is completel y compatib le with the i deological and sociologi cal conception of the psyche.

In poi nt of fact, any cognitive thought whatever, even one in my con sciousness, i n my psyche, comes into existence, as we have said , with an orientation toward an ideological system of k nowledge where that thought wi l l fi n d i ts place. My thought, in th is sense, from the very start belongs to an ideological system and is governed by its set of laws. But, at the same ti me, it belongs to another system that i s j ust as m u ch a u nity and just as m u ch in possession of its own set of laws-the system of my psyche. The u n i ty of th is secon d system is deter mined not on ly by the u n ity of my biological organism but a l so by the whole aggregate of condi tions of l i fe and society in wh i ch that organ ism h as been set. It is along the l i nes of this organic u nity of my self and these specific cond itions of my existence that the psychologist wi l l study my thought. Th i s same though t wi l l interest the ideologist on ly in terms of i ts objective contr ibution to a system of knowledge.

The system of the psych ic, a system determ i ned by organ ic and , in the broad sense of the word, biographical factors, is by no means m erely the resu l t of the psychol ogist's "point of view." I t is indeed a real u ni ty, as real as the biological sel f with i ts particu lar constitution, on w h i ch the psyche is fou n ded, and as real as the whole set of cond itions of l ife that determ ines the l ife of th is self. The more closely the i n ner sign i s interwoven with the u n ity of this psychic system and the m ore strongly marked by biological

'and b iograph ical factors, the further

away wi l l the i n ner sign be from fu l ly fledged ideologi cal expressio n . Conversely, as it approaches cl oser to its ideological form u lation and e mbod iment, the inner sign may be said to cast off the bonds of the psych ic context in wh i ch i t had been h el d .

This i s what also determines the d ifference i n the processes o f u nderstanding the i n n er sign ( i .e . , experience) on the one hand , and the outer, p u rely ideological sign, on the other. I n the first instance, to understand means to refer a parti· cular i n ner sign to a u nity consist ing of other i nner signs, to perceive it i n the context of a particu lar psyche . I n the second i nstance, to u n derstand is to perceive the sign i n the system of ideology app ropriate to i t. True, the first i nstance mu st also inc lude con si deration of the p u re ly ideological mean ing of the experie nce-after all, if the psychologist does not u nderstand the purely cognitive sense of some thought, he wi l l not be abl e to u nderstand i ts place in h i s subject's psyche e ither. If he d isregards the cognitive mean ing of the thought, he wi l l be confronting what i s not a thought, not a sign, but the sheer physiological process of i mp lementing the thought or sign in the organ ism. That is why psychology of


cogn it ion must be grounded i n epistemology and l ogic ; why, i n general, psycho l ogy must be grounded in ideological science and not the other way around .

I t shou ld b e noted that a ny outer sign express ion, an u tterance, for i n stance, can a l so be organ ized in e ither one of two d irect ions : e ither toward the subject h imself or away from h im toward ideology. In the f i rst i n stance, the u tterance a ims at giving outer s ign expression to i nner s igns, as such, and requ ires the receiver of the utterance to refer them to an inner con text, i .e . , requ ires a pure l y psychological k i n d of understand i ng . I n th e second instance, a pure ly ideologica l , objective-referential understand ing of the utterance i s requ ired. 12

I t i s i n th i s way that a de l i m itat ion between the psyche and ideology takes shape. 1 3

Now, i n what form do we receive the psyche, receive i nne r signs, for observation and study? I n its pure form, the i nner s ign, i .e . , experience, is receivabl e on ly by se l f-observation ( i n trospection) . Does i n trospection contravene the un i ty of outer, objective experience ? G iven a proper u nderstand ing of the psyche and of i n trospection i tself, noth ing of the sort occurs. 14

The fact i s, after a l l , that i nner sign is the object of i ntrospection and i nner sign , as such, can a l so be outer sign . I n ner speech cou l d i ndeed be given voice. The resu l ts of i n trospection in i ts process of self-clar ification must necessari ly be expressed outward ly or, at the very l east, be brough t up to the stage of outer expression . I n trospection, funct ion i ng as such, fol lows a course from inner to outer signs. I ntrospection itse l f, then , has an expressive character.

Se lf-observation ( introspection) is the u nderstand ing of one's own inner sign . I n th i s respect i t i s d i stingu ished from observation o f a physica l o bj ect or some physical process. We do not see or feel an experience-we understand it. Th is means that i n the process of i ntrospection we engage our exper ience i n to a con· text made up of other signs we u nderstand . A sign can be i l l um inated only with the he lp of another sign .

1 2 . I t should be noted that utterances of the first k ind can have a dua l character: they can i nform about experiences ( " I feel j oy"), or they can express them d i rectly ("Hurray ! " ). Transitional forms are possi b le (" I 'm so h appy ! "-w ith a strong expressive i n tonation of joy ) . The d istinction between these two types is of enormous importance for both the psychologist and the ideologist. I n the first case, there is no express ion of the exper ience and, therefore, no actual ization of inner s ign. What is expressed i s the resu l t of introspection (the s ign of a sign i s given, so to speak) . I n the second case, i n trospection in i nner experience erupts to the surface and becomes an object for external observation (granted, h av ing been al tered somewhat in erupting .to the surface ) . In the third-transiti onal-case, the resu l t of i ntrospection is col ored by the erupt ing inner sign (the i n i tia l sign ) .

1 3 . An exposit ion of our v iew on the content of the psyche as ideology is given i n our book c i ted above, Frejdizm. See the chapter, "The Content of the Psyche as Ideo logy. "

1 4. Such a contravention wou ld have taken p lace if the rea l i ty of the psyche were the real i ty of a th ing and not that of a sign .


I ntrospection i s a k i nd of understanding and, therefore, inev itably proceeds in some specific i deolog ical d i rection . Thus it can be carr ied out in the i n terests of psychology , and, in that case, it becomes u nderstand ing of a particu lar experience within the context of other i nner signs, with focus on the un i ty of psych ic l ife.

I n th i s in stance, introspection i l l um i nates i nner signs with the help of the cognitive system of psychological s igns; i t subjects the experience to clar ification and d ifferentiation, aiming toward an' exact psychological account of i t . This is just the sort of th i ng, for i n stance, that a subject i n a psychological experiment i s asked to do. The subject's response i s a psychological account, or the rough ing out of such an account.

But i n trospection can proceed in a different d i rection, gravitating toward eth ical or moral self-objectification . Here the inner sign is drawn into a system of eth ical values and norms, and is u nderstood and e lucidated from the i r point of view.

Other directions are a l so poss ib le . But a lways and everywhere introspection aims at e lucidating i nner sign, at advancing it to the highe st degree of semiotic defin itiveness. This process reaches its l im i t when the object of introspection becomes fu l ly understood, i .e . , when i t can become an object not of i n trospection on ly but a lso of ord inary, objective, ideological (semiotic) observat ion.

Thu s i n trospection, a s ideological u nderstanding, i s inc luded with in the un ity of objective experience. To th i s we must append the qua l ification that in concrete i nstances i t is impossib le to draw a c lear d iv id ing l i n e between inner and outer signs, between i nternal i n trospection and external observation, the latter supply i ng a steady stream of both semiotic and empir ical commentar ies to the i nner s igns being understood .

Empir ical commentary is a lways present . The understanding of any s ign, whether i nner or outer, occurs inextricab ly tied i n with the situation in which the sign is implemented. This s i tuation, even i n the case of introspect ion, exists as an aggregate of facts from external experience, the l atter commentat ing upon and i l l um inating a particular i n ner s ign . It i s a lways a social situation. Orientation in one's own sou l ( introspection) i s i n actu a l i ty i n separab le from orientation in the parti cu lar social s i tuation i n wh ich the exper ience occurs. Thus , any deepen i ng of i ntrospection can come about on ly i n unremitting conjunction w i th a deepened understand ing of the social orientation . Complete disregard of social orientation leads to a complete extingu ishment of experi ence, j ust as a l so happens when i t s semiotic nature i s di sregarded. As we sha l l see i n greater deta i l later on , the sign and its social situation are inextricably fused together. The s ign cannot be separated from the social s ituation without re l i nqu ish ing its nature as s ign .

The problem of the i nner s ign is one of the most crucia l problems of phi losophy of language. I nner sign i s, after a l l , preeminent ly the word, or inner speech .


The problem of i nner speech is a ph i losoph ical p roblem, as are a l l the problems treated i n this chapter . It l ies at the juncture between psychology and the concerns of the i deological sciences. A fu n damenta l , methodolog ical solution to this problem can be arrived at only on the grou nds of the ph i losophy of language as the ph i losophy of sign . What i s the nature of the word i n i ts role as inner sig n ? I n what form is i nner speech i m plemented? How d oes i t tie i n wi th the social s i tuation? What i s i ts rel ation to the external u tterance? What are the procedures for u n covering, for seizing hold, so to speak, of inner speech ? The answers to a l l these questions c a n only b e given b y a fu l ly elaborated ph i losophy of language.

Let us take a l ook at j u st the second of these questions-the question of the forms in which i n ner speech i s i mplemented.

I t i s c lear fro m the ou tset that, w ithout exception, al l categories worked ou t by l i ngu istics for the analysis of the forms of external language (the lexico logical, the grammatical, the phonetic) are inappl i cable to the analysis of i n ner speech or, if appl i cable, are appl icable only in thorough ly and rad ical ly revised versions.

C loser analysis wou l d show that the u n i ts of which i nner speech i s constituted are certa i n whole entities somewhat resembl ing a passage of monol ogic speech or whole u tterances. But most of al l , they resemble the alternating lines of a dialogue. There was good reason why th inkers i n ancient t imes shou l d have conceived of i n ner speech as inner dialogue. These w hole entities of i nner speech are not resolvable into grammati cal ele ments (or are resolvable only wi th considerable qual ifications) and have in f6rce between them, j u st as i n the case of the al ternating l i nes of d ia logue, not grammatical connections but con nections of a different k ind . These u n its of i nner speech, these total impressions15 of utterances, are joined with one another and alternate wi th one another not accord ing to the laws of gram mar or l ogic b u t according to the l aws of evaluative (emotive) correspondence, dialogical deployment, etc., in close dependence on the h i stori cal cond itions of the social s ituation and the whole pragmatic run of I ife.16

Only by ascerta in ing the forms of whole u tterances and, especia l ly, the forms of d ialogic speech, can l ight be shed on the forms of inner speech, as wel l, and on the pecul iar l ogic of their concatenation i n the stream of i nner speech .

1 5 . The term is borrowed from Gompertz, We!tanschauungs!ehre. I t appears that the term was first used by Otto Weininger. Total im pression means the s ti l l undifferentiated impress ion of the totality of a n object-the aroma of i ts total ity, as it were , wh ich precedes ·and underlies knowing the object distinctly . So, for example , we sometimes cannot rem e m ber a name or a word , though "it i s on the t ip of our tongue," i .e . , we al ready have a total i mpression of the nam e or word but the im pression cannot develop i n to its concrete d ifferentiated image. Accord ing to Gompertz, total i m pressions have great epistemological significance. They are the psychic equival ents of the forms of the whole and endow the whole with i ts un i ty .

1 6. The common d istinction made among types o f inner speech-visua l , aura l , and motor-is not relevant to our considerations h ere. W ithin each type, speech proceeds in term s of total i mpressions, whether visual , aura l , or motor.


Al l the problems o f i n ner speech we have noted here far exceed the b o u nd s o f o u r stu dy. Their prod u ctive treatment i s sti l l a n impossib i l ity a t t h e presen t time. I t i s essential to have huge amounts of pre l i minary factual mater ial before h and and an e lucidation of the more elementary and basic issues of the phi losophy of language, for example, the problem of the u tterance in particular.

In conclusion, then, we bel ieve that the problem of the mutual del i m i tation of the psyche and ideol ogy can be solved on the u n i tary territory of the i deol ogical sign which embraces both .

By means of this sol u tion, the contradiction between psychologism a n d antipsychologism wou l d be done away wi th , d i alectical ly, as wel l .

Antipsychologism is correct in refusing to derive ideology from the psyche. But even more than that is needed : the psyche must be derived from i deology. Psychology must be grou nded in i deolog ical science. Speech had first to come i nto being and develop in the process of the social intercourse of organ isms so that afterward i t coul d enter with i n the organism and become i n ner speec h .

Psycho/ogism is also correct, however. There is no outer sign without an inner sign. An outer sign i ncapabl e of entering the context of i n ner signs, i .e. , i n capab l e o f being u nderstood a n d ex perienced, ceases to be a sign a n d reverts to the status of a physical object.

The Ideological sign Is made viable by its psychic Implementation just as much as psychic Implementation is made viable by its ideological imp!etion. Psych ic experience i s someth ing i nner that becomes outer and the ideological sig n , something outer that becomes i n ner. The psyche enjoys extraterritorial stata s i n the organism. It i s a social ent ity that penetrates inside the organism of the i n d ividual person. Everyth ing ideol ogi cal i s l ikewise extraterritorial i n the socioeconomic sphere, s ince the ideolog ical sign, whose l ocus i s outside the organism, m ust en ter the i nner world in order to i mplement its meanin� as sign.

Between the psyche and ideology there exists, then, a continuous d ia l ectical i nterplay : the psyche effaces itself, or Is obliterated, In the process of becoming Ideology, and ideology effaces itself in the process of becoming the psyche. The i nner s ign must free i tsel f from its absorption by the psychic context (the biological-biographical context) , must cease being a su bjective experience, i n order to become a n ideological sign. T h e i deological sign must i m merse i tself in the element of i nner, su bjective signs; it must r ing with su bjective tones i n order to remain a l iv ing sign and not be relegated to the honorary status of an i n comprehens ib le m useu m piece .

Th is dialectical i nter p l ay between inner and outer signs-between the psyche and i deol ogy-has attracted the attention of th inkers many a time, but it has never fou n d proper understanding or adequate expression .

I n recent ti mes the most profound and i nteresting analysis of this i nter p lay . was given by the ph i losopher and sociologist Georg S immel .


Simmel perceived th is i n terplay i n a form typical for contemporary bourgeo i s speculation-that of the "tragedy of cu l ture" or , more accurate ly , the tragedy of the su bjective persona l i ty creating cu l tu re. This creative persona l i ty , accord ing to Simmel , obl iterates i tself, i t s su bjectivity, and i ts very "persona l i ty " in the objective product i t i tse l f creates. The b irth of an objective cu l tu ral valu e enta i l s the death of the s ubjective sou l .

W e shal l not go into the deta i l s of S immel 's ana lys is o f th is who le prob lem (an analysis wh ich conta in s no smal l nu mber of acute and i n teresting observat ions) . 17 But let us take note. of the basic deficiency in S immel 's conception .

For S immel , an irreconci lab le d iscrepancy exists between the psyche and ideology : he does not know the sign of a form of reality common to both psyche and ideology. Moreover, though a sociologist, he u tter ly fails to appreciate the thoroughgoing social nature of the reality of ideology, as well as the reality of the psyche, Both the one and the other k i nd of real ity are, after a l l , a refraction of one and t he same socioeconom ic ex i stence. A's a resu l t, t h e v i ta l d ia lectical contrad iction between the psyche and existence assumes for S imme l the shape of an inert, fixed ant inomy-a " tragedy," and h e .endeavors i n va in to surmount that i nevitab le ant inomy by resorting to a metaphysica l l y col ored dynam ics of the I ife process.

On ly on the grounds of a materia l ist ic monism can a dia lectical resolu tion of al l such contrad ictions be ach i eved . Any other grounds wou l d necessar i ly enta i l e ither c los ing one 's eyes to these contrad ict ions and ignoring them or transformating them i nto a hope less ant inomy, a tragic dead end . 18

I n the verbal mediu m, i n each u tterance, however triv ia l i t may be, th i s l iv i ng d ia lectical syn thesis is constant ly tak ing p lace aga in and aga in between the psyche and ideology, between the inner and the outer . In each speech act, subjective experience pe�ishes i n the objective fact of the enunciated word-

1 7 . Two studies of S immel 's, d evoted to th is issue, have been translated i nto Russ ia n : "The Tragedy o f Cu l ture," L ogos, 1 1 - 1 1 1 , 1 9 1 1 -1 9 1 2 , and "The Conflicts o f Contemporary Culture," pub l ished separately and wi th a preface by Professor Svj atl ovskij u nde r the t it le , Nacatki znanij [ " R ud iments of Knowledge" ] ( Petrograd, 1 923 ) . Simmel 's most recent book, Lebensanschauung, 1 9 1 9 , is a treatment of the same p roblem from the ph i losophy-of-life poi nt of view. The very same idea is the le itmotif of S imme l 's l ife of Goethe and to some degree also of h is books on Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and h is studies of Rembrandt and M ichelangelo ( the latter appeared i n Russian translation i n Logos, I, 1 9 1 1 -1 91 2 ) . The various means for overcoming this confl ict between psyche and its creative objectification in an external p rod uct of culture u nder l ie S imme l 's typology of creative persona l i ties.

1 8 . In Russian ph i losoph ical l i teratu re, Fedor Steppun has dealt and conti n u es to d eal w i th the problem of the objectification of the subjective psyche in ideol ogical p roducts and the con trad ictions and confl icts that resu lt therefrom. See his stud ies i n Logos, 1 1 - 1 1 1 , 1 9 1 1 -1 9 1 2, and 1 1 - IV , 1 9 1 3 . Steppun , too, p resents these problems i n a tragic and even mystical l ight. He is i ncapable of examin ing them in the framework of objective material real ity. Only in that framework can the problem find produ ctive and sober d i alectical sol u tion.


utterance, and the enunciated word is su bjectified i n the act of responsive understand ing i n order to generate, sooner or later, a cou n ter statement. Each word, as we know, i s a l i tt le arena for the clash and criss-crossi ng of d ifferently oriented social accents. A word in th e mouth of a particu lar ind iv idual person is a product of the l iv ing interaction of socia l forces.

Thus, the psyche and ideology d ia l ectica l ly i n terpenetrate in the un i tary and objective process of social i n tercourse.

P A R T I I

TOWARD A MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

C H A P T E R 1

Two Trends of Thought in Philosophy of Language

The problem of the actual mode o f existence of language. The basic principles of the first trend of thought in the philosophy of language (individualistic subjectivism). Representatives of the first trend. The second trend of thought in philosophy of language: abstract objectivism. The historical roots of the second trend. Contemporary representatives of abstract objectivism. Conclusions.

What, in fact, is the subject matter of the ph i losophy of l anguage? W here are we to fin d it? What is its concrete, material existence l i ke ? By what method or methods can we come to grips with its mode of existence ?

I n the first-the i ntroductory-section of our study, we completely eschewed these concrete issues. We addressed ourse lves to the ph i lo sophy of language, the ph i loso phy of the word . But what i s language, and what i s word ?

We d o not, o f course , have in m i n d anyth ing l i ke a concl usive defi n it ion of these concepts. Such a d efin i tion ( insofar as any scientific defin it ion may be ca l led conclusive) might come at the end of a study , but not at its begi n n i ng. When beginn ing an investigation, one needs to construct methodological gu idel i nes, not defin itions. It i s essentia l above a l l to get the fee l of the actual subject matter-the object under investigation ; i t i s e ssential to separate it from the real i ty surround ing it and to make a pre l im inary de l imitation of i t . At the outset of an investigation, it is not so much the i nte l lectual facu l ty for making formulas and defi n itions that leads the way, but rather it is the eyes and hands attempting to get the feel of the actual presence of the subject matter;

But when we turn to our part icu lar case, the eyes and hands find themselves in a quandary : the eyes see noth ing and there i s nothing for the hands to touch. The ear, it wou ld seem, i s at an advantage because it can claim to hear a word,

45

46 Marxist Philosophy of Language /Part II

to h ear language. And i n deed, the temptations of a superficial phonetic empiricism are very powerfu l i n l i ngu istic science. The stu dy of the sou nd aspect of language occupies a d isproportionate ly large p lace i n l i ngu i st ics, often setting the tone for the fie ld , and in most cases i s carried on outside any connection with the real essence of language as ideological sign. 1

T he task o f identifying t h e real object o f study i n t h e ph i losophy of language is b y no means an easy one. With each attempt to del i m i t the object of i nvestigation, to reduce it to a compact subject-matter complex of defi n it ive and in spectab le d i mensions, we forfeit the very essence of the th ing we are studyi ng-its · semiotic and i d eological nature. If we i solate sou n d as a p urely acoustic phenomenon, we wi l l not have language as our specific object. Sound perta ins who l l y to the competence ofphysics. I f we add the physiological process of sound production and the process of sound reception, we sti l l come no closer to o ur object. I f we join onto th is the experience ( i n ner sign s) of the speaker and l i stener, we obtain two psychophysical processes, tak ing pl ace in two d ifferent psychophysiological beings, and one physical sound complex whose n atu ral manifesta· t ion is governed by the laws of physics. Language as the specifi c o bject of study keeps e l u di ng u s. Yet we have al ready encompassed three spheres of reality-the ph ysical, the p hysiological , and the psychologi cal , and we h ave obtained a fair ly e laborate composite complex. What this complex l acks i s a "so u l " ; its com ponent parts are a col lection of separate enti ties not joined together to form a u n ity by som e i nner, pervasive governance that wou l d transform that com pl ex into precisely the p henomenon of l anguage.

What, then, needs to be added to our "al ready elaborate. complex? F irst of al l , t h i s complex needs to be i n cluded into a m uch wider and more com prehensive complex-into the u n ified sphere of organ ized social intercourse. I n order to ob serve the process of com b ustion, a substance m ust be p laced i n to t he air. I n order to observe the phenomenon o f language, both the producer and the receiver of sound and the sou nd itself m u st be placed into the social atmosphere. After a l l , the speaker and l i stener m ust belong to the same language communityto a society organized along certai n particu lar l ines. F u rthermore, o u r two i nd iv iduals m ust be encompassed by un ity of the immed iate social s ituation , i .e . , they m ust make contact, as one person to another, on a specific basis. On ly on a specific basis i s a verbal exchange possib le, however impersonal and however m u ch d ictated, so to speak, by the occasion that shared basis m ay be.

1. This concerns primarily experimental phonetics, wh ich , in fact, does not study sou n ds i n a language but sounds as produced by the vocal organs ahd received by the ear, com p letely without regard for the position those sounds occupy in the system of a l anguage or i n the construction of an Utterance. Other branches of phonetics also em ploy h uge masses of factual material, laboriously and meticulously col lected, which are in no way methodological ly positioned in language.

Chap. 7 ] Two Trends o f Thought 47

So, we may say that the unity of the social milieu and the unity of the immediate social event of communication are cond itions absol utely essential for bringing our physico-psycho-physio logical complex into relation with l anguage, with speech, so that it can become a l anguage-speech fact. Two b iological organ isms under purely natural cond itions wi l l not produce the fact of speech .

B ut the resu l ts of our analysis , i nstead of provid ing us the desired de l im ita· tion of our object of investigation , h ave brought us to an extreme expansion and to a further compl ication of it. For the fact of the matter i s that the organ ized social mi l ie u into which we have inc luded our complex and the immediate socia l communicative situation are i n themse lves extremely compl icated and i nvolve hosts of m u ltifaceted and m ultifarious connections, not a l l .of which are equal ly important for the u nderstand ing of l i nguistic facts, and not a l l of which are constituents of . l anguage. What is needed , final ly , i s to bring th is whole mu l tifarious �ystem of features and relations, of processes and artifacts, to one common de· nominator: all its various l i nes must be channeled to one center-to the focal po int of the language process.

Above we gave an exposition of the problem of l anguage, that i s to say, we unfolded the problem itself and revealed the d ifficu lties inherent in it. What, then , are the attempts that have been made by phi losophy of language and by general l i nguistics to solve th is prob lem? What are the signposts a l ready p laced along the road to its sol ution by wh ich we may take our bearings?

A detai l ed survey of the h i story of phi losophy of l anguage and general l i n· guistics or even on ly of the ir contemporary states i s not our a im. We sha l l l imit ourse l ves here to a general analysi s of the main arteries of ph i losophical and l ingu istic thought in modern times?

I n the ph i losophy of l anguage and in the related methodo logical sectors of general l i nguistics, we observe two basic trends i n the sol u tion of our prob lem, '

2. U p 'to the present moment, no stud ies special ly 'Jevoted to the ph ilosophy of language have appeared . Basic research is available only on the subject of the phi losophy of l anguage in antiquity, e.g., S teinthal , Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Grie chen und Romern ( 1 890) . As regards its Euro pean history , we possess only monographs on i ndividual th inkers and l inguists (Hu mboldt, W u ndt, Marty , and others) . We shall refer to the m in their proper place. The reader wil l find an outline of the h istory of the ph ilosophy of l anguage and l i n· guistics, so far the only substantive one of its k ind, in Ernst Cassirer's book, Philosophie der symbolischen For men: Die Sprache ( 1 92 3) . See Ch apter 1 , " Das S p rach problem in der Geschichte der Philosophic," pp. 55 ·1 2 1 .

I n Russian scholarly l iteratu re, a brief but sol id sketch of the contemporary state of af· fairs in l ingu istics and the ph i losophy of language is provided by R . Sor in her article, " Krizis sovremen noj l ingvistiki" [The Crisis in Contem porary Linguistics] , jafeticeskij sbornik, V ( 1 927) , pp. 32·7 1 . A general, though far from complete, su rvey of sociological stu d ies in l inguistics is given in an article by M. N . Peterson , " j azyk kak social'noe javlenie" [ Language as a Social Phenomenon ] , lfcenye zapiski instituta jazyka i /iteratury, Ran ion (Moscow, 1 927) , pp. 3·2 1 . Works on the h istory of l inguistics shall be left u nmentioned here.

48 Marxist Philosophy of Language [Part II

i .e . , the problem of the identification and the delimitation of language as a specific object of study. Differences over th i s i ssue a lso imply, of cou rse, fundamental d i fferences between these two trends over a l l other i ssues concern ing the study of l anguage .

The first trend can be termed individualistic subjectivism i n the study of language, and the second, abstract objectivism. 3

The first trend con si ders the bas is of language ( language mean i ng a l l l i nguist ic manifestation s without exception ) to be the ind ivi dual creative act of speech. The source of language i s the ind iv idual psyche. The laws of language creativityand l anguage is , i t assumes, a cont in uous process, an u nceasing creativ ity-are the laws of i nd iv idua l psychology, and the?e laws are just what the l i ngu i st and the phi losopher of language are supposed to study. To e lu ci date a l i ngu i stic phenomenon means to br ing i t in l ine with a meaningful (often even d iscurs ive) ind iv idual act of creativity. Everyth ing e l se the l inguist does h as only a prel im inary , de l i neatory, descri ptive, or classifactory character ; it i s meant on ly to prepare the ground for the true explanation of the l i nguist ic phenomenon in terms of the i ndiv idual creative act or to serve the practical a ims of language teaching . Language, so v iewed, is analogous to other ideological phenomena, i n particular, to art-to aesthetic activity.

The fundamental outlook on l anguage of the first trend amounts, therefore, to these fou r basic pr incip les :

1 . Language is activity, an unceasing process of creation ( energeia) realized in individual speech acts,'

2. The laws of language creativity are the laws of individual psychology,' 3 . Creativity of language is meaningful creativity, analogous to creative art; 4. Language as a ready-made product (ergon) , as a stable system

. (lexicon, grammar, phonetics}, is, so to speak, the inert crust, the hardened lava of language creativity, of which linguistics makes an abstract construct in the interests of the practical teaching of lanwage as a ready-made instrument.

The most important represen tative of the first trend, the one who la id i ts foundations, was W i lhe lm von H umboldt .4

·

H u mboldt's powerful thought has exercised an i nfluence far exceed ing the scope of the trend we have just characterized. It can be cla imed that a l l postHumbo ldt ian l i ngu i stics, to the present day, has experienced h i s determi native inf luence. The whole of H umbo ldt 's thought in i ts total i ty does not, needless to say, fa l l with in the four-pr inc ip le framework we have adduced ; i t i s b roader,

3 . Nei ther te rm, as always happens w i th terms of th is sort, fully covers the breadth and comple� i ty of the tren d denoted. As we shall see, the designation of the first trend i s part icular ly inadequate. We were unable to devise better ones, however.

4. H amann and Herder were Humboldt's p redecessors so far as this tre nd is concerned.

Chap. 7 ] Two Trends of Thought 49

more comp lex, and more contrad ictory, wh ich explains how it was possib le for H umboldt to become the preceptor for widely d ivergent trends and movements.5 Yet, the kernel of Humbol dt's ideas may be taken as the most powerfu l and most profound expression of the basic tendencies exempl ified by the fi rst trend .

A. A. Potebnja and h i s ci rcle of fol lowers are the most important representatives of th is trend in Russian l inguistic scho larsh i p.6

The representatives of the first trend, who came after H umboldt, d id not reach the scale of h is ph i losophical synthes is and profund ity . The trend became decided ly narrower especia l l y as part and parcel of i ts adopting positivistic and quasi-empi ri cistic ways. A l ready in Steinthal 's case, the H umboldtian sweep is m issing. As compensation, however, greater methodologica l preci s ion and systematization came to the fore . Steinthal, too, viewed the i nd ividual psyche as the source fcir language ani:. considered the laws of l i nguistic development to be psychological laws.7

The basic pr inc ip les of the first trend were drastical ly reduced i n sca le by the empir icist ic psychologism of Wundt and his fol lowers.8 Wundt's posit ion amounts to the notion that al l the facts of language without exception are amenab l e to ec><planation in terms of i ndividual psycho logy on a vo l u ntaristic basis.9 T rue, Wundt considers language, as does S teinthal , a fact of the " psycho logy of nations"

5 . Humboldt exposited his i d eas on ph i losophy of language in h is study , " Ueber d i e Versch iedenheiten des mensch l ichen S prachbaues," Gesamme/te Werke, VI , ( Berl i n , 1 84 1 -1 852 ) ; a Russian translation was made a long t ime ago, i n 1 8 59 , b y P. B iljarsk ij under the tit le, 0 razlicii organizmo v ce/o veceskogo jazyka [On the D istinction among Organ isms of H uman Language ] . There is a vast l i terature about Humboldt. We m ight mention the book by R. Haym, Wilhelm von Humboldt, which is avai l able in Russian translation . Among more recent stud ies, we might mention Edward Sp ranger , Wilhelm von Humboldt, (Berl i n , 1 909) .

Russian commentary on H umboldt and his ro le in Russian l ingu istic thought can be foun d in the boo k b y B . M . Engel 'gart, A . N. Vese/o vskij (Petrograd , 1 922 ) . Recently G-. S pett publ ished a provocative and interesting boo�' entitl ed : Vnutrennjaja forma slova (etjudy i variacii na temu Gumbo/'dta) [ The I nner Form of the Word ( Etudes and Variations on a Theme of Humboldt) ] . I n it, Spett tries to restore the origina l , authentic H umboldt from under successive overlays -of traditional interpretations. Spett's very subjective concept of

Humbold t once again proves how complex and con tradictory H umboldt is; the "variations" prove to be very free indeed .

6. Potebnja's basi c phi losoph ical study is: Mysl' i jazyk [Thought and Language ] . H is fol l owers, the so-ca l led Xar 'kov �chool (Ovsjani ko-Ku l ikovsk i j , Lez in , Xarciev, et a!. ) , publ i shed a non period ical series, Voprosy teorii i psixologii tvorcestva, wh ich i ncluded Potebnja's posthumous works and articles about him by h i? students. In Potebnja's vol ume of basic writ ings , there is an exposition of Humboldt's i deas.

7. Beh ind S te inthal 's conception stands Herbart's psychology , wh ich is an attempt to construct the whole ed ifice of the human psyche out of e lements of ideas bound together by association.

8. At th is point, the connection with Humboldt becomes very sl ight. 9. Voluntarism pl aces the e lement of will at the basis of the psyche.


(Volkerpsychologie) or "ethn ic psychology. "10 However, Wundt's national psychology is made up of the psyches of i nd ividual persons; on ly they, for h im, possess a fu l l measure of reality.

I n the final analysis, all his explanations of the acts of l anguage, myth, and rel igion amount to purely psychological explanations. A p urely so cio logi cal regu latedness, which is a property of a l l signs an d which cannot t>e reduced to laws of ind ivi d ua l psychology, is beyond h is ken .

I n recent ti mes, t h e first trend in t h e ph i losophy o f language, havi n g cast off the bonds of pos itivism, has once again achieved powerfu l growth and wide scope in the conception of its tasks through the Vossler school. /

The Vossler school (the so-cal led " l dea l i st ische Neuphi lo logie") is beyond question one of the most potent movements in contemporary ph i losoph ical-li nguistic thought. And the positive, specia l ized co n tr ib ution its adherents have made to l i nguistics ( in Romance and Germanic phi lology) is also e xceptional ly great. One need only name, in add ition to Vossler h imself, s uch of h is followers as Leo Spitzer, Lorek, Lerch, among others. A bout each of these scholars we shall have occasion to speak later o n .

T h e general phi losophical- l inguistic view h e l d by Vossler and the Vossler school is fully characterized by the four basic prin ciples we have add u ced for the first trend. The Vossler school is defined first an d foremost by its decisive and theoretical ly grounded rejection of linguistic positivism with its inab i l ity to see anyth i ng beyond the l ingui st ic form (primarily, the phonetic for m as the most " positive" kind) and the elementary psychophysiological act of its generat ion.11 In con nection with this, the meaningful ideological factor in language has been advanced to the fore. The main i mpetus to l i nguistic creativity is said to be " l i nguisti c taste," a special variety of artistic taste. L i nguistic taste is that l i n guistic truth by which language l ives and whi ch the l inguist m ust ascertain in every man ifestation of language i n order gen u inely to u nd erstand and explain the manifestation in q uestion. Writes Vossler :

The on ly history of language that can claim the status of a science is the one th at can run the whole gamut of the practical , causal order of things so as to arrive at the aes· thetic order, so that thereby l inguistic thought, l inguistic truth, l inguistic taste, and

1 0. It was G. Spett who proposed using the term "eth n ic psychology" instead of the l iteral translation of the German term , "Volkerpsychologie." The original term is indeed completely u nsatisfactory and S pett's alternative seems to us very apt. See G. S pett, Vvedenie v etniceskuju psixologiju [ I ntroduction to E thn ic Psychology ] , Gosudarstvennaja Akad emija X udozestv i Nauk ( Moscow , 1 927) . The book contains substantive criticism of Wu ndt's outlook, but G. Spett's own system is completely unacceptable.

1 1 . Vossler's first, trend-setting phi losophical study , Positivism us und Idealism us in der Sprachwissenschaft (Heidel berg, 1 904). set out to criticize l inguistic positivism.

Chap. 1] Two Trends of Thought

l i ngu istic sensib i l ity or, as W i l he lm Humbol d t h as cal led it, the i nner form of language, in its p hysical ly, psychical l y , pol it ical ly , econom ical ly. and, in general, its cultura l l y conditioned transformations, may be made c l ear and u nderstandable .11

5 1

Thus we see that a l l factors having a determinative effect o n a l i nguist ic phenomenon ( physical, po l itical, eco nomic, and other factors) have no d irect re levance for the l i nguist, accord ing to Voss ler ; what is important for h im i s on ly the artistic sen se of any given l i nguistic phenomenon.

Such i s the nature of Vosshr's pure ly aesthetic conception of l anguage. In his own words : "L inguisti c thought i s essenti a l l y poetic thought; l ingu istic truth i s artistic truth, is mean i ngfu l beauty."13

I t i s completely understandab l e , then, that for Vossler the basic man ifestation, the bas ic reality, of language shou ld not be language as a ready-made system, in the sense of a body of inherited, immediately usable forms-phonetic, grammatical, and other- but the individual creative act of speech (Sprache a/s Rede). What fol l ows from th is is that, from the standpoint of language generation, the vital feature of every speech act does not consist i n the grammatical form s, which are shared, stab le, and immediate ly usab le i n a l l other utterances of a given language, but in sty l i st ic concretization and modification of these abstract forms, which ind iv idual ize and un iquely character ize any given utterance.

On ly th is sty l istic ind ividual ization of language in concrete utterance is h istorical and creatively productive . I t is here precisely that language is generated, later to so l id ify i nto grammatical forms: everything that becomes a fact ofgrammar had once been a fact of style. This i s what Vossler's idea of the precedence of style over grammar amounts to.14 Most of the l i nguisti c studies pub l i shed by the Voss ler schoo l stand on the boundary between l ingu i st ics ( in the narrow sense) and sty l isti cs. The Voss lerites consistent ly d i rect their efforts toward d iscern ing mean ingfu l ideo logica l roots in each form of language.

That, basica l ly , is the ph i losophical - l inguistic view he ld by Vossler and h is school _ IS

1 2 . ( Russian translation) "G ram mar and the H is tory of Language," Logos, I , 1 9 1 0, p. 1 70. 1 3. /bid., p . 1 6 7 . 1 4. We shal l return later to criticism o f this idea. 1 5 . Vossler's basic ph i losophico-l i ngu istic stud ies, pub l i shed after Positivismus und /dea/

ismus, are col lected in Philo sophie der Sprache ( 1 926 ) . This book provides a complete picture of Vossler's ph i losophical and general l inguistic outlook. A mong l inguistic studies that disp lay the characteristic Vossler method, we might cite his Frankreich Ku/tur im Spiegel seiner Sprachentwicklung ( 1 9 1 3) . A complete bib l iography of Vossler's wr itings u p to 1 922 wi l l be found i n /dealistische Neuphi!o!ogie. Festschrift fUr K. Vossler ( 1 922 ) . Two artic les of Vossler's are avai lable i n Russian translation: "G rammatika i istori]a jazyka" [Grammar and the H istory of Language ] , Logos, I , ( 1 9 1 0) , and "Otnosenie istor i i jazykov k istori i l i teratury" [The Relationsh i p of the H istory of Languages to the H istory of Literature ] , Logos, 1- 1 1 ( 1 9 1 2-1 9 1 3) . Both articles contr ibute to an u nderstanding of the fundamentals of Vossler's outlook. No d iscussion whatever of the views of Vossler and h i s fol l owers has been

52 Marxist Philosophy of Language (Part II

· Among contemporary representatives of the first trend i n the ph i losophy of language, the name of the I ta l ian ph i losopher and l i terary scholar, Benedetto Croce, must a l so be mentioned in view of the great inf luence he has had on contempor-ary European thought in the ph i losophy of language and l iterary studies.

Benedetto Croce 's ideas are c lose in many respects to Vossler's . For Croce, language i s a lso an aesthetic phenomenon . T he basic, key term in his conception is expression. Any sort of express ion is, at the root, artist ic. Hence th e notion that l i ngu i stics, as the study of expression par exce l l ence (wh ich i s what the verba l med ium is) , co incides w ith aesthetics. And this means that for Croce, too, the i ndiv idual act of verbal express ion is the fundamenta l man ifestat ion of language. 16

Let us now go on to a characterization of the second trend of thought i n ph i losophy of language.

The organ izing cen ter of a l l l ingu i stic phenomena, that which makes them the specific object of a special science of l anguage, sh ifts in the case of the second trend to an ent ire ly different factor-to the linguistic system as a system of the phonetic, grammatical, and lexical forms of language.

If, for the first trend , language is an ever-flowing stream of speech acts i n which noth ing remains fixed and ident ica l to itse lf, then , for the second trend , language is the stationary rainbow arched over that stream .

Each ind iv idua l creative act, each utterance, is i d iosyncratic and un ique , but each utterance conta i ns e lements identical w ith e lements i n other utterances of the given speech group. A nd it is precisely these factors-the phonetic, grammatica l , and lex ica l factors that are identical and therefore normative for a l l utterances-that insure the un ity of a given language and its comprehens ion by a l l the members of a given commun ity.

I f we take any sound in a language, for instance the phoneme /b/ i n "ra inbow," then this sound as produced by the physio logica l articu latory apparatus of ind iv idual organisms is id iosyncrat ic and un ique for each speaker. The /b/ in "ra inbow" wi l l have as many different pronunciations as there are peop le who pronounce the word (even though our ear may resist or be i ncapab le of d i st inguishing these pecu l iarit ies) . Physiological sound ( i .e . , sound produced by the ind iv idua l physiological apparatus) i s , after a l l , j u st as u ni que as are a person ' s fingerprin ts or as is the chemica l com position of each ind iv idua l person 's b lood ( not-

.1 6 . The f i rst part of B . Croce's A esthetics as a Science of Expression and General L inguistics h as been translated into R ussian (Moscow, 1 920 ) . Croce's overa l l views on l anguage and l ingu ist ics are al ready specified in the first section of his book.

undertaken in Russian l ingu ist ic l iterature. A few references to them are given on ly in an art ic le by V. M . Zirmunskij about contemporary German l i terary scholarsh i p ( in Poetika, sb. I l l , "Academia," 1 927 ) . I n the above-cited survey by R. Sor, the Vossler school is ment ioned only in a footnote. In due t ime, we sha l l have something to say about works by Vossler's fo l l owers that have a ph i losoph ical and methodologica l s ignificance.

Chap. 7 / Two Trends o f Thought 53

withstanding t h e fact that science h as not yet been able t o provide the formu la for indiv idual b lood) .

However, the question i s : How important, from the standpoint of language, are a l l these id iosyncratic pecu l iar it ies in the pronunciation of /b/--pecu l iar ities for which, we may hypothesize, the shape of the ind ividua l person 's l ips and ora l cav ity are respons ib le ( assuming that we were i n a position to disti nguish and p inpoint a l l these pecu l iarities) ? The answer is, of cou rse, that they are tota l ly un important. What is important is precisely the normative identity of the sound in a l l i n stances in wh ich the word "rainbow" is pronounced . It is th i s normative iden tity (factual identity being, after al l , nonexi stent) that con stitutes the un ity of the sound system of a language (at some particular moment in its l ife) and that guarantees that the word in question w i l l be u nderstood by a l l members of the l anguage commun ity . Th i s normatively identi cal phoneme /b/ may be said to be a l i nguistic fact, a specific object for study by the scien ce of language.

The same is also true with respect to al l other e l ements of language. H ere, too, we find the same normative identity of l ingu i stic form throughout (e.g., a syntacti c pattern) and the ind ivid ua l-specific imp lementation and impletion of the part icu lar form i n the s ingu lar act of speech . The former belongs to the system of language, the latter is a fact belonging to ind iv idua l processes of speaking conditioned by fortu itous (from the standpoint of l anguage as system) physiological, s u bjective-psychologica l , and a l l other such factors as are not amenable to exact accountabi l ity.

I t is c lear that the system of language in the sen se characterized above i s comp lete ly i ndependent of ind ividual creative acts, intentions, or motives. F rom the point of v iew of the second trend , mean ingfu l language creativity on the speaker's part is s imply out of the q uestion . 1 7 L anguage stands before the ind iv idual as an inviolable, i ncontestab le norm which the ind ividua l , for h is part, can only accept. If the individua l fai ls to perceive a l i nguistic form as an incontestab le norm, then it does not exist for h i m as a form of language but simply as a na· tural poss ib i l ity for h is own ind iv idua l , psychophysical apparatus. The i nd ividual acqu ires the system of language from his speech commun ity complete ly readymade. Any change with i n that system lies beyond the range of h i s indiv idua l consciou sness. The ind ividual act of art icu lating sounds becomes a l ingu i st ic act on ly by measure of its compl iance with the fixed (at any g iven moment in time) and incontestable (for the ind iv idua l ) system of language .

What, then, is the nature of the set of laws in force with i n the language system?

1 7 . T h ough, as we shal l see, the bases just described o f t h e second trend of thought in

p h i l oso p h y of l anguage did, o n t h e grou n ds o f rational ism, i n corporate the idea of a n arti

ficia l ly constructed, logical, u n iversal l a n guage.

54 Marxist Philosophy of Language {Part II

This. set of laws has.a pure ly immanent and specific nature that is not reducib le to any other set of law�-ideological, artistic, or otherwise. A l l forms of language at any given point in time, i .e., synchronically, are i n a position of mutual i n dispensab i l ity and complementariness, w hereby they transform language into . an orderly system pervaded. by laws of a specifica l l y l i nguistic nature. This spe- ·

cifical/y linguistic systematicity, In distinction from the systematicity of ideology-of cognitio n , creative art, and eth ics-cannot become a motive for the individual consciousness. The individual must accept and assimi late th is system e ntirely as is; there is no place in it for eva luative, ideological d iscrim inat ionssuch as whether something is better, worse, beautifu l , ugly, or the l ike. I n fact, there is o n ly one l inguistic criterio n : correct versus incorrect, wherein linguistically correct is understood to mean only the correspondence of a given form to the normative system of language: Consequently, no such thi ng as l inguistic taste or l inguistic truth comes up for d iscussion. From the ind ividual 's point of view, l inguistic systematicity is arbitrary, i.e., utter l y lacking any natural or ideological (for i nstance, artistic) comprehens ib i l ity or motivation. T hus between the phonetic design of a word and its meaning, there is neither a natural connection nor an artistic correspondence.

If language, as a system of forms, is com pletely i ndependent of creative impu lses or activities on the part of the ind ividual, then i t fo l lows that language i s t h e product of col l ective creativity-that i t is a social entity a n d therefore, l ike al l social institutions, is normative for each separate individual .

However, th is system of language, which is an immutab le un ity at any given po int i n time, i.e., synchron ical ly, does change, does evolve in the process of the h istorical evol ution of the speech com munity. After al l , the normative identity of the phoneme we establ ished above wi l l be d ifferent at d ifferent periods in the deve lopment of the language in question . I n short, language does h ave its h i story. Now, how can th i s h i story be understood in the outlook of the seco n d trend?

A n overr iding characteristic of the second trend of thought in the ph ilosophy of language is its assuming a special k ind of discontinuity between the history of language and the system of language ( i .e., language in its a-h i storical, synchron i c d i mension) . From the standpoint o f the basic principles of t h e second trend, th i s d ual istic discontinu ity is absol ute ly insurmountable. T here can b e noth i ng i n common between the logic governing the system o f l i nguistic form s at a n y given moment in time and the logic (or rather "a-logic") of the h i storical change of these forms. The log ic is of two d ifferent k inds; or rather, if we recognize only one of them as logic, the other will be a-logic, i.e., sheer violation of the logic accepted.

I ndeed, the l inguistic forms that comprise the system of language are m utual ly ind ispensab le and com plementary to one another i n just the way that terms i n a mathematical formula are. A change of one member of the system creates a new system, just as a change of one term in a formula creates a new formu la. The

Chap. 7] Two Trends of Thought 55

interconnection and regularity governing the relationship between terms in one formu la do not, of course, extend, nor can they extend, to the relationsh ips between that particu lar formu la or system and another, subsequent formu la or system.

A rough analogy can be used here that wi l l adequately portray the attitude of the second trend of thought in the ph i losophy of language toward the h is tory of language. Let us l i ken the system of language to Newton's formula for the solution of binomials. With i n th is formula reigns a strict set of regu lations under which each term of the formu la i s subsumed and given i t s fixed function . Now let us suppose· that a student using th i s formu la has m isconstrued it (for i nstance, has m ixed up the exponents or the p lus and minus signs) . I n th is way, a new formula with its own inner regulatory principles i s obtained (of course, the new formula does not work for the so l ution of binomia l s, but that is beside the point of the analogy) . Between the first and the second formulas there i s no m athematical connection analogous to that which ho lds for the terms within each formu la.

The situation i s exactly the same in language. Systematic relationships connecting two l inguistic forms together in the system of a language ( at some particular point in time) have noth ing in common with re lationsh ips that connect one of these forms with its a l tered aspect in a subsequent period of the h i storical evol ution of that language. Up unti l the 1 6th century , a German formed the past tense of the verb "to be" as: ich was; wir waren. The German of today u se s : ich war; wir waren. " l ch was," therefore, changed into " ich war." Between the forms "ich was" and "w ir waren" and between the forms " ich war" and "wir waren," systematic l i nguistic connection and comp lementariness exist. They connect with and com plement each other, to be precise, as the first person singular and p lura l of the same verb. Between " ich was" and " ich war" and between "ich war" (modern times) and "wir waren" ( 1 5th and 1 6th centuries) , there exists a different, entirely separate re lationsh i p having nothing in common with the first, systematic, one. The form " ich war" came about by analogy with "wir waren" ; under the influence of "wir waren " peop le ( separate individuals) began creating " ich war" in p l ace of " ich was."1 8 This phenomenon became w idespread and, as a result , ari ind ividua l error turned into a l inguistic norm. T hus, between the fol lowing two series:

I . ich was-wir waren ( in the synchronic cross section of the 1 5th century, let us say) or ich war-wir waren ( i n the synchronic cross section of, say, the 1 9th century) and

I I . ich was-ich war �

wir waren (as a factor promoting analogy)

·1 s. Compare , English "I was."


the re exi st profound and fundamental d ifferences. The first-the synchron icseries is governed by the systematic l i nguistic con nectedness of mutua l ly i nd ispensable and comp lementary e lements. Th i s ser ies stands apart from the i nd iv idua l i n i ts capacity as an i n contestab le l i ngui st ic norm. The second-the h istorical or d iachron ic-series is govern ed by its own special set of pr inc ip les-str ict ly speaking, that of error by analogy.

The logic of the h i story of l anguage-the logic of i nd i vidua l errors or d eviation s (the shift from " ich was" to " ich war")-operates beyond the range of the i nd iv idua l consciousness. T he shift is u n intentional and u nnoticed and on ly as s uch can it come about. At any one period of t ime on ly o ne l i ngu i stic norm can exist: e ither " ich was" or "ich war." A norm can coexist on ly with i ts v io lation and not with another, contrad ictory norm (for w hich �eason there can b e no "tragedies" i n language) . I f the v iol at ion does not make itse lf fe l t and consequent ly is not corrected, and if there is favorable ground for th i s part icu lar violat ion to become a w idespread fact-and analogy in our i n stance qualifies as favorab le ground-then such a violat ion w i l l become the next l i ngu i st ic norm.

I t turns out, then , that there i s noth ing i n common-no con nect ion-between the logic of l anguage as a system of forms and the logic of its h i stor ica l evo lution. Comp letel y d ifferent sets of pr inci p les and sets of factors ho ld sway i n each of the two domains . What endows language w ith meaning and u nity i n its synchronic d imension i s overr idden and ignored i n its d iachron ic d imens ion . The present state of a language and the history of a language do not enter into and are incapable of entering into mutual comprehensibility.

At th i s point we come u pon a cardinal difference between the first and second trends in the ph i losophy of language. I n deed, for the first trend the very essence of l anguage is revealed precise ly i n its h i story ; the logic of language i s not at a l l a matter of reproducing a normativel y identical form but o f cont inuous renovation and i nd iv idua l i zation of that form via the sty l istica l l y u nreproduc ib le utterance. The reality of language is, in fact, its generation. Complete mutual comprehensib i l ity obtains in langu age between any given moment in its I ife and its h istory. T he same ideological motives prevai l in the one and the other . I n Vossl er ian terms, linguistic taste creates the unity of a language at any given moment in time; dnd it is the same linguistic taste that creates and secures the unity of a language 's historical evolution. T he transition from one h istorical form to another occurs bas ical ly within the i nd iv idua l consciousness, s i nce, for Voss ler, as w e know, each gram matical form was orig ina l ly a free sty l i st ic form .

The d ifference between the first and second trends i s very graph ica l l y b rought out in the fol lowing contrast. The self- identical forms com pr is ing the i mmutab l e system of language (ergon) represented for the first trend on ly the i nert crust of the actual generative process of language, i .e . , of the true essence of language imp lemented in the unreproducib le , i ndividual act of creation. Meanwhi le, for the second trend, it is exactly th is system of self-ident ical forms that becomes the

Chap. 7] Two Trends of Thought 57

essence of language ; i ndiv idua l creative refraction and var iation of l inguist ic forms are, for th i s trend, on ly the d ross of l i nguistic l ife or, rather, of l ingu i stic monumenta l ity, on ly the mercurial and extraneous overtones of the basic, fixed tone of l inguist ic forms.

The outlook of the second trend can, on the whole, be summarized in the fol lowing bas ic princ ip les :

1 . Language is a stable, immutable system of normatively identical linguistic forms which the individual consciousness finds ready-made and which is incontestable for that consciousness.

2. The laws of language are the specifically lingvistic laws of connection between linguistic signs within a given, closed linguistic system. These laws are objective with respect to any subjective consciousness.

3 . Specifically linguistic connections have nothing in common with ideological values (artisti c, cogn it ive, or other) . Language phenomena are not grounded in ideo logical motives. No connection of a k ind natural and comprehens ib le to the consciousness or of an artistic kind obtains between the word and its meaning.

4. Individual acts of speaking are, from the viewpoint of language, merely fortuitous refractions and variations or plain and simple distortions of normatively identical forms,· but precise ly these acts of ind ividua l d iscourse exp lain the h istorica l changeabi l ity of l inguistic forms, a changeabi l i ty that in itse lf, from the standpoint of,the language system, is irrat ional and sense less. There is no connection, no sharing of motives, between the system of language and its history. They are alien to one another.

The reader w i l l note that the four basic princi p les we have j u st formu lated to characterize the second trend of thought in the ph i losophy of l anguage represent antitheses to the corresponding four basic principles of the first trend .

The h i storica l deve lopment o f the second trend i s a great deal more d ifficult to trace back. In th i s case, no representative, no founder equa l to W i l he l m von . Humboldt appears at the dawn of our era. T he roots of th i s trend must b e sought in the rational ism of the 1 7th and 1 8th centuries. T hese roots go back to Cartesian grounds.1 9

The i deas behind the second trend received their first and very sharp ly del ineated expression in Leibniz's conception of universal grammar.

The idea of the conventionality, the arbitrariness of language, i s a typ ica l one for rational i sm as a whole, and no J ess typical is the comparison of language to the system of mathematical signs. What interests the mathematica l l y

1 9 . There can be no doubt that t h e second tren d has profound inner connection w ith Cartesian thought and with the overall world view of neoclassicism and its cu lt of autonomous, rationa l , fixed form. Descartes h imself produced no studies i n the ph i losophy of language, but charaCteristic pronouncements of his can be found in his letters. See Cassirer, Philosophie der symbo/ischen Formen, pp, 67-68.


minded rational ists i s not the relationshi p of the sign to the actua l real ity it reflects nor to the ind ividual who is its or ig inator, but the relationship of sign to sign within a closed system already accepted and authorized. I n other words, they are interested on ly in the Inner logic of the system of signs itself, taken, as i n a lgebra, completely independently of the ideo logical m ean i ngs that g i ve the signs the i r content. Rationa. l ists are not averse to takin g the understander's viewpoint into account, but are least of a l l i nc l ined to consider that of the speaker, as the subject expressing his own inner l ife. For the fact is that the mathematical sign is least amenable to interpretation as an expression of the ind iv idua l psyche -and it i s the mathematical sign, after a l l , that rationa l i sts ho ld to be the idea l of any s ign, inc lud ing the verbal s ign. Th i s is exactly what found graph ic expres" s ion in Leibn iz's idea of un iversal grammar?0

I t shou ld be noted at th i s point that the precedence of the u nderstander's v iewpoint over the speaker's has remained a constant feature of the second trend . T h is means that on the· basis of th is trend, there i s no access to the prob lem of expression nor, consequent ly, to the p roblem of the verba l generation of thought and the subjective psyche (one of the fundamental problems for the first trend) .

In somewhat s imp l ified form, the idea of language as a system of conventional , arbitrary s igns of a fundamenta l l y rat ional nature was propou nded by representatives of the Age of the En l ighten ment in the 1 8th century.

Engendered on French so i l , the ideas of abstract objectivism sti l l ho ld sway pre dominantly in France.21 Let us pass over its i ntermed iary stages o f d evelopment and turn d i rect ly to a characterization of the modern state of the second trend.

Abstract objectiv i sm finds its most str i king expression at the present time i n t h e so-ca l l ed Geneva schoo l o f Fe rd inand de Saussure. I ts representatives, particu larly Charles Ba l ly, are among the most prominent l ingu i sts of modern t imes. The ideas of th is second trend al l have been e ndowed with amazing clarity and precision by Ferdinand de Saussure. H i s formu lations of the basic concepts of l ingu istics can we l l be accounted classics of their k ind . M oreover, Saussure undaunted ly carried h is ideas out to their conclusions, provid ing a l l the basic l ines of abstract objectivism with exceptional l y clear-cut and r igorou s defin ition.

I n Russia, the Sau ssure schoo l i s as popular and i nf luentia l as the Vossler schoo l i s not. It can be c laimed t hat the majority of R ussian th inkers in l ingu is-

20. The reader can acquaint h imself w ith the views of Leibn iz pertinent here by refe rr ing to Cassirer's book, Leibniz' System in seinen wissenschaft/ichen Grund/agen ( Marburg, 1 902).

2 1 . Curiously, the first trend , in contradistinction to the second , has deve loped and continues to develop primari ly on German soi l .

Chap. 7 j Two Trends of Thought

tics are u nder the determ inative infl uence of Saussure and h i s disciples, Bal ly and Sechehaye.22

I n v iew of the fundamental importance of Saussure 's views for the whole second tren d and for Russian l inguistic thought in part i cu lar, we sha l l consider those views in some detai l . Here as e l sewhere, to be sure, we sha l l confi ne ourse lves to basic ph i losoph ica l - l i nguistic positions on ly .23

59

Saussure's point of departure is a dist inction among three aspects of language: language-speech ( langage), language as a system of forms ( langue) and the individual speech act-the utterance ( parole) . Language ( in the sense of langue: a system of forms) and utterance (parole) are constituents of language-speech (langage) ' and the latter is understood to mean the sum total of al l the phenomena-physical, phy,sio logica l , and psycho logica l-involved in the real ization of verbal activity.

Language-speech (langage) , according to Saussure, cannot be the object of study for l i ngu i stics. I n and of itself, it lacks inner unity and val i d ity as an autonomous entity; it is a heterogeoeous composite. I ts contrad ictory composition makes it d i fficult to handle. Precise definit ion of l i nguist ic fact wou ld be an imposs ib i l i ty on its grounds. Language-speech cannot be the point of departure for l ingu istic analysis.

W hat, then , does Saussure propose should be chosen as the correct methodo logical procedure for the identification of the specific object of l i nguist ics? We sha l l let h im speak for h imse lf:

I n our op i nion, there can be but one solution to al l these d ifficu lties [ i .e., d ifficu lties entai led in taking /angage as the point of departure for analysis-V. V. ) : we must first and foremost take our stand on the grounds of language ( langue ) and accept it as the norm for all other manifestations of speech ( langage) . I ndeed, amidst so many d ua l ities, l anguage alone appears susceptib le to autonomous defi n ition , and it alone can provide the' m i nd a satisfactory base of operations!4

22. R . Sor's jazyk i obscestvo [Language and S ociety ] (Moscow, 1 926) , is entrenched in the spir it of the Geneva School . S he also functions as an ardent apologist of Saussure's basic ideas in her article, "Krizis sovremennoj l ingvist ik i ," already c i ted. The l inguist V. V . V inogradov may be regarded a fol lower of the Geneva S chool . Two schools of R ussian l ingu istics, the Fortunatov school and the so-cal led Kazan' school ( Krusevskij and B audou i n de Courtenay ) , both of them vivid expressions of l ingu istic formal i sm, fit entirely w ithin the framework we have mapped out as that of the second trend of thought in ph ilosophy of language.

2 3. Saussure's basic theoretical work , pub l ished after his d eath by his students, is Cours de linguist/que generate ( 1 9 1 6) . We sha l l be q uoting from the second edition of 1 922 . Puzz. l i ngly enough, Saussure's book, for a l l its influence , has not as yet been translated into Russian. A brief summary of Saussure's views can be fo.und in the above-cited article by R. Sor and in an article by Peterson, "Obscaja l ingvistika" [General L ingu i stics] , Pecat' i R evo/jucija, 6, 1 92 3.

24. Saussure, Cours de linguist/que, p. 24.


And in what does Saussure see the fundamenta l d ifference between speech (langage) and language {langue) ?

Taken in its total ity, speech is m anifold and anomalous. A stride several domains at once-the physica l , the physiological, the psychological, it pertains, a l so , both to the domain of the i nd iv idual ar id to the domain of society. I t resists classification under any of the categories of human facts because there is no knowing how to e l i ci t its un i ty. Language, on the contrary, is a self-contained whole and a princi ple of classification . Once we give it first place among the facts of speech , we introduce a natural order into an assemb l age that is amenable to no other classificat ion!'

Thus, Saussure ' s contention is that language as a system of normative l y identical forms must be taken as the point of departure and that al l man ifestations of speech must be i l l um inated from the angle of these stable and autonomous forms.

After having d i st ingu ished language from speech (speech meani ng the sum total of a l l man ifestation s of the verbal facu l ty, i .e . , /angage ) , Saussure proceeds to d ist i ngu i sh language from acts of ind iv idua l speak ing, i .e . , from utterance (parole) :

I n dist ingu ish ing langu age (langue) from utte ran ce (parole) , we by the same token distinguish ( 1 ) w hat is social from what is indiv idua l , and (2) what is essentia l from what is accessory and more or less random. Language is not a fu nct ion of the speaker; it is a product that the ind ividual registers passive ly : it never re l ies upon premed itation and reflection pl;lys no part in it, except in the matter of classification-which is a topic for later consideration. Utterance, on the contrary, is an i nd iv idual act of wi l l and i n tel l igence i n which we must d isti nguish between ( 1 ) the combi nations through wh ich a speaker uti l izes a particular language code for expressing h is own personal thoughts, and (2 ) the psych ophysical mechanism that enables h im to exterior ize those combinations.26

Lingu i st ics, as Saussure conceives it, cannot h ave the utterance as its obj'ect of study.27 What constitutes the l ingu i st ic e lement in the utterance are the normatively identica l forms of language present in it. Everyth ing e l se is "accessory and random."

Let u s u nderscore Saussure's main thesis : language stands in opposition to utterance in the same way as does that which is social to that which is individual.

25 . Ibid., p. 2 5 . 2 6 . Ibid., p. 30. 27 . Saussure does, i t is true, a l low the poss ib i l ity of a special l inguistics of u tterance

( " l inguistique de I a parole" ) , but he remains s i lent on just what sort of l i ngu istics that would be. Here is what he says on this point:

I I faut choisir entre deux routes qu ' il est impossib le de prendre en meme temps; el les doivent etre su ivies separe'ment. On peuU. Ia rigueur conserver le nom d e l i ngu ist ique de Ia parole. M ais il ne faud ra pas Ia confondre avec Ia l ingu istique proprement d ite, cel l e dont Ia langue est ! 'un ique objet [Ibid., p. 39 ] .

Chap. 1 ] Two Trends of Thought 61

The utterance, therefore, i s considered a thoroughly ind iv idual entity. Th i s po int, as we shal l see later, conta ins the pseudos proton of Saussure's v iews and of the whole abstract objectiv ist trend .

The ind iv idual act of speaking, the utteran ce (parole), so decisively cast aside from l ingu ist ics, does return, however, as an essential factor in the h istory of language.28 Saussure, in the spir it of the second trend, sharp ly opposes the h istory of language to language as a synchron ic system . H is tory i s dominated by "utterance" with its i nd iv idual ity and randomness, and therefG�e a complete ly d ifferent set of princ ip les ho lds for the h i story of language than for the system of language. Saussure declares:

Such being the case, the synchronic " phenomenon" can have nothing in common with the diachronic . • • • Synchronic linguistics wi l l be concerned wi th the l og ical and psychological relations that b ind toge ther coexistant terms and form a system, such as these re lations are perceived by one and the same col lective mind. Diachronic linguistics, on the contrary , must study relations b ind ing successive terms together, which relations are not perceived by the col lective m i nd and replace one another without form ing a system!9

Saussure's v iews on h i story are extremely character i st ic for the spir it of rat ional ism that cont inues to ho ld sway in th i s second trend of thought i n the ph i losophy of language and that regards h i story as an i rrational force d i storting the logical pur ity of the language system.

Saussure and the Saussure school are not the on ly h igh point of abstract obj ectiv ism in our t inie. Loom ing alongside the Saussure school i s another-the sociological schoo l of Durkhe im, represented in l ingui st ics by a figure such as Me i l let. We sha l l not dwel l on a character ization of Mei l let 's v iews.30 They fit ent ire ly with in the framework of the basic pr inc ip les of the second trend . For Me i l let, too, language i s a social phenomenon , not in its aspect as a process, but as a stable system of l ingu i stic norms. The compu lsory nature of language and the fact that language i s exterior to the ind iv idual consciousness are for Me ilfe t its fundamental socia l characteristics.

So much, then, for the v iews of the second trend of thought in ph i lo sophy of language-the trend of abstract object iv i sm.

Needless to say, there are numerou s schoo l s and movements in l i ngu ist ics, sometimes h ighly s ignifi cant ones, that do not fit into the framework of the two trends we have described. It was our purpo se to trace the major arteries o n ly. A l l other man ifestat ions of ph i lo soph ical-l ingu istic thought are in the nature of

28. Saussu re says: "Tout ce qui est diachronique dans /a langue ne /'est que par fa parole. C'est dans Ia parole que se trouve le germe de tout les changements [ Ibid., p. 1 38 ] .

29. Ibid., pp . 1 29 and 1 40. 30. An exposition of Me i l l et's v iews in connect ion with the pr inc iples of Durk he im 's so

cio logical method is give n in the above-cited art ic le by M. N . Peterson , " ] azyk kak socia l 'noe javlenie." The article i nc l udes a b ib l iography.

i f


comb inations or compromises w ith respect to the trends d iscussed or are entirely devoid of any appreciab le theoretical or ientation .

Let u s take the example of the neogrammarian movement, a phenomenon of no smal l importance in the l i ngu istics of the latter half of the 1 9th century. The neogrammarians, w ith respect to part of their basic pr inc ip les, are associated with the f irst trend, tend ing toward its physiological extreme. For them, the ind iv id· ual who creates language is essentia l ly a physiological be ing. On the o ther hand , the neogrammarians d id attempt to construct, o n psychophysiologica l grounds, i nvariable natural scient ific laws of language comp lete ly removed from anything describable as the ind ividual wi l l of speakers. From th is i ssued the neogrammarians' notion of sound laws (Lautgesetze). 31

I n l i ngu i stics, as in any other d isc ip l ine, there are two basic devices for avoiding the ob l igation and troub le of th ink ing in respons ib le, theoretical , and, con· seq uently, ph i losoph ical terms. T he first way is to accept a l l theoretical v iews who lesa le (academ ic eclectic ism) , and the second is not to accept a si ngle point of v iew of a theoretical nature and to procla im "fact" as the u lt imate bas is and criter ion for any kind of knowledge (academic positiv ism ) .

The ph i losoph ica l effect of both these devices for avo id ing ph i losophy amounts to one and the same th ing, since in the second case, too, al l poss ib le theoretica l points of v i ew can and do creep into investigation u nder the cover of "fact." Which of these devices an investigator w i l l choose d epends entire l y u pon h i s temperament: the eclectic tends more to the b l i the s ide ; the positivist, tD the surreptitious.

There have been in l ingu ist ics a great many deve lopments, and entire schools (here, school has the sense of scientific and techn ical tra i n ing) that have avoided the troub l e of a ph i losoph ical l ingu istic orientation. They , of course, d id not find a p lace in the present survey.

We sha l l have o ccasion to mention later, i n connection with our analysis of the prob lem of verbal i nteract ion and the prob lem of meaning, certai n l i ngu i sts and ph i losophers of language not mentioned here-for i n stance, Otto Deitrich and Anton Marty.

At the beginn ing of th is chapter, we posed the problem of the identification and delimitation of language as a specific object for Investigation. We endeavored to br ing into view those gu ideposts a lready p laced along the road of the so lut ion to the problem by the preced i ng trends of thought i n the ph i losophy of language. As a resu lt, we find ourselves confronted by two series of gu ideposts po int ing i n

3 1 . T h e basic works o f the neogrammarian movement are : Osthoff, Das physio logische und psycho/ogische Moment in der Sprachlichen Formenbildung (Berl i n , 1 879 ) ; B rugmann and Delbril ck, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen, 5 Volumes {Vol . I , 1 st ed ition, 1 886 ) . The neogram marian program is spe l led out in the preface to the book by Osthoff and B rugmann , Morphologische Untersuchungen, Vol . I { Leipzig, 1 878) .

Chap. 7] Two Trends of Thought

diametrica l l y opposite d i rections: the theses of individualistic subjectivism and the antitheses of abstract objectivism.

63

What, then, is the true center of l i ngu i stic rea l ity : the i nd iv idual speech actthe utterance-or the system of language? And what i s the real mode of existence of language : unceasing creative generation or inert immutab i l ity of self- identical norms?

C H A P T E R 2

Language, Speech, and Utterance

Can language as a system of normative, self-identical forms be considered an objective fact? Language as a system of norms and the actual viewpoint on language in a speaker 's consciousness. What kind of linguistic reality underlies a linguistic system? The problem of the alien, foreign word. The errors of abstract objectivism. Summary and conclusions.

I n the preced ing chapter, we tried to give an entirely objective .p icture of the two mai n trends of thought i n the ph i losophy of l anguage. Now we must submit those trends to a thorough critical analysis . On ly after hav ing done so wi l l we be ab le to answer the question posed at the end of the preced ing chapter.

Let us begin with critical analysis of the second trend, that of abstract objectivism.

First of al l , let us pose a question : to what degree may the system of se lfidentical l i ngu i stic norms ( i .e . , the system of language, as the representatives of the second trend understand i t) be considered a real enti ty ?

None of the representatives of abstract objectiv ism wou ld , of course, ascribe concrete mater ia l rea l i ty to the system of l anguage. True, that system is expressed in material th ings-in signs-but as a system of normativel y i dentical forms, it has rea l i ty only i n the capacity of the social norm.

Representatives of abstract objectivism constant ly stress-and i t is one of their basic pr incip l es-that the system of language i s an objective fact external to and independent of any i nd iv idual consciousness. Actual ly , represented as a system of self- identical , immutable norms, i t can be perceived i n th i s way only by the ind iv idua l consciousness and from the poin t of view of that con sciousness.

I ndeed, if we were to d isregard the su bj ective, i ndiv idual consciousness v is-av i s the l anguage system, the system of norms incontestab le for that consciousness,

65


i f we were to l ook at language in a tru ly objective way - from the s ide, so to speak, or more accurately, from above i t, we wou l d d i scover no i nert system of self-identical norms. I nstead, we wou l d find ourselves witnessing the ceaseless generation of language norms.

From a tru l y objective �iewpoin t, one that attempts to see l anguage i n a way completely apart from how it appears to any given ind iv idua l at any given

'

moment i n t ime, language presents the p icture of a ceasel ess flow of becoming . From the standpo int of observi ng a l anguage objective ly , from above, there i s no real moment in t ime when a synchronic system of l anguage cou l d be constructed.

Thus a synchronic system, from the objective point of view, does not correspond to any real moment in the historical process of becoming. And indeed, to the h istor ian of language, with his d iachron ic po int of v iew, a synchron i c system i s not a real ent ity ; i t merely serves as a conventional scale on which to regi ster the deviat ions occur i ng at every real i nstant in t ime . .

So, then, a synchron ic system may be said to exist on ly from the po int of v iew of the subjective consciousness of an ind iv idua l speaker belonging to some particu l ar language grou p at some particu lar moment of h i stori cal t ime. From an objective point of v iew, no such system exi sts at any real instant of h i stor ica l t ime. We may suppose, for i nstance, that whi le Caesar was engaged i n writ ing h i s works, the Lat in l anguage was for h im a fixed, i ncontestab le system o f selfidentical norms; but, for the h i storian of Lati n, a cont inuous process of l i ngu i st ic change was going on at the very moment that Caesar was working (whether or not the h i storian of Latin wou l d be able to p i npoint those changes) .

Any system of social norms occupies an analogous pos it ion . I t exists only with respect to the subj ective consciousness of i nd iv iduals belonging to some part icu lar commun ity governed by norms. Such i s the nature of a system of moral norms, of j ud ic ia l norms, of norms for aesthetic taste (there are, i ndeed, such norms) , and so on. Of course, these norms vary: the i r ob l igatory nature varies, as does the breadth of the i r social compass, as does a l so the degree of the i r social s ignificance, determined by their proxim ity to the basis , e tc . B u t the nature o f the i r existence as norms rema ins the same-they exist on ly with respect to the su bjective consciou sness of members of some particu lar commu nity.

Does i t fol low, then, that th i s relationsh i p between the su bjective consciousness and l anguage as a system of objective, incontestab le norms i s i tself bereft of any objectivity? Of course not. Properly understood, this relationsh ip can be considered an objective fact.

If we c la im that l anguage as a system of incontestabl e and immutable norms exi sts objective ly , we commit a gross error. B u t i f we c la im that l anguage, w i th respect to the i ndiv idual consciousn.ess, is a system of immutab le norms, that such i s the mode of ex i stence of l anguage for each member of any given l anguage commun i ty, then what we are expressing in these terms is a complete ly objective

Chap. 2] Language, Speech, and Utterance 67

relationsh ip . Whether th� fact itse lf is correctly constitu ted, whether language actua l ly does appear on ly as a fixed and inert system of norms to the speaker's consciousness-that i s another question . For the t ime being we sha l l leave that question open. But the point, in any case, i s that a certa in k ind of objective relationsh ip can be establ ished.

Now, how do representatives of abstract objectiv ism themselves regard th is ·

matter? Do they assert that language is a system of objective and incontestable self- identical norms, or are they aware of the fact that th i s is only the mode of existence of the l anguage for the subjective consciousness of a speaker of any given l anguage?

No better answer can be given than the fol l owing: Most representatives of a bstract objectivism are inc l i ned to assert the unmediated reality, the unmediated objectivity of language as a system of normatively identical forms. I n the case of these representatives of the second trend, abstract objectiv i sm converts d irectly into hypostasizing abstract objectivism. Other representatives of the trend (Mei l l et, for instance) have a more critical attitude and do take account of the abstract and conventional nature of the l i ngu i stic system. However, not a s i ngle representative of abstract objectiv ism has arr ived at a clear and d istinct conception of the k ind of rea l ity that language as an objective system does possess. I n t h e majority of cases, these representatives wa l k the tightrope between two conceptions of the word "objective" as app l ied to the system of l anguage : one in quotation marks, so to speak (from the standpoint of the speaker 's su bjective consciousness} , and one without quotation marks (from the objective standpoi nt) . Th is, i ncidenta l ly , is the way that Saussure, too, hand les the question-he provides no c lear-cut solution.

Now we must ask: Does language rea l ly exist for the speaker 's subjective consciousness as an objective system of i ncontestab le , normativel y identical forms? Has abstract objectivism correctly u nderstood the point of view of the speaker's su bjective consciousness? Or, to put i t another way : I s the mode of being of l anguage in the subjective speecr consciousness real ly what abstract objectiv ism says i t is?

We must answer th is question in the negative. The speaker 's su bjective consciousness does not in the least operate with language as a system of normative ly i dentical forms. That system i s merely an abstraction arrived with a good dea l of trouble and with a defin ite cogn itive and practical focus of attention. The system of l anguage is the product of del iberation on language, and de l i beration of a k ind by no means carried out by the consciousness of the native speake r h imself a nd by no means carried out for t h e immed iate purposes of speak i ng.

I n poin t of fact, the speaker 's focus of attention is brought about in l i ne wi th the particu lar, concrete utterance he is mak i ng. What matters to h i m is app lying a normatively identical form ( let us grant there i s such a th i ng for the time being) in some particular, concrete context . For h im , the center of gravi ty l ies not in


the ident ity of the form but in that new and concrete meaning it acquires in the p articular context. What the speaker val ue s i s not that aspect of the form which i s i nvariab ly identical i n al l i nstances of i ts usage, despite the nature of those i nstances, but that aspect of the l i ngu istic form because of wh ich i t can figure in the given, concrete contt(xt, because of wh ich i t becomes a sign adequate to the cond it ions of the given, concrete s i tuation .

We can express i t th i s way : what is important for the speaker about a linguistic form is not that it is a stable and always self-equivalent signal, but that it is an always changeable and adaptable sign. That i s the speaker's po int of view.

But doesn't the speaker al so have to take into account the point of view of the l istener and understander? I sn 't i t poss ib l e that here, exact ly , i s where the normative identi ty of a l i nguistic form comes into force?

This , too, is not qu i te so. The basic task of u nderstand ing does not at a l l amount to recogniz ing the l ingu istic form used by the speaker as the fam i l iar, "that very same, " form, the way we d istinctly recognize, for i nsta11ce, a signal that we have not qu ite become used to or a form in a l anguage that we do not know very wel l . No, the task of u nderstand ing does not basical l y amount to recogn iz ing the form used, but rather to u nderstanding it in a particu l ar, concrete context, to understand ing its mean ing in a particu lar u tterance, i .e . , i t amounts to understanding i t s nove l ty and not to recogn iz ing i ts identi ty.

I n other words, the u nderstander, belonging to the same language community, a l so i s attuned to the l i ngu istic form not as a fixed, self- identical s igna l , but as a changeab le and adaptabl e sign .

The process of u nderstand i ng i s on no account to be confused w i th the process of recognit ion. These are thoroughly d ifferent processes. On ly a sign can b e u nderstood ; what i s recogn ized is a s igna l . A s ignal i s an interna l ly fixed, s ingu lar th ing that does not i n fact stand for anyth ing e l se, or reflect or refract anyth ing, but is s imp ly a techn ical means for ind icating th i s or that object ( some defin ite , fixed object) o r t h i s o r that action ( l i kewise defin ite and fixed ) . 1 Under no circumstances does the signal re late to the domain of the ideological ; it relates to the world of techn ical devices, to i nstruments of production in the broad sense of the term . Even further removed from ideology are the signals w ith wh ich reflexology is concerned. These signals, taken in re lat ion to the organ ism of the an i mal su bject, i .e . , as signa ls for that subject, h ave no relation to techn i ques of product ion. I n th i s capacity they are not signals bu t stimu l i of a special k i nd . They become instruments of p roduction only in the hands of the experimenter. The grievous m isconceptions and ingra ined hab its of mechanistic

1 . For i n teresting and ingenious d isti nctions between a signal or combinations of signals ( i n maritime usage, for i nstance ) and a l inguistic form or combinations of l ingu istic forms in connection with the problem of syn tax, see K. Buhler, "Yom Wesen der Syntax," Festschrift fur Karl Vossler, pp. 6 1 -69.


thought are alone responsib le for the attempt to take these "signals" and very nearly make of them the key to the understanding of language and of the human psyche ( i nner word) .

Shou l d a l i nguistic form remain on ly a signal , recognized as such by the understander, i t, then , does not exist for h i m as a l i nguistic form. Pure signal ity is not evinced even in the ear ly stages of language learning. I n this case, too, the l i nguistic form is oriented in context; here, too, it i s a sign, a lthough the factor of signal ity and its correlative, the factor of recognition, are operative.

Thu s the constituent factor for the l i ngu istic form, as for the sign, is not at a l l its self-identity as s ignal but its specific variab i l i ty ; and the constituent factor for understanding the l i ngu istic form is not recogn i tion of "the same th ing," but understanding . in the proper sense of the word, i .e . , orientation i n the particu lar, given context and i n the parti cu lar, given s i tuation-orientation in the dynamic process of becoming and not "orientation " in some inert state.2

I t does not, of course, fol l ow from all that has beeR said that the factors of signal ization and its correlative, recogn ition, are absent from language. They are present, but they are not constituents of l anguage as such . They are d ia lectica l ly effaced by the new qual i ty of the sign ( i .e . , of language as such ) . I n the speaker's native language, i .e ., for the l i nguist ic consciousness of a member of a particular language commun i ty, s ignal-recogn ition is certain ly d ialectica l ly effaced . I n the process of master ing a foreign l anguage, signal i ty and recogn ition sti l l make themse lves fe lt, so to speak, and sti l l remain to be surmounted, the language not yet fu l l y having become language. The ideal of mastering a language i s absorption of signal i ty by pure semioticity and of recogni tion by pure understanding.3

2 . We shal l see later that precisely this k ind of understanding in the proper sense, an understand ing of process, l ies at the basis of response, i .e., at the basis of verbal interaction . No sharp d ividing l ine can be d rawn between understanding and response . Any act of understanding is a response, i .e . , i t translates what is being understood i nto a new context from which a response can be made.

3. The principle advanced here u nder l ies the practice ( though p roper theoretical awareness may be l acking) of all sens ib le methods of teach ing l iving foreign l anguages. What is cefltral to al l these methods is that students become acqua inted w ith each l i nguistic form only in concrete contexts and -si tuati ons. So, for instance, students are acquainted with some word only th rough the p resentation of a variety of contexts in wh i ch that word figures. Thanks to this procedure, the factor of recognit ion of identical word is dia lectical l y combined with and submerged under the factor of the word 's contextual changeabi l ity, d iversity, and capacity for new meanings. A word extracted from context, w ritten down i n an exercise book, and then memorized together w ith i ts Russian translation undergoes signal ization, so to speak. It becomes a particular h ard-and -fast th i ng, and the factor of recognition i n tensifies in the p rocess of understand i ng it . To put i t b riefly , under a sound and sensib le method of practical i nstruction, a form should be assim i lated not in i ts relation to the abstract system of the language, i.e., as a self-identical form, but in the -concrete structure of utterance, i .e. , as a mutable and pl iable sign.


The l i ngu i st i c consciousness of the speaker and of the l istener-u nderstander, in the practical bus iness of l iv i ng speech, i s not at al l concerned with the a bstract system of normative ly identica l forms of language, but w i th languagespeech in the sense of the aggregate of poss ib l e contexts of u sage for a particu l ar l i nguistic form. For a persqn speaking h i s native tongue, a word presents itse lf not as an i tem of vocabu lary but as a word that has been used i n a wide variety of u tterances by co-speaker A, co-speaker B , co-speaker C and so on, and has been various ly u sed i n the speaker's own u tterances. A very special and specific k i nd of or ientat ion i s necessary, if one i s to go from there to the self- identical word bel onging to the l ex ico logical system of the language in question-the d ictionary word. For that reason, a member of a language commun ity does not norma l ly feel h imself u nder the pressure of incontestab le l i ngu ist ic norms. A l ingu istic form w i l l br ing its normative s ign ificance to the fore on ly i n exceptional l y rare instances o f confl ict, i nstances that are no t typical for speech activ ity (and wh ich for modern man are a lmost exclusively associated with writ ing) .

One other extremely pertinent consideration needs to be added here. The verbal consciousness of speakers has, by and large, nothi ng whatever to do with l i ngu istic form as such or w ith l anguage as such .

I n po int of fact, the l ingui stic form, wh ich, as we have j u st shown, exi sts for the speaker on ly in the context of specific u tterances, exi sts, consequently, on ly in a specific ideological context. I n actual i ty, we never say or h ear words, we say and h ear what is true or fal se , good or bad , important or u n important, p leasant Gr u np leasant, and so on . Words are always filled with content and meaning drawn from behavior or ideology. That i s the way we understand words, and we can respond on ly to words that engage us behav ioral l y or ideol ogica l ly .

On ly i n abnormal and special cases do we app ly the criterion of com;ctness to an u tterance (for instance, i n language instruction ) . Norma l ly , the cr iterion of l i nguistic correctness i s su bmerged by a purely ideologica l criter ion : an

· u tterance 's correctness i s ecl i p sed by its truthfu l ness or fal si ty, i ts poeticalness or banal i ty , etc.4

Language, in the process of i ts practical imp lementation, i s i n separable from i ts i deological or behavioral imp letion . Here, too, an orientation of an entire ly special k ind-one u naffected by the a ims of the speaker's consciousness-is requ ired if language is to be abstractly segregated from i ts ideological or behav· ioral imp l et ion.

4. On th is basis, as we shal l see l ater, one wou ld have to d isagree with Vossler i n h is postu lat ing the existence of a separate and d istinct k ind of l inguistic taste that i n each i nstance would remain apart from some specific kind of ideol ogical "taste"-aesthetic, cognitive, eth ical , or other.

Chap. 2/ Language, Speech, and Utterance 7 1

I f we advance this abstract segregation to the status of a princip le, if we reify l inguistic form divorced from ideological imp letion, as do certain represen tatives of the second trend, then we end up deal ing wi th a signal and not with a sign of language-speech.

The d ivorce of language from its ideological impletion i s one of abstract objectivi sm's most serious errors.

I n sum, then, for the conciousness of a speaker of a language, the real mode of existence for that l anguage is not as a system of normative ly identical forms. From the v iewpoint of the speaker's consciou sness and his real - l ife practice in social intercourse, there is no d i rect access to the system of language env i s ioned by abstract objectivism .

What, then, i n such a case, i s th i s system? I t i s c lear from the start that- that system i s obtained by way of abstraction,

that i t i s composed of e lements extracted in an abstract way from the real u n its that make up the stream of speech-from utterances. Any abstraction, if i t is to be l egitimate, must be justified by some spec ific theoretical and practical goal . An abstraction may be productive or not productive, or may be productive for some goa ls and tasks and not productive for others.

What are the goals that u nderl ie the kind of l i nguistic abstraction that leads to the synchron ic system of language? And from what point of view may this system be regarded p roductive and necessary?

At the basis of the modes of l i ngu istic thought that lead to the postu lation of l anguage as a system of normatively identical forms l ies a practical and theoretical focus of attention on the study of defunct, alien languages preserved •

in written monuments. This ph i lo logical or ientation has determined the whole course of l i ngu i stic

th inking in the European world to a very considerable degree, and we must stress this point with a l l poss ib le ins istence. European l i ngu istic thought formed and matured over concern wi th the cadavers of written languages; almost al l its basic categories, its basic approaches and techniques were worked out in the process of rev iv ing these cadavers.

Phi lo logism is the i nevitable d i st ingu ish i ng mark of the whole of European l i ngu istics as determined by the h i storical vicissitudes of its birth and devel opment. However far back we may go in tracing the h i story of l i ngu i stic categories and methods, we find ph i lo logists everywhere. Not ju st the Alexandrians, but the ancient Romans were ph i l ologists, as were the Greeks (Aristotl e is a typ ical phi lo logist) . Al so, the ancient Hindus were ph i lo logists.

We can state outr ight : linguistics makes its appearance wherever and whenever philological need has appeared. Ph i lological need gave b i rth to l i ngu ist ics, rocked i ts cradle, and l eft its ph i lo logical fl u te wrapped in i ts swadd l ing c lothes. That flute was supposed to be able to awaken the dead. But i t lacked the range necessary for master ing l iv ing speech as actua l ly and continuously generated.

72 Marxist Philosophy of Language /Part II

N . J a . Marr i s perfectly correct i n pointing out th i s ph i lo logical essence i n I ndo-European l i ngu istic thought:

I ndo-Eu ropean l ingu istics, commanding an a l ready estab l ished and a l ong s ince fu l l y formed object of investigat ion-the I ndo-European l anguages of the h istorical epochsand taking its d eparture, moreover, al most exclusively from the petrified forms of w ri tten l anguages-dead l anguages foremost among them-is natura l l y itself i ncapable of b ri nging to l ight the p rocess of the emergence of speech i n general and the orig ination of i ts species.'

Or in another passage :

The greatest o bstacle [ to the study of aboriginal speech-V. V. ] is caused not by the d ifficu lty of the research i tself, nor the l ack of sol id data , but by our scientific th i nking, which is l ocked i nto the traditional outlook of ph i lol ogy or the h istory of cu lture and has not been n u rtured by ethnological and l i ngu istic perception of l iving speech in i ts l imitlessl y free, creative ebb and flow.•

Marr's words ho ld tru e not on ly, of course, for I ndo-European stud ies, wh ich have s e t t he ton e for al l contemporary l ingu i stics, but a l so for t he whole of l i n gu i stics as we k now it from h istory. Everywhere, as we have sai d, l i ngu istics i s the c h i l d o f ph i l ol ogy.

Gu ided by ph i lo logica l n eed, l i nguistics has always taken as i ts point of departure the fin i shed mono logic utterance-the ancient wri tten monUJ :nent, considering i t the u l timate real i um . A l l i ts methods and categories were e laborated in i ts work on this k i nd of defunct, monologic u tterance or, rather, on a series of such utterances constitu ting a corpu s for l i ngu i st ics by virtue of common language alone.

But the monologic utterance is, after al l , a l ready an abstraction, though, to be sure, an abstraction of a " natural " k i nd . Any monologic u tterance, the written monument i nclu ded, i s an inseverable e lement of verbal commun ication. Any utterance-the fin ished, wri tten utterance not excepted-makes response to somethi ng and i s calcu lated to be responded to i n turn. I t i s bu t one l i nk i n a cont inuous cha i n of speech performances. Each monument carr ies on the work of i ts predecessors, polemicizing with them, expecting active, responsive u nderstanding, and antic ipating such u nderstand ing in return . Each monument in actua l i ty i s an i n tegral part of science, l i terature, or po l i tiCal l ife . The monument, as any other monol ogic u tterance, is set toward being perceived in the context of current scientific l ife or current l iterary affairs, i .e . , i t i s perceived in the generative process of that parti cular ideological domain of wh ich i t is an i n tegral part.

5. N. j a . Marr, Po etapam jafetskoj teorii [Th rough the Stages of the j aphetic Theory ) ( 1 926) . p. 269.

6 . /bid., pp . 94-95 .

Chap. 2} Language, Speech, and Utterance 73

The ph i lo logist- l i ngu ist tears the monument out of that real domain and views i t as if i t were a self-sufficient, isolated entity. He br ings to bear on i t not an active ideological understanding but a complete ly passive kind of understanding, i n wh ich there is not a fl icker of response, as there wou ld be in any authentic kind of u nderstand ing. The ph i lo logist takes the i so lated monument as a document of l anguage and p laces it in relation with other monuments on the genera l p lane of the l anguage in question. All th e methods and categories of l i nguist ic thought were formed in th i s process of compar ing and corre lating isolated monologic u tterances on the p lane of language.

The dead language the l i ngu ist stud ies is, of course, an a l ien language. Therefore, the system of l i ngu istic categories is l east of a l l a product of cognitive refl ection on the part of the l i nguistic consciousness of a speaker of that l anguage. Here reflection does not involve a native speaker's feel ing for h i s own language. No, th is k ind of reflection is that of a mind str ik ing out into, b reaking tra i l s through , the unfami l iar world of an al ien language.

I nevitably , the ph i lo logi st-l i nguist's passive understand ing is projected onto the very monument he i s studying from the l anguage poin t of view, as if that monument were in fact cal cu lated for ju st that kind of understanding, as if it had, i n fact, been wri tten for the ph i lo logist.

The resu l t of a l l th is i s a fundamental ly erroneous theory of understand ing that u nder l ies not on ly the methods of l ingu i stic interpretation of texts but also the whole of European semasiology. I ts en tire position on word mean ing and theme is permeated through and through with the false notion of passive understanding, the k ind of understanding of a word that excludes active response in advance and on princip le .

We shal l see later that th is k ind of \.Jnderstanding, with bu i l t- in exclus ion of response, is not at al l in fact the k ind of understand ing that appl ies in languagespeech . The latter k ind of understanding inextr icably merges with an active posit ion taken apropos of what has been said and is being understood. The characteristic feature of passive understanding i s exactly a d istin ct sense of the i dentity factor in a l i ngu istic sign, i .e . , perception of it as an artifact-signal and, i n correlation w ith th is, the predominance of the recogn it ion factor.

Thus dead, written, alien language i s the true descr ipt ion of the language with which l i ngu i st ic thought has been concerned .

The isolated, finished, monologic utterance, divorced from its verbal and actual context and standing open not to any poss ib le sort of active respon se but to passive understand ing on the part of a ph i lologist-that i s the u l timate "donnee" and the starting point of l i nguistic thought.

Engendered in the process of master ing a dead, a l ien language for purposes of scientific investigation, l i ngu istic thought has also served another, not investigatory , but instructional purpose : the purpose not of decipher ing a language but of teaching an al ready deciphered language. Monuments were

i


made over from h euristic documents i n to a classica l model of language for the l ecture hal l .

This second basic task of l i ngu istics-its creating the apparatus essential for instruction i n a d eciphered language, for codify ing i t, so to speak, i n l i ne with the aims of l ecture-ha l l transm ission, made a su bstantial imprint on l ingu istic th ink ing. Phonetics, grammar, lexicon-the three branches of the system of l anguage, the three organiz ing centers for l i ngu istic categories-took shape with in the channel of these two major tasks of l i ngu istics: the heuristic and the pedagogical.

What is a ph i lo logist? Despite the vast d ifferences in cu l tural and h istorical l ineaments from the

ancient Hindu pri ests to the modern Eu ropean scholar of language, the ph i lo logist has always and everywhere been a decipherer of al ien, " secret" scripts and words, and a teacher, a d i sseminator, of that wh ich has been deciphered and handed down by trad ition.

The fi rst ph i lo logists and the first l i ngu ists were always and everywhere priests. History knows no nation whose sacred wr itings or oral tradition were not to some degree in a language foreign and incomprehensib l e to the profane. To decipher the mystery of sacred words was the task meant to be carried out by the priest-ph i lo logists.

It was on these grounds that ancient ph i losophy of language was engendered : the Vedic teach ing about the word, the Logos of the ancient Greek thin kers, and the b ib l ical ph i losophy of the word .

To understand these ph i losophemes properly , one must not forget for one i nstant that they were philosophemes of the alien word. I f some nation had k nown on ly i ts own native tongue ; if, for that nation, word had a lways coincided with native word of that nation 's l ife; if no mysterious, alien word, no word from a foreign tongue, h ad ever entered i ts purview, then such a nation wou ld never have created anyth ing resemb l ing these ph i losophemes .7 It is an astonishing feature: from remotest ant iquity to the present day, the ph i losophy of word and l i nguistic thought have been bu i l t u pon specific sens ib i l ity to the a l ien, fore ign-language word and upon those tasks which preci se ly that k ind of word presents to the m ind-deci phering and teach ing what has been deciphered .

The Vedic p r iest and the contemporary ph i lo logist- l ingu ist are spe l l bound and he ld captive in their think i ng about language by one and the same phenomenon-the phenomenon of a l ien, foreign-language word .

7. According to Ved ic rel igion , the sacred word-in that usage to wh ich it is put by the "gnosti c " consecrated priest -becomes the sovereign of al l Be ing , i nc l ud ing both gods and men . The p riest-gnostic is d efined h ere as the one who Fommands the word-there i n l ies al l h is power. The doctrine to this effect is contained a l ready in the Rig Veda. The ancient Greek ph i losopheme of Logos and the Alexandrian doctr ine of Logos are we l l known.


One is sensible of one's native word in a complete ly d ifferent way or, to be more precise, one is ordinar i ly not sensib le of one 's native word as a word crammed with al l those categories that i t has generated in l i nguistic thought and that i t generated in the ph i losoph ical-re l igious thought of the ancients. Native word is one's " kith and k in" ; we fee l about i t a s we feel about our habitual attire or, even better, about the atmosphere in wh ich we habitual l y l ive and breathe. I t contains no mystery; i t can become a mystery on ly i n the mouth of others, provided they are h ierarchica l ly a l ien to u s-in the mouth of the ch ief, in the mouth of the priests. But in that case, it has al ready become a word of a d ifferent k ind, external ly changed o.nd removed from the routine of l ife (taboo for usage in ord inary l ife, or an archaism of speech ) ; that is , if i t had not al ready been from the start a foreign word i n the mouth of a conquerorch ief. On ly at this point is the "Word" born, and on ly at th i s point-incipit philosophia, incipit phi/alogia.

Orientation in l i ngu istics and the ph i losophy of language toward the a l ien, foreign word is by no means an accidental occurrence or a whim on the part of l inguistics and ph i losophy. No, that orientation i s the expression of the enormous h i storical role that the a l i en word has p layed in the formation of a l l the h i storical cul tures. It has p layed that role with respect to al l domains of i deo-logical creativity without exception, from the sociopo l i tical order to the behavioral code Of da i ly l ife. I ndeed, i t was the a l ien , foreign-language word that b rough t civi l izat ion, cu l ture, rel igion, and pol i ti cal organ ization (e.g., the role of the Sumerians with respect to the Babylonian Semites, of the J aph ites to the He l l enes, of Rome and of Christian ity to the barbarian peoples, of Byzant ium, the "Varangians ," the South SlaviC tr ibes to the Eastern Slavs, etc.). This grandiose organizing role of the al ien word , wh ich always either entered upon the scene with a l ien force of arms and organization or was found on the scene by the young conqueror-nation of an old and once mighty culture and captivated, from its grave, so to speak, the ideological consciousness of the newcomer-nation-th i s ro le of the a l ien word led to its coalescence in the depths of the h istorical consciousness of nations with the idea of authority, the i dea of power, the i dea of ho l iness, the idea of tru th, and d ictated that notions about the word be preeminently oriented toward the a l ien word.

However, the ph i losophy of language and l i ngu ist ics never were, and are sti l l not today, objectively aware of the enormous h istori ca l ro l e played b y the foreign word. No, l i ngu istics is sti l l enslaved by it ; l ingu istics represents, as i t were, the last wave to reach us of the once-upon-a-time fru ctifying inu ndation of a l i en speech, the l ast res idue of i'ts d ictatorial and cu lture-creating role .

For th is very reason, l i ngu istics, i tse lf the product of foreign word, is far from any proper understand ing of the role p layed by the foreign word in the h istory of language and l ingu i stic consciousness. On the contrary, I ndoEuropean studies have fash ioned categories of understand i ng for the h i story


of language of a k i nd that preclude· proper evaluation of the role of al ien word . M eanwh i l e, that role, to a l l appearances, i s enormous.

The i dea of linguistic "crossing" as the basic factor in the evolution of languages has been defin i tively advanced by Marr . He a l so recognized l i ngui stic crossing to be the main fac�or in the solut ion of the prob lem of how language originated :

Crossing in general , a s a factor i n the emergence o f d i fferen t language species and even types of l anguage, being the source for the formation of new species, has been observed and traced throughout a l l the j aphetic l anguages, and this must be consid· ered one of the most momentous achievements of j aphetic l ingu istics . . . . The poi n t is that no p ri m igene of sound l anguage, no s ingle-triba l language exists o r , a s we shal l see, existed or could have existed . Language, the creation of sociality whi ch had arisen on the basis of i ntertr iba l communication brought about b y economi� needs, is the accumulat ion of precise ly this k ind of socia l i ty , which is always mu l ti tr ibal ."

I n h i s article, "On the Origin of Language, " Marr has the fol lowing to say on our topic:

In short, the approach to this or that language in terms of so-cal led nati onal cu l ture, as the mass, native language of an entire population, is u nscien tific and u nrealistic; the ecumenica l , classless national l anguage remains a fiction. But that is not the half of i t . J ust as castes i n the ear ly stages of d evelop ment issue from tribes-or real l y from tribal formations, that are also b y no means si mp le in themselves-so by way of crossing, d id concrete tribal languages and , even more so, nationa l languages, come to r?.presen t crossbred types of languages, crossbred from the combination of sim pie ele· ments through which, in one way or another, every l anguage is formed . Paleontologi· cal anal ysis of human speech goes no further than d efi n i tion of these tribal e lements, but the japhetic theory accomodates these e lements i n such a decisive and d efi n i tive way that the question of the origin of language is bo i l ed down to the questi on of the emergen ce of these elements, wh ich are in fact noth i ng more than tribal names!

Here we can on ly take note of the sign ifi cance of the al ien word for the problem of the origin of language and its evo lu tion . These prob lems exceed the scope of our present study . For us the importance of the a l ien word cons ists in its role as a factor determin ing ph i losophical l i nguist ic thought and the categories and approaches stemming from that though t.

We sha l l now d i sregard the parti cu larit ies of aboriginal thought about the a l ien word 10 and a lso the categories of the ancient ph i l osophemes of word ment ioned above. We sha l l attempt to note down here on ly those particu lar features

8. N . ] a . Marr, japhetic theory, p . 268 . 9 . /bid., pp. 3 1 5 -3 1 6 .

1 0 . Thus to a sign ificant degree it was the a l ien word that d eterm ined preh istoric man 's magical perception of the word . We have i n m ind in this connection al i the relevant pheno· mena in toto.


in thought about the word that have l?ersisted through the centuries and h ave had determi native effect on contemporary l i nguistic thought. We may safe ly assume that these are precise ly the categories that have found their most marked and most clear-cut expression in the doctr ine of abstract objectiv ism.

We shal l now attempt to reformu late, i n the fol lowing series of concise premises, those features of cogn izance of the a l i en word that u nderl ie abstract objectivism . I n doing so, we shal l also be summarizing our preceding exposition and supplementing i t at c�rta in crucia l points. 1 1

1 . The factor of stable self-identity in linguistic forms takes precedence over their mutability.

2. The abstract takes precedence over the concrete. 3. Abstract systematization takes precedence over historical actuality. 4. The forms of elements take precedence over the form of the whole. 5 . Reification of the isolated linguistic element to the neglect of the dynam

ics of speech. 6, Singularization of word meaning and accent to the neglect of its living

multiplicity of meaning and accent. 7. The notion of language as a ready-made artifact handed down from one

generation to another. 8, Inability to conceptualize the inner generative process of a language.

Let us consider briefly each of these features of the system of thought dominated by the al ien word .

1 . The first feature needs no further commentary. We have al ready po inted . out that understanding one's own language is focused not on recogn iz ing identical e lements of speech but on understanding their new, contextual mean i ng . The construction of a system of self- identical forms may then be said to be an i ndi spensable and vita l stage i n the processes of deciphering an a l i en language and handing i t on .

2. The second point, too, is clear enough on the basis of what has al ready been said . The finished monologic u tterance is an abstraction, in point of fact. Concretization of a word is poss ib le on ly by way of inc lud ing that word i n to the actual h i storical context of its original i mp lementation . By propound ing the

1 1 . One should not forget in this connection that abstract objectivism in i ts new formation is an expression of the cond i tion that the a l ien word had reached when it had a l ready lost its authoritativeness and produ ctivity to a significant degree. Moreover, specific i ty of perception of the al ien word has dec l ined in abstract objectivism, owing to that fact that the l atter's basic categories of thought have been extended to perception of l iving and native languages. L inguistics studies a l iv ing language as i f it were a dead l anguage, and native language as if i t were an a l i en tongue. That is why the postu l ations of abstract objectivism are so d ifferent from the ancient ph i l osophemes of a l i en word.


i sol ated monologic u tterance, a l l those ties that b ind an u tterance to the fu l l con creteness of h istorical generation are torn away .

3 . Formal i sm and systematicity are the typical dist ingu i sh ing marks of any k i nd of th ink ing focused on a ready-made and , so to speak, arrested object.

Th i s particu lar feature of thought has many d ifferent manifestations. Characteristical ly , what undergoes systematization i s u sual ly ( if not exclusively) someone e l se 's thought. True creators-the i n i tiators of new ideological trendsare never formal i st ic systematizers. Systematization comes u pon the scene dur ing an age wh i ch feel s itself i n command of a ready-made and handed-down body of authoritative thought . A creative age must first have passed ; then and on ly then does the bus iness of formal ist ic systematizing begin-an u ndertak ing

· typ i ca l of h eifs and epigones who feel themselves in possession of someone e l se 's, now voice less word . Orientation in the dynamic f low of generative process can never be of the forma l , systematizing k ind . Therefore, formal , systematizing grammatica l thought cou l d h ave developed to i ts fu l l scope and power only on the material of an al ien, dead language, and only cou l d have done so provided that that language had a l ready, to a significant degree, l os t its affective potencyits sacrosanct and authoritative character. With respect to l iv i ng language, systematic, grammati cal thought must inevitab ly adopt a conservative pos it ion , i .e . , i t must interpret l iv ing language as if it were already perfected and readymade and thus must l ook u pon any sort of innovation in language w ith host i l i ty. Formal, systematic thought about language i s i ncompati b l e with l iv ing, h istorical understanding of l anguage. From the system 's po int of v iew, h istory always s�ems merely a series of accidental transgressions.

4. L inguistics, as we h ave seen, is oriented toward the i solated, monolog ic utterance. L ingu i stic monuments comprise the material for study, and the passively u nderstand ing m ind of the ph i l ol ogist i s brough t to bear on that mater ia l . Thus a l l the work goes on with in the bounds of some given u tterance. As for the boundaries that demarcate the u tterance as a whole enti ty, they are perceived fai nt ly or sometimes not at al l . Research is who l ly taken up in study of immanent connections on the inside terri tory of the u tterance. Considerations of the utterance's external affai rs, so to speak, remain beyond the fie l d of study . Thus , a l l connections that exceed the bounds of the u tterance as a monologic who le are ignored . One m ight wel l expect, then, that the very nature of an utterance 's wholeness and the forms that that wholeness may take are l eft outs ide of l i ngu i stic thought. And indeed, l i ngu istic thought goes no further than the e l ements that make up the monologic u tterance. The structure of a comp lex sentence (a period)-that i s the furthest l imit of l ingu istic reach . The structure of a whole u tterance is someth ing l i ngu i stics l eaves to the competence of other . d isc ip l i nes-to rhetoric and poetics. L inguist ics lacks any approach to the composit iona l forms of the whole . Therefore, there i s no d irect transit ion between


the l i nguistic forms of the e lements of an u tterance. and the forms of i ts whole , indeed, no connection at al l ! On ly by mak ing a jump from syntax can we arrive at problems of composit ion . Th is is abso lu te ly i nevi table, seeing that the forms making up the whole of an u tterance can on ly be perceived and u nderstood aga inst the background of other whole u tterances be long ing to a un i ty of some particular domain of i deology . Thu s, for i nstance, the forms of a l i terary u tterance-a l iterary work of art-can on ly be understood in the u ni ty of l i terary l ife, i nd issolub ly connected with other k inds of literary forms. When we relegate a l i terary work to the h i story of language as a system, when we regard it on ly as a docu ment of language, we l ose access to i ts forms as the forms of a l i terary whole. There is a world of d i fference between referring a work to the system of language and referring �·

work to the concrete uni ty of i iterary l ife, and that d ifference i s i n surmountab le on the grounds of abstract o bjectiv i sm .

5. L i ngu istic form is merely an abstract ly extractab l e factor of the dynamic whol e of speech performance-of the u tterance. Abstract ion of that sort is , of course, perfectly l egitimate with i n the range of the specific tasks l i nguistics sets for i tself. However, abstract objectiv i sm supp l ies the grou nds for the reification of the l i nguistic form, for its becoming an e lement supposed ly extractab le i n actual ity a nd supposed ly capable o f a n i so lated, h i storical ex istence of i t s own . Th is is completely understandab le : after al l , the system as a whole cannot u ndergo h i storical development. The u tterance as a whole entity does not exist for l i ngu istics. Consequent ly, the e lements of the system, i .e . , the separate l i nguistic forms, are al l that is l eft. And so they must be what can u ndergo h i stor ical change.

H istory of language, then, amoun ts to the h i story of separate l i nguistic forms ( phonetic, morphological, or other) that undergo development despite the system as a whole and apart from concrete utterances. 12

Voss ler i s perfectly right in what he says about the hi story of language as conceived by abstract objectiv i sm :

Roug h ly speaking, the h istory of language, as it is given to us by h istorical grammar, is the same sort of thing as a h istory of clothi n g would be, which does not take the concept of fash ion or the taste of the time as its point of departure, but provides a chronologica l ly and geographically arranged l i st of buttons, clasps, stockings, hats, and ribbons. In historical grammar, such buttons and ribbons would have names l ike weak or strong e, voiceless t, voiced d, and so on.13

6. The mean ing of a word is determined entirely by i ts con text. I n fact, there are as many meanings of a word as there are contexts of i ts usage. 14 At the

1 2 . Utterance is merely a neutral med i um for c(lange of l inguistic form. 1 3 . See Voss ler, "Grammatika i istorija jazyka, Logos, I (1 9 1 0 ) , p . 1 70 . 1 4. For the t ime being, we d isregard the d istinction between meaning and theme about

which we sha l l s peak be low (Chapter 4) .

8 0 Marxist Philosophy of Language [Part II

same time, however, the word does not cease to be a s ingle enti ty ; it does not, so to speak, break apart into as many separate word s as there are contexts of its u sage. The word ' s un i ty i s �ssured, of course, not only by the un i ty of its p honetic composit ion but also by that factor of un i ty which i s common to al l i ts mean ings. H ow can the fundamental po lysemantic i ty of the word be reconc i led with i ts un i ty ? To pose th is question is to formulate, in a rough and e lementary way, the card inal problem of semantics. I t i s a problem that can on ly be solved d ia lectica l ly . But h ow does abstract obj ectiv i sm go about it? For a bstract obj ectivism, the un i ty factor of a word sol id ifies, as it were, and breaks away from the fundamenta l mu l tip l i ci ty of its meanings. Th i s mu l tip l ic ity i s perceived a s t h e occasional overtones o f a s ingle h ard-and-fast meaning. The focus of l inguistic attention i s exactly opposite that of real-l ife u nd erstanding on the part of the speakers engaged i n a particu lar f low of speech . The ph i l ol og i st- l i nguist, when comparing d ifferent contexts in wh i ch a given word appears, focuses h i s attention on the ident ity factor in its usage, s ince to h i m what is i mportant i s to be ab le to remove the word from the contexts compared and to give i t defi n it ion outside context, i .e., to create a d i ct ionary word out of it. Th i s p rocess of isolating a word and fixing i ts mean ing outside any context takes on added force when comparing d ifferent languages, i .e . , when try ing to match a word with an equ ival ent word in another language. I n the process of l i nguist ic treatment, mean ing is constructed, as i t were, on the border of at l east two languages. These endeavors on the l i nguist 's part are further com pl icated by the fact that he creates the fict ion of a s ing le and actual object correspond ing to the g iven word. This object, be ing s ing le and self- identical , i s just what ensures the un i ty of meani ng. The fiction of a word 's l i teral rea l ia promotes to an even greater degree the reification of its mean ing. On these grounds, the dia lectical combination of the u nity of meaning with its mu lt ip l ic ity becomes impossib l e .

Another grave error on the part of abstract objectivism i s to be seen i n the fol l owing. The various contexts of u sage for any one particular word are conceived of as al l l yi ng on the same plane. These contexts are though t of as formi ng a series of c ircumscribed, se lf-contained u tterances a l l pointed i n the same d i rection . I n actual fact, th i s i s far from true : contexts of usage for one and the same word often contrast with one another. The class ical i nstance of such contrasting contexts of usage for one and the same word i s found in d ia logue. I n the al ternating l ines of a d ia logue, the same word may figure i n two mutual l y clash ing contex ts . Of course, d ia logue i s on l y t he most graph i c and obvious i nstance of var id i rectional contexts. Actua l ly , any real u tterance, i n one way or another or to one degree or anoth er, makes a statement of agreement with or a negation of someth i ng . Contexts do not stand side by s ide in a row, as if u naware of one another, but are in a state of constant tens ion, or i ncessant in teraction and confl ict. The change of a word 's eval uative accent. i n d ifferent contexts is tota l l y ignored by l i nguistics and has no reflection in its doctr ine on


t he u n ity of mean ing . Th is accent is least amenable to reification, ye� i t i s precisely a word 's mu l tiaccentual i ty that makes i t a l i v i ng th ing. The problem of mu l tiaccentual i ty ought to be c losely associated with the problem of mu l t ip l i ci ty of mean ings. On ly provided that they are associated together can the two problems be solved . But i t is exactly this association that the basic princip l es of a bstract objectiv ism u tter l y precl ude. L inguistics has thrown evaluative accent overboard along with the u nique utterance (parole) _ IS

7. Accord i ng to the teach ing of abstract objectiv ism, l anguage is handed down as a ready-made product from generation to generation . Of course, the representatives of the second trend u nderstand the transmi ssion of the language l egacy, transmission of l anguage as an artifact, in metaphor ical terms, but st i l l , i n their hands, such a compari son i s not mere ly a metaphor. I n reify ing the system of language and in v iewing l iving language as i f i t were dead and a l ien, abstract objectivism makes language someth ing external to the stream of verbal communication . Th i's stream flows on , but language, l i ke a bal l , i s tossed from generation to generation. In actual fact, however, l anguage moves together with that stream and i s inseparab le from it. Language cannot properly be said to be handed down-it endures, but i t endures as a conti nuous process of becom ing. I ndiv iduals do not receive a ready-made language at al l , rather, they enter u pon the stream of verbal commun ication ; indeed, only i n th is stream does the i r consciousness first begin to operate . Only ir, learn i ng a foreign language does a fu l l y prepared consciousness-fu l l y prepared thanks to one 's native languageconfront a fu l l y prepared l anguage wh ich it need on ly accept. People do not "accept" the i r native language-it is in the ir native l anguage that they first reach awareness.16

8. Abstract objectiv i sm, as we have seen, is i ncapabl e of ty ing together the existence of language in i ts abstract, synchronic d imension with the evo lu tion of language. Language exists for the consciousness of the speaker as a system of normatively identical forms, but only for the h istorian as a process of generat ion. This excludes any possib i l i ty for the speaker's consciousness to be active l y in touch with the process of h istorical evolut ion. The d ia lectical coup l i ng of necess i ty with freedom and with, so to speak, l i nguistic respon sib i l i ty is, of course, u tter ly impossib le on these grounds. A purely mechanistic conception of l i nguistic necess i ty ho lds sway here. No doubt th i s feature of abstract objectiv i sm, too, is connected with i ts subconscious fixation on dead and a l ien language.

1 5 . We shal l further ampl ify the points made here in the fourth chapter of this section of our study .

1 6. The process of a ch i l d 's ass imilation of h is native l anguage is the proces� of h is gradual i mmersion i nto verba l commun ication. As that process of i mmersion proceeds, the ch i l d 's consciousness is formed and fi l led with content.


Al l that remains is for u s to summarize our cri tical analys is of abstract objectivi sm. The problem we posed at the beginn ing of the first chapter-the problem of the actual mode of be ing of l i ngu i st ic phenomena as a specific and un i fied object of study-was i ncorrectly solved by abstract objectiv i sm . Lan· guage as a system of normat,ive ly identical forms i s an abstraction j ustifiab le i n theory and practice on ly from the standpoint of decipher ing and teach i ng a dead, a l ien l anguage. Th is system cannot serve as a bas i s for u nderstand ing and expla in ing l i ngu ist ic facts as th ey rea l ly exist and come i n to being. On the contrary, this system l eads us away from the l iv i ng, dynamic real i ty of language and i ts social functions, notwithstand ing the fact that adh erents of abstract o bj ectivism cla im sociological s ignificance for their po int of v iew. Underly i ng the theory of abstract objectiv ism are presupposit ions of a rational ist i c and mechanist ic world out look. These presupposit ions are l east capab le of furn ish ing the grounds for a proper u nderstand ing of h istory-and language, after al l , is a purel y h istorical phenomenon.

Does i t fol low from th i s that the bas ic posit ions of the first trend, the trend of i ndiv idual i sti c subjectivism, are the correct ones? Perhaps i nd iv idual ist ic s ubj ectivism has succeeded i n grasping the true real i ty of language-speech? Or perhaps the truth l i es somewhere in the midd le, representing a compromise between the first and second trends, between the theses of i nd iv idua l i st ic subjectivism and the anti th eses of abstract objectiv i sm?

We bel i eve that i n th i s i nstance, a s everywhere e l se, the truth i s not to be found i n the gol den mean and i s not a matter of compromise between thesis and antithesis, but l ies over and -beyond them, consti tu ting a negation of both thesis and antithesis a l i ke , i .e . , const i tut ing a dialectical synthesis. The theses of the first trend al so do not h ol d up u nder cr i t ical examination, as we sha l l see i n the next chapter.

Let us at this point d i rect attent ion to the fol lowing: Abstract objectivism, by tak ing the system of language and regard ing i t as the entire crux of l i ngu ist ic phenomena, rejected the speech act-the u tterance-as someth i ng ind iv idua l . As we said once before, herein l ie s th e proton pseudos of abstract objectivism. For i nd ividual ist ic subjectiv i sm, the entire crux of the matter i s just exactly the speech act-the u tterance. However, ind iv idual ist ic su bjectivism l i kewise defines th i s act as someth i ng i n div idual and therefore endeavors to expla in i t i n terms .of the ind iv idual psych i c l ife of the speaker. Herein l ies its proton pseudos.

I n point of fact, the speech act or, more accurate ly, its product-the utterance, cannot u nder any c ircumstances be considered an i nd iv idual phenomenon in the precise meaning of the word and cannot be exp lained in terms of the i nd iv idual psychological or psychophys iological cond i tions of the speaker. The utterance is a social phenomenon.

I t shal l be our concern to substantiate th is thesis in the next chapter.

C H A P T E R 3

Verba l Interaction

Individualistic subjectivism and its theory of expression. Criticism of the theory of expression. The sociological structure of experience and expression. The problem of behavioral ideology. The utterance as the basic unit in the generative process of speech. Approaches to the solution of the problem of the actual mode of existence of language. The utterance as a whole entity and its forms.

The second trend of thought in the ph i losophy of language was associated, as we saw, with rational ism and neoclass ic ism. The first trend-ind ividual i st ic subjectiv i sm-is associated with romanticism. Romantic ism, to a considerable degree, was a reaction against the a l i en word and the categories of thought promoted by the a l i en word. More particu lar ly and more immed iate ly , romanticism was a reaction against the last resurgences of the cu l tural power of the a l i en word-the epochs of the Renaissance and neoclassic i sm. The romanticists were the first ph i lo logists of native language, the first to attempt a rad ica l restruc· turing of l i ngu i stic thought. Their restructur ing was based on experience w i th native language as the med i um through which consciousness and i deas are generated. True, the romanticists remained ph i lo logists in the strict sense of the word. It was, of course, beyond the ir power to restructure a mode of th i n king about language that had taken shape and had been sustained over the course of centuries . Neverthe less, new categories were i ntroduced into that th i nki ng, and these new categories were precisel y what gave the first trend its specific character i stics. Symptomatical ly , even recent representatives of i nd ividua l i st ic subject iv ism have been special i sts in modern languages, ch iefly the Romance l anguages (Vossler, Leo Sp i tzer, Lorch, et a!. ) .

·

83


However, i nd iv idua l ist ic subject iv ism a l so took the monologic u tterance as the u l t imate rea l i ty and the po int of departure for i ts th ink ing about l anguage. To be sure, i t d i d not approach the monologic utterance from the viewpoint of the passively understand i ng ph i lo logist but, rather, approached it from with in , from the v iewpo int of the P.erson speak ing and expressing h imself.

What does the monologic u tterance amount to, then, in the view of i nd iv idua l ist ic su bjectiv ism? We have seen that it is a pure ly i nd iv idual act, the express ion 'of an i nd iv idual consciousness, i ts ambit ions, i ntentions, creative impu l ses, tastes, and so on. The category of expression for i nd iv idua l i st ic subjectivism i s t he h ighest and broadest category under wh i ch the speech act-the utterancemay be subsumed.

But what i s expression? I ts s imp lest, rough defin it ion is : someth ing wh ich, having in some way taken

shape and defi n it ion in the psyche of an i nd iv idua l , i s outward ly objectified for others with the he lp of external s igns of some k i nd .

Thus there are two e l ements i n express ion : that i nner someth ing wh i ch i s expressible, and its outward objectification for o thers ( o r possi b ly for onese lf) . Any theory of express ion, however complex or subt le a form i t may take, inevita bly presupposes these two e lements-the whole event of express ion i s p layed out between them, Consequently , any theory of expression i n ev i tabl y presupposes that t he express ib le i s someth i ng that can somehow take shape and exist apart from express ion; that i t ex ists f i rst i n one form and then switches to another form. This would have to be the case ; otherwise, if the express ib l_e were to exist from the. very start in the form of expression, w ith quant itative transit ion between the two e lements ( i n the sense of c lar ifi cation, d ifferent iat ion, and the l i ke ) , the whole theory of expression wou ld col lapse . The theory of express ion inev i tab ly presupposes a certa in dua l i sm between the i nner and outer e lements and the expl ic i t primacy of the former, si nce each act of objectifi cation (express ion) goes from i nside out . I ts sources are with i n . Not for noth ing were ideal ist ic and sp ir i tual i sti c grounds the on ly grounds on wh i ch the theory of ind iv idual ist ic subjectivism and a l l theories of expression in general arose. Everyth ing of real importance l ies w i th i n ; the outer e lement can take on real i mportance on ly by becoming a vessel for the i nner, by becom ing expression of spir it .

To be sure, by becom ing external , by express ing i tself outward ly , the i nner e lement does u ndergo al terat ion . After al l , i t must gai n control of outer material that possesses a val i d i ty of i ts own apart from th e i nner e lement. In this process of gain i ng control , of master ing outer material and making it over i n to a compl iant medium of expression, the experient ia l , express ib le e l ement i tse l f undergoes al teration and is forced to make a certa i n compromise. Therefore, ideal ist ic grounds, the grounds on which al l theories ofexpression have been establ ished, a lso contain provi s ion for the rad i ca l negation of express ion as someth ing that

Chap. 3/ Verba/ Interaction 85

deforms the purity of the inner e l ement . 1 I n any case, a l l the creative and organizing forces of "expression are within. Everyth ing outer is merely passive material for manipu lation by the inner e lement. Expression is formed basica l ly with in and then merely sh ifts to the outs ide . The understand ing, interpretation, and exp lanation of an ideolog ical phenomenon, i t wou l d fol low from th i s argument, must a l so be d irected i nward ; it must traverse a route the reverse of that for express ion . Starting from outward objectification, the explanation must work down into its inner, organ izing bases. That is how i nd ividual istic su bjectivism understands express ion.

The theory of expression u nderly i ng the f irst trend of thought in ph i losophy of language i s fundamenta l ly u ntenab le .

The experiential , expressib l e e lement and i t s outward objectification are created , as we know, out of one and the same material . After al l , there i s no such th i ng a s experience outside o f embodiment in signs. Consequently, the very notion of a fundamental ; qual i tative d ifference between the inner and the outer e lement is i nval id to beg in with . Furthermore, the l ocation of the organizing and formative center i s not .with in ( i .e . , not in the material of inner signs) but outs ide. It is not experience that organ izes expression, but the other way around-expression organizes experience. Expression is what "irst gives experience its form and specificity of d irection.

I ndeed , from whichever aspect we consider i t, expression-utterance i s determined by the actual cond i tions of the g iven utterance-above a l l , by i ts immediate social situation.

Utterance, as we know, is constru cted between two socia l ly organ ized persons, and in the absence of a real addressee, an addressee i s p resupposed in the person, so to speak, of a normal representative of the social group to wh ich the speaker belongs. The word is oriented toward an addressee, toward who that addressee might be : a fel low-member or not of the same social group , of h igher or l ower stand ing (the addressee's h ierarch ical status) , someone connected with the speaker by close social ties ( father, b rother, h usband, and so on) or not. There can be no such th ing as an abstract addressee, a man unto h imself, so to speak. With such a person, we wou l d indeed have no language in common, l iteral ly and figuratively. Even though we sometimes have pretens ions to experiencing and saying th ings urbi et orbi, actua l ly , of course, we envis ion th i s "world at l arge" through the prism of the concrete social m i l ieu surround ing u s. In the majority of cases, we presuppose a certa in typical and stabi l ized social purview toward which the i deological creativity of our own social group and time is oriented ,

1 . "Spoken thought is a l ie" (Tjuteev ) ; "Oh, if 9ne could speak from the soul w i thout words" ( Fet}. These statements are extremely typical of ideal ist ic romanticism .

86 Marxist Philosophy of Language [Part If

i . e . , we assume as our addressee a contemporary of our l i terature, our science, our moral and legal codes .

Each person 's i nner worl d and thought has i ts stab i l ized social audience that com pr i ses the environment in which reasons, motives, values, and so on are fash ioned. The more cul tur�d a person, the more c lose ly h i s i nner aud ience wi l l approximate the normal aud ience o f ideological creat iv ity ; but , i n a ny case, specific c lass and specific era are l im i ts that the ideal of addressee cannot go beyond .

Orientation o f the word toward the addressee has a n extremely h igh sign ificance. I n point of fact, word is a two-sided act. It is determ ined equa l ly by whose word i t i s and for whom it i s meant. As word, it i s precisely the product of the reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee. Each and every Word expresses the "one " i n relation to the "other. " I g ive myself verbal shape from another 's poin t of v iew, u l timate ly , from the po int of v iew of the commun i ty to wh ich I be long. A word i s a bridge thrown between myself and another. I f one end of the br idge depends on me, then the other depends on my addressee. A word is terr i tory shared by both addresser and addressee, by the speaker and h i s i nter locutor.

Bu t what does being the speaker mean? Even if a word i s not entire ly h is, constituting, as it were, the border zone between h i mself and h is addresseesti l l , it does in part be long to h im .

There is one instance of the s i tuation where in t h e speaker i s the u ndoubted possessor of the word and to which, in th is i nstance, he has fu l l r ights. Th i s i nstance is the phys io logica l act of implemen.ti ng the word . But in sofar as the act is taken in purely physiolog ical terms, the category of possession does not apply.

I f, i nstead of the physio logica l act of imp lementing sound, we take the i mp l ementation of word as sign, then the question of proprietorsh i p b ecomes extremely compl icated . Aside from the fact that word as sign i s a borrowing on the speaker 's part from the socia l stock of ava i lab le s igns, the very ind iv idual man ipu lation of th i s social sign in a concrete u tterance i s whol ly determined by social relations . The sty l i stic ind ividual ization of an u tterance that the Vosslerites speak about represents a reflection of social i n terrelationsh ips that constitute the atmosphere in wh ich an utterance is formed . The immediate social situation and the broader social milieu wholly determine--and determine from within, so to speak-the structure of an utterance.

I ndeed, take whatever k ind of utterance we w i l l , even the k ind of u tterance that is not a referential message (commun ication in the narrow sen se ) but the verbal express ion of some need-for instance, h unger-we may be certai n that it i s social l y oriented in i ts entirety. Above al l , it i s determined immediately and d irectly by the partic ipants of the speech event, both exp l ic i t and imp l ic it participants, i n connection wi th a specific situation . That si tuation shapes the u tterance, d ictating that it sound one way and not another- l ike a demand or

Chap. 3] Verbal Interaction

request, i n sistence on one's rights or a p lea for mercy, in a style flowery or plain, i n a confident or hesitant manner, and so on.

87

The immed iate social situation and i ts immed iate social participants determine the "occasional " form and sty l e of an utterance. The deeper layers of i ts structure are determined by more susta ined and more basic social connections with wh ich the speaker is in contact.

Even if we were to take an utterance sti l l in process of generation " i n the sou l , " it wou l d not change the essence of the matter, s ince the structure of experience is j u st as social as is the structure of i ts outward objectific;J.tio n . The degree to which an experience i s perceptib l e, d i stinct, and formu lated i s d irect ly proportional to the d egree to which i t i s social l y oriented .

I n fact, not even the s imp lest, d immest apprehension of a fee l i ng-say , the feel ing of hunger not outwardly expressed-can dispense with some k i nd of ideological form. Any apprehension, after a l l , must have i nner speech, i nner intonation and the ru d iments of i nner sty le : one can apprehend one ' s hunger apologetical ly , i rr itab ly , angri ly , ind ignantly, etc. We have ind icated, of course, on ly the grosser, more egregious directions that i nner i ntonation may take ; actual ly , there i s an extreme ly subtle and complex set of possib i l i ties for i n ton ing an experience. Outward expression i n most cases on ly continues and makes more distinct the d irection a l ready taken by inner speech and the intonation a l ready embedded in it.

Which way the inton ing of the i nner sensation of hu nger w i l l go depend s upon the hungry person's genera l social stand ing as wel l as upon the immediate circumstances of the experience. These are, after al l , the circumstances that determine i n what eval uative context, with i n what social purview, the experi-ence of hunger wil l be apprehended. The i mmed iate social context wi l l determine possib le addressees, friends or foes, toward whom the consciousness and the experience of hunger wi l l be oriented : whether it wi l l i nvolve dissatisfaction with cruel Nature, with oneself, with society, with a specific group with i n society, with a specific person, and so on. Of course, various degrees of perceptib i l i ty, d istinctiveness, and d ifferentiation i n the social orientation of an experience are possib le ; but without some k ind of evaluative social orientation there is n o experience. Even the cry of a nursing infant i s "oriented" toward i ts mother . There is the possib i l i ty that the experience of hunger may take on pol it ical coloring, i n which case i ts structure w i l l. be determined along the l i nes of a potential pol it ical appeal or a reason for pol i ti ca l agitation. I t may be apprehended as a form of protest, and so on .

With regard to the potential (and sometimes even d i stinctly sensed ) addressee, a d i sti nction can be made between two poles, two extremes between wh ich an experience can be apprehended and ideological ly structured, tend i ng now toward the one, now toward the other. Let us label these two extremes the "!-experience" and the "we-experience. "


The " ! -experience" actua l ly tends toward extermination : the nearer i t a pproaches its extreme l im i t, t he more i t l oses i ts ideo logical structuredness and , hence, i ts apprehens ib le qua l ity, reverting to the phys io logica l reaction of the an ima l . In its course toward this extreme, the experience rel i nqu i shes al l its potentia l ities, a l l outcropp i t;�gs of social orientation, and, therefore, a l so loses its verbal de l ineat ion. Sing le experiences or whole groups of exper iences can approach th is extreme, rel inqu ish ing, in doing so, their ideologica l c lar ity and structuredness and testify ing to the inabi l i ty of the consciousness to stri ke social roots.2

The "we-experience" is not by any means a nebulous herd experience; i t is d i fferentiated . M oreover, i deo log ical d ifferentiation, the growth of consciousness, is in d irect p roportion to the firmness and rel iab i l i ty of the social orientat ion. The stronger, the more organ ized, the n)ore d i fferei1tiated the co l lective i n wh ich an ind iv idual orients h imself, the more v iv id a nd complex h i s i nner wor ld wi l l be .

The "we-exper ience" al l ows of d ifferent degrees and d ifferent types of ideological structur ing.

Let us suppose a case where h unger i s apprehended by one of a d i sparate set of hungry persons whose h unger is a matter of chance (the man down on h i s l uck , t he beggar, o r t he l ike) . The exper ience of such a declasse loner w i l l b e col ored in some specific way and wi l l gravitate toward certa in particu lar ideological forms w ith a range potential l y qu i te broad : humi l ity, shame, enviousness, and other evaluative tones w i l l color h i s experience. The ideological forms along the l ines of wh ich the experience wou ld develop wou ld be e i ther the i nd iv idual ist ic protest of a vagabond or repentant, mystical re signation .

Let us now suppose a case i n wh ich the hungry person belongs to a col l�ctive where hunger is not haphazard and does bear a col lective character-but the col lective of these hungry p eop l e is not i tself tight ly boun d togethe r b y mater ia l ties, each of i ts members experiencing hunger on h i s own. This i s the s ituation most peasants are in. Hunger i s experienced "at large, " but u nder cond it ions of material d i sparateness, i n the absence of a un ify i ng economic coa l i ti on, each person suffers hunger in the smal l , enclosed wor ld of h is own ind iv idual economy. Such a col lective lacks the u n it4ry material frame necessary for u nited action. A resigned but u nashamed and u ndemeaning apprehension of one's h unger wil l be the rule under such cond i tions-"everyone bears it, you must bear i t, too." Here grounds are furnished for the development of the ph i losoph i cal and rel ig ious systems of the nonresistor or fata l ist type (ear ly Chr i stian ity, Tol stoyan ism) .

2. On the possib i l ity of a set of h uman sexua l experiences fal l ing out of soc ial context with concom i tant l oss of verbal cognizance, see our book, Frejdizm [ Freud ian ism] ( 1 92 7 ), pp . 1 35 -1 36 .

Chap. 3] Verba/ Interaction 89

A complete ly different experience of h unger appl ies to a member of an objective l y and mater ia l l y a l igned and un ited col lective (a regiment of solders; workers in the i r association w i th in the wal l s of a factory ; h ired hands on a largescale, capita l i s t farm; fina l ly , a whole c lass once i t has matured to the point of "class unto i tse lf" ) . The experience of h unger th is t ime w i l l be marked predominantly by overtones of active and self-confident protest w i th no basis for humb le and submissive intonation. These are the most favorable ground3 for an experience to ach ieve i deol ogical clari ty and structuredness.3

Al l these types of express ion, each with i ts basic intonations, come rife with correspond ing terms and correspond ing forms of poss ib le u tterances. The social situation in a l l cases determ ines which term, wh ich metaphor, and wh ich form may deve lop in an utterance express ing h unger out of the particular i ntonational bearings of the exper ience.

A specia l kind of character marks the ind ividual istic self-experience. I t does not be long to the " ! -experience " in the strict sense of the term as defined above. The ind iv idua l istic experience i s fu l l y d ifferentiated and stru ctured . I nd ividuali sm is a specia l i deolog ical form of the "we-experience" of the bourgeois class (there i s also an analogous type of indiv idual i stic self-experience for the feudal aristocratic c lass) . The indiv idua l istic type of experience derives from a steadfast and confident social orientation . I nd iv idual i stic confidence in onese lf, one's sense of personal value, is drawn not from with in , not from the depths of one's personal ity, but from the outs ide wor ld . It i s the ideological interpretation of one's social recognizance and tenabi l i ty by rights, and of the objective security and tenab i l i ty provided by the who le social order, of one's ind ividual l ivel ihood . The structure of the conscious, ind iv idual personal i ty i s just as social a structure as i s the col lective type of experience. It is a particular k ind of interpretation, projected into the i nd ividual soul , of a complex and sustained socioeconomic s ituation . But there res ides in this type of ind ividual istic "we-exper ience, " and a l so in the very order to wh ich i t corresponds, an inner contrad ication that sooner or later wi l l demol ish i ts ideological structuredness.

An analogous structure i s presented in sol i tary self-experience ( "the ab i l i ty and strength to stand a lone in one 's rectitude") , a type cu l tivated by Romain Rol land and, to some extent, by Tol stoj . The pride involved in th i s sol itude also depends upon "we." It is a variant of the "we-experience" characteristic of the modern-day West European i n te l l igen tsia. Tol stoj 's remarks about there being d ifferent k inds of th ink ing-"for onese lf" and "for the publ ic"-merely j uxtapose two d ifferent conceptions of "pub l i c ." Tol stoj's "for oneself" actual l y s ign ifies

3. I n teresting material about expressions of h u nger can be found in Leo Spitzer's books, ltalienische Kriegsgefangenenbriefe and Die Umschreibungen des Begriffes Hunger. The basic concern i n these stud ies is the adaptabi l i ty of word and image to the conditions of an exceptional s ituat ion. The author does not, however, operate with a genu ine sociol ogical approach .


on ly another social conception of addressee pecu l iar to h imself. There i s no such th ing as th ink ing-outside or ientation toward possib le expression and , hence, outs ide the social orientation of that expression and of the th i nk ing invo lved .

Thus the persona l i ty of the speaker, taken from with in , so to speak, turns out to be whol ly a product of social i nterrelations. Not on ly its outward express ion but a l so its i nner experience are social territory . Consequent ly , the whole route between i nner experience (the "express ib l e ") and i ts outward objectificatio n (the "utterance") l ies entirely across social terr itory . When an exper ience reaches the stage of actua l ization in a fu l l -fledged u tterance, its social orientat ion acqu ires added complex i ty by focusing on the immed iate social circumstances of d i scourse and, above a l l , u pon actual addressees.

Our analysis casts a new l igh t upon the problem of consciousness and i deology that we examined earl ier .

Outside objectification, outside embodiment in some particular material (the material of gesture, inner word, outcry ) , consciousness is a fiction. I t is an improper ideological construct created by way of abstraction from the concrete facts of social expression. But consciousness as organized, mater ial expression (in the ideologica l materia l of word, a sign, drawing, colors, musical sound , etc. )consciousness, s o conceived, i s an objective fact and a tremendous social force. To be sure, th is k ind of consciousness i s not a su praexistehtial phenomenon and cannot determine the constitution of existence. It i tself is part of existence and one of its forces, and for that reason i t possesses efficacy and p l ays a role in the arena of existence . Consciousness, wh i le sti l l i ns ide a conscious person 's h ead as i nner-word embryo of expression, is as yet too tiny a piece of existence, and the scope of i ts activity i s a lso as yet too smal l . But once i t passes through al l the stages of social objectifi cation and enters in to the power system of science, art, eth ics, or law, it becomes a real force, capab le even of exerting in turn an inf luence on the economic bases of socia l l ife. To be sure, th is force of consciousness is incarnated in specific social organ izations, geared into steadfast ideological modes of expression (science, art, and so on), but even in the origi n ia l , vague form of g l immering thought and experience, i t had al ready constituted a social event on a small scale and was not an inner act on the part of the i nd iv idua l .

From the very start experience is set toward fu l ly actua l ized outward express ion and, from the very start, tends in that d i rection . The expression of an experience may be rea l ized or i t may be he ld back, i nh ibi ted. In the latter case, the experience is inh ib ited expression (we sha l l not go into the extremely comp lex prob lem of the causes and cond i tions of inh ib i tion ) . Real ized expression, i n i ts turn, exerts a powerfu l , reverse influence on experience: it begins to t ie i nner l ife together, g iv ing i t m ore defin i te and lasting expression .

This reverse influence by structured and stab i l ized expression on experience ( i .e . , i nner expression) has tremendous importance and must alway s be taken

Chap. 3} Verbal Interaction 91

into account . The c la im can be made that i t i s a matter not so much of expression accomodating itself to our inner world but rather of our inner world accomodating itself to the potentialities of our expression, its possible routes and directions.

To d istinguish it from the establ i shed systems of ideology-the systems of art, ethics, law, etc.-we shal l use the term behavioral ideology for the whole aggregate of l i fe experiences and the outward expressions d irectly connected with it. Behavioral ideology is that atmosphere of u nsystematized and u nfixed i nner and outer speech wh ich endows our every instance of behavior and action and our every "conscious" state with meaning. Considering the soc io logical nature of the structure of exp ression and experience, we may say that behavioral ideology in our conception corresponds basica l l y to what is termed "social psychology" in Marx ist l i terature. I n the present context, we shou l d prefer to avoid the word "psychology," s ince we are concerned exclus ive ly with the content of the psyche and the consciousness. That content i s ideological through and through, determ ined not by ind iv idual , organ ismic ( b iological or physiological) factors, but by factors of a purely soc io logical character. The ind ividual , organismic factor i s completely irrelevant to an u nderstand ing of the basic creative and l iv ing l i neaments of the content of consciousness.

The estab l ished ideological systems of social eth i cs , scien ce, art, and rel i gion are crystal l izations of behavioral ideology, and these crysta l l izations, iri turn, exert a powerfu l influence back upon behavioral ideology, norma l l y sett ing its tone . At the same time, however, these already formal ized ideolog ical products constant ly maintain the most vital organic contact with behavioral ideology and draw sustenance from it ; otherwise, without that contact, they wou ld be dead, just as any l i terary work or cogni tive idea is dead without l iv i ng, eva luative perception of it. N ow, this ideol ogical perception, for wh ich a lone any ideological piece of work can and does exi st, i s carried out in the language of behavioral ideology . Behavioral ideology draws the work into some particular social s i tuatio n . The work combines with the whole content of the consciousness of those who perceive it and derives its apperceptive values on ly in the context of that con sciousness. I t is i n terpreted in the spir it of the particular content of consciousness (the consciousness of the perceiver) and is i l lum inated by i t anew. Th i s is what constitutes the vi tal i ty of an ideological production . I n each period of i ts h istorical existence, a work must enter i n to c lose association with the changing behav ioral ideology, become permeated wi th it, and draw new sustenance from it. On ly to the degree that a work can enter i n to that k ind of i n tegral , organ ic association with the behavioral ideology of a g iven period i s i t viable for that period (and of course, for a given socia l group) . Outside i ts connection with behavioral ideol ogy it ceases to exist, s ince i t ceases to be experienced as somethi ng ideological l y mean i ngfu l .

92 Marxist Philosophy of Language [Part 11

We must dist inguish several d ifferent strata i n behavioral i deology . These strata are defined by the social scale 6n which experience and expression are measured, or by the social forces w i th respect to which they must d i rectly or ient themselves.

The pu rview in which an experience or expression comes into being may, as we know, vary in scope. The wor ld of an exper ience may be narrow and d im ; i t s social or ientation may be haphazard and ephemeral and character i stic on ly for some advent it ious and loose coal i t ion of a smal l number of persons. Of cou rse, even these erratic exper iences are ideo logical and socio logical, but their pos ition I ies on the borders of the normal and the pathological . Such an experience w i l l remain an iso lated fact in the psycho logica l l i fe of the person exposed to it. It w i l l not take firm root and w i l l not receive d ifferentiated and fu l l-fledged expression ; i ndeed, if it l acks a social ly groun"ded and stabl e audience, where cou l d i t poss ib ly f ind bases for i ts d i fferentiation and final ization? Even less l ike ly wou l d such an adventit ious experience be set down, i n writing or even more so in print. Exper iences of that k ind , exper iences born of a momentary and acci dental state of affairs, have, of course, no chance of further social impact or efficacy.

The lowest, most fl u i d, and qu ick ly changi ng stratum of behav ioral ideo logy consists of experiences of that k i nd . To th i s stratum, consequent ly, be long al l those vague and u ndeve loped experiences, thoughts, and id l e , accidenta l words that flash across our m inds . They are al l of them cases of m i scarriages of social or ientations, nove l s w i thout heroes, performances without aud iences . They lack any sort of logic or un i ty . The sociol ogical regu latedness in these ideo logical scraps is extreme ly d ifficu l t to detect. In this lowest stratum of behav ioral ideology only statist ical regu lar ity i s detectab le ; given a huge q uan tity of p roducts of th i s sort, the ou tl ines of socioeconomic regu lated ness cou ld be revea led . Needless to say, it would be a practi cal impossi b i l i ty to descry in any one such accidental experience or expression i ts socioeconomic premises .

The u pper strata of behavioral ideology , the ones d i rectly l i n ked w i th i deological systems, are more v i ta l , more serious and bear a creative character . Compared to an establ ished ideology, they are a great deal more mobi le and sen s i tive: they convey ch!lnges in the socioeconomic basis more q u ick ly and more v iv id ly . Here, p recisely, is where those creative energies bu i l d u p through whose agency partial or rad ical restructur ing of i deological systems comes about. Newly emerg ing social forces f ind ideological expression and take shape f i rst in these u pper strata of behavioral ideo logy before they can succeed i n dominating the arena of some organized, official ideology. Of course, i n the process of th i s struggle, i n the p rocess of their gradual i nfi l tration into ideological organ izations (the press, l i terature, and science) , these new currents in behavioral i deology, no matter h ow revolut ionary they may be, undergo the i nfl uence of the establ ished i deol ogical systems and, to some extent, incorporate forms, ideolog ica l practices, and approaches a l ready in stock.

Chap. 3/ Verba/ Interaction 93

What usua l ly i s cal led "creative i n djvidual i ty " i s noth ing but the expression of a particular person ' s basic, firmly grounded , and consistent I ine of social orientation. This concerns primar i ly the uppermost, fu l ly structured strata of inner speech (behavioral ideol ogy) , each of whose terms and intonations have gone through the stage of expression and have, so to speak, passed the test of expression. Thus what is i nvolved here are words, i ntonations, and i nner-word gestures that have undergone the experience of outward expression on a more or l ess ample social scale and h ave acqu ired, as i t were, a h igh social po l i sh and lustre by the effect of reaction s and responses, resistance or support, on the part of the social audience.

I n the lower strata of behavioral ideology, the bio logical -b iograph ical factor does, of course, p!ay a crucial role, but its importance constantly d im in ishes as the utterance penetrates more deep ly into an ideolog ical system. Consequently, wh i l e b io-biograph ical explan ations are of some value i n the l ower strata of experience and expression (utterance ) , their role i n the upper strata is extremely modest. Here the objective sociolog ical meth od takes fu l l command .

So, then, the theory of expression underly ing i nd iv idual istic su bjectivism must be rejected. The organizing center of any utterance, of any experience, is not within but outside-in the social milieu surrounding the individual being. Only the i narticu late cry of an animal is rea l l y organ ized from inside the physio- ·

l ogical apparatus of an ind ividual creature. Such a cry lacks any posi tive ideologi cal factor v is-a-vis the physiological reacti on . Yet, even the most primit:ve human utterance produced by the i nd ividual organism is, from the point of view of i ts content, import, and meaning, organ ized outside the organ ism, in the extraorganismic condit ions of the social m i l i eu . Utterance as such i s who l ly a product of social interaction, both of the i mmed iate sort as determined by the c ircumstances of the d i scourse, and of the m ore general k i nd , as determ ined by the whole aggregate of conditions under wh ich any given commun i ty of speakers operates.

The individual utterance(parole) , despite the conte ntion s of abstract objectivism, is by no means an ind iv idual fact not susceptib l e to sociological analysis by virtue of its indiv idual ity. I nd eed, if th is were so, ne ither the sum total of these ind ividual acts nor any abstract features common to a l l such ind ividual acts ( the "normatively identical forms") cou l d poss ib ly engender a social product.

I nd ividual istic subjectivism i s correct in that i nd iv idual utterances are what constitute the actual , concrete real i ty of language, and in that they do have creative value in language.

But ind ividual istic su bjectiv ism is wrong i n ignoring and fai l ing to u nderstand the social nature of the utterance and i n attempting to der ive the u tterance from the speaker's i nner world as an expression of that i nner worl d . The structure of the utterance and of the very exper ience bei ng expressed is a social structure. The sty l i stic shap ing of an utterance i s shap ing of a social k i nd, and th e very


verbal stream of u tterances, which is what the real i ty of language actua l ly amounts to , i s a social stream. Each drop of that stream i s social and the entire dynamics of its generation is' social .

I nd iv idual istic subjectivism i s a l so compl etely correct in that l i ngu i st ic form and its ideological imp letion are not severab le . Each and every word is ideological and each and every app lication of l anguage i nvolves ideological change. But i nd iv idual ist ic subjectivi sm i s wrong i nsofar as i t a lso derives th i s ideo logica l i mp let ion of the word from the condit ions of the ind iv idual psyche.

I nd iv idual istic subjectivism is wrong in tak ing the monologic u tterance, just as abstract objectiv ism does, as its basic point of departure. Certain Vosslerites, it i s true , have begun to consider the prob lem of d ialogue and so to approach a more correct understand i ng of verba! i n teract ion. H igh ly symptomatic i n this regard i s one of Leo Spitzer 's books we have al ready cited-- h i s ltalienische Umgangssprache, a book that attempts to an lyze the forms of I ta l i an conversational l anguage in close connection w ith the cond ition s of d i scourse and above all with the i ssue of the addressee.4 However, Leo Spi tzer ut i l izes a descriptive psychological method . He does not draw from h i s analysis the fundamenta l ly sociological conc lusions i t suggests. For the Voss ler ites, therefore, the monologic u tterance sti l l remains the basic rea l i ty;

The prob lem of verbal i n teraction has been posed clear ly and d i sti n ctly by Otto D ietrich .5 He proceeds by way of subjecti ng to crit ic ism the theory of

utterance as expression. For h im, the basic fu nction of language i s not expression but communication { in the str ict sense) , and this l eads h i m to consider the role

oLthe addressee. The m in imal condit ion for a l i ngu i st ic man ifestation is, according to D ietrich, twofold (speaker and l i stener) . However, D ietrich shares assumptions of a genera! psycho logical type with i nd ividual i st ic subjectiv ism. D ietrich ' s investigations l i kewise lack any d eterminate socio logical basis .

Now we are i n a posit ion to answer the question we posed at the end of the first chapter of this section of our stu dy. The actual reality of language-speech is not the abstract system of linguistic forms, not the isolated monologic utterance, and not the psychophysiological act of its implementation, but the social event of verbal interaction implemented in an utterance or utterances.

Thus, verbal i nteraction is the basic rea l ity of language.

4. I n this respect, the very organization of the book is symptomatic. The book d ivides in to fou r main chapters. Their titl es are as fol lows: I . Eroffnungsformen des Gesprachs. I I . Sprecher und Harer; A. HOflichkeit (R Dcksicht auf den Partner). B. Sparsamkeit und Verschwendung im A usdruck; C. In einandergreifen von Rede und Gegenrede. I l l . Sprecher und Situation. IV . Oer A bschluss des Gesprachs. Spitzer's predecessor in the study of conversationa l l anguage under cond i ti ons of real- l ife d iscourse was Hermann Wunder l ich . See his book, Unsere Umgangssprache ( 1 8 94) .

5 . See Die Probleme der Sprachpsycho/ogie ( 1 9 1 4 ) .


Dialogue, i n the narrow sen se of the word, is , of course, on ly one of the forms-a very important form, to be sure-of verbal i n teraction . But dialogue can al so be understood in a broader sense, meaning not only direct, face-to-face, vocal ized verbal commun ication between persons, but also verbal communication of any type whatsoever. A book, i .e . , a verbal performance in print, is also an elemen t of verbal commun icat ion. It is something d iscussab le in actual, reall ife dialogue, but aside from that, i t is calcu lated for active perception, involv ing attentive read ing and i nner responsiveness, and for organized, printed reaction in the various forms devised by the particu lar sphere of verbal communication i n question ( book reviews, cr itical surveys, defin ing i nfluence on su bsequent works, and so on) . Moreover, a verbal performance of this k i nd also inevitably orients i tself with respect to previous .performances i n the same sphere, both those by the same author and those by other authors. It inevitably takes its point of departure from some particu lar state of affairs involving a scientific problem or a l i terary sty le . Thus the pr inted verbal performance engages, as it were, in ideological col loquy of l arge scale: it responds to someth i ng, objects to someth i ng, affirms somethi ng, anti cipates poss ib le responses and objections, seeks support, and so on.

Any utterance, no matter how weighty and complete i n and of itself, is only a moment in the continuous process of verbal communication. But that continuous verbal commun ication is , i n turn , i tself only a moment in the cont inuous, a l l -inc lusive, generative process of a given social col l ective . An important problem arises i n th i s regard: the study of the connection between concrete verbal interaction and the extraverbal situation-both the immediate s ituation and, through i t, the broader s ituation . The forms th i s connection takes are d ifferent, and different factors i n a s i tuation may, i n association with this or that form , take on d ifferent meanings (for i n stance, these connections differ with the different factors of si tuation in l i terary or in scientific commun ication) . Verbal communication can never be understood and explained outside of this connection with a concrete situation. Verbal i n tercourse is inextricably interwoven with communication of other types, al l stemming from the common ground of production communication. It goes without say ing that word cannot be divorced from th i s eterna l ly gen erative, un ified process of communication. In its concrete connection with a s ituation, verbal communication i s a lways accompanied by social acts of a nonverbal character (the performance of labor, the symbol ic acts of a r i tual , a ceremony, etc. ) , and i s often on ly an accessory to these acts, merely carry i ng out an auxi l iary ro le . Language acquires life and historically evolves precisely here, in concrete verbal communication, and not in the abstract linguistic system of language forms, nor in the individual psyche of speakers.

From what has been establ ished, it fol l ows that the methodologica l ly based order of study of language ought to be: ( 1 ) the forms and types of verbal i n teraction in connection with their concrete conditions; (2) forms of part icu lar


utte_rances, of parti cu lar speech performances, as e lements of a c losely l i nked interaction-i .e . , the genres of speech performance i n human behav ior and i deol ogical creativ i ty as determ i�ed by verbal i n teraction ; ( 3) a reexamination, on th is new basis, of language forms in their usual l ingu istic presentation .

Th is i s the order that th<t actual generative process of language fol l ows: social intercourse is generated (stemming from the basis) ; in it verbal communication and interaction are generated; and in the latter, forms of speech performances are-generated; finally, this generative process is reflected in the change of language forms.

One thing that emerges from a l l that has been sai d is the extreme importance of the prob lem of the forms of an utterance as a whole. We have a l ready pointed out that contemporary l i ngu i st ics lacks any approach to the u tterance i tself_ i ts analys is goes no further than the e lements that consti tute an u tterance . Meanwh i l e, utterances are the real u n i ts that make up the stream of language-speech . What i s necessary i n order to study the forms of th i s real un i t i s precisely that it not be isolated from the h istorical stream of u tterances. As a who le entity , the u tterance is imp lemented on ly in the stream of verbal intercourse. The whole i s, after a l l , defined by i ts bou ndaries, and these boundaries ru n along th e l i ne o f contact between a given u tterance and the ex traverbal and verbal ( i .e . , made up of other u tterances) mi l ie u .

The first and last words, t he beg in n ing and end points of real-l ife u tterancethat i s what a l ready constitutes the problem of the whole . The process of speech, broad ly understood as the process of inner and outer verbal l ife, goes on cont inuous ly . I t know.s ne i ther beginn ing nor end . The outward ly actual ized u tterance is an i s land r i s ing from the bound less sea of inner speech ; the d imens ions and forms of this is land are determ ined by the particu lar situation of the u tterance and i ts audience. Situation and aud ience make inner speech u ndergo actual i zation into some k ind of specific outer expression that i s d irectl y inc luded into an u nverbal ized behavioral context and in that context is ampl ified by actions, behavior, or verbal responses of other partic ipants of the utterance . The fu l l fl edged question, exclamation, command, request-these are th e most typical forms of wholes in behavioral utterances. Al l of the m (especia l l y the command and request) requ i re an extraverbal complement and, i ndeed, an extra verbal commencement . The very type of structure these l i tt le behavioral genres wi l l achieve i s determi ned by the effect of its comi ng u p against the extraverbal m i l ieu

and against a n other word (i .e., the words of other people). Thus, the form a com

mand wi l l take is determi ned by the obstacles i t may encounter, the degree of sub

m issiveness expected, and so on. The structure of the gen re in these i n stances w i l l

b e i n accord with the accidental a n d u n ique features o f behavioral situations. Only

when social custom and circumstances have fixed and stabi l ized certa i n forms i n


behavioral interchange to some appreciable degree, can one speak of specific types

of structure in gen res of behavioral speech. So, for instance, an entirely special type

of structure has been worked out for the genre of the l ight and casual causerie of

the d rawing room where everyone "feels at home" and where the basic d ifferenti

ation within the gathering (the audience) is that between men and women. Here

we find devised special forms of ins inuation, half-sayi ngs, a l l usions to l ittle tales of

an intentiona l ly nonserious character, and so on. A different type of structure is

worked out in the case of conversation between husband and wife, brothe r and

s ister, etc. In the case where a random assortment of people gathers -wh i l e waiting in a l i ne or conducting some business-statements and exchanges of words wi l l start and fi n ish and be constructed in another, comp l etely different way. V i l l age sewing circles, u rban carouses, workers' l u nchtime chats, etc., w i l l a l l have their own types. Each s ituation, fixed and sustained b y social cu stom, commands a parti cular kind of organization of audience and, hence, a parti cular repertoi re of I itt le behavioral genres. The behavioral genre fits everyWhere i nto the channel of social i n tercourse ass igned to it and functions as an ideological reflection of its type, structure, goa l , and social composition . The behavioral genre i s a fact of the social m i l ieu : of hol iday, le i sure time, and of social contact in the parlor, the workshop, etc . It meshes with that m i l ieu and i s de l im i ted and defi ned by i t in al l its i nternal aspects.

The production processes of labor and the processes of commerce know d ifferent forms for constructing utterances.

As for the forms of ideological intercourse in the strict sense of the termforms for pol i tical speeches, po l i tical acts, laws, regu lations, man ifestos, and so forth ; and forms for poetic u tterances, scientific treatises, etc.-these have been the object of special investigation in rhetor ic and poetics, but, as we have seen, these i nvestigations have been completely divorced from the problem of language on the one hand, and from the problem of social intercourse on the other .6 Productive analysis of the forms of the whole of u tterances as the real un its in the stream of speech is poss ib le only on a basis that regards th e i nd ividual utterance as a purely socio logical phenomenon. Marxist ph i losophy of language should and must stand square ly on the utterance as the real phenomenon of language-speech and as a socioideol ogical structure.

Now that we have out l ined the sociological structure of the u tterance, l et u s return to the two trends in ph i l osoph ical l i ngu istic thought and make a final summing u p .

6. On the topic o f disj uncture o f a l i terary work of art with condi tions o f artistic commun ication and the resu l ti ng i nertness of the work , see ou r study , "S iovo v zizni i s l ovo v poez i i" [Word in Life and Word in Poetry ] , Zvezda, 6 ( 1 926) .

1 .


R. Sor, a Moscow l i ngu i st and an adherent of the second trend of thought i n ph i l osophy o f language, ends a br ief sketch of the contemporary state of l i ngu istics with the fol lowing words:

" Language is not an artifact (ergon ) but a natural and congen ital activity of mank ind"so c l aimed the romanticist l i ngu istics of the 1 9th century . Theoretical l ingu istics of modern times cla i ms otherwise: " Language is not ind iv idua l activity (energiea) bu t a cu l tu ra l -h istorical legacy of mankind (ergon ) . 7

This conc lus ion is amaz i ng i n i ts bias and one-sideness. On the factual s ide , i t i s completely u ntrue. Modern theoretical l ingu i st ics i n cludes, after al l , the Vossler ' school, one of G ermany's most powerfu l movements in contemporary l inguist ic thought . I t is i mpermiss ib le to identify modern l inguistics with only one of its trends.

From the theoretical point of v iew, both the thesis and the ant i thes is made up by Sor must equal ly be rejected, s i nce they are equal ly i nadequate to the real nature of l anguage.

Let us concl u de the argument with an attempt to formulate our own point of v iew i n the fol lowing set of proposit ions :

1 . Language as a stable system of normatively identical forms is merely a scientific abstraction, productive on ly i n connection with certa i n part icu lar practical and theoretical goal s . Th is abstraction is not adequate to the concrete real ity of language.

2 . Language is a continuous generative process implemented in the socialverbal interaction of speakers.

3 . The laws of the generative process of language are not at all the laws of , individual psychology, but neither can they be divorced from the activity of speakers. The laws of language generation are sociological laws .

4. Linguistic creativity does not coincide with artistic creativity nor with any other type of specialized ideological creativity. But, at the same time, linguistic creativity cannot be understood apart from the ideological meanings and values that fill it. The generative p rocess of l anguage, as i s true of any h i storical generative p rocess, can be perceived as b l ind mechan ical necess i ty , but i t can also become "free necess i ty" once it has reached the posit ion of a conscious and des i red necessi ty.

5 . The structure of the utterance is a purely sociological structure. The u tterance, as such , o btains between speakers. The i nd iv idual speech act ( i n the strict sense of the word " ind iv idual ") is contradictio in adjecto.

7. R. Sor, " Krizis sovremennoj l invistik i " [The Crisis in Contemporary L inguistics ] , jofeticeskij sbornik, V ( 1 927 ) , p . 7 1 .

C H A P T E R 4

lbeme and Meaning in Language

Theme and meaning. The problem of active perception. Evaluation and meaning. The dialectics of meaning.

The problem of meani ng i s one of the most d iffi cu l t prob lems of l i ngu i stics. Efforts toward solving this problem have revealed the one-sided monologism of l i nguistic science i n particu lar ly strong rel i ef. The theory of passive understandi ng prec ludes any poss ib i l ity of engaging the most fundamental and crucial features of mean ing i n l anguage.

The scope of th e present study compel s us to l im i t ourselv�s to a very brief and perfunctory examination of this issue . We sha l l attempt on ly to map out the main l i nes of i ts productive treatment.

A defi n ite and uni tary meaning, a un i tary sign ificance, i s a property be longing to any utterance as a whole. Let us cal l the s ignifi cance of a whole utterance i ts theme. 1 The theme must be un i tary, otherwi se we wou l d have no basi s for tal king about any one utterance. The theme of an utterance i tself i s ind iv idual and unreproducib le , ju st as the utterance i tself is ind iv idua l and u n reproducib le . The theme i s the expression of the concrete, h istori ca l si tuation that engendered the utterance. The utterance "What t ime i s i t? " has a d ifferent mean ing each time it is used , and hence, in accordance with .our termi nol ogy, has a d ifferent theme, depend ing on the concrete h i storical s i tuation ("h i storical " here i n m icroscopic d imensions) dur ing wh ich i t i s enunciated and of wh i ch , i n essence, it is a part.

1 . The term is, of course, a provisional one. The.me i n our sense embraces i ts imp lemen· tation as wel l ; therefore, ou r concept must not be confused with that of a theme in a l i terary work . The concep t of "thematic un i ty" would be closer to what we mean.

99

1 00 Marxist Philosophy of Language {Part II

I t fol l ows, then, that the theme of an u tterance is determined not on ly by the l i nguist ic forms that comprise i t-words, morpho logicaf and syntactic structures, sounds, and i n tonation-but al so by extraverbal factors of the situation. Shou ld we m iss these s ituational factors, we wou l d be as l i tt le able to u nderstand an u tterance as if we were to m i ss its most important words . The theme of an u tterance is concrete_:as concrete as the h i storical in s tant to which the u tterance be longs. Only an utterance taken in its full, concrete scope as an historical phenomenon possesses a theme. That is what i s meant by the theme of an u tterance.

However, if we were to restr ict ourselves to the h istorical u n reproduc ib i l ity and un i tar iness of each concrete u tterance and its theme, we wou l d be poor d ialect icians. Together w i th theme or, rather, w ith in the theme, there is a lso the meaning that be longs to an utterance . By mean ing, as d ist inguished from theme, we understand a l l those aspects of the u tterance that are reproducible and self-identical i n al l i nstances of repet it ion. Of course, these aspects are abstract: they have no concrete, autonomous existence in an artificial l y iso lated form, but, at the same time, they do constitu te an essen tial and i nseparabl e par t of the u tterance. The theme of an utterance i s , in essence, i nd iv i s ib le . The mean ing of an u tterance, on the con trary, does b reak down into a set of mean ings be longing to each of the various l i ngu i st ic e lements of wh i ch the utterance consists . The unreproducib le theme of the u tterance "What t ime is i t ?" taken in its ind isso lu b le connection with the concrete h i storical si tuation, cannot be d iv ided i n to e lements . The mean ing of the u tterance "What time is it? "-a mean ing that, of course, remains the same in al l h istorical instances of i ts enunciation-is made up of the mean i ngs of the words, forms of morphological and syntact ic u nion, i nterrogative i n tonations, etc . , that form the construction of the u tterance.

Theme is a complex, dynamic system of signs that attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative process. Theme is reaction by the consciousness in its generative process to the generative process of existence. Mean ing i s the technical apparatus for the implementation of theme. Of course, no abso lu te, mechan ist ic boundary can be drawn between theme and mean ing. There is no theme without mean ing and no mean ing w i thout theme . Moreover, it is even impossib l e to convey the mean ing of a particu lar word (say, in the course of teach ing another person a foreign language) w i thout having made it an e l ement of theme, i .e . , without having constructed an "examp l e" u tterance. On the other hand, a theme must base i tself on some k i nd of fix i ty of mean ing; otherwise i t loses i ts connection w i th what came before and what comes after-i .e . , i t a ltogether l oses its s ign ificance.

The study of the languages of preh i storic peoples and modern semantic paleontology have reached a conc lus ion abou t the so-ca l l ed "comp lex-ness" of preh istor ic th i n king. Preh istoric man used one word to denote a wide variety of phenomena that, from our modern po int of view, are i n no way re lated to one

Chap. 4] Theme and Meaning

another . What i s more, the same word cou l d be used to. denote diametri cal ly oppos ite notions-top and bottom, earth and sky, good and bad, and so on . Declares Marr:

Suffice it to say that contemporary pal eontological study of language has given us the possib i l i ty of reach i ng, through its i nvestigations, back to an age when a tribe had only one word at its disposal for usage i n al l the meanings of which mankind was aware.'

1 0 1

"But was such an al l -mean ing word i n fact a word?" we might be asked . Yes, precise l y a word. I f, on the contrary, a certa in sound comp lex had only one single, i nert, and i nvar iab le meaning, then such a complex wou l d not be a word , not a s ign, but on ly a signal .3 Multiplicity of meanings is the constitutive feature of word. As regards the a l l -mean ing word of which Marr speaks, we can say the fol lowing : such a word, in essence, has virtually no meaning; it is all theme. I ts meani11g is inseparable from the concrete situation of its implementation. This mean ing i s d ifferent each t ime, j u st as the situation is d ifferent each t ime. Thus the theme, in th is case, subsumed meani ng unde r i tself and d issolved i t before meaning had any chance to consol idate and congea l . But as l anguage developed further, as its stock of sound complexes expanded, mean ing began to congeal a long l ines that were basic and most frequent in the l i fe of the community for the thematic app l ication of th i s or that word .

Theme, as we have said , is an attr ibute of a whole u tterance on ly ; i t can belong to a separate word on ly i nasmuch as that word operates i n the capacity of a who le utterance. So, for i n stance, Marr 's a l l -mean ing word always operates in the capacity of a whole (and has no fixed meanings precisely for that reason) . Meaning, on the other hand, be longs to an e l ement or aggregate of e lements in their relation to the whole . Of course, if we entire ly d i sregard th is relation to the whole ( i .e . , to the utterance) , we sha l l ent ire ly forfe it mean ing. That is the reason why a sharp boundary between theme and mean ing cannot be drawn.

The most accurate way of formu lat ing the i n terrelationsh ip between theme and mean ing is in the fol lowing terms. Theme is the upper, actual limit of linguistic significance," i n essence, on ly theme means someth ing def in i te . Meaning is the lower limit of l i nguistic s ign ificance. Mean ing, in essence, means noth i ng; it on ly possesses potent ia l i ty-the possib i l ity of having a mean i ng with in a concrete theme. I nvestigation of the mean ing of one or another l i nguistic e l ement

2. N. ja. Marr, }aphetic Theory, ( 1 926 ) , p . 2?8 . 3. I t i s c lear t ha t even tha t earl iest of a l l words, about wh i ch Marr speaks, is not i n any

way l i ke a signal (to which a number of investigators endeavor to reduce l anguage ) . After a l l , a s igna l that meant every th ing wou ld be min ima'l l y capable of carry ing out the function of a signa l . The capacity of a signal to adapt to the changing cond i tions of a situ ation is very low. By and l arge, change in a signal means replacement of one signal by another.

1 02 Marxist Philosophy of Language (Part II

can proceed, i n terms of our defi n i tion , in one of two d irections : e i th er i n the d irection of the u pper l im it, toward theme, in wh ich case i t wou l d be investigat ion of the contextual mean ing of a given word with i n the condit ions of a concrete u tterance; or investigation can aim toward the lower l im it, the l im i t of meaning, i n wh ich case i t wqu l d be i nvestigation of the mean ing of a word in the system of language or, in other words, investigation of a d ictionary word.

A d istinction between theme and mean ing and a proper u nderstand ing of their interrelationsh ip are vita l steps i n constructing a genu ine science of meanings. Total fai l ure to comprehend the i r importance has persi sted to th e present day . Such d i scrim inations as those between a word's usual and occasional meanings, between i ts central and lateral meanings, between i ts denotation and connotation, etc., are fu ndamenta l ly unsatisfactory. The basic tendency u nderlying al l such d i scrim inations-the tendency to ascribe greater val ue to the cen tral , usual aspect of mean ing, presupposing that that aspect real l y does exist and i s stab le-is completely fal l acious. M oreover, i t would leave theme unaccounted for, s ince theme, of course, can by no means be reduced to the status of the occasional or lateral mean ing of words .

The d i st inction between theme and mean ing acqu i res particu l ar clar ity i n connection w ith t he problem of understanding, which we shal l now br iefly touch upon.

We have a lready had occasion to speak of the ph i lo logica l type of passive u nderstand i ng, wh ich exclu des response i n advance. Any genu ine k i nd of u nderstand ing w i l l be active and w i l l constitute the germ of a response . On l y active understand ing can grasp theme-a generative process can be grasped on ly w ith the a id of another generative process.

To understand another person 's utterance means to orient oneself w ith respect to it, to fin d the proper p l ace for it in the correspond ing context. For each word of the u tterance that we are i n process of u nderstand ing, we, as i t were, lay down a set of our own answering words . The greater their n umber and weight, the deeper and more su bstantial our understand ing wi l l be.

Thus each of the d ist inguish ab le sign ificative e lements of an utterance and the ent ire utterance as a whole entity are trans lated in our m inds in to another, active and responsive, context. Any true understanding is dialogic in nature. Understand ing i s to u tterance as one l i n e of a d ia logue is to the next. Understand ing strives to match the speaker's word with a counter word. On ly in u nderstand i ng a word in a foreign tongue is the attempt made to match i t with the "same" word i n one's own language .

Therefore, there is no reason for say ing that mean ing belongs to a word as such. I n essence, mean ing belongs to a word i n i ts position between speakers; that is, mean ing i s real ized only in the process of active, responsive understanding. Meaning does not reside i n the word or i n the sou l of the speaker or i n the soul of the l istener. Mean ing i s the effect of interaction between speaker and

Chap. 4} Theme and Meaning 1 03

listener produced via the material of a particular sound complex. I t is l i ke an e lectric spark that occurs only when two d ifferent terminals are hooked together. Those who ignore theme (which i s accessib l e only to active, responsive u nderstanding) and who, i n attempting to define the meaning of a word, approach its l ower, stable, se lfidentical l im it, W'!nt, in effect, to turn on a l ight bu lb after having switched off the current. Only the current of verbal intercourse endows a word with the l ight of mean ing.

Let us now move on to one of the most important problems in the science of mean ings, the prob lem of the interrelationship between meaning and evaluation.

Any word used in actual speech possesses not only theme and mean ing i n t h e referential , o r content, sense of these words, but also value judgment: i .e . , a l l referential contents produced in l iving speech are said or written in conj unction with a specific evaluative accent. There is no such th ing as word without evaluative accent .

What is the nature of th i s accent, and how does i t relate to the referentia l s ide of mean ing?

The most obvious, but, at the same time, the most superficial aspect of social value j udgement incorporated in the word is that wh ich is conveyed with the help ofexpressive intonation. In most cases, i n tonation i s determined by the immediate s ituation and often by i ts most ephemeral circumstances. To be sure, intonation of a more substantia l kind i s a l so possib le . Here is a c lassic instance of such a use of i ntonation in real-l ife speech . Dostoevskij , i n Diary of a Writer, re lates the fol l owing story.

One Sunday night, already getting on to the smal l hours, I chanced to find myself wal k ing alongside a band of six tipsy artisans for a dozen paces or so, and there and then I became convi nced that a l l thoughts, a l l feel i n gs, and even whole trains of rea· soning could be expressed merely by using a certain noun, a noun, moreover, of utmost simp l i ci ty in itself [ Dostoevskij h as i n mind here a certa in widely used obscen ity.- V. V. ] . Here is what h appened. F i rst, one of these fel l ows voices this noun shri l l y and emphatica l ly by way of expressing h i s utter ly d isdainful den i a l of some point that had been in general contention j ust prior. A second fel l ow repeats th is very same noun in response to the first fe l l ow, bu t n ow in an a l together d ifferent tone and sense-to wit, in the sense that h e fu l ly doubted the veracity of the first fellow's denia l . A th ird fel low waxes i nd ignant at the first one, sharply and heated l y sal ly ing into the conversation and shou ting a t h im that very same noun , b u t now i n a pejorative, abusive sense. The second fel low, ind ignant a t the th i rd for being offensive, h imself sal l ies back in and cuts the latter short to the effect: "What the he l l d o you think you 're doing, b u tt ing i n l i ke that? ! Me a n d F i l 'ka were. havi ng a nice q u iet ta lk and j ust l ike that you come along and start cuss ing h im out !" And i n fact, th is whole train of thought h e conveyed by emitting just that very same time-honored word, that same extremely l aconic designation of a certai n i tem, and noth ing more, save only that he a lso raised h is h and and grabbed the second fel l ow by the shou ld er. Thereupon, al l of a sudden a fourth fel low, the you ngest in the crowd , who had


remained s i l ent a l l th is wh i l e , _apparently having just struck upon the sol ut ion to the problem that had original ly occasioned the d ispute, i n a tone of rapture, with one arm half-raised , shouts---Whafdo you th i nk : " Eureka ! " ? " I found i t, I found i t ! " ? No, noth i ng a t a l l l i ke "Eure ka," nothing l i ke " I found i t." He mere ly repeats that very same u npri ntab l e noun, just that one single word, just that one word a lone, bu t w i th rapture, w i th a squeal of ecstacy, and apparently somewhat excessively so, be· cause the sixth fel low, a su r ly character and the oldest i n the bunch, d i dn ' t th ink i t seemly and i n a trice stops the young fel l ow's raptu re cold b y turning o n h im and repeati ng i n a gruff and expostu latory bass--yes, that very same noun whose usage is forbidden in the company of lad ies, wh ich , however, in this case c learly and pre· cise ly d enoted : "What the he l l are you shouting for, you ' l l burst a b l ood vesse l ! " And s o , without having uttered one other word , they repeated just this one, but obviousl y be loved , l i tt le word of theirs s ix times i n a row, one after the o ther, and they understood one another perfectly. 4

Al l s ix "speech performances" by the artisans are d i fferent, despite the fact that they a l l cons isted of one and the same word . That word, in th is i n stance, was essential l y on ly a vehic l e for intonation . The conversation was conducted i n i ntonations expressing the val ue j udgments of the speakers. These va l ue j udg" ments and their correspond ing i n tonations were who l ly determ ined by the immed iate social s i tuation of the tal k and therefore d i d not requ i re any referentia l support. I n l iv ing speech, i ntonation often does have a mean ing qu i te independent of the semantic composit ion of speech . I n tonational material pent up i ns ide us often does f ind out l e t i n l i nguist ic construct ions comp letely inappropriate to the particular k i n d of intonation i nvolved . I n such a case, intonation does not imp inge upon the i n te l l ectual, concrete, referen tial sign ificance of the construction . We have a hab i t of expressing our fee l i ngs by imparting expressive and mean ingfu l i n tonation to some word that crops up in our m i nd by chance, often a vacuous interjection or adverb . Almost everybody h as h i s favori te interjection or adverb or sometimes even a semantical l y ful l-fledged word that he customar i ly uses for pu re ly intonational reso lu tion of certain trivial (and sometimes not so trivial) s i tuations and moods that occur in the ord i nary b us iness of l ife. There are certa in expressions l ike "so-so," "yes-yes, " "now-now," "we l l-we l l " and so on that commonly serve as "safety valves" of that sort. The doub l i ng usual i n such expressions is symptomatic; i .e . , i t represents an artific ia l pro longation of the sound i mage for the purpose of a l l owing the pent up in tonation to expire fu l ly . Any one such favor ite l i ttle expression may, of course, be pronounced i n an e normous variety of i ntonations in keeping with the wide d iversity of s ituations and moods that occur i n l ife.

I n a l l these i nstances, theme, which is a property of each u tterance (each of the utterances of the six artisans had a theme proper to i t) , is imp lemented en-

4. Polnoe sobranie socinenij F. M. Dostoe vskogo [The Complete Works of F . M . Dostoevskij ] , Vol . IX, pp . 274-2 7 5 , 1 906 .

Chap. 4] Theme and Meaning 1 05

tirely and exc lusively by the power of_ express ive intonation without the a id of word mean ing or grammatical coord ination. This sort of value j udgment and its corresponding intonation cannot exceed the narrow confines of the immediate situation and the smal l , i ntimate socia l world in wh ich it occurs. L inguistic eva luation of this sort may righ tly be cal led an accompan i ment, an accessory phenomenon, to mean ing in language.

However, not a l l l i ngu istic value j udgments are l ike that. We may take any utterance whatsoever, say, an utterance that encompasses the broadest possible semantic spectrum and assumes the widest poss ib le socia l audience, and we shal l sti l l see that, i n it, a n enormous importance be longs to eval uation . Natural ly, value judgment fn this case w i l l not a l low of even m in ima l l y adequate expression by intonation , but i t w i l l be the determinative factor in the cho ice and deployment of the basic e lements that bear the mean ing of the u tterance. No utterance can be put together without va lue judgment. Every utterance i s above a l l an evaluative orientation. Therefore, each element in a l iv ing utterance not only has a mean ing but also has a va lue. Only the abstract e lement, perceived with in the system of l anguage and not with i n the structure of an u tterance, appears devoid of val ue judgment. Focusing their attention on the abstract system of l anguage is what led most l i nguists to d ivorce eva luation from meaning and to consider eva luation an accessory factor of meaning, the express ion of a speaker's individual attitude toward the subject matter of his discourse.5

In Russian scholarsh ip, G. 5pett has spoken of eval uation as the connotation of a word . Characterist ica l ly , he operates with a strict d iv ision between referential denotation and eval uative connotation, locating th is divis ion in various spheres of rea l i ty . This sort of d isjuncture between referential meaning and evaluation is tota l l y inadmiss ib le. It stems from failure to note the more profound functions of evaluation in speech . Referentia l mean ing i s molded by eva luation ; it i s evaluation, after a l l , wh ich determ ines that a particu l ar referentia l mean ing may enter the purview of speakers-both the immediate purview and the broader social purview of the particu lar social group . Furthermore, with respect to changes of meaning, i t is precise ly eval uation that p lays the creative role . A change i n mean ing is , essentia l l y, a lways a reevaluation: the transposi tion of some particu lar word from one evaluative context to another. A word is e ither advanced to a h igher rank or demoted to a lower one. The separation of word mean ing from eva l uation inevitab ly deprives meaning of i ts p lace in the l iving social process (where mean ing i s a lways permeated with value j udgment) , to its being ontologized and transformed i nto ideal Being divorced from the h istorical process of Becoming.

5. That is how Anton Marty defines evaluation, and it is Marty who gives the most acute and detai led ana lysis of word meani ngs; see h is Untersuchungen zur Grund!egung der a//gemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie ( Hal le , 1 908 ) .

1 06 Marxist Philosophy of Language (Part II

Precisely in order to understan d the h istorica l process of generation of theme and of the mean i ngs implementing theme, i t is essentia l to take socia� eval uation into account . The generative' process of sign ification i n l anguage i s a lways associated with the generation of the evaluative purview of a part icular social group, and the generation of an evaluative purview-in the sen se of the tota l i ty of a l l those th ings that h ave mean i'ng and i mportance for the part icular grou p-is en t ire l y determined by expansion of the economic basis. As the econom ic bas is expands, i t promotes an actual expans ion i n the scope of existence wh ich i s accessible, comprehens ible, and v i ta l to man . The preh i storic h erdsman was virtua l l y i n terested in nothing, and virtua l ly noth ing had any bear i ng on h i m. Man at the end of the epoch of capital i sm i s d i rectly concerned about everyth ing , h is interests reach ing the remotest corners of the earth and ev.en the most · distant stars. This expansion of eva luative purview comes about d ialectica l l y . New aspects of existence, once they a re drawn i nto the sphere of social i nterest, once they make con tact with the h u man word and h u man emotion, do not coexi st peacefu l l y with other e lements of existence previous ly drawn i n, but engage them i n a struggle, reeva luate them, and br ing about a change i n their posit ion with i n the un i ty of the evaluative purv iew. This d ia l ectical generative process is reflected in the generat ion of seman tic properties in l anguage. A new sign ificance emanates from an old one, a nd does so with i ts help, but th i s happens so that the new sign ificance can e nter into contrad ict ion w ith the o ld one and restructure it.

The outcome is a constant struggle of accents in each semantic sector of exi..:;tence. There is nothing in the structure of sign ification that cou l d be said to tran scend the generative process, to be independent of the d ia lectica l expansion of socia l purv iew. Society in process of generation expands its perception of the generative process of existence. There is noth i ng in th is that cou ld be sa id to be abso lutely fixed. And that i s how it happens that mean ing-an abstract, selfidentical e lement-is subsumed u nder theme and torn apart by theme 's l iv ing contradictions so as to return i n the shape of a new meaning with a fixity and self- identity on ly for the wh i l e, j u st as i t had before.

P A R T I l l

TOWARD A HISTORY OF FORMS OF

UTTERANCE IN LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTIONS

(Study in the Application of the Sociological Method to Problems of Syntax)

C H A P T E R 1

Theory of Utterance and Problems of Syntax

The significance 6f problems of syntax. Syntactic categories and utterance as a whole. The problem of paragraphs. Forms of reported speech.

Traditional pr inci p les and methods in l ingu istics do not provide grounds for a productive approach to prob lems of syntax. T hi s is particular ly true of abstract objectiv ism where the trad it ional methods and pr incip les have found their most distinct and most consistent e xpress ion. A l l the fundamenta l categories of modern l ingu i st ic thought, w ith their development stemming primari l y from I ndoEuropean comparative l i nguistics, are thoroughly phonetic and morphological categories. As the product of comparative phonetics and morphology, such thought i s i ncapable of viewing other phenomena of language except through the spectacles of phonetic and morphological forms. I t attempts to v iew syntax in the same way, and th i s has led to the morpho logization of syntactic problems. 1 I n consequence, the study of syntax is in a very bad state, a fact that even the majority of representatives of the I ndo-European school open ly adm it.

Th i s is perfectly u nderstandable once we reca l l the basic features characteri zing perception of a dead and a l ien language-perception governed by the overr iding needs to decipher such a language and i nstruct others in it.2

1 . A s a consequence of this covert tendency to morphologize syntactic form , the study of syntax is dominated by scholastic th in king to a degree u nmatched in any other branch of I i ngu is tics.

2. Added to this are the special aims of comparative l i nguistics: the estab l ishment of a fam i ly of l anguages, of their genetic order, and 'of a protolanguage. These aims fu rther rein force the primacy of phonetics i n l inguistic thought. The prob lem of comparative l inguistics, a very important one i n contemporary ph i losophy of language owing to the massive posit ion i t occupies i n modern l i nguistics, u nfortunate ly had to be left u ntouched within the scope of our study. I t is a problem of great complexity, and even su perficial treatment of it would have necessitated en l arging ou r book considerably.

1 09

1 1 0 Forms of Utterance [Part Ill

Meanwh i le, prob lems of syntax have immense importance for the proper u nd erstand ing of language and its generative process. I n po int of fact, of a l l the form s of language, the syntactic forms are the ones closest to the concrete forms of utterance, to forms of concrete speech performances. A l l syntact ic anal y se s of speech entai l analyzing the l iv i ng body of an utterance and , therefore, powerfu l l y resist relegation to the abstract system of l anguage. Syntactic forms are more concrete than morphological or phonetic forms and are more c lose ly associated with the real cond itions of d i scourse. Therefore, our point of v iew, wh ich deal s with the l i vi ng phenomena of language, must give precedence to syntactic forms over morphol ogical and phonetic ones . But, as we have a l so m ade clear, productive study of .. syntactic forms i s on ly possib l e on the grounds of a fu l ly e laborated theory of utterance. A s long as the u tterance, i n its wholeness, remains terra incognita for the l inguist, it is out of the questio n to speak of a genu ine, concrete, and not scholastic kind of u nderstand ing of syntactic forms.

We have a lready ind icated that the i ssue of who le utterances is a matter very poor l y off in l ingu istics. We can go so far as to say that linguistic thinking has hopelessly lost any sense of the verbal whole. A l inguist fee l s most su re of h imself when operating a t the center of a phrase u n it . T he further he app roache s the peripher ies of speech and thu s the prob lem of the utteran ce as a whole, the more i n secure his position becomes. He has no way at a l l of cop ing with the whole . Not a s ing le one of the categories of l ingu istics i s of any val ue for defin i ng a who le l ingu istic entity .

The fact of the matter i s that a l l l ingu i stic categories, per se, are app l icab l e on ly on the ins ide territory of an utterance. A l l morphological categor ies, for instance, are of value exclusively as regards the constituents of an utterance and cease be ing serviceab le when it comes to defin ing the whole. The same is true of syntactic categories, the category of "sentence," for examp l e : the category of sentence is mere ly a defin it ion of the sentence as a u nit-e lement w ith i n an utterance, and not by any means as a whole entity.

For proof of th is "elementar i ness" i n principle of al l l i ngu i st ic categories, one need on l y take any f in ished uttera nce {relative l y speak i ng, of course , s ince any utterance i s part of a verbal process) consist ing of a s ingle word . I f we apply a l l the categories u sed by l i ngu istics t o t h i s word, it w i l l i mmed iately become apparent that these categories define the word exclus ive ly in terms of a potentia l e lement of speech and that none encompasses the who le utterance, That extra someth ing that converts th is word into a who le utterance remains o utside the scope of the e ntire set of l ingu istic categories and definit ions, Were w e to d evelop th is word i nto a fu l l-fledged sentence by fi l l ing i n a l l the basic con st ituents (fo l lowing the prescription : "not stated , but u nderstood") , we wou ld obta i n a s imp le sentence and not at a l l an utterance. No matter which of the l ingu istic categories we wou ld try to apply to th is sentence, we wou ld never fi nd just what it is that converts i t into a whole utterance. Thus if we remain within the con-

Chap. 7 j Theory of Utterance 1 1 1

fines of the grammatical .categories with which contemporary l ingu istics suppl ies u s, the verbal whole w i l l be forever e l u sive and beyond our grasp. The effect of these l inguistic categories is to draw u s relentlessly away from the utterance and its concrete structure into the abstract system of l anguage.

This fai l u re of l inguistic defin it ion app l ies not on ly to the utterance as a whole entity, but even to u nits w ith i n a monologic u tterance that have some claim to being regarded as comp lete u n its. A case in point invo lves u n its set off from one another i n writ ing by i ndentation that we cal l paragraphs. The syntactic composition of paragraphs is extremely d iverse. Paragraphs may contain anyth ing from a single word to a whole array of comp lex sentences. To say that a paragraph i s supposed to consist of a complete thought amounts to say ing abso l utely noth ing. What is needed, after a l l , is defin it ion from the standpoint of language, and under no circumstances can the notion of "comp lete thought" be regarded a l i ngu i stic definition. Even if it i s true, a s we be l ieve, that l ingu istic defin it ions cannot be complete ly d ivorced from ideologica l defin it ions, sti l l , neither can they be u sed to substitute for one another.

Were we to probe deeper i nto the l ingu i st ic nature of paragraphs, we wou ld surely find that in certain crucial respects paragraphs are analogous to exchanges in dia logue. The paragraph is someth ing l i ke a vitiated dialogue worked into the body of a mono!ogic utterance. Beh ind the device of partit ioning speech in un its, wh ich are termed paragraph s in the ir written form, l ie orientation toward l is· tener or reader and ca lcu lation of the latter' s possib le reactions. The weaker th i s orientation and calcu lation are, the l ess organ ized, as regards paragraphs, our speech w i l l be. The classic types of paragraphs are : quest ion and answer (where question is posed and answer given by the same author) ; supp lementation; antic ipation of possib le objections; exposition of seeming d iscrepancies or i l logica l it ies in one's own argument, and so forth.3 Very commonly, we m ake our own speech or some part of i t (for example, the preced ing paragraph) the object of d iscussion. I n such a case, a sh ift occurs in the speaker's attention from the referent of h i s speech to the speech itself (reflection over one's own words) . B ut even th is sh ift i n verbal i ntentions is conditioned by the addressee's interest. If we cou ld imag ine speech that absolute ly ignored the addressee (an imr;wssib le k ind of speech, of course), we wou ld have a case of speech w ith organic partition reduced to the min imum. Need less to say, we are not th ink ing here of certain special types of partition shaped by the particu lar a ims and purpo ses of specifi c ideological fie lds-for instance, the strophic partition of speech in verse or the

3, We, of course, merely sketch out the problem of paragraphs he re. The assertions we make must sound dogmatic, s ince we present them without proof and appropriate supporting material . Moreover, we have s imp l ified the prob lem, Widely different ways of partitioni ng monologic speech may be conveyed by the written form of paragraphs. Here we mention on ly one of the more i mportant of such types-a type of partition ing that takes the addressee and his active understanding i n to decisive account.


pure ly logica l part i tion of s peech of the type: premi se , conc lus ion; thes is , ant i thesis, and the l i ke.

Our study of the forins of verbal commun ication and the correspond ing forms of whole utterances can shed l ight on the system of paragraph ing and a l l analogous problems. As long as l ingu istics cont inue s to or ient itse lf toward the i solated, m0nologic utterance, It w i l l remain devoid of any organic a pproach to a l l these q uestions. Even treatment of the more e lementary prob le ms of syntax i s poss ib le only o n t h e grounds of verbal commun icat ion . A I I t h e basic categor ies of l ingu i stics shou ld be closely reexamined a long these l i nes. The i nterest i n in tonation that has a risen recent ly i n syntact ic studies and the attempts, i n conj unction with that i n terest, to revise defi n it ions of syntacti c wholes v ia a more subtle and d iffe rent iated considerat ion of in tonation, do not strike us as very productive. They can become productive on ly if they are combined w ith a p roper u nderstand i ng of the bases of verbal communicat ion.

We sha l l now devote the rema in ing chapters of our study to one of the s pecia l problems of syntax.

It is sometimes extremely important to expose some fam i l iar and seem ingly already wel l-stud ied p henomenon to fresh i l l um inat ion by reformu lat ing it as a problem, i .e. , to i l l um inate new aspects of it with the a id of a set of que st ions that have a spec ia l bearing u pon it . I t i s part icular ly i m portan t to do so i n those fie l d s where research has become bogged down i n masses of meticu lous and detai led-but utter ly po int less-descr iptions and c lassificat ions. In the course of such a reformu lation of a problem, it may turn out that what had a ppeared to be a l im ited and secondary phenomenon actua l ly has meaning of fundamental importance for the who le fiel d of study. An apt pos ing of a prob lem can make the phenomenon u nder scrut iny reveal the methodo logica l potent ia l i ties embedded i n it .

We be l ieve that one such h igh ly productive, "pivota l " p henomenon i s that of so-cal led reported speech, i .e., the syntact ic patterns (d i rect d iscourse, i nd i rect d iscourse, quasi-d i rect d iscourse ) , the mod ificat ions of those patterns and the variants of those mod ificat ions, wh ich we f ind i n a language for the reporting of other persons' utterances a nd for incorporat ing those utterances, a s t he utterances of others, into a bound, mono logic context. The extraord inary methodo logica l i nterest i nherent i n these phenomena has gone tota l ly unappreciated to the present day. No one was ab le to d iscern i n th i s i ssue of syntax, i n what superfic ia l examination he ld to be a secondary matter, prob lems of enormous genera l l ingu i st ic and theoretica l s ign ificance .4 It i s precise ly when emp laced in soc io logi cal l y or iented sc ientific concern with language that the whole s ignifi cance, the whole hermeneut ic power of th i s phenomenon i s d isclosed.

4. For example , i n A . M . Peskovskij's study of syntax, this phenomenon has a mere fou r pages d evoted to it. S ee h is Russkij sintaksis v naucnom osvescenii [ Ru ssian Syntax in a S cientific Light) ( 2 n d ed., Moscow, 1 920) , pp . 465 -468; (3rd ed., 1 928, pp. 5 52-5 55 ) .

Chap. 7 j Theory of Utterance 1 1 3

To take the phenomenon of reported speech and postulate it as a problem from a sociological orientation -that is the task we undertake in the remainder of our study. On the material of this problem we sha l l attempt to map out the sociological method in l i ngu i stics. We do not presume to estab l ish major, positive conclusions of a specifica l l y h istorical k ind. The very nature of the material we have chosen, wh i l e adequate for purposes of exposit ing the prob lem and making evident the necessity of treating i t along sociological l ines , i s far from adequate for drawing broad h i storical genera l izations. Such h istorical general izations as do occur are of merel y a prov isional and hypothetica l order.

C H A P T E R 2

Exposition of the Problem of Reported Speech

Definition of reported speech. The problem of active reception of reported speech in connection with the problem of dialogue. The dynamics of the interrelationship of authorial context and reported speech. The "linear style " of reporting speech. The "pictorial style " of reporting speech.

Reported speech is speech with in speech, u tterance with in utterance, and at the same time a l so speech about speech, utterance about utterance.

Whatever we tal k about is only the content of speech, the themes of our words . Such a theme-and i t i s on ly a theme-might be, for i n stance, "nature," "man," or "subord inate clause" (one of the themes of syn tax) . A reported u tterance, however, i s not j u st a theme of speech : it has the capacity of entering on i ts own, so to speak, i nto speech, i n to i ts syntactic makeup, as an i ntegral un i t of the construction. In so doing, it reta ins i ts own constructional and semantic autonomy wh i l e l eaving the speech texture of the context incorporating it perfectly in tact.

What is more, a reported u tterance treated solely as a theme of spee<;h may be characterized only superficial ly at best. If i ts con tent is to be had to the ful l , i t must be made part of a speech construction. When l im i ted to the treatment of reported speech in thematic terms, one can answer questions as to " h ow" and "about what" so-and-so spoke, but "what" he said cou ld be disc losed on ly by way of reporti ng h i s words, if on ly in the form of indirect d i scou rse.

However, once it becomes a constructional un i t in the author's speech, into which it has entered on its own, the reported u tterance concurrently becomes a theme of that speech . I t enters i n to the l atter's thematic d esign precise l y as reported, an u tterance with i ts own autonomous theme: the au tonomous theme thus becomes a theme of a theme.

1 1 5


Reported speech is regarded by the speaker as an u tterance belonging to someone else, an u tterance that was or ig ina l ly tota l ly independent, comp lete i n i ts constru ction, and ly ing outside the given context. Now, i t i s from th i s independent ex i stence that reported speech is transposed i n to an au thorial context wh i l e reta in ing i ts own referentia l content and at l east the rud iments of i ts own l i nguistic i n tegrity, i ts original constructional i ndependence. The author's u tterance, in i n corporating the other u tterance, br ings i n to p l ay syn tactic, sty l istic, and composit ional norms for i ts partial ass im i lation-that is, i ts adaptation to the syntacti c, composit ional, and sty l i st ic design of the author's u tterance, wh i l e preserving ( i f on ly i n rud imentary form) t he i n i tia l autonomy ( i n syntactic, composi tional., and sty l ist ic terms) of the reported u tterance, wh ich otherw i se cou ld not be grasped i n ful L

Certa in mod ifications of i nd i rect d iscourse and, i n particular, of quas i -d i rect d i scourse in modern languages ev ince a d i sposit ion to transpose the reported utterance from the sphere of speech construction to the thematic l eve l-the sphere of content. However, even i n these instances, the d i ssolu tion of the reported u tterance i n the authorial context i s not-nor can i t be-carried out to the end. H ere, too, as ide from ind icat ions of a semantic nature, the re ported utterance perseveres as a construction-the body of the reported speech remains detectab le as a self-suffi c ient u n it.

Thus, what i s expressed in the forms emp loyed for reporting speech i s an active relation of one message to another, and i t i s expressed, moreover, not on the level of the theme but i n the stab i l ized constructional patterns of the l anguage i tse lf.

We are deal i ng here w i th words reacting on words. However, th i s p henomenon i s d istinctly and fu ndamental l y d i fferent from d ialogue. In d ia logue, the l ines of the ind iv idua l participants are grammati cal ly d i sconnected ; they are not i n tegrated i n to one un ified context. I ndeed , h ow cou l d they be? There are no syn. tactic forms with which to build a unity of dialogue. I f, on the other hand, a d ialogue is presented as embedded i n an author ia l context, then we h ave a case of d irect d iscourse, one of the variants of the phenomenon with wh ich we are dealing i n this i n qu i ry.

The attention of l i nguists nowadays i s d rawn more and more to the problem of d ialogue ; i ndeed, it sometimes becomes the i r central concern . 1 This makes

1 . In Russ ian scholarsh ip , on ly one study devoted to the p roblem of d ia logue from the l in guistic po int of view h as appeared : L. P. j ak ubi nski j , "0 dia l ogiceskoj rec i" (On D ia logic Speech ] , Russkaja rec' ( Petrograd , 1 923 ). I n teresting commen ts of a sem i l i ngu istic nature on the problem of d ia logue a�e contained i n V. Vinogradov, Poez1ja A nny A xmatovoj [The Poetry of Anna Axmatova] ( Leningrad , 1 925 ) ; see the chapter "Grimasy d i al oga" [ D ia logue Gesticu lat ions] . In German schol arsh ip , th e problem is cu rrently under i n tensive treatment by the Voss l e r school . See, especia l ly , Gertraud Lerch, "Die u ne igent l iche d i rekte Rede, Festschrift fiJr Karl Vossler ( 1 922 ) .

Chap. 2} Problem of Reported Speech 1 1 7

perfect ly good sense, for, as we now know, the real un i t of language that i s implemented in speech (Sprache a/s Rede ) i s not the ind iv idual, i solated monol ogic u tterance, but the i nteraction of at least two utterances-in a word, dialogue. The productive study of dia logue presupposes, h owever, a more profound investigation of the forms u sed in reported speech, s ince these forms reflect basic and constant tendencies i n the active reception of other speakers ' speech, and it i s this reception, after al l , that i s fundamental al so for d ia logue.

How, in fact, i s another speaker's speech rece ived ? What i s the mode of existence of another's utterance in the actua l , i n ner-speech consciousness of the recip ient? How is it manipu lated there, and what proces s of orientation w i l l the subseguent speech of the recip ient h imself have u ndergone in regard to i t?

What we have in the forms of reported speech i s precise ly an objective document of th i s reception . Once we have l earned to decipher i t, th is docu ment provides us with information, not abou t accidental and mercurial su bjective psychol ogical processes in the "sou l " of the recipient, but abou t steadfast social tendencies in an active reception of other speakers' speech, tendencies that have crysta l l ized into l anguage forms . The mechan i sm of th i s process i s located , not in the individual sou l , but in society. It is the fu nction of society to select and to make grammatical (adapt to the grammatical structure of i ts language) j u st those factors in the active and evaluative reception of u tterances that are social l y vital and constant and, hence, that are grounded in the economic existence of the particular commun ity of speakers.

There are, of course, essentia l d ifferences between the active receptio n of another 's speech and its transmiss ion in a bound context. These differences shou l d not be overlooked . Any type of transmiss ion-the cod ified variety in particu lar-pursues special aims, appropriate to a story, legal proceed ings, a scholar ly polemic, or the l i ke. Furthermore, transmission takes i n to account a th i rd person-th e person to whom the reported utterances are be ing transmitted . This provision for a third person is especia l ly important in that i t strengthens the impact of organized social forces on speech reception . When we e ngage in a l i ve d ialogue with someone, i n the very act of deal ing with the speech received from our partner, we usual ly omit those words to which we are answeri ng. We repeat them on ly in special and exceptional circumstances, when we want to check the correctness of our u nderstand ing, or trip our partner up w i th h i s words, or the l i ke . Al l these specifi c factors, wh ich may affect transmiss ion, must be taken i n to account. But the essence of the matter i s not changed thereby. The c ircumstances under which transmi ssion occurs and the aims it pursues mere ly contri bute to the imp lementation of what is al ready l odged in the tendencies of active reception by one's innerspeech consciousness. And these tendencies, for their part, can on ly d evelop with in the framework of the forms u sed to report speech in a given language.

We are far from cla iming that syntactic forms-for instance those of indirect or d irect d iscourse-d i rectly and unequ ivocal l y express the tendencies and forms

1 1 8 Forms of Utterance (Part Ill

of an active, eva luative reception of another 's u tterance. Our speech reception does not, of course, operate ·d irectly i n the forms of i nd i rect and d i rect d i scourse. These forms are on ly standardized patterns for reporting speech . But, on the one hand, these patterns and their mod ifications cou l d have arisen and taken shape on ly i n accordance with the governing tendencies of speech reception ; on the other hand, on

.ce these patterns have assumed shape and function

in the l anguage, they in turn exert an influence, regul ating or i nh ib it ing in their development, on the tendencies of an eva luative reception that operate wi th in the channel prescr i be d by the existing forms .

Language reflects, not subjective, psychological vaci l lations, but stabl e social i n terrelationsh ips among speakers. Various l ingu istic forms of these i n terrelationsh i ps , and var ious mod ifications of these forms, preva i l in d ifferent languages at d ifferent periods of time with i n d ifferent social groups and u nd er the effect of d ifferent contextual a ims. What th i s attests to is the rel ative strength or weakness of those tendencies in the social i n terorientation of a commun i ty of speakers, of which the given l i ngu i stic forms themselves are stab i l ized and age-old crysta l l i za· t ions. Shou l d it happen that circu mstances consp i re to d i sparage some particu l ar form (for example, certa in modifications of i nd i rect d i scourse, such as the "dogmatic-rationa l i st ic" type i n the modern Russian nove l ) , then this may be taken as evidence that the dominant tendencies in u nderstand i ng and eval uating the messages to be reported are not properly man ifested by that parti cu lar formthat i t i s too unaccommodati ng, too hampering.

Everyth ing v ita l i n the eval uative reception of another's u tterance, everyth ing of any ideo log ica l va lue, i s expressed in the materia l of i nner speech. After al l , it i s not a mute, wordless creature that receives such an u tterance, but a human being fu l l of inner words. All his experiences-h i s so-cal led apperceptive background-exist encoded in h is inner speech, and only to that extent do they come into contact with speech received from outside. Word comes i n to contact with word. The context of th i s i nner speech i s the l ocale i n which another's u tterance i s received, comprehended, and evaluated ; it i s where the speaker's active orientation takes p lace. This active i nner-speech reception proceeds i n two d i rections: first, the received u tterance i s framed w i th in a context of factual com mentary (coincid i ng in part with what is cal led the apperceptive background of the words) , the v i sual signs of expression, and so on ; second, a rep ly (Gegenrede) i s prepared. Both the preparation of the reply (internal retort) and the factual commentary2 are organi ca l l y fused in the un i ty of active reception , and these can be iso lated on ly in abstract terms. Both l i nes of reception fi nd the i r expression, are objectified, in the �·au thoria l " context su rround ing the reported speech . Regard l ess of the functional orientation of the given context-whether it i s a work of fiction, a po lem ical articl e, a defense attorney's summation, or the l i ke-we clear ly d iscern

2. The term is borrowed from L. P. ) ak u binskij (see the artic le c ited above) .

Chap. 2} Problem of Reported Speech 1 1 9

these two tendencies i n i t : that of commenting and that of retorting. Usua l ly one of them is dominant. Between the reported speech and the reporting context, dynamic relations of h igh comp lex ity and tens ion are in force. A fai lure to take these into account makes i t impossib le to understand any form of reported speech.

Earl ier investigators of the forms of reported speech committed the fundamental error of virtua l ly divorcing the reported speech from the reportin g context. That exp lains why their treatment of these forms is so static and i nert (a characterization appl i cable to the whole field of syntactic study in general ) . Meanwh i le, the true object of inqu i ry ought to b e precisely the dynamic i n terre lationsh ip of these two factors, the speech be ing reported ( the other person's speech) and the speech doing the report ing ( the. author's speech ) . After a l l , the two actua l ly do exist, function, and take shape on ly in the i r interrelation, and not on their own, the one apart from the other. The reported speech and the reporting context are but the terms of a dynamic in terre lationsh ip . This dynamism reflects the dynamism of social i n terorientation in verbal i deological communication between peop le (with in, of course, the vital and steadfast tendencies of that communication ) .

I n what direction may the dynamism o f the interrelationsh ip between the authorial and the reported speech move?

We see i t moving in two basic directions. In the first p lace, the basic tendency in reacting to reported speech may be

to maintain its integrity and authenticity ; a language may strive to forge h ard and fast boundaries for reported speech . I n such a case, the patterns and their mod ifications serve to demarcate the reported speech as cl early as poss ib l e, to screen it from penetration by the author's intonations, and to condense and enhance i t s individual l i ngu istic characteristics.

Such i s the first d i rection. Wi th i n i ts scope we must r igorously defi ne to what extent a given l anguage commun ity differentiates the social reception of the speech to be reported and to what extent the expressiveness, the sty l i st ic qual it ies of speech, its lex ical coloration, and so forth, are fel t as d istinct and soci a l l y important values. I t may be that another's speech i s received a s one who l e b lock of social behavior, as the speaker's indiv is ible, conceptual posi tion-in wh ich case on ly the "what" of speech is taken in and the "how" is l eft outside recep tion. This content conceptual izing, and ( in a l i nguistic sense) depersonal izing way of receiving and reporting speech predominates in O ld and M idd le French ( i n the l atter with a considerab le deve lopment of the depersonal iz ing mod ifications of ind i rect d i scourse) .3 The same type is found in the l iterary monuments of O ld

3 . See below concerning special features o f Old French i n this connection. O n reported speech in Middle French, see Gertraud Lerch, "Die. uneigentliche d irekte Rede;' in Festschrift fur Karl Vossler (1922), pp. 1 12ff, and, also, K. Vossler, Frankreichs Kultur im Spiegel seiner Sprachentwicklung (1913).

1 20 Forms of Utterance (Part Ill

Russian-though h ere the pattern of i nd i rect d iscourse i s a lmost comp letely lack i ng. The dominant type i n th i s case was that of the depersonal ized ( i n the l in gu i stic sense) d irect d i sc�u rse.4

Within the scope covered by the first d i rection; we must also define the. degree of authorita r ian reception qf an utterance and the degree of its ideo log ica l assurance-its dogmatism. The more dogmatic an u tterance, the less leeway permitted between truth and fal sehood or good and bad in its reception by those who comprehend and eva luate, the greater w i l l be the depersona l izat ion that the forms of reported speech wi l l u ndergo. I n point of fact, g iven the s i tuat ion in w h ich al l socia l val u e j udgments are d ivided into wholesale, clearcut a l ternatives, we have s imp ly no room for a positive and observant attitude toward a l l t hose factors wh ich give another speaker's u tterance i ts i nd iv i dual character. Author itarian dogmatism of that type characterizes M idd l e French and O l d Russ ian writ ings. The 1 7th century in France and the 1 8th centu ry in Russ ia were characterized by a rationa l ist ic type of dogmatism that l i kewise tended to curb the i nd iv idua l ization of reported speech , though in d ifferent ways. I n the sphere of rationa l ist ic dogmatism, the dominant forms were the content-analyzing mod ificat ions of i nd i rect d i scourse and the rhetorical modifications of d irect d i scourse.5 Here the exp l i ci tness and i nv io labi l i ty of the boundaries between author ia l and reported speech reach the u tmost l im its.

We may cal l th i s first d i rection in which the dynami sm of the i nteror ien tation between reporting and reported speech moves the linear style (der lineare stil) of speech reporting ( borrowing the· term from Wolffl in ' s study of art) . The bas ic tendency of the l i near sty l e i s to construct c lear-cu t, external contour s for reported speech , whose own i nternal ind iv idua l i ty is m in imized. Wherever the ent i re context d i sp lays a comp lete sty l istic homogeneity ( in wh ich the author and his characters a l l speak exactly the same l anguage ) , the grammatical and compositional man ipu l ation of reported speech ach ieves a maximal compactness and p lastic re l ief.

The processes we observe i n the second d i rection in wh ich the dynamism of the in terorientation between reporting and reported speech moves are exactly opposite in nature. Language dev ises means for infi ltrating reported speech with authoria l retort and commentary in deft and subtl e ways. The reporting context strives to b reak down the self-contained compactness of the reported speech , to resolve it, to obl i te rate i ts boundaries. We m ay cal l th is sty l e of speech reporting pictorial. I ts tendency i s to ob l i terate the preci se, external contours of

4. For i nstance, in 5/ovo o po/ku !goreve [ The Lay of I gor's Campaign] , there is not a singl e i nstance of i nd i rect d iscou rse despite the abundance of other speakers' words i n this monument. I nd irect d iscou rse in the Old Russian chronicles is extremely rare. Reported speech is i ncorporated everywhere as a compact, impermeab le b l ock with l i t t le or no i nd ividual ization .

5 . I nd i rect d iscou rse is vi rtua l ly nonexistent in R ussian neoclassicism.

Chap. 2] Problem of Reported Speech 1 2 1

reported speec h ; a t the same t ime, th e reported speech i s ind iv idual ized to a . much greater d egree-the tang i b i l i ty of the var ious facets of a n u tteran ce may be subtly d ifferentiated . T h i s time the reception inc l udes not on ly th e referenti al mean i ng of the u tterance, the statement it makes, but also al l the l i ngu i st ic pecu l i ar i ties of i ts verbal i m p l ementation .

A n u m ber of d iverse types may be p l aced with in the scope of th i s second d i rection . The i m petus for weake n i ng the per ipheries of the u tterance may origi nate i n the author's context, in w h i ch case that con text permeates the reported speech with i ts own i n tonation-hu mor, i rony, l ove or h ate, e n th usiasm or scorn. T h i s type characterizes th e Renai ssance ( especia l ly i n the French l anguage) , the end of the 1 8 th century, and v irtua l ly the entire 1 9th century. I t i nvolves a severe d eb i i i tat ion of both the authoritarian and the rationa l i stic dogmatism of u tterance. Social value j udgments were the n ruled by a relativism supp ly ing extremely favorable grou nds for a pos itive a n d sens i tive recept ion o f a l l i n d ividua l i zed verbal nuances o f though t, bel i ef, feel i ng. These grou nds eve n e ncouraged the growth of a "decorative" tren d i n treat ing reported speech, lead i ng sometimes to a neglect of th e mean i n g o f a n u tterance i n favor of i ts "color"-for exam ple, i n the R u ssian " natu ral schoo l : " I ndeed, i n Gogo ! ' ' s case, characters' speech sometimes l oses a lmost a l l i t s referentia l meani ng'and becomes d ecor i nstead , on a par w i th cloth i ng, appearance, furn ish i ngs, e tc.

A rather d i fferent type i s a l so poss ib le : the verbal dominant may sh ift to the reported speech, wh ich i n that case becomes more forcefu l and m ore active than the authorial context framing it . T h i s time the reported speech begins to resolve, as i t were, th e reporting con text, in stead of the oth e r way around. The au thorial context l oses th e greater object iv ity it normal ly commands in com p arison with reported speech. I t begins to perceive i tse lf- and even recogn izes i tself-as su bj ective, "other person 's" speech . I n works of fiction, this i s often exp ressed compositiona l ly by th e appearan ce of a narrator who repl aces the author ( i n the usual sense of the word) . The narrator's speech i s j ust as i nd iv idual ized, col orfu l , and nonauthoritative as is the speech of the characters. The narrator ' s posit ion is fl u i d , and in the m ajor ity of cases he uses the language of the pei)Dnages dep icted in the work. He ca nnot bring to bear agai nst their su bjective position a more authori tative and objective worl d . S u ch is th e nature of n arrat ion in Dostoevsk i j , And rej Belyj , Remizov, Sologub, and m ore recen t R u ssian wr iters of prose.6

6 . There is a fair ly l arge l i te ratu re on the role of the narrator i n the nove l . The basic work. up to the present has been : K. Friedmann, Die Rolle des Erzdhlers in der Epik ( 1 91 0 ) . I n Russia i t was t h e "formalists" who aroused interest in the prob lem ·of t h e narrator. V . V . Vinogradov defines narrator's speech in Gogo! ' as "zigzagging from the author to t h e characters." (see his Gogo/' i natural'naja skola [ Gogo! ' and the Natural School ] ) . According to Vi nogradov, the l anguage sty l e of Dostoevskij 's narrator in Dvojnik [ The Doub l e ] occu-

1 22 Forms of Utterance [Part Ill

Whi le the incursion of an authorial context into reported speech is typical of speech reception in the moderate variety of both idealism and col l ectivism, the d i ssolut ion of the author ial context testifies to a relativistic ind ividual i sm in speech reception. I n the l atter, the subj ective reported utterance stand s in oppos i tion to a commenting a n? retort ing authoria l context that recogn izes i tself to be equal ly s ubj ective.

The entire second d i rection is character ized by an exceptiona l deve lopment of mixed forms of speech reporti ng, inc lud ing quasi ind irect d i scourse and, in particular, quasi d irect d i scourse, i n wh ich the boundaries of the message reported are maximal l y weakened . Also, among mod ifications of ind i rect and d irect d iscourse, the predominant ones are those wh ich show the greatest f lexib i l ity and are the most suscept ib le to permeation by authoria l tendencies (for example, d i ssem inated d irect d iscourse, texture-a nalyzing forms of i ndirect d iscourse, and others) .

I nquiry i nto a l l these tendencies shown i n the actively responsive recept ion of speech m ust take i nto account every pecu l iar i ty of the l i ngu i stic phenomena u nder scrut iny . The teleology of the author ia l context is especia l l y important. I n th i s respect, it is verbal art that most keen ly imp lements a l l the permutations in sociol i ngual i nterorientat ion. As d i st inct from verbal art, rhetoric, owing simply to i ts teleology, i s less free in i ts hand l i ng of other speakers' utterances. Rhetoric requ i res a d isti nct cogn izance of the boundar i es of reported speech. I t i s marked b y an acute awareness o f property rights to words and b y a fast id iousness in matters of authentic ity.

pies a l i ke pos i t ion w i th respect to the style of the hero, Gol jad k in . See V inogradov's "S ti l ' peterburgskoj poemy ,Dvojnik " [The sty le of t h e Petersburg epic, The Double] , Dostoevskij, ed i ted by Do l i n in , l , 1 923 , pp . 2 39, 241 (the resemblance between the l anguage of the narrator and the l anguage of the hero had al ready been noted by Be l inski j ) . B . M. Enge l 'gardt poi n ts out q u i te correctly that "one cannot find any so-ca l l ed objective d escr ipt ion of the external world in Dostoevskij . . . . Owing to this fact there arose i n the l i te rary work of art a mu ltistratifi cat ion of real i ty that has led to a u n i q ue d issol u tion of be ing i n the case of Dostoevsk i j 's successors ." Engel 'gardt sees evidence of this "disso lu tion of be ing" in Sologub's Melkij bes [Petty D emon ] and A. Be l yj 's Petersburg. See B . M . Engel 'gard t , " l deologiceski j roman Dostoevskogo" [ Dostoevski j 's Ideo logical Novel ] , Dostoevskij, edi ted by Do l i n in , I I , 1 92 5 , p . 94. Cf. Bal l y 's d escription of Zola 's sty l e :

Personne p l u s que Zol a ·n 'a use e t abuse du procede qu i consiste a fai re passer taus J es evenements par le cerveau de ses personnages, a ne d ecr ir Jes paysages que par l eu rs yeux, a n ' e noncer d es id ees persone l les q u e par l eu r bouche . Dans ses dern iers romans, ce n 'est p l us u ne man iere: c 'est u n t ic, c 'est une obsessi on . Dans Rome, pas u n coin d e I a v i l l e eternel l e , pas une scene q u ' i l ne vo ie par l es yeux d e son abbe, pas une i dee sur Ia rel ig ion qu ' i l ne formu le par son i n termediare [ quoted from E. Lorek , Die "Er!ebte Rede, " p. 64 ] .

An inte rest ing article d evoted to the p roblem of the narrator is l l ' ja Gruzdev's "0 priemax xudozestvennogo povestvovani ja" [On Devices of Narration in Literary Art ] , Zapiski Peredvfznogo Teatra (Petrograd , 1 922 ), Nos. 40 , 4 1 , 42. Nowhere, however, is the l i nguist ic problem of reported speech formu l ated i n these stud ies.

------ - - -------------- - - ----- - - - - - -

Chap. 2] Problem of Reported Speech 1 23

J ud icial language intrinsical ly assumes a clear-cut d i screpancy between the verbal subjectiv ism of the parties to a case and the objectiv i ty of the courtbetween a ru l ing from the bench and the entire apparatus of judicial-i n terpretat ive and investigative commentary. Pol it ical rhetoric presents an analogous case. I t is important to determ ine the specific gravity of rhetorical speech, j ud icial or po l i tical , i n the l i ngu i stic consciousness of the given social group at a given time. Moreover, the position that a specimen of speech to be reported occupies on the social h i erarchy of val ues must a l so be taken i n to account. The stronger the feel i ng of h ierarch ical eminence in another's u tterance, the more sharply defined w i l l its boundaries be, and the less accessib le w i l l it be to penetration by retorting and commenting tendencies from outside. So, for instance, it was possible within the neoc lassical sphere for the low genres to d i sp l ay strik i ng deviations from the rational i stic, dogmatic, l i near style of speech reporting. I t is symptomatic that quasi-d i rect d i scourse achieved i ts first powerfu l development precise l y t here-in the fab les and tales of La Fontaine.

I n summarizing a l l we have said of the various poss ib le tendencies i n the dynamic interre l ationsh ip of reported and reporting speech , we may mark out the fol lowing chronolog'i cal sequence:

1 . Authoritarian dogmatism, characterized by the l i near, impersonal, monumental s ty le of reported speech transmission in the M idd le Ages;

2. Rationalistic dogmatism, with i ts even more pronounced l i near sty l e in the 1 7th and 1 8 th centuries;

3. Realistic and critical individualism, with i ts p ictorial style and its tendency to permeate reported speech with authorial retort and commentary (end of the 1 8th century and ear ly 1 9th century) ; and f ina l ly

4. Relativistic individualism, with its decomposition of the authorial context ( the present period ) .

Language exists not in and o f itself b u t only in conj u . :ction with the i nd ividual structure of a concrete u tterance. I t is sol e ly through the utterance that language makes contact with commun ication, is imbued with its vital power, and becomes a real i ty . The cond i tions of verbal commun ication, i ts forms, and i ts methods of d ifferentiation are d ictated by the social and economic prerequ is ites of a given period . These changing socio l i ngual cond i tions are what in fact determ ines those changes in the forms of reported speech b rough t out in our analysis. We wou ld even venture to say that in the forms by which language registers the impressions of received speech and of the speaker the h istory of the changing types of socioideo logical commun ication stands out in particular ly bold rel ief.

C H A P T E R 3

Indirect Discourse, Direct Discourse, and 'fileir Modifications

Patterns and modifications; grammar and stylistics. The general nature of speech reporting in Russian. The pattern of indirect discourse. The referential-analytical modification of indirect discourse. The impressionistic modification of indirect discoUrse. The pattern of direct discourse. Preset direct discourse. Particularized direct discourse. Anticipated, disseminated, and concealed direct discourse. The phenomenon of speech interference. Rhetorical questions and exclamations. Substituted direct discourse. Quasi-direct discourse.

We have now outl i ned the basic d i rections of the dynamism character izing the interorientation of the author's and another person ' s speech. Th i s dynamism finds i ts concrete l i ngu istic expression in the patterns of reported speech and in the mod ifications of those patterns-which may be sai d to be the ind ices of the balance between reporting and reported messages ach ieved at any given time in the development of a language.

Let us now turn to a brief characterization of these patterns and their princ ipal modifications from the standpoint of the tendencies a lready poi n ted out.

F irst, a few words must be sai d about the re lation of the mod ifications to the pattern. This relation is analogou s to the relation of the actual ity of rhythm to the abstraction of meter. A pattern may be imp lemented only in the form of i ts specifi

,c modification. Changes with i n mod ifications bu i l d u p over per iods of

t ime, whether centuries or decades, and new hab its of active orientation toward the speech to be reported take ho ld-to crysta l l ize later as regu lar l i ngu i stic formations i n syntactic patterns. The posit ion of the modifications is on the borderl ine between grammar and styl istics. From time to time, d isputes ar ise as to whether a given form of speech transmiss ion is a pattern or a mod ification, a

1 25

1 26 Forms of Utterance {Part Ill

matter of grammar or a matter of style . An example of such a d i spute was the one waged over the question of q uasi-d irect d iscourse in French and German, w i th Bal l y taking one s ide an d Kalepky and Lorek the other . Ba l l y refused to recogn ize a l egit imate syntact ic pattern in q uas i-d i rect d i scourse and regarded it

· as noth ing more than a sty l ist ic modification . The same argument might be appl ied to quasi i nd i rect d iscou rse in F rench . F rom our point of v iew, the demar· cation of a strict borderl ine between grammar and sty le, between a grammatical pattern and i ts sty l i st ic modificat ion, i s methodologica l l y u nproductive and in fact i mposs i b le. Th is borderl i n e i s fl u id becau se of the very mode of existence of language, in wh ich, s imu ltaneously, some forms are u ndergo ing grammaticization wh i l e others are undergo ing degrammaticization. It is p recise l y these ambiguous, border l i ne forms that are of the greatest interest to the l ingu ist : this is pre· cise!y where the developmenta l tendencies of a . language may be d iscerned. 1

We sha l l keep our brief characterization of the pattern s of d irect and ind irect d iscourse confi ned to the standard Russian l iterary language, and even so, with no i n tention of cover ing a l l their poss ib le modificat ions. We are here concerned exc lus ive ly with the methodological aspect of the problem.

In R ussian, a s i s we l l known, the syntactic patterns for reporting speech are very poorl y developed. Aside from quasi-d i rect d i scou rse (which in Ru ssian lacks c lear-cut syntactic markers, as i s a l so true of German) , we have two patterns : d i rect and ind irect d i scourse. But these two patterns are not so strict ly de l im ited from one another as in other l anguages. The ha l lmarks of ind i rect d iscou rse are weak, and in col loquia l language they eas i ly comb ine with those of d i rect d is· course.2

A lack of consecutio temporum and the subju nctive mood deprives i nd i rect discourse in Ru ssian of any d i sti nctive character of its own. Thus there is no

1 . One very frequent ly hears Vossler and the Vosslerites accused of concern i ng them· se lves more w i th sty l istics than with l i ngu istics i n the strict se nse. A ctua l ly , the Vossler school d i rects its i nterest io issues on the border between the two, in fu l l rea l ization of the methodological and heuristic sign ificance of such issues; a nd there in l ie the great advantages of this school, as we see it. Regrettab ly, the Vossler ites, as we know, focus pr imary attention on subject ive psychological factors and on i nd iv idua l intentions in their exp lanat ions of these phenomena. Due to th is fact, language does at t imes become a mere playth ing of i nd ividual taste.

2. I n many other languages, i nd irect d iscourse has d ist i nct syntactic different iation from d irect d iscourse ( special usage of tenses, moods, conj u n ct ions, persona l forms) , re· suit ing in a special , complex pattern for the i nd irect reporting of speech. I n Russia n , however, even those few d istingu ish ing marks we have j ust mentioned very often lose their effect, so that ind irect d iscourse m ixes with d irect d iscourse. For insta nce, in Gogol"s Revizor [The I nspector Genera l ] , Osip says: "T he i n nkeeper said that I won ' t g ive you any· thing to eat u nt i l you pay for what you've had. ( Example take n from Peskovsk ij , R ussian Syntax ( 3rd ed ) , p. 5 53, w i th Peskovskij's ital ics).

Chap. 3j Indirect and Direct Discourse 1 27

favorable ground for the wide development of certain mod ifications that are part icular ly important and i n terest ing from our poi n t of v iew. On the whole, one must acknowledge the u nqua l ified pr imacy of d i rect d i scourse i n Russian. The h istory of the Russian language knows no Cartes ian, rationa l istic period, d ur ing wh ich an objective "authoria l context, " self-confident in its power of reason, had analyzed and d issected the referentia l structure of the speech to be reported and created complex and remarkab le devices for the i ndirect transmission of speech .

A l l these pecu l iarit ies of the R ussian language create an extremely favorable s ituation for the p ictoria l styl e of speech reporting-though, granted, of a somewhat loose and flaccid k ind, that i s, without that sense of boundaries forced and resistance overcome that one fee l s in other languages. An extraordinary ease of i nteraction and in terpenetration between reporting and reported speech is the ru l e. This is a c ircumstance con nected wi th the neg l igible ro le ( i n the h istory of the Russian l i terary l anguage) p layed by rhetor ic , with its c lear-cut l i near style of hand l ing u tterances to be reported and its wholesale, but d i stinct and s inglem inded, i n tonation.

Let us first of al l descri be the characteristics of i ndirect d i scourse, the pattern least elaborated i n Russian. And let u s begin with a brief cri ticism of the c laims made by the grammarian, A . M . Peskovski j . After noti ng that forms of i nd i rect d i scourse in Russian are u nderdeveloped, Peskovsk ij makes the fo l lowing exceedingly pecu l iar d eclarat ion : 3

To convince oneself that t h e R ussian language i s natural ly uncongen ia l t o reporting indirect speech, one need on ly try rendering any p iece of d irect d iscourse, even j u st slightly exceed ing a simple statement, into ind irect d iscourse. For examp le: The A ss, bowing his head to the ground , says to the N ightingale that not bad, that no kidding, it's nice listening to him sing, but that what a shame he doesn 't know their Rooster, that he could sharpen up his singing quite a bit, if he 'd take some lessons from him.

If Peskovskij had performed the same experiment of mechan ica l ly tran sposing d irect d iscourse into ind i rect d iscourse, u si ng the F rench language and observing on ly the grammatical ru les, he wou l d have had to come to exact l y the same conc lusions. I f, for i n stance, he had a ttempted trans lating into forms of ind i rect d iscourse La Fontaine's u se of d i rect d i scou rse or even of quasi-d i rect d i scour se in h i s fables ( in wh ich i nstances of the latter form are very common} , the resu lts obtained wou l d have been j ust as grammatica l l y correct and styl i stica l ly i nadm issible a s in the example given . And th i s wou ld have happened despite the fact

3. 1bid., p, 5 54. [The " piece of d irect d iscourse" Peskovskij uses for h is examp le is from the wel l-k nown fab le by I van K ry lov, The A ss and the Nightingale, I n the fable, the A ss says to the N ightingale, after the latter's demonstration of h is art: "Not bad! No k idding, it's n ice l istening to you s ing. B ut what a shame you don't k now our Rooster! You could sharpen up your s ing ing qu ite a bit if you'd take some lessons from h im ."

.Peskovskij makes a p urely me

chanical rend ition of this statement in ind irect d iscourse. The result is awkward; i ndeed, impossible. The Engl ish translation a ims at mirroring this resu lt.-Trans/otors.]

i I


that quasi-d i rect d iscourse in F rench is extreme ly close to i nd irect d iscourse (the same sh ift of tenses and persons occurs in both) . There are whole sets of words, i d ioms, and turns of speech appropriate in d i rect and quasi-d i rect d iscourse that wou ld sound weird if transposed into an i nd i rect d i scourse construct ion .

Peskovskij makes a typical grammarian 's error. H is mechanica l , pure ly grammatical mode of trans lat ing reported speech from one pattern in to another, without the appropriate styl i sti c reshaping, i s nothing but a bogus and high ly object ionable way of manufactur ing c lassroom exercises in grammar. Th i s sort of imp lementation of the patterns of speech reporting has noth ing even remotely to do with their real ex istence in a language. The patterns express some tendency i n one person ' s active reception of another's speech. Each pattern- treats the message to b e reported i n i ts own creative fash ion , fol l owing the specific d irection proper to that pattern a lone. i f, at some given stage in its deve lopment, a language habitual l y perceives another's utterance as a compact, i nd iv i sib le, fixed, impenetrab le whole , then that language w i l l command no other pattern than that of prim itive, i nert d irect d i scourse (the monumental sty le ) . It is exact l y th i s conception of the immutab i l ity of an u tterance and the abso lute l i teral ness of its transm ission that Peskovskij asserts i n his experiment; yet, at the same t ime, he tries to apply the pattern of i nd i rect d iscourse. The resu l ts of that exper iment do not by any means prove that the R u ssian language i s natu ra l ly u ncongenia l to reporting ind i rect speech. O n the contrary, they prove that, however weak l y developed i ts pattern, ind i rect d i scourse in R ussian has enough character o f i ts own so that not every case of d irect d i scou rse lends itself to l itera l translat ion .4

Th i s s i ngu lar experiment of Peskovsk i j ' s makes evident h i s comp l ete fai l u re to recognize the l i ngu istic essence of ind i rect d i scourse. T hat essence consists in the analytica l transm i ss ion of someone's speech . An anal ys is s imu l taneous with and inseparab le from transmission constitutes the ob l igatory ha l lmark of al l modifications of ind irect d iscourse whatever. They may differ only with respect to the degree and d i rection of the analysis .

The analytical tendency of ind i rect d iscourse is manifested by the fact that a l l the emotive-affective features of speech, in so far as they are expressed not in the content but in the form of a message, do not pass intact into ind irect d iscourse. They are trans lated from form into content, and on ly in that shape do they enter into the construction of ind i rect d i scourse, or are sh ifted to the main c lause as a commentary modifying the verbum dicendi.

Thus, for example , the d irect utterance, "Wel l d one! What an ach ievement !" cannot be registered in ind i rect d iscourse as , "He sa id that wel l done and what an ach ievement." Rather, we expect: "He said that that had been done very we l l and was a real ach ievement." Or : "He said, de l ighted ly, that that had been done

4. This error of Peskovskij 's which we have been examin ing once again testifies to the methodological pern ic iousness of d ivorc ing grammar and sty l istics.

·

Chap. 3] Indirect and Direct Discourse 1 29

wel l and was a real ach ievement." A l l the various e l l ipses, omissions, and so on , possib le in d irect d iscou rse on emotive-affective grounds, are not tol erated by the analyzing tendencies of ind i rect d i scourse and can enter ind irect d iscourse on ly if developed and fi l led out. The Ass's exclamation, "Not bad ! " in Pe�kovski j ' s example cannot be mechan ica l l y registered in ind i rect d iscourse as: " H e says that not bad . . . . " but on ly a s " H e says that i t was not bad . . . . " or even "He says that the nighti ngale sang not badly."

Neither can the " no k i dd ing" be mechanica l ly regi stered in ind irect d i scourse, nor can "What a shame you don ' t know . . . " be rendered as, "but that what a shame he doesn ' t know . . . "

I t is obvious that the same impossib i l ity of a mechan ical transposit ion from d i rect i nto ind i rect d i scourse a l so- appl ies to the original form of any composit iona l or compositional- i nflectional means that the speaker being reported u sed in order to convey h i s i ntention . Thus the compositional and i nflectional p ecul iarit ies of interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative sentences are re l i nqu i shed in ind i rect d iscou rse, and their identification depends so le ly on the conten t.

I nd i rect d iscourse " h ears" a message differently; it actively receives and bri ngs to bear in transmission d ifferent factors, d ifferent aspects of the message than do the other patterns. That i s what makes a mechanical , l i teral transposition of utterances from other patterns i nto ind irect d i scourse impossible. It i s possible only in instances in which the d i rect utterance i tself was somewhat ana lyt ica l ly constructed-insofar as d irect d iscourse w i l l tolerate such anal ysis. A nalys is i s the heart and sou l o f i nd i rect d i scourse.

A c loser scrut iny of Peskov-skij ' s "experiment" reveals that the lex ica l t i n t of expressions such as "not bad" and " sharpen up" does not fu l ly harmonize with the analytical spir it of ind i rect d iscourse. Such expressions are too co lorfu l ; they not on ly convey the exact meaning of what was said but they a lso suggest the manner of speech (whether i ndividual or typologica l ) of the Ass as protagon ist. One wou ld l i ke to replace them with a synonym ( such as "good" or "we l l " and " perfect/h is s inging/") or, if these "catchy" terms are to be retai ned i n i nd i rect d i scou rse, at least to enc lose them w ith i n quotation marks. If we were to read the resu lt ing case of ind irect d i scourse aloud, we would speak the express ions with in quotat ion marks somewh at d ifferently, as if to give notice through our intonation that they are taken d i rectly from another perso n 's speech and that we want to keep our d i stance.

Here we come up against the necessity of dist inguishing between the two d irections which the analyzing tendency of indirect d i scourse can take, and, accordingly, the necessity of disti ngu i sh i ng its two basic mod ifications.

The analysis invo lved i n a construction of ind i rect d iscourse may i ndeed go i n two d i rections or, more precisely, it may fQcus attention on two fu ndamenta l l y different objects. An utterance may be received as a certain particu lar ideational posit ion of the speaker. I n that case, its exact referential makeup (what the

1 30 Forms of Utterance [Part Iff

speaker said) i s transm itted ana lytica l ly by the agency of the ind i rect d i scourse construction . Thus in th� examp le we have been us ing, it is possib l e to transmit precisely the referential meani ng of the A ss's eval uation of the N ightinga le ' s s i nging. On the other hand, an utterance may be received and analytica l l y tran sm i tted as an expression chiJ.racteriz ing not on ly the referent but a l so, or even more so, the speaker h imse lf-his manner of speech ( i nd iv idua l , or typo logica l , o r both ) ; h i s state of mind as expressed not i n the content but i n the forms of h is speech (d isconnectedness, pauses between words, expressive i ntonat ion, and the l i ke) ; h i s ab i l ity or lack of ab i l ity to express h imse lf, and so on .

These two objects of analys is by the transmi ss ion of ind i rect d i scourse are profound ly and fundamenta l l y d ifferent. I n the one case, mean ing is d issected i n to its const i tu tent, ideationa l , referent ia l u n i ts, wh i l e in the other the utterance per se i s b roken down i n to the var ious sty l istic strands that compose its verbal texture. The second tendency, carried to i ts l ogical extreme, wou l d amount to a techn ical l i ngu istic anal ys is of sty le. However, s imu ltaneous ly w i th what wou l d appear to be sty l istic analys i s, a referential analys is of the speech to be repo rted also takes p lace i n th is type of ind i rect d i scourse, w ith a resu lt ing d issection of the referential meaning and of i ts imp lementation by the verbal envelope.

Let us term the fi rst modification of the pattern of ind irect d i scourse as the referent-analyzing modification , and the second, the texture-analyzing modification. The referent-analyz ing mod ification receives an utterance on the pure ly thematic l evel and s imp ly does not "hear" or take i n whatever there i s i n that utterance that i s without thematic sign ificance. Those aspects of the forma l verbal design wh ich do have thematic s ign ificance-wh ich are essentia l to an understand ing of the speaker ' s ideational position-may be transmitted thematica l l y by th i s var iant o r may be inco rporated into the authoria l context a s cha racter i zation on the author 's part.

The referent-analyzing modification provides a wide opportun i ty for the retorting and commenting tendencies of authorial speech, wh i l e at the same time maintain i ng a strict and c lear-cut separation between report i ng and reported utterance. For that reason, i t makes an exce l lent means for the l i near sty le of speech reporting. I t u nq uestionably has a bu i l t- in tendency to thematicize another speaker's utterance, and th u s i t preserves the cohesiveness and autonomy of the utterance, not so much i n constructional terms as in terms of mean ing (we have seen how an expressive construction in a message to be reported can be rendered thematica l ly) . These results are ach i eved , however, on ly at the pr ice of a certain depersonal izat ion of the reported speech .

The d evelopment of the referen t-analyzing modification to any appreciab le extent occurs on ly w ith i n an authorial context that i s somewhat rational ist ic and dogmatic i n nature-one at any rate i n which the focus of attent ion i s strongly ideational and in wh ich the author shows through h is words that he h imse lf, in h i s own right, occup ies a particu lar ideational position . Where this does not

Chap. 3] Indirect and Direct Discourse 1 3 1

ho ld true, where either the author's language i s itse l f colorfu l and particu larized, or where the conduct of speech is d i rectly handed over to some narrator of the appropr iate type, this modification wi l l have on ly a very secondary and occas ional significance (as it does, for instance, in Gogo ! ', Dostoevsk ij, and others) .

On the whole, this mod ification is on ly weak ly developed in R ussian. I t is found pr imari l y in d i scursive or rhetorical contexts (of a scientific, ph i losoph ica l , pol itical , o r sim i lar nature), i n which the author must dea l with t h e prob lem of expla in ing, comparing, and putt ing into perspective the op inions of other people on the topic being d i scussed. I ts occurrence in verba l art i s rare. I t takes on a certa in stature on ly in works by writers who are not loath to have their own say with i ts special ideational aim and weight, such as Turgenev, for i n stance, or more especia l ly , Tol stoj. Even in these cases, however, we do not find th i s modification in that richness and d iversity of variation we observe in F rench or German. ,

Let u s now turn to the texture-ana lyzing modification. I t ineorporates into i nd i rect d i scour se words and locutions that characterize the subjective and styl istic physiognomy of the message v iewed as ex press ion . These words and l ocutions are incorporated in such a way that their specificity, their subjectivity, their typica l i ty are d istinctly felt ; more often than not they are enclosed in q uotation marks. H ere are four examples:

About the deceased , Gr igorij remarked, mak ing the s ign of the cross, that he was a good hand at a th ing or two, but was thick-headed and scourged by his sickness, and a disbeliever to boot, and that it was Fedor Pavlovic and the e l dest son who had taught him his disbelief [Dostoevskij , The Brothers Karamazov; i ta l ics added ] . The same thing happened with the Poles: they appeared with a show of pride a nd independence. T hey loudly testified that, in the first place, they were both "in the service of the Crown " and that "Pan Mitja" had offered to buy the ir honor for 3000, and that they themselves had seen large sums of money i n h i s hands (ibid. ) .

Krasotkin proud l y parried the accusation, g iving t o understand that i t wou ld indeed have been shameful "in our day and age " to play make-be l ieve w ith h is contemporaries, other 1 3 year-olds, but that he d id i t for the "chubb ies" because he was fond of them , and no one had any b us iness ca l l ing him to account for his fee l ings (ib id. ) .

He found Nastas'ja F i l ippovna in a state s im i lar to utter derangement: she cont inua l ly cried out , tremb led, shouted that Rogozin was h idden i n the garde n , in their very house, that she had j ust seen h im , that he would murder her . . . cut her throat! [Dostoevsk ij , The Idiot. Here the ind irect-discourse construction reta ins the expressive in tonation of the origi nal message. I talics added ] .

The words and ex pressions, i ncorporated i nto i nd irect d i scour se with their own spec ificity detectab le (especia l ly when they are enc losed in q uotation marks) , are being "made strange," to u se the language of the Formal i sts, and made strange precise ly in the d i rection that su its the author's needs : they are particu lar ized, their coloration is heightened, but at the same time they are made to accommodate shadings of the author's attitude-h i s irony, h umor, and so on .


I t is advi sab le to keep th is mod ification separate from cases of unbroken transition from ind irect to direct d i scourse, a l though both types have v irtual ly identical fu nctions. In the latter, when d i rect d i scou rse continues ind irect d is· course, the subjectivity of speech acqu ires a heightened d ef in i tion and moves in the d i rection that suits the author's needs. For example :

Try as he m ight to be evasive, nevertheless, Trifon Borisovic, once th e peasants had been in terrogated about the thousand rub l e note, made his confession, add ing on ly that r i gh t then and there he had scrupulous ly returned and remitted everyth ing to Dm itrij Fedorovic "out of the strictest sense of honor, " and that "only, you see, the gentleman himself, having been at the time dead drunk, cannot, recall it" [ Dostoevsk ij , The Brothers Karamazo v,· i ta l ics added ] . Though f i l l ed w i th the profou ndest respect for the memory o f his ex-master, h e nevertheless, among other th ings, dec lared that he had been negl igent toward Mitja. ahd had "brought the children up wrong. The little child without me would have been eaten alive by lice, " he added, recounting ep isodes from M itja's earliest years [ibid.; i ta l ics added ] .

Such an instance, in wh ich d i rect d iscourse i s prepared for by ind irect d iscourse and emerges as if from in side i t-l ike those scu l ptures of Rod in 's, in wh ich the figure i s left only parti a l l y emerged from stone-is one of the innumerab le mod ifications of d irect d iscou rse treated p ictorial ly .

Such i s the natu re of the textu re-ana lyzing mod ification of the ind irect d i scourse construction. I t creates h igh ly origi na l pictorial effects in reported speech transmission . I t is a mod ification that presupposes the presence in the l i ngu istic consciousness of a h igh degree of ind iv idual ization of other speakers' u tterances and an ab i l i ty to perceive d ifferentia l l y the verbal envelope of an utterance and i ts referentia l mean ing. None of that i s congen ia l e ither to the authoritar ian or the rat iona l i stic type of reception of other speakers' utterances. As a v iab le styl istic dev ice, it can take root in a language on ly on the grounds of crit ical and rea l istic ind ividual i sm, whereas the referent-analyz ing mod ificat ion is characteristic of the rationa l istic k ind of indiv idual i sm. In the h istory of the Ru ss ian l iterary language, the latter period hardly exi sted . And that exp la ins the abso lute preeminence of the texture-analyzing mod ification over the referent-analyzing mod ificat ion in Russian. A lso, the development of the texture-ana lyzing modification benefited to a h igh degree from the lack of consecutio temporum in Rus· sian.

We see, therefore, that our two modifications, d esp ite their l ia i son th rough the common analytical tendency of the pattern, express profound ly d ifferent l ingu ist ic conceptions of the reported addresser 's words and the speaker ' s i nd iv idua l i ty. For the fi rst modificat ion, the speaker's i nd iv idua l i ty i s a factor only as i t occupies some specific i deational position (epistemo logica l , eth ica l , ex i stential , or behavioral ) , and beyond that position (wh ich i s transm itted in str ict ly referential terms) it has no ex istence for the reporter. There is no wherew ithal h ere for the speaker's ind iv idual ity to congeal i n to an image.

Chap. 3} Indirect and Direct Discourse 1 3 3

The opposite is true of the second mod ification, i n which the speaker ' s i nd iv idua l i ty is presented as subjective manner ( i nd iv idual �r typo logical ) , as manner of th i nking and speaking, i nvolv i ng the author's eva luat ion of that manner as we l l . Here the speaker's ind iv idua l ity congeals to the po int of form ing an image.

St i l l a third and not inconsiderab le mod ification of the i nd irect d iscourse construction in Russian may be pointed out. It is u sed main ly for reporting the in ternal speech, thoughts, and exper iences of a character. I t treats the speech to be reported very freely ; it abbrev iates i t, often on ly h igh ! ighting its themes and dominants, and therefore it may be termed the impression i st ic modification. Authorial i n tonation easi ly and free ly r ipp les over its flu i d structure. Here is a classic example of the impress ion ist ic modificat ion from Puskin 's Bronze Horseman:

What were the thoughts he pondered then? That he was poor ; that he perforce m ust labor tb achieve respect, secur ity ; that God j ust might have granted h im more b ra ins and money. That goodness knows, there are those id l e lucky dogs with l ittle brains, those loungers, for whom life is just a lark! That he had been i n service i n a l l two years; h is thoughts remarked as wel l that the weather wasn't ca lm ing down; that the river k ept on ris ing; that the br idges over the N eva were a l l most l ike ly up and that he wou ld be two days or three cu t off from h is Parasa. Thus went h is pondering [ ita l i cs added ] .

'

j udging from th is example, we note that the impression i st ic modification of ind irect d i scourse l ies somewhere m idway between the referent-analyzing and the texture-analyzing mod ifications. I n th i s or that instance, a referential a nalys is has qu ite defi nite ly taken p lace. Certai n words and l ocutions have clearly originated from the m ind of the hero, Evgeni j (though no emphasis i s put on their specificity) . What comes through most is the author's irony, his accentuation, h i s hand in ordering and abbreviating the materia l .

Let u s now turn to the pattern of direct discourse, wh ich is extremely we l l worked out in the Russian l iterary l anguage and commands an immense assortment of dist inctive ly d ifferent mod ifications. From the cumbersome, inert, and i nd iv is ib le b locks of d irect d iscourse in O ld Ru ssian l i terary monuments to the modern, e lastic, and often ambiguous modes of i ts i ncorporation i n to the authorial context stretches the long and i nstructive path of its h istor ica l development. But here we must refrai n from examin ing that h istorical development; nor can we i nventory the ex ist ing mod ifications of d i rect d iscourse in the l iterary language. We sha l l l im it ourse lves on ly to those modifications wh ich d isp lay a mutua l exchange of i ntonation s, a sort of reciprocal infectiousness between the report ing context and the reported speech'. Furthermore, with in those l im i ts, our concern I ies not so much with those i nstances i n wh ich the author's speech advances u pon the reported message and penetrates i t with its own intonat ions, but rather with instances i n which, on the contrary, e l ements of the reported message creep into and are d ispersed throughout the entire authoria l context, making


it fl u i d and ambiguous. I t is true, however, that a sharp d iv id ing l ine cannot a l ways be drawn between these two types of i n stances: often i t i s indeed a matter of a rec iprocity of effect.

The first d i rection of the dynamic interrelat ionsh ip, character ized by the author's " im position, " may be termed preset direct discourse. 5

The case of d irect d isco'urse emerging out of ind i rect d iscourse (with wh ich we are already fam i l iar) be longs in th is category. A particu lar ly i nteresti ng and widespread i nstance of th i s mod ification i s the emergence of d irect d i scourse o ut of q uasi-d i rect d iscou rse. S ince the nature of the latter d i scourse i s ha lf narration and half reported speech, it presets the apperception of the direct d i scourse. The bas ic themes of the i mpend ing d irect d i scourse are anticipated by the context and are colored by the author's intonations. Under th i s tyr,e of treatment, the boundar ies of the� reported utterance become extremely weak. A classic examp le of th is mod ification is the portrayal of Pr ince Myski n 's state of m ind on the verge of an epi leptic fit, wh ich takes up a lmost the entire fifth chapter of Part I I of Dostoevski j ' s Idiot (magn ificent specimens of q uasi-d i rect d i scourse are a l so to be found there} . I n th i s chapter, Pr ince My�ki n's d irectly reported speech resounds w ith in h i s self-enc losed world, s ince the author narrates With in the con · fines of h i s, Prince Mysk i n 's, purview. Half the apperceptive background created for the "other speaker's" utterance here be longs to that other speaker (the hero) , and half to the author. However, it is made perfectl y clear to u s that a deep penetration of authorial i ntonations into d irect d iscourse is a lmost a lways accompanied by a weaken i ng of o bj ectivity in the authorial context.

Another mod ification in the same d irect ion may be termed particularized direct discourse. The authorial context h ere i s so constructed that the traits the author u sed to define a character cast heavy shadows on h is d irectly reported speech. The va lue j udgments and attitudes in which the character ' s portrayal i s steeped carry over into the words he utters. The referential weight o f the reported utterances dec l ines in this modificatio n b ut, in exchange, their charactero logica l sign ificance, their p icturesqueness, or their t ime-and-p lace typical ity, grows more intense. S im i lar ly, once we recogn ize a com ic character on stage by h i s sty le of makeup, his costume, and h i s general b earing, we are ready to laugh even before we catch the meaning of h i s words. S uch i s the way d irect d i scourse i s usua l l y hand led by Gogo ! ' and by representatives of the so-ca l led " natural schoo l ." As a matter of fact, Dostoevsk ij tr ied to reanimate th i s part icu larized treatment of reported utterances in h i s first work, Poor Folk.

5. We shal l d isregard the more prim it ive devices for authorial retort and com mentary i n d i rect d iscourse, e.g., t h e author's use o f ita l i cs i n d irect d iscourse (sh ift o f accen t) , interpolation of parenthetical remarks of various k inds, or simp ly of exc lamation or q uestion marks or such conventional notations as (sic ! ) , etc. Of crucial sign ificance i n overcom ing the inertness of d irect d iscourse are the various possib le position ings of the report ing verb i n conjunc· tion w i th commentary and retort.


The presetting of the reported speech and the anticipatio.n of its theme i n the narrative, its judgments, and accents may so subjectivize and color the author ' s context i n the tints of h is h ero that that context w i l l begin to sound l i ke "re ported speech," though a k ind of reported speech with i t s authorial intonations sti l l intact. To conduct the narrative exclusively within the purview of the h ero h imself, not on ly with i n its d imensions of time and space but a l so iti its system of val ues and i ntonations, creates an extremely origina l k i nd of apperceptive background for reported utterances. It gives us the r ight to speak of a special mod ification : anticipated and disseminated reported speech concealed in the authorial context and, as i t were, b reaking into rea l , d i rect utterances by the hero.

This mod ification is very widespread in contemporary prose, especia l l y that of Andrej Be lyj and the writers u nder his i nfluence (for i nstance, in Erenburg's Nikolaj Kurbov) . However, the c lassical specimens must be sought in Dostoevski j 's work of h is first and second periods ( in h i s last per iod, th is mod ifi cation is encountered less often) . Let us look at h i s Skvernyj anekdot [A Nasty Story].

One might enclose the who le narrative in q uotation marks as narratio n by a "narrator," though no such narrator is denoted , either thematica l ly or com posi· tiona l ly. However, the s ituation within the narrative is such that almost every epithet, or defin ition, or value j udgment m ight a l so be enclosed in quotat ion marks as originating in the m ind of o ne or another character.

Let us quote a short passage from the beginn i ng of the story :

Once in w inter, on a cold and frosty even ing-very late evening, rather, it being al ready the twelfth hour-th ree extremely distinguished gentlemen were sitting in a comfor· table, even sumptuously appoi nted , room inside a handsome two-story house o n Petersburg I sl and and were occupied i n weighty a n d superlative talk on an extremely r�markable topic. A l l three gentlemen were officia ls of the rank of general. They were seated around a smal l tab le , each in a handsome u pholstered chair, and during pauses in the conversation they comfortably s ipped champagne [ i tal ics added ] .

I f we d isregarded the remarkab l e and comp lex p lay of i ntonations in th i s passage, it wou ld have to be judged as styl istica l ly wretched and banal. W ith in the few l i nes of pr int , the epithets "handsome" and "comfortab le" are u sed twice, and others are "sum ptuously," "weighty," "superlative," and "extremely d istinguished" !

Such sty le would not escape our severest verd ict i f we took i t serious ly as description emanating from the author (as we would in the case of Turgenev or Tol stoj ) or even as a narrator's d escr iption, provided the narrator be of the monol ithic /ch-Erziihlung variety.

However, it is impossible to take this passage in t hat way. Each of these co lorless, banal , i nsipid epithets i s an arena in wh ich two i ntonations, two po i nts of view, two speech acts converge and clash.

1 36 Forms of Utterance f Part Ill

Let us look at a few more excerpts from the passage characteriz ing the master of the house, Privy Counc i l or N i kiforov:

A few words about h im : he had begun his career as a m inor official, had conte nted ly fi ddle-fadd led h is way t h rough the next 45 years or so . • . . He particular ly despised u ntidiness and excitab i l i ty., consi der ing the latter moral u ntidi ness, and toward the end of h is l ife he submerged h imself completely i n a state of sweet and relaxed comfort and systematic sol itude • . . . H is appearance was that of an extremely respectable and well-shaven man who seemed younger than his years, was wel l preserved , showed promise of l iv ing for a long time to come , and abided b y the most exalted gentlemanly code. H is position was a qu ite comfortable one: he was the head of someth i ng and pu t h is signatu re on someth i ng from time to time. In short, he was considered to be a most excellent man. H e had on ly one passion or, rather, one ardent w ish : to own h i s own house--one, moreover, bu i l t a long manorial , not tenement, l ines. H is w ish at last came true [ ital ics added ] .

Now we see clear ly where the first passage derived its banal and monotonous ep ithets (but with the i r bana l monotony pointedly sustained) . T hey or ig i nated not in the author 's m ind b ut in the mind of the genera l savoring h i s comfort, h is very own house, h i s situation in l ife, h is rank-the m ind of Privy Counci lor N ik iforov, a man who has "come up in the wor ld ." Those words m ight be enc losed in quotation marks as "another's speech," the reported speech of N ik i forov. Bu t they be long not on ly to h im. After a l l , the story is be ing to l d by a narrator, who would seem to be in so l i darity with the "genera l s," who fawns u pon them, adopts their attitude in a l l t h i ngs, speaks the i r language, b ut no,netheless provocatively overdoes it and thus thorough ly exposes a l l the ir real and potentia l utterances"to the author 's irony and mockery. By each of th ese banal ep ithets, the author, through h i s narrator, makes h i s hero ironic and r idicu lous . This is what creates the com p lex play of intonations in the passage cited-a p lay of intonations v irtua lly unproducib le if read a loud.

The remain i ng port ion of the story i s constructed ent i re ly with in t he purview of another main character, Pra l i nski j . Th is portion, too, is studded with the ep i thets and value j udgments of the hero (h is h i dden speech ) , and aga inst that background , steeped in the author's irony, his actua l , properly punctuated, internal and external d irect speech arises.

Thus a lmost every word in the narrative (as concerns its expressivity, its emotiona l coloring, its accentual position in the phrase) figures s imu l taneous ly in two intersecting contexts, two speech acts : in the speech of the author-narrator ( iron ic and mocking) and the speech of the hero (who i s far removed from i ro ny ) . Th i s s imu l taneous participation of two speech acts, each d ifferently or iented in its expressiv ity, a l so exp la ins the cur ious sentence structure, the twists and turns of syntax, the h igh l y original sty le, of the story. If o n ly one of the two speech acts had been u sed, the sentences wou ld have been structured otherwise, the sty le wou l d have been d ifferent. We have here a c lassic instance

Chap. 3} Indirect and Direct Discourse

of a l i nguist ic phenomenon a lmost never studied_:_the phenomenon of speech interference.

1 37

I n Russian, th i s phenomenon of speech i n terference may take p lace to a certain extent in the texture-analyz ing modification of ind i rect d i scourse, i n those comparatively rare i n stances i n wh ich the reported clause conta ins not on ly some of the origi nal words and expression s b u t a l so t h e expressive structure o f t h e message reported. We have seen an example of this above, one in wh ich i nd i rect d i scourse i ncorporated the exclamatory structure-granted, it was somewhat toned down-of the or ig ina l message. What resulted was a certai n counterpo in t between the ca lm, business l ike, narrational i ntonat ion of the author's analytical transmiss ion and the emotional, hysterical i ntonation of h i s half-crazed hero i ne . Th i s a l so accounts for the pecu l iar d isfigurement of the syntactic physiognomy of the clause-a c lause serv ing two masters, parti c ipating s imu l taneously i n two speech acts. I nd i rect d i scourse, however, does not su pply the grounds for anyth i ng l i ke a d isti nctive and d urable sty l i st ic -expression for th i s phenomenon of speech interference.

The most important and, in French at l east, the most syntactical ly standardized case of an i nterferentia l merg ing of two different ly or iented speech acts i s quasi-direct discourse. I n v iew of its extraordinary importance, we shal l devote the ent i re next chapter to the q uest ion of quasi-direct d i scourse. There we sha l l a l so examine how the question has been treated i n Romance and G ermanic l in gu istics. The controversy over quasi-d i rect d iscourse and the var ious stands ta ken on the i ssue, especia l ly by members of the Vossler school , compr i se materia l of considerab le methodological i n terest and, therefore, ought to be subjected to our crit ica l analys is .

Within the scope of the present chapter, we sha l l be concerned with examining a few other phenomena re lated to quasi-d irect d iscourse , wh ich probab ly, i n Russian, are t o b e ident ified as the basis for i ts i nception and format ion .

In our exc lus ive concern with dua l istic, duplex mod ifications of d irect d iscourse i n its p ictorial treatment, we have neglected one of the most important of the linear modifications of d i rect d i scourse: rhetorical direct discourse. This " persuasive" modification with i t s several var iants has great socio logical s ignificance. We cannot dwel l on these forms but shal l focus some attention on certa i n phenomena associated with rhetoric.

There i s i n socia l intercourse what i s cal led the rhetorical question, or the rhetorical exclamation. Certain i nstances of th i s phenomenon are especia l ly interesti ng becau se of the prob l em of the i r local ization i n context . They w ou ld seem to be si tuated on the very boundary between authorial and reported speech (usual ly, i n ternal speech) and often they s l ide d i rectly i nto one or the other. Thus they may be i n terpreted as a q uest ion or exclamation on the part of the author or, equa l ly, as a quest ion or exclamation on the part of the hero, addressed to h imself.

1 38 Forms of Utterance {Part !//

Here is an example of such a q u estio n :

But w h o is approaching, stealthy footed , by moonl i t path, am i d d ee pest sti l l ness? The Russian sudden ly comes to. Before h im stands, with tender, wordless greeting, the Circassian maid. He gazes at her s i lentl y and th i nks; this is some ly ing d ream, the ho l low play of flagging feel i ngs . • • [Pusk in , The Captive of the Caucasus ] .

The hero's conc lud ing ( i nternal) words seem to respond to the rhetor ica l question posed by the author, and that rhetori cal question may be interpreted as part of the hero's own i nternal speech.

Here is an example of rhetorical exclamati on:

Al l , a l l , the d readfu l sound betrayed. The world of nature d immed before h im . F arewe l l , b l essed freedom ! H e is a slave! [ibid. ] .

A particu larly frequent occurrence i n prose i s the case i n wh ich some su ch q uestion as "What is to be done now?" introduces the hero ' s i nner de l i berations o r the recount i ng of h i s act ions-the quest ion being equa l ly the author 's and a l so one the hero poses to h imself i n a predicament.

I t wi l l sure ly be claimed that in these and sim i lar quest ions and exclamations the author's i n it iative takes the u pper hand, and that that i s why they n ever appear enclosed in quotation marks. I n these particular i n stances, it is the author who steps forward, b u t he does so on h i s hero's behalf-he seems to speak for h im .

Here i s an i nteresting example of th i s type:

The Cossacks, lean ing on the i r p ikes, gaze over the rush i ng water of the r iver , wh i l e u nnoticed by them, b l u rred i n fog, a v i l l a in and his weapon float past. • . What are you th i nk ing, Cossack? A re you reca l l i ng battles of bygone years? • . . . Farewe l l , free frontier v i l lages, paternal home, the quiet Don, and war, and pretty g irls. The u nseen enemy has reached the bank, an arrow l eaves the qu iver-takes fl ight-and down the Cossack fal l s from the b loodied rampart [ ibid. ] .

Here the author stand s i n for h i s hero, says in h i s stead what the hero m ight or shou ld have said , says what the given occasion cal l s for. Pu�k in b i d s farewel l to the Cossack's homeland for him (natura l ly, someth ing the Cossack h imself could not have done) .

This tal k i ng in another's stead comes very close to quasi-d irect d iscourse. Let u s term th i s case substituted direct discourse. Such a substitution presupposes a

parallelism of intonations, the i ntonations of the author's speech and the substi tuted speech of the hero (what he m ight or should have said) , both runn ing in the same d irect ion. Therefore, no i nterference takes p lace here.

When a complete so l i darity in va lues and i n tonations ex i sts between the author and his hero with i n the framework of a rhetorical ly constructed context, the author's rhetoric and that of the hero begin to overlap : their voice s merge; and we get protracted passages that be long s imu ltaneously to the author's narrative and to the hero's i nternal ( though sometimes also external) speech . The result


obtained is almost ind ist inguishable from quasi-d i rect d i scourse; on ly interference is m issing. I t was on the gro unds of the young Pu�k in ' s Byron ic rhetoric that quasi-d i rect d i scourse ( presumably for the first t ime) took shape in Ru ss ian . I n The Captive of the Caucasus, the author shares a comp lete sol idar ity in values and intonations with his hero. The narrative i s forged in the hero 's tones, and the hero's u tterances i n the al:l thor's tones. We find the fo l lowing, for i n stance:

There, mountain peaks, each one al ike, stretch out in l ine ; a lonely track among them winds and fades in gloom; . • . Oppressive thoughts beset the captive youth's tormented breast. . . . The d i stant track leads back to Russia, land where h is ardent youth began, so proud, so free of care: where he knew early j oy, where he found so much to l ove, where he embraced d i re suffering, where he destroyed del ight, desire, and hope in stormy l i fe . . , . The world an·d its ways he fathomed, and he knew the p rice of a faithless l ife. In people's hearts he found betrayal, in d reams of love, a mad i llusion . . . .

Freedom! For you alone he kept the quest in th is sub lu nar world . . . • I t came to pass • . . • N ow he sees nothing in the world on which to set h i s hopes, and even you, h is l ast fond d ream, you, too, are gone from h im. He is a s lave ( ibid. ; ita l ics addeq ] .

Here, c learly, it is the captive ' s own "oppressive t houghts" that are being transm itted. It i s his speech, but i t i s being formal ly de l ivered by the author. I f the personal pronoun "he" were changed everywhere t o " I ," and if t h e verb forms were adjusted accord i ngly, no di ssonance or incongru ity, whether in style or otherwise, would resu lt. Symptomatica l ly enough, th i s speech contain s apostrophes in the second person (to "freedom," to "dreams") , which a l l the more u nderscore the author 's ident ification with h is hero . Th i s i nstance of the hero 's speech does not d iffer in style or ideas from the rhetorical d irect d iscourse reported as del ivered by the h ero in the second part of the poem:

" Forget me! I am u nworthy of you r Jove, your heart's d el ight. . • . Bereft of raptu re, empty of desire, I w i ther, pass ion's victim . . • . 0 why d i d not my eyes behold you long ago, in days when sti l l I la id my trust in hope and rapturous dreams ! Bu t now it is too late ! To happ iness I am no more al ive, the phantom H ope has flown away . . . . " [ibid. ] .

A l l writers o n quasi-d irect d i scourse ( perhaps with the s i ngle except ion of Ba l ly ) would acknowledge the passage in question a perfectly genu ine specimen.

We, however, are i nc l i ned to regard it as a case of subst ituted d i rect d i scourse. True, only one step is needed to turn it i n to q uasi-d i rect d i scourse. And P uskin took that step when he succeeded in standing apart from his heroes and brought to bear the contrast of a more objective authorial context w ith its own values and i ntonations. The examp le cited above sti l l lacks any interference between the author's speech and the character's speech . Consequently, it a l so lacks the grammatical and sty l ist ic features that such in terference generates and wh ich characterize quasi-d irect d iscourse, d ifferentiating i t from the surround ing authorial context. The fact i s that in our example we recogn ize the speech of the


" captive" on ly by p u re ly semantic i n d i cations. We do not sense here the merging of two differently oriented speech acts; we do not sense the integrity and re" sistance of the reported m·essage beh ind th e author's transm ission .

Fina l l y , t o demon strate what we regard as real q uasi,d irect d i scourse, we reproduce below a remarka? le specimen from Pu�k i n 's Poltava. With this we w i l l end th is chapter.

But his rage for action Kocu bej h id deep with in his heart. " H is thoughts h ad now, al l woebegone, addressed themse lves to death. No i l l -w i l l d id he bear Mazeppa-his daughter was a lone to b lame. But h e forgave his daughter , too: Let her answer to G od , now that she had p l unged her fam i ly i n to shame, had Heaven and the l aws of m an forgot. . . " Bu t meanwh i l e h e scanned h is h ousehold with an eagle eye, seek ing for h imse lf bold, u nswerv ing, i ncorru pt ib le companions . .

C H A P T E R 4

Quasi-Direct Discourse in French, German, and Russian

Quasi-direct discourse in French: Tobler; Ka!epky; Bally. Criticism of Bally 's hypostasizing abstract objectivism. Bally and the Vosslerites. Quasi-direct discourse in German. Eugen Lerch 's conception. Lorek � conception. Lorek 's theory concerning the role of fantasy in language. Gertraud Lerch � conception. Reported speech in Old French. Reported speech in Middle French. The Renaissance. Quasi-direct discourse in La Fontaine and La Bruyere. Quasi-direct discourse in Flaubert. The emergence of quasi-direct discourse in German. Criticism of the hypostasizlng individualistic subjectivism of the Vosslerites.

Various writers have proposed various nomenclatu res for the p henomenon of quasi-d i rect discourse in F rench and German. Each of the writers on the subject has, i n effect, proposed his or her own term. We have been u sing and sha l l cont inue to u se Gertraud Lerch's term, "uneigent l iche d irekte Rede," [q uasi-d irect d i scourse ] as the most neutral of a l l the terms proposed and the one entai l i ng the least amount of theory. As regards Russian and G erman, the term i s beyond reproach ; w i th respect to French, however, i ts usage may arouse some m isgivings. 1

1 . Here are some examples of quasi-d i rect discou rse in F rench:

1 . I I prbtesta: Son ptre fa hai�sait! I n d i rect discou rse that wou l d be:

II protesta et s' ecria: "Man pere te ha;·t!" I n ind i rect discou rse:

II protesta et s'tkria que son pere Ia haissait. I n quasi-ind irect d iscourse:

II protesta: "son pere, s'ecria+i l , Ia hai�sait!" ( Example from Balzac as cited by G . Lerch . )

(Continued on next page )

1 41

1 42 Forms of Utterance /Part Ill

The first mention of quasi-d i rect d i scourse as a special form for reportjng an u tterance, on a par w i th d i rect and ind irect d i scourse, was made by Tob ler in 1 887 (Zeitschrift fur romanische Phi!o!ogie, XI, 437) .

Tobler defined quasi-d irect d iscourse as a "pecu l iar m ixture of d i rect and i n d i rect d iscourse" [eigentiJmliche Mischung direkter und indirekter Rede ] . Th i s m ixed form, accord i ng to Tobler, derives i ts tone and word order from d irect d i scourse and its verbal tenses and persons from indirect d i scourse.

As pu re description, th i s defi n it ion may be considered acceptab le . I nd eed, from the superficial v iewpoint of the comparative descript ion of features, Tobler has accurately ind icated the resemb lances and d ifferences between the form in question and d irect and ind irect d iscourse.

But the word "mixture" in the d efi n it ion is complete l y u nacceptab le , s ince it entai l s a genetic exp lanat ion-"formed from a m ixture of"-which can hard l y b e proved . And even i n its purely descriptive way, the defin it ion i s fau lty inasmuch as what we have i n _q uasi-d irect d i scourse is not a s imp le mechanical mixture or arithmetical sum of two form s but a comp letely new, positive tendency i n active reception of another person 's u tterance, a special direction i n wh ich the dynam ics of the i n terre lationship between reporting and reported speech moves. But Tobl er is deaf to dynamics and registers on ly the abstract features of patterns.

So much for Tobler's defin ition. Now, how does he expla in the emergence of the form?

A speaker, relating past events, cites another person ' s u tterance in an autonomous form j u st as it sounded in the past. I n the process, the speaker changes the present tense of the original u tterance to the imperfect in order to show that the u tterance i s contemporaneou s w ith the past events being re lated. He then makes some add i tional changes (persons of the verbs and pronouns) so that the u tterance not be m istaken for the relator's own.

Tobler 's exp lanation i s bu i l t on a fau l ty but old and very widespread l i ngu istic way of argu ing: if the speaker had conscious ly and premeditated ly p lanned to i ntroduce the new form, what would his reason ing and m otivation have been?

(Footnote 7 -Continued) 2. Tout le jour, il avait l 'oe i l au guet; et Ia nuit , s i que lque chat faisait du b ru it, le

chat prenait / 'argent [ La Fontaine] . 3. En vain i l [ le colone l) parla d e Ia sauvagerie du pays e t de Ia d ifficu l te pour une

fem me d 'y voyager: e l l e (M iss Lyd ia) ne craignait rien; el/e aimait par-dessus tout a voyager a cheval; elle se faisait une fete de coucher au b ivac; elle mena�ait d 'a/ler en A sie M ineure. Bref, e l l e avait nlponse a tout, car jamais A nglaise n 'ova it ete en Corse; done e!le devait y oiler [ P. Merimee, Colombo ] .

4. Reste' seu l dans ! 'embrasure de Ia fen€tre, le card inal s'y t int immob i le , u n instant encore . . . . Et ses bras fremissants se tend irent , en un geste d ' imp lorat ion: "0 Dieu! puisque ce medecin s'en a/fait ainsi, hereux de sauver l'embarras de son impuissance, o Dieu! que ne faisiez-vous un miracle, pour montrer ! 'eclat de votre pouvoir sans barnes! Un miracle, un miracle! II le demandait du fond de son a me de croyant [ Zola, R ome ] .

( Examples. three and four are cited and d iscussed by Kalepky , Ba l ly , and Lorek.)

Chap. 4] Quasi-Direct Discourse 1 43

Even if such a way of arr iv i ng at exp lanations were adm issible, sti l l , t he motives of Tob ler's " speaker" are not q uite convinc ing or c lea r : If he wants to preserve the autonomy of the utterance as· it actua l ly sounded in the past, wou ld it not be better to report it in d i rect d iscourse? I ts belonging to the past and to the reported , not the reporting, addresser wou ld the n be beyond any possib le doubt. Or, if the imperfect and the third person are what is at stake, wou ldn 't it be easier s imply to u se i nd i rect discour se? The troub l e is that what is basic to our form-that entirely new interelationship between reporting and reported speech which it achieves-is j ust exact ly what Tobler 's motives fa i l to express. For Tobler, it i s s imply a matter of two o ld forms out of which he wants to paste together a new form.

in our opin ion, what can at best be exp la ined by th i s type of a rgument about speakers' motives is merely the use in one or another concrete i nstance of an already available form, but u nder no circumstances w i l l it do to expla in the composing of a new form in language. The i nd ivid ual motives and intentions of a speaker can take meaningfu l effect on ly with in l im its imposed by current grammatical possib i l i ties on the one hand, and with in the l imi ts of the condi t ions of socioverbal intercourse that predominate in h is group on t h e other. These possib i l it ies and these condit ions are given quantities-they are what circumscr ibe the speaker's l i nguist ic purview. I t i s beyond the speaker's i nd iv idual power to force that purview open.

No m atter what the i n tent ions the speaker means to carry out, no matter what errors he may commit, no matter how he analyzes forms o r mixes them or comb ines them, he w i l l not create a new pattern i n language and he w i l l not create a new tendency i n socioverbal i ntercourse. H is subjective i n tent ions w i l l bear a creative character on ly to the extent that there is someth i ng i n them that co incides with tendencies in the socioverbal i n tercourse of speakers that are in process of formation, of generat ion; and these tendencies are dependent upon socioeconomic factors. Some d i sp lacement, some sh ift had to have occurred within socioverba: l intercourse and with regard to the mutua l or ientation of utterances in order for that essent ia l l y new manner of perceiv i ng another person's words, wh ich found expression in the form of quasi-direct d i scourse, to have been establ ished. As it too k shape, th i s new form began penetrating i nto that fie l d of l ingu istic possib i l i ties on ly with i n the confines of wh ich can the indiv idual verbal i n tentions of speakers find defi n it ion, motivation, and productive imp lementation.

The next writer on the subject of q uasi-d i rect d iscourse was Th . Kalepky (Zeitschrift fiir romanische Philologie, XIII, 1 899, 49 1 -5 1 3). He recogn ized in quasi-d i rect d iscourse a comp lete ly autonomous th ird form of reported speech and defined it as concealed or veiled d iscourse (verschleierte Rede ) . The sty l istic point of the form consisted in the n ecessity of guessing who the speaker is. And indeed, there is a puzz le : from the standpoint of abstract grammar, it is the


author w ho speaks; from the standpo in t of the actual sen se of the who le context, it i s a character who speaks.

Kalepky's ana lys is con.tains an undoubted step forward in i nvestigation of the

question concern ing us. I nstead of mechanica l l y coup l i ng the abstract features of two pattern s, Kalepky. attempts to descry the new, positi ve sty l ist i c bearing of the form. I n add it ion , h e correctly u nderstood the double-faced natu re of quasi-d i rect d i scourse. However, he i ncorrectly defined it . Under no condit ions can we agree w i th Kalepky that quas i-d i rect d i scourse i s " masked" d i scourse and that the point of the device consists i n guess ing who the speaker is . N o one, after a l l , starts off t he process of understand ing with abstract grammatical considerat ions. Therefore, it is c lear to everyone from the very start that, i n terr11s of the sense of what i s sa id , i t i s the character speak ing . D ifficu l t ies ar i se o n ly for grammarians. Furthermore, our form does not at a l l conta i n a n "ei th er /or" d i lemma; its specificum i s precisely a matter of both author and character speak ing at the same t ime, a matter of a s ing le l i nguist ic construction w i th in wh ich the accents of two d ifferently oriented vo ices are ma inta i ned . We have a l ready seen that the phenomenon of genu ine ly concealed reported speech does take p lace in language. We have seen how the ins id ious effect of another person ' s speech secreted in the author's context can cause that context to man ifest special grammati ca l and styl i st ic features. But that i s one of the modificat ions of d i rect d i scourse. Quasid i rect d iscourse, however, is an overt type of d iscourse, n otwithstand ing the fact that it is doub le-faced , l ike J anus .

The ch ief methodo logical deficiency in Kalepky's approach i s h is i n terpreti ng a l i nguistic phenomenon with i n the framework of the individual consciousness, h i s attempt ing to d iscover its psych ic roots and subjective-aesthet ic effects. We sha l l return to a fundamental crit ic ism of th i s approach when we exam i ne the views of the Voss ler i tes ( Lorek, E . Lerch , and G . Lerch ) .

Bal l y spoke ou t on our topic i n 1 9 1 2 (Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, IV , 549 ff, 597 ff) . l n 1 9 1 4, i n respon se to Kalepky's po lemic, he returned once again to the q uestion with an article on its fundamenta l s enti tled "F igures d e pen see et formes l i ngu i st iques" (Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, VI , 1 9 1 4, 4D5 ff, 456 ff) .

The gist of Ba l ly ' s views amounts to the fo l lowing: he cons iders quasi-d irect . discourse a new, later variant of the classical form of i nd i rect d iscou rse. He traces its formation through the ser ies : i l d isa i t q u ' i l etait malade > i l d i sa i t : i l eta it malade > i l eta i t malade (d i sa it-i l )? The dropping of the conju nction que is exp la ined, accord i ng to Ba l ly , by a more recent tendency i nherent in language to prefer paratactic coord i nation of clauses to hypotactic subord i nation . Ba l ly points out, furthermore, that th i s variant of ind irect d iscourse-w h ich he appropriatdy e nough terms style indirect fibre- i s not an i ne rt form but a form in

2 . The intermediate ( transi t ional) form is, of course, a l ingu istic fict ion .

Chap. 4} Quasi-Direct Discourse 1 45

motion, moving toward d irect d i scourse as its furthest extreme. I n part icu lar ly intensive cases, Ba l l y c la ims, i t is sometimes d ifficu l t to say where style indirect fibre l eaves off and style direct begins. That is how, incidently, he regards the passage from Zo la quoted in our fourth example [ see footnote 1 , pp . 1 41 -1 42) . The d ifficu l ty ar ises precise ly at the po int where the card ina l addresses God : "C D ieu ! que ne fais iez-vous u n m iracl e ! , " wh ich apostrophe conta ins s imu ltaneously a feature of ind irect d iscourse (the imperfect) and the use of the second person as in di rect di scourse. Ba l l y considers as analogous to F rench style indirect fibre that form of German ind irect d iscourse which omits the conjunction and keeps the word order as in d irect d i scourse (the second type in Ba l ly 's ana ly sis) .

Ba l ly makes a strict d istinction between linguistic forms ("formes l ingu i st iques") and figures of thought ("figures de pen see") . He u nderstands by the latter devices of expression which are i l logical from the standpoint of language and in which the normal in terrelationsh ip between the l i ngu istic sign and i ts usual mean ing i s v io l ated . F igures of thoug.ht cannot be acknow ledged l i ngu istic p henomena in the strict sense : indeed, there are no specific, stab le l i ngu ist ic features which might express them. On the contrary, the l i nguistic features i nvo lved have a meaning in language which is pointedly other than the mean ing i m posed upon them by figures of thought. To figures of thought Ba l ly relegates quasi· d i rect d i scourse in i ts pure forms. After a l l , from a strict ly grammatica l point of view, it is the author ' s speech, whereas according to the sense of it, i t is the character's speech . Bu t this "sense of it" is not represented by any specia l l i ngu i stic sign. Consequent ly, what we are dea l ing w ith is, according to Bal ly , an extral i nguistic phenomenon.

Such i s Ba l ly ' s conception in basic out l i ne. He i s the l i ngu ist who at the present time most outstand ing ly represents l i ngu istic abstract objectiv ism. B a l l y hypostasizes and v iv ifies forms of language obta ined by way of abstract ion from concrete speech performances (speech performances in the spheres of practical l ife, l i terature, science, etc. ) . Th i s process of abstraction has been carried out by l i ngu ists, as we have a l ready i nd icated, for purposes of decipher ing a dead, a l ien l anguage and for the practical purposes of teach i ng i t . And now Ba l ly comes along and endows these abstractions with l ife and momentum: a modification of ind irect d i scou rse begins to pursue a course toward the pattern of d i rect d i scourse, and on {he way q uasi-d irect d iscourse is formed. A creative ro le in the composition of the new form is ascr ibed to the dropping of the conjunct ion que and the reporting verb. I n actual fact, however, the abstract system of language, where Bal ly 's formes lingufstiques are to be found, is devo id of any movement, any l ife, any ach ievement. Life begi ns on ly at the point where utterance crosses utterance, i .e., where verbal i nteraction begins, be i t not even "face-to-face" verbal interaction, b u t t h e mediated, l i terary .variety.3

3. On med iated and unmed iated forms of verbal interaction , see the already cited study by L. P. ] akub insk ij .


I t is not a matter of one abstract form moving toward another , bu t a matter of the mutual or ientat ion of two utterances changing on the basis of a change i n t he active perception by the l ingu i st ic consciousness of the "speak ing person a l ity,'' of its ideationa l , ideolog ical autonomy, of i t s verbal i nd ividual i ty . The dropping of the conj u nctio n que br ings together, not two abstract for ms, b u t two utterances i n a l l the i r i deational fu l l ness. T h e d i ke ruptures, a s i t were, and authoria l intonations free ly stream in to the reported speech.

A methodological d ivorce between l inguist ic forms and figures of thought, between " langue" and " parole," also resu l ts from th i s kind of hypostasiz ing o bj ectivism. I n po int of fact, the l i nguist ic forms Bal ly has i n m ind exist on ly i n grammar books a n d d ict ionar ies (where, t o b e sure, their existence i s perfect ly legit imate), but in the l iv ing rea l i ty of language they are i mmersed deeply i n what, from the abstract grammatical po int of view, i s t h e irrational e lement of "figures de pensee."

Bal l y is a l so wrong in tak ing the German ind irect d iscourse construction of h i s second type to be analogous to French quasi-d i rect d iscourse.4 I t i s a n extremely symptomatic m istake. Ba l l y 's analogy i s irreproachab le from the standpoint of abstract grammar, but from the standpoint of socioverbal tendency, the com parison cannot ho ld up u nder crit icism. After a l l , one and the same socia l-verbal tendency (d ictated by identical socioeconomic con dit ions} in d ifferent languages may, in accordance with the grammatica l structures of those languages, appear with d ifferent outer features. I n any part icu lar l anguage, what begins to u ndergo mod ificat ion in a certa in specifi c d irect ion is precise ly t hat pattern wh ich turns out to be the most adaptable i n the necessary regard. I n F rench it was the pattern of ind irect d i scou rse, in G erman and Russ ian --d irect d i scou rse.

Let us now turn to an exam ination of the po int of v iew of the Voss ler ite s. These l i ngu i sts sh ift the dominant i n their investigat ions from grammar to sty l i stics and psychology, from " language forms" to "figures of thought." Their d isagreements with Ba l l y are, as we a l ready know, fundamental a nd far reaching. Lorek i n his crit ic ism of the Geneva l ingu ist contrasts, i n Humboldt ian terms, Ba l ly ' s outlook on language as ergon with his out look on language as energeia. Thus, the basic prem ises of ind iv idua l istic subjectivism are brough t d i rectly to bear aga inst Bal ly 's po in t of view on the particu lar q uestion at hand. What now enter the l ists a s factors to exp la i n q uasi-d i rect d iscourse are: affect i n language, fantasy in language, empathy, l ingu i st ic taste, and the l i ke.5

4. Kalepky po inted out this mistake to Ba l l y , who, i n h i s second study, does part ia l ly correct it.

5 . Before proceed i ng to an analysis of the Vosslerites' v iew, we sha l l supp ly three examples of quasi-d i rect d iscourse in German:

1 . Der Konsu l ging, d ie Hande auf dem Rucken , umher und bewegte nervos d ie Schu l tern.

Er hatte keine Zeit. Er war bei Gott uberhauft. Sie sol/te sich gedu/den und sich gef(il!igst noch filnfzlg mal besinnen/ [Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks}.


A lso i n 1 91 4-the year of the Kalepky-Ba l ly polem ics-Eugen Lerch came forward with h is assessment of q uasi-direct d i scourse (G-r.M., V I , 470 ) . H i s defin ition of quasi-d i rect d iscourse was "speech as fact" (Rede a/s Tatsache). Reported speech is transmitted by th is form in such a way as if its content were a fact that the author h im self is commun icating. Contrasting d irect, ind irect, and quasi-d i rect d iscourse in terms of the degrees of real ness i nherent in the content of each, Lerch came to the concl usion that the most real of them is q uasi-d irect d i scourse. He a l so evinced a sty l i st ic preference for quasi-d i rect d i scourse over ind irect discourse in regard to the vividness and concreten ess of the impression produced . That i s what Lerch 's d ef in it ion amounts to .

A detai led study of q uasi-direct discourse was furnished by E . Lorek i n 1 92 1 i n a smal l vo l ume under the t itle Die "Er!ebte Red e. " The book was ded icated to Vossler. I n it , Lorek dwe l l s at some l ength on the h i story of the i ssue in question.

Lorek defined quasi-d irect d i scourse as "experienced speech" (er!ebte Rede) in contradisti nction to d i rect d i scourse, d efined as "repeated speech" (gesprochene Rede) , and i ndi rect d iscourse-"communicated speech" (berichtete Rede ) .

Lorek expounds h i s defin it ion i n the fo l l owing way. L e t us suppose F au st on stage speaking h i s monologue : "Habe n u n, ach! Ph i losoph ie, J u r isterei . . . d urchaus stud iert m i t he issem Bemuhn . . . " What the hero utters in the first person , a member of the audience experiences i n t he third person . A nd th i s transposition, occurring in the very depths of the experience of reception , sty l i stical ly al igns the exper ienced d iscourse with narrative.

Now, if the l i stener shou ld want to transmit the speech of Faust , wh ich he had heard and exper ienced, to another, a th i rd person, he w i l l e ither quote it i n d irect form or i n i ndirect form. B ut i f he shou ld desire to s ummon up for h imself in h i s own m i nd the l iv ing impression of the scene experienced , he w i l l reca l l i t a s : "Faust hat nun , ach ! Ph i losophie . . " or, i nasmuch as i t i s a case of i mpress ions in the past, " Faust hatte nun , ach ! . . . "

Thus, accord ing to Lorek, q uasi-d irect d i scourse is a form for the d irect dep iction of the experienc ing of another's speech, a form for summon ing u p a l iv ing

2. Herrn Gosch ging es schlecht: mit e iner schiinen und grossen A rmbewegung wies er d ie A n nahme zuriick , er kiinne zu den G l uck l ichen gehiiren. Das beschwerliche Greisenalter nahte heran, es war da, wie gesagt, seine Grube war geschaufelt. Er konnte abends kaum noch sein Glas Grog zum Munde fiihren, ohne die Hiilfte zu verschutten, so machte der Teufel seinen Arm zittern. Da nutzte kein Fluchen . . . Der Wille triumphierte nicht mehr [Ibid. ] .

3. Nu n k reutzte Doktor Mantelsack im S tehen die Be ine u n d b latterte in seinem N otizbuch. Hanna B uddenb rook sah vornuber gebeugt und rang u n ter dem T isch die Hande. Das B, der Buchstabe 8 war an der Reihe! Gleich wiirde sein Name ertonen, und er wurde einen Skandal geben, eine laute, schreckliche Katastrophe, so guter Laune der Ordinarius ouch sein mochte. , . D i e Sekunden dehnten sich martervo l l . "Buddenbrook. " . . . J etzt sagte er "Buddenbrook. " . . .

" Edgar" sagte Doktor Mantelsack . . . [Ibid. ] .


impression of that speech and, on that account, of l itt le u se for convey ing that speech to a third person . I ndeed, if q uasi-d i rect d i scourse were u sed for that purpose, the reporting aCt wou id l ose its commun icative character and wou l d make i t appear as if the person were ta lk i ng to h imse lf or ha l l ucinating. Hence, as one wou l d expect, quasi-direct d i scourse i s u nu sab le in conversational language and meant only to serve a ims of artistic depiction. There, in its proper fu nction, quasi-d irect d iscourse has enormous sty l istic s ign ificance.

I ndeed , for an arti st in process of creation, the figures of h i s fantasies are the realest of rea l it ies; he not on ly sees them, he hears them, as we l l . He does not make them speak (as in d i rect d i scourse) , he hears them speaki ng. And th i s l i v ing impressio n of voices heard as if i n a dream can be d irectl y expressed on l y i n the form of q uasi-d i rect d i scourse. It is fantasy's own form . A nd that exp la in s why it was in the fab le wor l d of La Fontaine that the form was first g iven tongue .and why it i s the favorite device of such arti sts as Ba lzac and especial l y F la ubert, artists who l l y ab le to immerse a nd lose themse lves in the created wor ld. of their own fantasies.

And the artist, when he uses th i s form, a l so addresses h imse lf o n ly to the reader's fantasy. It i s not his a im to commun icate facts or the content of thought with i ts he lp ; he desires on ly to convey h is impressions direct ly , to arou se in the reader's m i nd l i v i ng figures and representations. He addresses h imse lf not to the reader's i nte l l ect, but to h i s imagination . Only the reason ing and ana lyz ing inte l l ect can take the position that the author i s speak ing i n quasi-d irect d iscourse ; for the l iv ing fantasy, i t i s the hero who speaks. Fantasy i s the mother of the form.

Lorek ' s basic idea , an i dea he expatiates upon i n other works of h i s,6 amounts to the po in t that the creative role in language belongs not to the intellect but to fantasy. On l y forms that fantasy has a l ready created and that a re fin i shed, inert products abandoned by i ts l iv i ng spir it come u nder the command of the inte l lect. The i nte l l ect itself creates noth i ng.

Language, in Lorek's v iew, is not ready-made being (ergon ) but eterna l becom ing and l iv ing occurrence (energeia) . Language i s not a mean s or an instru ment for achieving extra l i nguistic goal s but a l iv i ng organ ism with its own goa l , wh ich i t bears with in itself a nd wh ich i t rea l izes a l so with in itse lf. And t h i s creative se lf-sufficiency of language is imp lemented by l ingu i st ic fantasy. I n l anguage, fantasy feel s itself at home, in its v ital native e lement. Language, for fantasy, i s not a means, but flesh of i t s f lesh and b l ood of i ts b lood. The p lay of language for the sake of play sufficies for fantasy. Wri ters such as Bal l y approach language from the angle of the i n te l lect and, therefore, are i ncapab le of u nderstand ing those forms which are sti l l a l ive in l anguage, in wh ich the pu l se of becoming sti l l

6. Passe defini, imparfait, passe indefini. E ine grammatischpsychologische S tud ie von E . Lorek.


beats and wh ich have not yet been transformed into a means for i nte l lectual use. That i s why Bal ly fai led to grasp the un iqueness of quasi-direct d iscourse and, d i scover ing no logical coherence i n it , exc luded i t from language.

Lorek attempts to understand and interpret the form of the imperfect tense in quasi-d i rect d iscourse from the point of view of fantasy. He d istinguishes "Defin i-Denkakte" and " l mparfait-Denkakte." The d i sti nction between th ese acts runs not a long l ines ofthe ir conceptua l content, but a long l ines of the very form of their effectuation. Wi th the Detini, our view projects outward i n to the wor ld of conceived artifacts and contents; with the lmparfait our view p l unges

· inward-into the world of thought i n process of generation and formation. "Defin i-Denkakten " bear a character of factual ascerta inment; " lmparfait

Denkakten"-that of fel t exper ience, impression . Through them, fantasy itself recreates the l iv ing past.

Lorek analyzes the fol lowing example:

L ' l r lande poussa u n grand cri de soulagement, mais Ia Chambre des lord s, six jours p lus tard, repoussait l e bi l l : G ladstone tombait [Revue des deux Mondes, 1 900, Mai , p. 1 59 ] .

I f, h e says, the two cases of the imperfect were to be rep laced by the definite past, we wou ld be very sens ib le of a difference. Gladstone tombait i s colored i n an emotive tone, whereas Gladstone tomba wou ld have the sound of a d ry business l i ke communique. I n the first case, thought l ingers, as i t were, over its object and over itself. But what f i l l s the con sciousness here is not the idea of G lad stone's fal l" but a sense of the momentousness of what has happened. "La Chambre des lords repoussait le b i l l " is a d ifferent matter. Here a sort of anxious suspense about the consequences of the event is establ i shed : the i mperfect i n "repoussait" expresses tense expectation. O ne need only utter the whole sentence aloud to detect these special features i n the p sychic orientation of the speaker. The last sy l lab le of "repoussait" is pronounced with h igh p i tch expressing tension and expectation . This tension finds reso l ution and re lease, as i t were, i n "G lad stone tombait. " The imperfect in both i nstances is emotive ly colored and permeated with fantasy ; it does not so m uch establ ish the fact of, bu t rather l ingeri ngly experiences and recreates, the action denoted . Herein cons i sts the sign ificance of the imperfect for q uasi-d irect d i scourse. I n the atmosphere created by the form , the defin ite past would have been impossib le .

Such i s Lorek 's conception ; he h imself cal l s h i s ana lysis i nvestigation i n the fie l d of the l ingu i stic psyche (Sprachseele ) . Thi s field ( "das Gebiet der Sprachsee!enforschung") was, accord ing to Lorek, opened up by Karl Vossler. A nd it was i n Vossler's footsteps that Lorek fol lowed in his study .

Lorek exam ined the quest ion i n i ts static, psychological d imensions. G ertraud Lerch, in an. artic le pub l ished in 1 922, u si ng the same Vosslerite grounds, endeavors to estab l i sh its broad h i storical perspectives. H er study contains a number

1 50 Forms of Utterance [Part Iff

of extremely valuable observations, and we sha l l , therefore, stop to cons ider i t - i n some deta i l .

The ro le assigned to fantasy i n Lorek 's conception i s p layed by empathy (Einfiih!ung} in L erch 's. It i s empathy that fi nds adequate expression in q uasid irect d i scourse. A repor�i ng verb { "said," "thought," and the l i ke) is a prerequ i site in d i rect and ind i rect d i scourse . I n th i s way, the author p laces the responsib i l ity for what i s sa id on h is character. Than.ks to the fact that such a verb is omitted i n quasi-d i re ct d i scourse, the author i s ab le to prese nt the utterances of h is characters in a way suggesti ng that he h imse lf takes them serious ly, and that what is at stake i s not merely someth ing that was said or thought, but actual facts. Th i s is poss ib le , Lerch c la ims, on ly on the basis of the poet's empathy w ith the creations of his own fantasy, on the basis of h is identify ing h im self w ith them.

How d id th i s form come about h istorical l y ? What were the essential h i storical features u nder ly ing i ts development?

In Old F rench, psychological and grammatical construct ions were far from being as sharply d i st i ngu ished as they are now. Paratactic and hypotactic components could st i l l be m ixed together i n a great many d ifferent ways. Punctuation was sti l l in its embryon ic stage. Therefore, no c lear l y marked boundar ies between d irect d iscourse and i nd i rect d i scourse existed then . The O ld F rench storytel ler was as yet u nab le to separate the figures of h i s fantasy from h i s own " I . " He participated in their words and action s from with in , operating a s their i n tercessor and advocate. He had not as yet learned to transmit a nother person ' s words i n the i r l i teral, outward shape, eschew i ng personal i nvolvement and interference. The O ld F rench temperament sti l l stood far removed from d ispassionate, cogitative observation and objective judgment. However, this d i sso lv ing of narrator into h i s characters in O ld F rench was not on ly the resu lt of the storyte l ler 's free choice, but a l so came about of necessity : firm logical and syntactic forms for d i st i nct, mutual demarcation were lacking. A nd so , q uasi-d irect d iscourse first appears in O ld F re nch on the basis of th i s grammatica l defic iency and not as a free sty l istic dev ice. Quasi-direct d i scourse in th i s i n stan ce is the resu lt of the s imp le grammatical i ncapacity of the author to separate h i s own po int of v iew, h i s own posit ion, from that of h i s characters. 7

7. H ere is a curious passage from Canticle to St. Eula/ie (second half of the 9 th century ) :

E l l ' ent adunet lo suon e lemen t; melz sostendreiet les empedementz qu 'e/le perdesse sa Virginitet. Poros furer morte a grand honestet.

("She gathers her strength: better that she undergo tortures than lose her virginity. Thus she d ied w i th great honor.")

H ere, Lerch asserts, the saint's staunch, u nshakable decision ch imes with ("k l ingt zusam· men"), the author's passionate stand on her beha lf.

Chap. 4] Quasi-Direct Discourse 1 5 1

I n the M idd le French of the late M idd le Ages, th is immersion o f oneself i n the m inds and fee l i ngs of others no longer holds true. I n the h istorical writ ings of the time, very rare ly is the praesens historicum encountered, and the standpoint of the narrator is kept d i sti nctly apart from the standpoints of the persons dep icted. E motion gives way to the intel lect; Reported speech becomes impersonal and color less, and the narrator's voice is now heard more d istinctly in it than the vo ice of the reported speaker.

After th is depersonal iz: ing period comes the heavi ly marked ind iv idual ism of the Renaissance. Reported speech once aga in endeavors to become intuit ive. The storytel ler once aga in tr ies to a l ign h imse lf with h i s character, to take a more i ntimate stand i n h i s regard . Characteristic of Renaissance style is the free, fluctuati ng, psycho logical ly colored, capric ious concatenation of grammatical tenses and moods.

I n the 1 7th century, the l ingu i st ic irrationa l i sm of the Renaissance was counteracted by the i n itiation of firm ru les govern i ng tense and mood in ind irect discourse (thanks espec ia l ly to Oud i n, 1 632) . A harmon ious ba lance was establ ished between the objective and subjective sides of thought, between referential analysis and expression of personal att i tudes. A l l this d id not come about without pressure on the part of the Academy.

The appearance of q uasi-t:l i rect d iscourse as a free, con sciously used sty l i st ic device was poss ib le only after a background had been created, thanks to the estab l ishment of consecutio temporum, against wh ich it could be d i st inct ly perceived. As such, it first appears in La Fontai ne and mainta ins, in the form i n wh ich h e used i t, a n equ i l ibr ium between the objective and the subjective, a s was character istic for the age of neoclassicism.

The omission of the report ing verb ind icates the identification of the narrator with h i s character and the u se of the imperfect ( i n contrast to the present tense of d irect d i scourse) and the choice of pronouns appropriate to ind i rect d iscourse ind icate that the narrator mainta in s his own independent position, that he does not utter ly d issolve into h i s character 's experiences.

The device of q uasi-d irect d iscourse, wh ich so neatly surmounted the d ualism of abstract analysis and unmed iated impression , br inging them i nto harmon ious consonance, proved very su itab le for the fabu l ist La Fonta ine . I nd irect d iscourse was too analytical and i nert. D irect d i scourse, though able to recreate another person's utterance dramatical ly, was i ncapab le of creating, at the same time, a stage for that utterance, a mental and emotional m i l ieu for its perception .

Whi le the device served La Fontaine's purpose o f congen ial empath iz ing, La B ruyere was able to extract from it acute satir ical effects. H e dep icted h i s characters neither in the land of fab le nor with mi ld -mannered humor-he invested quasi-d irect di scourse w ith h is an imosity toward them, h i s superiority over them. �e reco i l s from the creatures he dep icts. A l l of La Bruyere's figures come out ironica l ly refracted through the med ium of h is mock objectivism.

1 52 Forms of Utterance (Part /!!

I n F laubert's case, the device revea l s an even more comp lex nature. F laubert u nfl i nch ingly fixes his regard u pon precise ly those th i ngs wh ich d i sgust and repe l h im . B ut even then he i s 'ab l e to empathize, to identify h imse lf with the hatefu l and despicable th i ngs he portrays. Quasi-d i rect d i scourse i n F la ubert b ecomes j u st as ambiva lent and j u_st as turbu lent as h is own standpo int vi s-a-vis h i s creat ions : his i nner position osc i l l ates between admiration and revu ls ion. Quasi-d irect d i scou rse, with its capacity for conveying s imu ltaneou sly ident ificat ion with a nd i ndependence, d i stance from one 's creations, was an extreme ly su itab l e means for embodying th is l ove-hate re lation F laubert maintained t oward h i s characters.

Such are Gertraud Lerch 's i nteresting de l iberat ions on our topic. To her h istorical sketch of the development of quasi-d irect d iscourse in French, let us add the i nformation supp l ied by Eugen Lerch about the t ime of the appearance of th i s device in G erman. Q uasi-d i rect d i scourse is an extreme ly late development i n German. As a de l i berate and fu l l -f ledged device, it i s u sed for the first t ime by Thomas Mann i n h i s novel Buddenbropks ( 1 901) , apparent ly u nder the d irect i nfluence of Zo la . Th is "fami l y ep ic" i s narrated by the writer in emotional tones suggesting one of the unassum ing members of the Budden brook clan who remin i sces about, and i n rem in i scing viv id ly reexperiences, the whole h istory of the fam i ly . To th is we may add our own remark that in h i s latest novel , Der Zauberberg ( 1 924}, T homas Mann provides us with a st i l l subt ler and more p rofound uti l ization of the device.

To our knowledge, not h i ng new and nothing e lse of any weight has been said on the i ssue u nder i nvestigation here. L et us now turn to a cr it ica l ana lysis of the v iews expressed by Lorek and Lerch .

I n the studies of both Lorek and Lerch, a consistent and emphatic i ndiv idua l ist ic subjectivism i s p i tted aga inst Ba l ly 's hypostas iz ing object iv ism . T he ind iv idua l , subjective cr it ica l awareness of speakers u nd er l ies the notion of l ingu i st ic psyche. Language i n a l l its man ifestations becomes expression of i nd iv idua l psych ic forces and i nd iv idua l i deat ional i n tentions, The generation of l anguage turns out to be the process of generation of mind and sou l in ind ividua l speakers.

The Yosslerites' ind iv idua l ist ic subjectivism in exp lanation of our concrete phenomenon is j u st as u nacceptable as Ba l ly 's abstract objectiv ism. The fact i s, after a l l , that the speak ing personal ity, its subjective d esigns and i ntent ions, and its conscious sty l i st ic stratagems do not exist outs ide the i r mater ia l objectification in language. Without a way of reveal ing itse lf in l anguage, be it o n l y in i nner speech , persona l ity does not exist ei ther for itself or for others; i t can i l l um i nate and take cognizance i n i tself of only that for wh ich there is objective, i l l um i nating mater ia l , the materia l i zed l ight of consciousness i n the form of estab l ished words, value judgments, and accents. The i n ner subjective persona l ity w i th its own se lf-awareness does not ex ist as a materia l fact, usab l e as a bas is for causa l explanation, bu t i t exists a s an ideologeme. The i nner persona l ity, w i t h a l l its subjective intentions and a l l i ts i nner depths, is noth i ng but an i deologeme-an

Chap. 4j Quasi-Direct Discourse 1 53

ideologeme that _is vague and flu id i n character u nt i l it ach ieves d efinit ion i n the more stab le and more e laborated products of ideological creativity. Therefore, it is nonsense to try to exp la in ideo l ogica l phenomena and forms with the aid of subjective psych ic factors and i ntentions: that wou l d mean expla in ing an ideol ogeme of greater c larity and precision with another ideologeme of a vaguer, more mudd led character. Language l ights up the i nner personal ity and its consciouness; language creates them and endows them with intricacy and profund ity-and it does not work the other way. Persona l ity is itself generated through language, not so m uch, to be sure, in the abstract forms of language, but rather in the ideological themes of language. Personal ity, from the standpoint of its inner, subjective content, i s a theme of language, and this theme u ndergoes development and variation with in the channel of the more stable con structions of l anguage. Consequently, a word is not an expression of inner personality; rather, inner personality is an expressed or inwardly impelled word. And the word is an expression of social i ntercourse, of the social i n teraction of material personal ities, of producers. The conditions of that thorough ly material i ntercourse are what determine and cond i tion the k ind of thematic and structural shape that the inner persona l i ty w i l l receive at any given time and in any given environment; the ways in wh ich it w i l l come to se l f-awareness ; the degree of richness and surety this se lf-awareness wi l l ach ieve; and how it wi l l motivate and eva luate its actions. The generation of the inner consciousness wi l l depend upon the generative process of language, in terms, of course, of language's grammatical and concrete ideological structure. The inner personal ity is generated a long with language, in the comprehensive and concrete sense of the word, as one of its most importa nt and most profound themes. The generation of language, meanwhi le , is a factor in the generative process of socia l commun ication, a factor inseparab le from that communication and its material base. The material base determines d ifferentiation in a society, its sociopol i tical order; it organizes society h ierarch ica l ly and de, p loys persons interacting within i t. Thereby are the p lace, t ime, conditions, forms, and means of verbal commun ication determined and, by the same token, the vicissitudes of the ind iv idua l utterance in any given period in the deve lopment of language, the degree of i t s i nviolab i l i ty, the degree of d ifferential ity in percept ion of its various aspects, the nature of its ideational and verbal i ndividua l ization. And th is fi nds expression above a l l in stab le constructions of language, i n language pattern s a nd their modifications . Here the speaking persona l i ty exists not as an amorphous theme but as a more stable construction ( to be sure, concrete ly th is theme is i nextricab ly bound up with the specific thematic content appropriate to it) . Here, in the forms of reported speech, l anguage itself reacts to personal ity as the bearer of the word.

B ut what do the Vosslerites do? They provide explanations that mere ly put the comparatively stab le structural reflection of speaking persona l ity into loose thematic terms that translate events of social generation, events of h istory, into


the language of ind ividual motivations, extremely subtle and genu ine though they may be. They prov ide an ideology of ideology. However, the objective, material factors in these ideologies-both in forms of language and in t he subjective motivat ions for the ir u sage-remain outs ide their fie l d of i nvestigat ion . We do not contend that the endeavor to ideologize ideology is complete l y worth le ss. On the contrary, sometimes it i s very important to thematicize a formal construction in order to gai n access to its objective roots-those roots, after al l , are common to both aspects. The keen and a nimated interest in ideology that the idealist Vosslerites have i n troduced into l ingu istics does he lp e lu cidate certa in aspects of language that had turned i nert and opaque i n the hands of abstract object iv ism. And we owe them gratitude for that. They teased and worried the ideological nerve in language when language had at t imes, i n the hands of certai n l i ngu ists, begun t o resemb le i nan imate nature. However, they d id not f ind their way to a real , objective exp lanation of language. They came close to the l ife of h istory, but not to an exp lanation of h istory ; they approached the ever-seeth ing, ever-moving surface of h istory, b ut not i ts deep, u nder ly ing motive forces. It i s symptomatic that Lorek, i n a letter to Eugen Lerch that i s appended to h i s book , goes so far as to make the fol lowing somewhat surpris ing statement . After hav i ng descr ibed the i nertness and inte l lectual ist sclerosis of French, he adds the com ment: "There i s o n l y one possib i l i ty for its rejuvenatio n : the proletariat must take over command of the word from the bourgeoisie (Fur sie g ibt es n u r e i ne Mogl ichkeit der Verj u ngung : anstel l e des Bourgeoi s muss der Proletar ier zu Worte kommen) ."

How is th is to be connected with the overrid i ng, creative role of fantasy i n language? I s a member of the pro letariat such a fantasizer, then?

Sure ly Lorek had something e lse in mind . He probab ly means that the pro letariat wi l l bri ng with i t n ew forms of socioverba l intercourse , new forms of verbal interaction of speakers, and a whole new wor ld of social i ntonations and accents. It w i l l a l so bring with i t a new l i ngu i st ic truth . Probably that or someth i ng l i ke it was what Lorek had i n m in d when he made h is assert ion . B ut there is no reflection of th i s in h i s theory. As for fantasizi ng, a bourgeo i s i s no worse a hand at it than a proletarian , and has more spare time for i t, to boot.

Lorek 's i ndividua l i st ic subjectivism in appl ication to our concrete q uestion makes itself fel t in the incapacity of his conception to reflect the dynam ics of the interrelationsh ip between reporting and reported speech. By no m eans does quasi-d i rect d i scourse express a passive impression received from another's utterance. It expresses, instead, an active orientation, and not one that mere ly amounts to a sh ift of person from first to third, but one that imposes u pon the reported utterance i ts own accents, which col l ide and i nterfere with the accents in the reported utterance. Nor can we agree with Lorek in h is content ion that q uasid irect d i scourse is the form of reported speech closest to d irect reception and experience of another person's speech. Each form of reported speech perceives


the speech to be reported i n i ts own particu lar way. G ertraud Lerch seems to have some grasp of the dynam ics i nvolved, but she expresses it i n terms of subj ective psycho logy . Both wr i ters, therefore, attempt to flatten out a three-d imens iona l phenomenon, as i t were. I n the objective l i ngu i stic phenomenon of q uasid i rect d i scourse, we have a combination not of empathy and d i stancing with in the confi nes of an ind iv idua l psyche, but of the character 's accents (empathy) and the author's accents (d i stancing) with i n the confines of one and the same l i ngu i stic construction .

Both Lorek and Lerch a l ike fai l to take i nto accou nt one factor of extreme importance for the u nderstand ing of our phenomenon: the val ue j udgment inherent in every l iv i ng word and brought out by the accentuation and expressive intonatio n of an u tterance. Message in speech does not exist outside its l iv i ng and concrete accentuation and i ntonation . I n quasi-d i rect d i scourse, we recogn ize another person 's utterance not so much in term s of its message, abstractly con sidered, but above a l l i n terms of the reported character 's accentuation and intonation, in terms of the evaluative orientation of h i s speech.

We perceive the author's accents and i ntonat ions being i nterrupted by these va lue j udgments of another person . And that is the way, as we know, in wh ich q uasi-d irect d iscourse differs from substituted d i scourse, where no new accents vis-a-vi s the surround ing authorial context appear.

Let us now return to examples of quasi-d i rect d i scourse from R u ssian l iterature. Here i s a samp le of an extremely characteristic type in th is regard, aga in from

Pu�k in 's Po/tava :

Pretending grief, Mazeppa raises loud his humb le voice u nto the Tsar. "God knows . and all the world can see, he, hapless hetman, twenty years has served the Tsar with loyal heart; bestrewn with boundless favours and most wondrously advanced . . . . What blindness, what folly animosity would be! Is it thinkable that he, who stands upon the threshold to the tomb, would now commence to school himself in treason and becloud his honest name? A nd did not he indignantly refuse his aid to Stanislaw; appalled, reject the Ukrainian crown and send the Tsar the pact and letters of the plot, as was his duty ? Did not he turn a deaf ear unto the blandishments of Khan and Tsargrad Sultan? A flame with zeal, he gladly plied his mind and sword in contests with the White Tsar's foes, he spared no pains nor life itself, and now a vicious enemy his old grey hairs has covered all in shame. And who? Iskra and Kocub ej! Who were so long his friends! . . " And with b loodth irsty tears, in icy inso lence, the v i l la in demands their punishment . . , Whose pun ishment? Implacable o ld man! W hose daughter is in h i s embrace? Bu t the murmur ings of his heart he co ld ly st i l l s . . . [ ita l ics added ] .

Syntax and sty le i n this passage, o n the one hand , are d etermined by the eval uative tones of Mazeppa's hum i l ity and tearful p lea and, o n the other hand, th i s "tearfu l p lea" i s subjected to the evaluative orientation of the author's context, h i s narrative accents which, in the given instance, are colored in tones of ind ignation that eventua l ly erupts in the rhetorical q uestion : "Whose pun i shment? I mp lacab le o ld man ! Whose daughter is i n h is embrace?"


It would be enti re ly possible to recite th i s passage a loud and convey the double i n tonation of each of its words, i .e . , i nd ignantly reveal the hypocrisy of Mazeppa's p lea through the very read ing of it. What we have here i s a fair ly s imp le case with i ts rhetorica l , somewhat pr im itive and sharp ly etched i n tonations . I n most cases, however, and e specia l l y in that area where quasi-d i rect d i scourse has become a massivel y used device-the area of modern prose fiction-transm i ss ion by voice of eva luative interference wou ld be imposs ib le . F urthermore, the very k i nd of development quasi-d i rect d i scourse has undergone i s bound up w ith the transposition of the larger prose genres i n to a s i lent register, i .e., for s i lent reading. On ly th i s "s i l encing" of prose cou l d have made poss ib le t he m u lt i l eveled ness and voice-defy ing complex i ty of intonational structures that are so character istic for modem l i terature.

An example of thi s k i nd of i n terference of two speech acts wh ich can not b e conveyed adequate ly by vo ice is the fo l lowing passage from Dostoevsk i j ' s The Idiot:

And why did he [P ri nce Mysk i n ] avo id going straight u p to h im and turn away as if he d id n't notice anyth ing, a lthough their eyes had met. (Yes, their eyes had m et! A nd they had looked at one a nother.) D idn 't he h imself, after a l l , want not long ago to take h im by the arm and go with him there ? D idn 't he h imse lf, after a l l , wan t to go to h im tomorrow and say that he had been to see her? D id n 't he h imself, after a l l , renounce h is demon o n h is way there, in mid-course, when suddenly joy f looded h is sou l ? Or was there i ndeed something or other in Rogozi n , that is, in today 's whole image of the man, in the sum total of h is words, gestures, behavior, looks, that m ight justify the prince's terrib le forebod ings and the infuriating ins inuations of h i s demon? Something or other of the sort that makes itself fe lt but is d ifficu lt to analyze and relate, someth i ng impossib le to p in down with sufficient reasons. B ut somet h ing nevertheless that produces, desp ite a l l the d ifficu lty and the i mpossib i l ity, a perfectly cogent and i rresist ib le impression that u nw ittingly turns into the most abso l ute convict ion . Conviction that what? (Oh, how the pr ince was tormented by the monstros· ity, the "baseness" of that conviction, of "that vile fo rebod ing," and how he re· proached h imself! ) .

Let u s now devote a few words to a considerat ion of the very important and i n teresting prob lem of the phonic embodiment of reported speech displayed by the author's context.

The d ifficu l ty of eva l uative, expressive i ntonation consists here in the con stant sh ift ing from the eva luative purview of the author to that of the character and back aga i n.

I n what cases and to what l i m its can an author act out h is character? The absolute of acting out we u nderstand to be not on ly a change of expressive intonation-a change equa l ly possible with in the confines of a s ing le Voice, a s i ngle consciousness--but a l so a change of voice in terms of the whole set of features indiv idua l iz ing that voice, a change of persona ("mask") in terms of a whole set of ind iv idual iz ing traits of facial expression and gesticu lation , and, f ina l ly , the com-

Chap. 4} Quasi-Direct Discourse 1 5 7

plete self-consistency of this vo ice and persona th roughout the ent ire act ing out of the ro le . After a l l , i nto that se lf-enc losed , ind iv idua l wor l d there can no longer be any i nfus ion or sp i l l over of the author's i ntonations. As a resu l t of the selfconsistency of the other voice and persona, there i s no possib i l ity for gradation in sh ifting from the author's context to reported speech and from reported speech to author's context. The reported speech wi l l beg in to sound as if it were in a p lay where there is no embrac i ng context and where the character's l ines confront other l i ne s by other characters w i thout any grammatical concatenation . Thus re lat ions between reported speech and authoria l context, v ia abso lute acting out, take a shape analogous to the relations between a lternat ing l i nes i n d ial ogue. Thereby the author is put on a level w ith h i s character, and their re lationsh ip is d ia logized. From a l l th is, it necessar i l y fo l lows that the abso l ute acting out of reported speech, where a work of fiction i s read a loud, i s admissi b le only i n the rarest cases. Otherwise an i nevitable confl ict ar ises with the basic aesthetic design of the context. It goes without saying that these exceed ing ly rare cases can invo lve only l i near and moderate ly p icturesq ue modifications of the d irect d i scourse construction. I f the author's retort ing remarks i n tersect the direct discourse or if too dense a shadow from the author 's eval uative context fal l s u pon it, abso lute acti ng out i s impossib le .

However, another possib i l ity i s partial acti ng out (without transformation) , wh ich perm its making gradua l intonational trans it ions between authoria l context and reported speech and, in some cases, given doub le-faced modificat ions, perm i ts accomodating a l l intonations w ith i n one vo ice. To be sure, such a possibi l ity is viable on ly i n cases <fnalogous to the ones we have cited. Rhetor ical questions and exclamations often carry out the function of switch ing from one tone to another.

It remains on ly for us to sum up our analys is of quasi-d i rect d i scourse and, at the same t ime, to sum up the who le th i rd section of our study. We sha l l be br ief: the substance of the matter i s i n the argument itself, and we shal l refra in from rehash ing it .

We have conducted an inqu iry i nto the ch ief forms of reported speech . We were not concerned with prov id ing abstract grammatica l descr ipt ions; we endeavored in stead to f ind i n those forms a document of how language at th i s or that period of its development has perceived the words and personal ity of another addresser. The po i nt we had in m ind throughout was that the vic i ss itudes of utterance and speaking personal ity in language reflect the social v i c i ssitudes of verbal interact ion, of verbal- ideo logica l commun ication, i n their most vital tendencies.

The word as the ideological phenomenon par exce l lence exists in continuous generation and change; i t sensitive ly reflects a l l soc ial shifts and a l terations. I n the vic iss itudes of the word are the v iciss itudes of the society of word-u sers. But the dia lect ical gen eration of the word i s suscept ib l e of i nvestigation by various

I I '


routes. O ne can study the generation of ideas, that i s, the h i story of ideo logy i n the exact sense-the history of knowledge, a s the h i story o f the generation of truth {si nce truth i s eternal on ly as eterna l l y generated truth ) ; the history of literature, as the generation of art i st ic veracity. That is one route. Another, in t imate l y connected and i n c lose col laboration with the first, is the study of the generation of language itself, as ideological material, as the medium for ideological reflection of existence, s ince the reflection of the refraction of ex i stence i n the h uman consciousness comes about on ly i n and through the word. The generation of language cannot be stud i ed, of cou rse, in com p lete d isregard of the social ex istence refracted in i t and of the refracting powers of the socioeconomic cond i tions. The generation of the word cannot be stud ied i n d i sregard of the generation of truth and artistic veracity i n the word and of the human societ>' for whom that truth and veracity ex i st . Thus these two routes, i n the ir constan t i n teract ion with o n e another, study the reflection and refraction of the generation of nature and history in the generation of the word.

But there is sti l l another route: the reflection of the social generation of word in word itself, with its two branches: the history of the philosophy o f the word and the history of word in word. I t is precisely i n th i s latter d irection that our own study l ies. We are perfect l y wel l aware of the shortcomings of our study and can on ly hope that the very posing of the prob lem of the word in word has cru cia l importance. The h i story of truth, t he h i story of art i st ic veracity, and the h i story of language can benefit cons iderab ly from a study of the refract ions of their basic phenomenon-the concrete utterance-in constru ctions of language itself.

And n ow a few add itional words in conclwsion about quasi-direct d iscourse and the social tendency it expresses.

The emergence and d evelopment of q\.fasi-d irect d i scourse must be studied i n c lose association w i th the development of other p icturesque modifications of d i rect d iscourse and ind i rect d i scourse. We sha l l then be i n a posit ion to see that quasi-d irect d iscourse l ies on the m(lin road of deve lopmen t of the modern European languages, that i t signal izes some crucial turn i ng po int i n the social v ic iss i tudes of the utterance. The v ictory of extreme form s of the p icturesqu e sty le i n reported speech i s not, of course, to be expla ined i n terms e i ther of p sycho logical factors or the artist's own ind iv idual sty l i st ic purposes, bu t i s explainab l e in terms of the general, far-reaching subjectivization of the ideological word-utterance. No longer i s i t a monument, nor even a document, of a substantive ideational position ; i t makes itself fel t on ly as expression of an advent i t ious, subjective state. Typify ing and i nd iv idual iz ing coatings of the utterance have reached such an i ntense degree of d ifferentiation i n the l ingu i st ic consciousness that they have comp lete ly overshadowed and re lativized an u tterance's ideational core, the respon sib l e social posit ion implemented i n it . The utteran ce h a s v irtual l y ceased to be an object for serious i deational consideration . The categorical word, t he word


"from orie's own mouth," the declaratory word remains a l ive on ly in scien tific writi ngs. I n all other fie lds of verba l -ideological creativity, what predominates is not the "outright" but the "co ntrived" word. A l l verbal activity in these cases amounts to piecing together "other persons' words" and "words seemingly from other persons ." Even the humanit ies have developed a tendency to supplant respons ib le statements about an issue w ith a depict ion of the issue's contemporary state of affairs, i nc lud ing com putation and inductive adducing of "the prevai l ing po int of v iew at the presen t t ime," wh ich is someti mes even taken as the most so l i d k ind of "solut ion" to the i ssue . A l l th i s bespeaks an alarm ing i n stab i l i ty and uncerta inty of ideological word . Verbal expression i n l iterature, rhetoric, ph i losophy, and human istic stud ies has become the realm of "opi n ions," of out and out op inions, and even the paramou nt feature of these opin ions i s not what actual l y i s "opined" i n them but how-i n what individual or typical way-the "opin ing" is done. Th i s stage in the vic iss itudes of the word in present-day bourgeo i s E urope and here in the Soviet Un ion ( i n our case, up to very recent times) can be characterized as the stage of transformation of the word into a thing, the stage of depression in the thematic value of the word. The ideologues of this process, both here and in Western Europe, are the forma l i stic movements in poetics, l i ngu istics, and ph i losophy of language. One hardly need mention here what the under lying social factors exp la i n i ng this process are, and one hard ly need repeat Lorek 's we l l-fou nded assert ion as to the only ways whereby a revival of the i deological word can come about-the word with its theme i n tact, the word permeated with confident and categorical social value j udgment, the word that rea l ly means and takes respons ib i l i �y for what i t says.

A P P E N D I X

On the First Russian Prolegomena

to Semiotics

Ladislav Matejka

1 . Modern ph i losoph ica l specu lation about the nature of signs and about their role i n socia l commun ication has a tradition in G raeco-Roman civi l i zation go ing back to remote antiqu ity. Th i s trad ition embraces both Platonic and Aristote l ian reason ing on the re lationsh ip between l anguage sou nds and the h u man mind. It i nvolves the Stoics and their d ia lectical approach to the opposit ion between the sign ify ing and the sign ified, and, furthermore, it mainta ins a vita l connection with the medieva l semiotics, which regarded signs as something material stand ing for someth ing spiritual and considered human .words as the most important signs among signs.

I n Russia, the modern inqu iry into the nature of verbal s igns was stimu lated by the br i l l iant l i nguists of the Kazan schoo l , particular ly by Baudouin de Courtenay, whose phenomenologica l observations about the systematic connection between sound and mean ing found many ta lented fo l l owers in the major Russian academic centers at the begi nn ing of the 20th centu ry. Moreover, the Russian science of signs was given a sol id base by the scholar ly, as we l l as pedagogica l , contr ibutions of the prominent Moscow professor, F . F. Fortunatov, for whom the notion that h uman language i s a system of signs was one of the most fundamental concepts of l i ngu istics. A l so the class ic E ng l i sh empir ic ist, j o h n Locke, whose doctr ine o n signs subsequently influenced American semioti cs, has to be considered a powerfu l inte l lectual source in prerevo lutionary Russia, where the Anglo-Saxon ph i l osophers found many attentive students among both Marxists and non-Marx ists. However, the most decisive impact on modern Russian semiotics was, no doubt, produced by Ferd i nand de Saussure, the sp ir itual founder of the Geneva schoo l of l i nguistics.

Young Russian l i ngu i sts in the years just prior to the revo lut ion became acquainted w ith Saussure not on ly through his posthumous Cours de finguistique generate [ Course in General Linguistics ] , but a l so through the i nterpretat ion of

1 61

! I I .

1 62 Ladis/av Matejka

Saussur ian teachi ng by Sergej Karcevsk i j , who �eturned to Russia i n 1 9 1 7 after several years of study i n Geneva. As Roman J akobson recol lects in h i s Selected Writings,

I t was in t hose years that students of psychology and l i ngu istics i n our u n iversity we re passionately d iscuss i ng the ph i losophers' newest attempts toward a p henomenology of language and of signs i n general ; we learned to sense the de l icate d istinction between the signatum ( the s ignified) and the denotatum ( the referred-to) ; hence to assign an intr ins ical ly l i ngu istic posit ion , first to the signatum and then, by inference , to i t s in al ienable coun terpart as well-that i s , to the signans. 1

Russian l i ngu istics i n the early 1 920s c lear l y ref lects the impact of var ious aspects of Saussure's Course, References to Saussure and to h i s i nf luence appear, cri tica ! iy fi l tered, in J akobson 's book on Czech versification pub l i shed in 1 923 . The same year, reference s to Saussure and h i s G eneva school were made repeated ly in Russkaja r�c ' [ Ru ssian language ] , a compend i um of stud ies b y several

- young Russ ian l ingu i sts mutua l ly associated (as the ed i tor of the vo l u me, Lev �cerba, suggests i n h i s i n troductory footnote) by their common dependence on the l ingu istic teach ing of Baudou in de Courtenay.2 Moreover, i n 1 923 , the young syntactic ian, M. N . P eterson , pub l ished a l ucid out l i ne of Saussure's fundamental concepts in the journa l Pecot ' i revo!jucija [The press and the revo l u tio n J . 3 Dur i ng the 1 920s, the impact of Saussure, particu lar l y o n the students, and t he students of the students, of Baudou in de Courtenay, dominated to such an extent that V. N. Vo lo�i nov was a pparent ly very close to the truth when he stated : " I t can be cla imed that the majority of Ru ssian th i nkers i n l i ngu i st ics are u nd er the determinative i nfluence of Saussure and h is d i sc ip les, Ba l ly arid Sechehaye."

I n Saussure' s Course, as we know, the concept of s ign i s v iewed a s the very p ivot of verbal commun ication and of any communication of mean i n g in general . " Language, " he says, "is a system of s igns that express ideas."4 A lthough Saussure d i st i ngu i shes var ious s ign systems, human l anguage i s for h im the most im· portant of them a l l . I n h is i n terpretation, the semiot ic nature of human language necessari ly imp l ies its socia l character. Language as a system is a soci a l inst itut ion. As Saussure puts i t , " I t exists on ly by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a commun i ty ; the i nd iv idual must a lways serve an a pprenticesh ip in order to learn the fu nct ion ing of language; a ch i l d ass im i lates i t on ly gradua l ly. "5 S ince language is on ly one among several sem iotic systems, Sau ssure considers I i ngu i s tics a branch of the general science of s igns. 6 Us ing G reek

1 . "Retrospect," Selected Writings, I . p. 63 1 . 's-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1 962. 2. Ed i ted by L . v. Scerba , R usskaja rec' (Petrograd, 1 923 ) , p, 1 1 . 3. M . N. Peterson, "Obscaja lmgu istika," Pecat' i revo/jucija, 6, ( 1 923) , pp. 26-32. 4. Ferdinand de Sau ssure, Course in General Linguistics, translated by Wade Bask i n ,

p . 1 6. M cG raw-H i l l , N ew York, 1 959 . 5 . Ibid., p. 1 4. 6. Ibid., p. 77 .

Appendix 7 Prolegomena to Semiotics 1 63

semefon {sign) as h i s derivational base, he cal l s the envisaged science of signs semiology, as distinct from J ohn Locke's term semiotic, subsequently adapted and ingen ious ly developed by Char les Sanders Peirce .

There can hard ly be any doubt that Saussure's emphasis on the sem iotic nature of human language and on its intr ins ica l ly social character fou nd, in Va lenti n Vo lo� inov, a m ighti ly impressed a lbeit critical reader. As a matter of fact, the essential part of Volo�inov's Marxism and the Philosophy of Language cou ld be considered the first extensive Russian pro legomenon to sem iotics, enthusiastical ly e laborating the b inary concept of sign and the notion of the social basis of sem iotics in general . "Everyth i ng ideo logical _possesses mean i ng," c la ims

· Volo� inov in the opening chapter of h i s book. " I t represen ts, dep icts, or stand s for someth ing ly ing outside itself; i n other words, i t is a s ign ; w i thout signs, there is no i deology." Consequently, the study of signs is for Volo�inov a study of ideology, and the ph i losophy of language is a ph i lo sophy of sign .

Deve loping Saussure's observations about the origin o f language i n the com- . mun ity of speakers {"masse parlante") , Volo�inov i nsists that s igns can arise on ly on an i n teri ndiv idua l territory. " I t i s e ssential ," he says, "that they [the i ndiv iduals ] compose a group {a socia l u n it) ; on ly then can the med i um of s igns take shape between them." In sharp d i sti nction from Saussure, however, he does not consider signs as be ing basica l l y psychological i n nature. Wh i l e for Saussure language " i s a system of signs i n wh ich the on ly essentia l th ing is the u n ion of mean ing and sound images, and i n which both parts of the sign are psycho logica 1 ,"7 for Volo� inov "a sign is a phenomenon of the external wor ld." In his view, the local ization of s igns i n the psyche wou l d change semiotic into the study of consciousness and its laws. He is unwi l l i ng to neglect the physical properties of the sign and to treat them as if they w ere "merely techn ical means for the real ization of the inner effect, wh ich is u nd erstand ing." Wh i le Saussure regards h i s sem iology as "a part of social psychology and consequent ly of general psychology,"8 for Volo� inov the study of s igns "does not depend on psychology to any extent and need not be grounded in it." O n the contrary, he is convinced that objective psychology has to be grou nded i n the study of signs. I n h is d ia lectical approach, the b inary character of each sign imp l ies that the phys ical and mean ingfu l aspects are i n separable and cannot be studied in i solat ion from one another, precise ly because the u nity of the b inary opposition is the basis of semioticity.

Ferdinand de Saussure, faithfu l l y fo l lowing the spirit of Cartesian d ua l i sm, emphatica l ly i n si sts on a clear-cut separation between the actual speech act and the abstract system of norms i nternal ized by the l ingu ist ic competence of the speakers. " I n separating language from speaking," he says, "we are at the same t ime separating { 1 ) what is social from what is i nd iv idual , and (2 ) what is essen-

7. /bid., p. 1 5 . 8 . Ibid., p . 1 6.

i i i

1 64 Ladislav Matejka

t ia l from what is accessory and more or less accidenta l ."9 The ep istemolog ical imp l ication s of such an analytic d ivorce of language system (Ia langue) from speech act (fa parole) became a major chal lenge for the Russian students of Saussure. Not a l l of them were w i l l ing to embrace the methodologica l consequences of the two routes that resulted from Saussure's d ivorcing language from speak ing. I n obvious opposit ion to Saussure's i nsistence that "we must choose between two routes that cannot be fo l lowed simu ltaneous ly ."10 J ur ij Tynjanov and Roman J akobson in 1 928 proposed that the pr inc ip le relating the se two categories ( i .e . , Ia langue and Ia parole) must be e laborated .U A l so Volo� inov, applying h i s d ia lectica l approach, regarded the speech act and the language system as an ind iv i s ib le coup l i ng that cannot be stud ied by isolat ing one pole fro m the other. Throughout his ent ire book he makes it c lear that the concrete utterance cannot be adequately hand led without s imultaneous ly tak i ng i nto account the system of language. And converse ly , the language system, in his op in ion , cannot be analytica l ly grasped without the s imu ltaneous consideration of concrete utterances. Or, as he puts it, "the actual rea l i ty of language-speech is not the abstract system of l ingu istic forms, not the iso lated monologic utterance, and not the psychophysiological act of its imp lementation, but the social event of verbal i n teraction imp lemented i n an utterance or utterances." Thus l i ngu i stic i nqu iry i s p laced by Volo�inov in to a soc io logical framework where not o n ly the opposition between language and speech has to be taken i nto account, b ut a l so the opposit ion between speaker and hearer. With in such a comp lex analyt ic model , ne ither t h e speaker's nor the hearer's role i s favored ; they have to b e considered complementary and mutua l l y dependent in the process whereby the abstract language system is deployed to execute the concrete u tterance. Wh i l e Saussure ' s dua l i sm b reaks the complex ity of the sem iotic operation apart i n order to fac i l itate its analysis, Volo"S i nov's d ialectical pred i lection is to try to supersede the i n ner dua l i ty by a s ingle un ify ing structure. I n expl ic it opposition to Saussure ' s d ivorce between system and utteran ce, Volo�inov i nsists t hat:

1 . I d eo logy may not be d ivorced from the mater ial real i ty of sign ( i .e., by locating i t in the "consciousness" or other vague and e lu sive region s) .

2 . Sign may not be d ivorced from the concrete forms o f socia l i ntercourse {see ing that sign is part of organ ized social i ntercourse and cannot exist, as such, outside it, reverting to a mere physical artifact) .

3. Communication and the forms of commun ication may not be d ivorced from their materia l basis.

9. Ibid., p. 1 4. 1 0. Ibid., p. 1 9 . 1 1 . Cf., j u rij Tynjanov and Roman j akobson, " Problemy izucenija l i teratury i jazyka;'

Novyj Lef, 1 2 ( 1 928 ) , p. 36 ["Problems in the Study of L iterature and Language," Readings in Russian Poetics, ed i ted by L . Matej ka and K . Pomorska, p. 79 . M IT Press, Cambridge, 1 9 7 1 . ]


Saussure's systematic langu\lge versus speech bifurcation virtua l ly imp l ied the necessity of imposing strict boundaries between the synchronic aspect of a language system and the h i story of the language. "The opposit ion between the two viewpoints, the synchronic and d iachronic," he says, " i s abso lute and a l l ows no compromise."12 Accord ingly, the study of language is divided by Sau ssure i nto two d i st inct parts, defined i n the Course as fo l lows :

Synchronic linguistics wi l l be concerned with the logical and psychologica l relations that bind together coexisting terms and form a system i n the co l lective mind of speakers. Diachronic linguistics, on the contrary, w i l l study relations that b ind together successive ter!Jls not perceived by the col lective mind but subst ituted for each other w ithout forming a system.13

I t was precise ly th is separation of synchron ic and d iachronic l ingu i st i cs that became a major topic of methodologica l controversy in Russia in the 1 920s. I n 1 922, Sergej Karcevskij appl ied the Saussurian synchronic approach to the descr iption of the Russian verbal system and u sed as the epigraph to h i s art ic le Saussure's d i ctum : "La langue est un systeme dont toutes les parties peuvent et doivent etre considerees dans leur so l idarite synchronique ." 14 The fo l lowing year, in 1 923, V. V. Vinogradov, acknowledging the methodo logical st imu lus of Saussure, Baudou i n de Courtenay, and Karcevskij , proposed the appl ication of a r igorous synchron ic method to the analysis of sty le in verbal art. I n h i s proposa l , the primary task of every styl istic analysis i s to inqu i re i nto the specific system of l i ngu ist ic means and their organization as u sed by a given writer; such a task categor ica l ly requ ires, accord ing to Vinogradov, a c lassification of e lements and an exhaustive description of the styl i st ic forms and their functions. 1 5 Hence, the very center of Vinogradov's attention i s a l iterary text that is viewed as a concrete corpus of data representing a certain l ingu i st ic type and characterizing a special social group (a dia lect) . The proposed description and classification are, as V inogradov admits, i nevitab ly static. From th is position, which strict ly adheres to Saussure' s d ichotomy of synchrony and d iachrony, Vinogradov attacked those fo l l owers of the so-ca l l ed formal method who were u nwi l l ing to embrace Saussure's d ual istic separation and had insi sted that a true explanatory approach had " to overcome statics and d i scard the abso lute . " 16

Among the responses to Saussure's d ua l i st ic fal lacy and i ts Russian app l ication, the most outspoken rejection appeared in 1 927 i n a set of polemic theses,

1 2 . Course, p . 83 . 1 3 . I bid., p . 9 9 - 1 00. 1 4. S. Karcevsk ij, " E tudes sur le systeme verbal du russe contem pora in ," S/avia, 1 , ( 1 922 ) ,

p. 242. 1 5 . Cf., V. V. Vinogradov ,O zadacax sti l istiki "Russkaja ree, " (Petrograd, 1 92 3 ) , p . 286. 1 6. Roman ) akobson, " Futu rizm," lskusstvo, A ug. 2, 1 9 1 9 ; cf. h is Selected Writings, I ,

p. 65 1 ( 1 962) .

1 66 Ladis!av Matejka

s igned by J ur ij Tynjanov and Roman J akobson . "Pure synchron ism now proves to be an i l l u s ion," the authors assert. "Every synchron ic system has its past and its future as i n separable structura l e lements of the system." Whi le Saussure cla ims that "everyth ing that relates to the static side of our sci ence i s synchron ic and everything that has to do w i th evo lut ion is d iachron ic/>17 Tynjanov and J akobson proclaim :

·

The opposition between synchrony and d iachrony was an opposition between the concept of system and the concept of evolut ion; i t l oses its importance in pr inc ip le as soon as we recognize that every system necessari ly exists as evolution, w hereas, on the other hand, evolution i s i nescapably of. a systematic nature. '"

For J akobson, the rejection of Saussure's fal lacy became one of the recurrent themes of h i s scholar ly career. l n 1 928, he renewed his attack on Saussure's fal lacious dua l ism by stating :

F. d e S aussure and h is school broke a new trai l i n static l ingu istics, b u t as to the field of l anguage h istory, they remained in the neogrammarian rut.. S aussure's teach i ng that sound c hanges are destructive factors, fo rtuitous and b l i nd, l im its the active ro l e of the speech commun i ty to sens ing each given stage of deviations from the customary l in · guistic pattern as an orderly system. This ant inomy between synchronic and d iachronic l ingu istic stu dies should be overcome by a transformation of h istorical phonetics into the h i story of the phonemic system."19

The tenor of th is argument reappears, essent ia l ly unchanged, 40 years later in j akobson ' s " Retrospect" to the second vo lume of h is Selected Writings ( 1 971 ) .

Accord ing to S aussure's Cours, the in ner dua l ity of synchrony and d iachrony threatens l i ngu istics w ith particu lar d ifficu l ties and ca l l s for a complete separation of the two facets: w hat can be i nvestigated i s e ith er the coexistent relations with in the l i n gu istic system "d 'ou tout i n tervention du temps est exclue" or single successive changes without any reference to the system. I n other words, Saussure anticipated and a n nounced a new, structural approach to l inguistic synchrony but fol lowed the o ld , atom izing, neogrammarian dogma in h i storical l i nguistics. H is fal lacious identificat ion of two oppositions-synch rony versus d iachrony, and statics versus dynamics-was refuted by. post-Saussu rian l ingu istics!0

It must be said that not all post-Saussurian l i ngu istics has rejected Saussure's d i chotomy of synchrony and diachrony and statics versus dynam ics. It certa in ly preva i l s i n the present revival of Saussurian semiotics i n F rance, part icu larly i n t he school of Claude Levi-Strauss, who h imse lf embraces Saussurian synchrony w i thout reservations. A l so, in the Un ited States, Saussure ' s synchron ic approach

1 7 . Course, p. 8 1 . 1 8 . Readings in Russian Poetics, p.80. 1 9 . Casopis pro modern! filologii, XIV (P rague, 1 928 ) ; cf. "The concept of the sound law

and the teleological criter ion," Selected Writings, 1 , p. 1 -2 . 20. " Retrospect," Selected Writings, I I , p. 7 2 1 , The H ague, 1 97 1 .


sti l l dominates l i nguistic structura l i sm whether post-BJoomfie ld ia n or neo-Saussurian. On the other hand, the rejection of Saussure ' s dual i sm by representatives of the Russian school of formal ism was fu l ly adopted by the Prague school of structuralism and became a characterist ic tra i t of the ir sem iotic stud ies. The rejection of Saussure's d ual i sm a l so became typical for Volo�i nov's ph i losophy of language and for Baxt in ' s Len ingrad school in genera l .

Wh ile Saussure suggests that the synchronic system ex i sts in the co l lective mind of speakers, for Volo�inov a synchronic system is not a rea l entity at a l l . "F rom an objective point of view," he asserts, "no such system ex ists at any real i n stant of h istorical t ime. " A synchron ic system is in his opin ion nothing m ore than a descript ive construct of an analyst wh ich is handy for the bookkeep i ng of his observations:

"That system is merely an abstraction arrived at with a good deal of trouble and w ith a defi n ite cognitive and practical focus of attent ion ; the system of language is the product of del i beration on language, and de l i berat ion by no means of the k ind carried out by the consciousness of the native speaker and hy no means of the k i nd carri ed out for the immed iate purpose of speak ing."

The static nature of Saussure's synchronic model and i ts artificial separation from the ceaslessly changing cont i nuum of the creative flow of language was correctly interpreted by Volo�inov as the revival of the Cartesian spir it in the area of l i nguistic i nvest igation. As a d ia lectic ian, he objected to the segregat ing tendency of Cartesian d ua l i sm and tr ied to see evolut ionary forces and systematization as a cont inuous i nteraction wh ich is i nd ivis ible, a lbe it ant ithetic. A t the same time, however, Vo lo�inov was fu l ly aware of the impact of Saussure's Cartesian ism on h i s contemporaries. "Saussure's views on h i story," he read i ly

· admits, "are extremely characteristic for the spirit of rationa l ism that cont inues to hold sway in the ph i losophy of language a nd that regards h istory as an irrational force d istorting the logical purity of the language system."

2. The static nature of an abstract system of norms, featured i n the formalism of Cartesian l i ngu istics, found a persuasive crit i c i n Wi l helm von Humbo ldt, for whom language was a continuou s, incessantly changing generative process. Whi le the tradition of Cartesian l i ngu i st ics tended to consider every language as a c losed, stable system of ru les, as a ready-made normative i n strument inherited from preced ing generations, H umbo ldt saw it as a natural creative activity of mankind. Although various aspects of Humboldt's observations about language are not fu l ly d iscern ib le i n the tw i l ight of h i s grand iose general izations, nevertheless he was often regarded as a coryphaeus of the Romantic reaction against the era of rationa l ism, wh ich dominated 1 7th- and 1 8th�century l i ngu istics.21 I n Russia, the tradit ion of H umboldt ian l ingu i stics was commonly v i ewed

2 1 . A d iametrica l ly opposite i n terpretation of von Humbo ldt appears in Noam Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics. Harper and Row, N ew York, 1 966 . S ee, for example, p. 1 9 : "The Cartesian emphasis on the creative aspect of language use, as the essential and defi n i n g char·


as an opposit ion to the trad i tion of Cartesian l i nguistics. Characteristica l ly, the most outspoken fol l ower of the Humboldtian trend i n the h i story of Russian l ingu istics was the syntactician A lexander Potebnja, the l eadi ng theor i st of the R u ss ian symbo l ic movement and the pr incipal target of the generat ion in spired by Ferd inand de Sau ssure. I n the 1 920s, the tradit ion of H umboldtian l i ngu ist ics was viewed i n d irect contrast to the modern trends i n l ingui stics a s po inted out by the M oscow l i ngu ist, R . 5or, who i n 1 927 i n "Cris is in contemporary l ingu i stics" arrived at the fol lowing conclus ion :

"language i s not an artifact (ergon ) b u t a natural a n d congen ita l activity of mank ind"so c la imed the romanticist l ingu istics of the 1 9th century. Theoretical l ingu ist ics of modern times cla ims otherw ise: " language is not ind iv id u a l activity (ehergeia) but a cu l tura l-h istor ica l legacy of mankind (ergon ) ."22

Thus the Humboldt ian emphasis on the creative aspect of h uman l anguage was identified as a typ ical expression of romanticism in d irect opposit ion to modern l i ngu i stics. For Volosinov, l ikewise, von Humboldt was an antithesis to Descartes and, in effect, the most promi nent antipode of abstract obj ectivism in European ph i losophy of language. In d i st inction from R. Sor , however, Vo los inov did not consider the H umboldtian focus on the creative aspect of human language as someth i ng i rre l evant to l ingui st ic investigat ion; on the contrary, he conceived i t as one of the most important concepts of h is own ph i losophy of language.

I n contrad istinction to the tradit ion of the Cartesian l i ngu ist ics, the Humboldtian l i ngu istics encompasses, accord ing to Vo los ino v, the need for the true explanation of l ingu ist ic phenomena, whi le descriptive and classifying p rocedure s are viewed as prel im i nary a t best. The Humboldtian emphasis on the creative aspect as the fundamental character istic of human language i s, as Vol osinov sees it, in d irect contradiction to i n terest in the i nner logic of the system of sign itself, taken as in a lgebra without adequate relation to the actual real i ty or to the participants of the commun ication. The systematic presentat ion of the grammar, lex icon, and phonetics i s for Volosinov noth i ng more than de l i berat ion on language and specu lative exercises i n logic, segmentation, c lassification, abstracting, and a lgebraizat ion.

Thus, the pr imary target of l ingu ist ic i nvestigation shou ld be exact l y that wh ich reveals the creative aspect of human language; and such a task, in Volosi nov's v iew, can not be fu l fi l led w i thout adequate study of utterances, that is to

22. R . �or, " Kr iz is sovremennoj l ingvistik i," jafeticeskij sbornik, V ( 1 927} p . 71 (as quoted by V. N. Volosi nov) .

acteristic of h uman language, finds its most forcefu l expression in H umboldt 's attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of general l ingu istics." A lso see Chomsky's note 36 (p . 8 6 ) : "Considered aga inst t h e background that we are surveying here, it [ H umbold t 's treatise ] seems to mark the term ina l point of the deve lopment of Cartesian l i ngu istics rather than the beginn ing of a new era of l ingu istic thought."


say, w ithout accounting for the creative aspect of h uman language i n its social function. As Vo lo�inov says,

The task of identify i ng the real object of study in the ph i losophy of language is by no means an easy one; w ith each attempt to del im it the object of investigation , to redu ce it to a compact subject-matter complex of defin i tive and i nspectable d imensions, we forfe i t the very essence of the th ing we are study ing-its semiotic and ideol ogical natu re.

The semiotic nature of human commun ication cannot be grasped, as Vo lo�i nov sees i t, if the novelty of the speech act and its relevance are d isregarded as su perficial phenomena, as "mere ly fortu itous refraction and variations or p la in and s imple d i stortions of normative ly identical forms." ln Cartesian l i ngu istics and in the schoo l of abstract objectiv i sm i n genera l, accord ing to Volo�inov, the factor of stab l e se lf- identity in l i ngu i st ic forms takes precedence over theirmutab i l ity, the abstract over the concrete, systematicity over h i storicity, the forms of i so lated components over the property of the entire structure. I n Volo�i nov's view, Cartesian l i ngu istics and its cont inuation in abstract objectiv ism rejected the speech act and the resu lt ing utterance as something ind iv idual because the abstract system of ru les and norms was promoted to the exc l usive object of l i n guistic investigation.

On the other hand, H umbo ldtian l i ngu i stics and its contin uation in ideal istic subjectivism rejected the static, normative system of ru les a s artifi cia l de l iberation on language and promoted the creative novelty, the styl i st ic variab i l ity of the speech act, to the primary focus of attention. A lthough Vo lo�i nov agrees with the fol lowers of the Humbo ldt ian trend that the study of utterance deserves the fu l l attention of l ingu i stic investigation, he d i sagrees with the emphasis on the i ndiv idual character of the utterance and with the attempts to exp la in the creative aspect of h uman l anguage in terms of the i ndiv idua l psych i c life of the speaker. And precise ly for that reason, he rejects certai n fo l lowers of the Humboldtian trad ition, parti cu lar ly the Vossler schoo l :

I n point o f fact, the speech act , o r more accurately, its product-the u tterance, cannot under any c i rcumstances be considered an ind iv idua l phenomenon in the precise meaning of the word, and cannot be expla ined in terms of the ind ividua l psychological or psychoph'ysiological conditions of the speaker.

Thus neither Cartesian l i ngu istics nor H umboldtian l i ngu i stics and their fo l l owers are fu l ly embraced by Volo�inov. In h i s attempt to operate as a d ia lectician, he sees ind iv idua l istic subjectiv ism and abstract objectiv ism as thesis and antithesis and proposes a dia lectical synthesis beyond these oppos ing trends, a synthesis that wou ld constitute a negation of both thesis and antithesis a l i ke . The true center of l i ngu istic real ity for Volo�inov i s the mean ingfu l speech act, viewed as a social structure in a l l its aspects v ita l for semiot ic operation.


Dia logue i n a broader sense is for Vo lo"Sinov an exemp lary case of verbal interaction d isp lay ing, a s i t does, the most essential features of semiotic operation : not on ly the speech event w ith i t s physica l and semantic aspects i n re lation to another speech event but a l so the oppos it ion of the part ic ipants of the speech event and the condit ions of their verba l contact in a given context.

3. Al though Vo lo"Sinov had many harsh comments to make about the Vossl er school , he certa in ly s hared with the Vossler ites some of their basic v iews, inc lud ing the notion of importance of d ialogue as an approach to a more correct u nderstanding of verbal interaction. He particular ly s ing led out Leo S pi tzer 's book on the I tal ian conversational language, appreciat ing its emphasis on the role of speaker and l i stener in actual conversation.23 A l so M ixa i l M. Baxtin, whose inte l l ectual bond with Volo�inov i n the !ate 1 920s was strik ing ly c lose, high ly prized Sp itzer' s observations on the essential ro le of the partic ipants of the speech even t in the structure of the utterance. I n h i s study of d iscourse typology, Baxt i n quotes Sp itzer:

When we reprodu ce i n our own speech a portion of what our conversat ional p artner sa id , a change of tone i nevitab ly occurs if for no other reason than that the addressers have been shifted around : the words of the "other" in our mouths a lways sound l i ke someth ing fore ign, very often with a mocking, exaggerated , and d eris ive i ntonation . . . I n this connection I shou ld l i ke to make a special point of the funny o r shar p l y iron ic repetition of the verb of our p artner's question in our subsequent rep ly. In such a situ ation it may be seen that we often resort, not on ly to grammatical l y i ncorrect, bu t even to very daring, sometimes completely impossib le construct ions for t he so le pu rpose of somehow repeating a part of our partner's speech and giving it an i ron i c twist.24

The framework of d ia logue natura l ly brought forward the crucial ro le of i n tonation for semantics and the i nadequacy of grammatica l analys is confined w ithin the boundaries of a s i ngle, comp lete and so-cal led wel l -formed sentence. The focus on the b inary character of a verbal exchange imp l ied an u rgent need for taking i nto account syntactic un its that were either more comprehensive or less comprehens iv e than a single complete sentence. The prob lem of correctness and incorrectness of sentence formation was shown in a new l ight. The incomp leteness of sentences, the dependence on the antecedent, and the concept of utterance as a whole appeared as stimu lating chal lenges for syntactic i nqu iry. At the same time, it became apparent that morpho logized syntax was a poor tool for hand l ing an utterance as a whole, the syntactic i nterdependence of utterance structure and, i n genera l , the mu lti farious man ifestations of verba l interaction.

In Russian l ingu istic scholarsh ip, the theoretical importance of the d ia logue framework was out l ined i n modern terms as ear l y a s 1 91 5 by Baudou in d e

2 3. ,Leo S p itzer, /talienische Umgangssprache ( L ei pzig, 1 922 ) . 2 4. M. M. Baxtin, " D iscourse Typology in P rose ," Readings in Russian Poetics, ed ited by

L. M atejka and K. Pomorska, p p. 1 86-1 8 7 . M IT Press, Cambridge , 1 97 1 .

Appendix 7 Prolegomena to Semiotics 1 7 1

Courtenay's student, Lev Scerba, i n h is study o n East-Lusatian d ia lects. Developing Scerba's observations about the natura l ness of d ialogue and the artifi cia l ity of monologue, Lev J akubinskij , a prominent theoretician of the Russian school of Formal ism, devoted a comprehensive study to the prob lem of d ia logue wh ich was pub l i shed in S�erba's Russkaja rec' [ Russian Language] in 1 923 .

I n j akub inski j 's view, d ia logue provides a natura l framework for l i ngu ist ic i nqu i ry i n to verbal interaction, which is for h im one of the most fundamenta l l i ngu istic concepts. The study of dia logue imp l ies the necessity of consider ing verbal commun ication i n i ts social setting. The relationsh i p of the opposing partners in the verbal interchange is shown by J akubinskij as a basis for an adequate i n terpretation of utterances in semantic terms as we l l as for the study of i ncomp lete sentences and their dependence on various types of antecedents. J akubinski j 's observations about " speech by h i nts" d ramatical ly revealed the i nsufficiencies of syntactic procedures original ly developed on ly for the analysis of iso lated , monological sentences. Phonological and morphological criteria, however soph isticated, proved to be i nadequate points of departure for analysis of the semantic consequences of verbal i n teraction d i splayed in a dia logue.

I nqu i ry into verbal interaction sh ifted focus of attent ion to the crucial importance of intonation or, as J akub inskij puts i t, to "the commun icative ro le p layed by the re lationship of the dynamic, i n tonat ional , and t imbre systems i n the perception of speech." To i l l u strate the meaningful function of i ntonation, j ak ub inskij quotes the famous passage from Dostoevski j 's Diary of a Writer about the "u nprintable noun" of the drunkards who sudden ly made the writer re-a l ize "that al l thoughts, a! I fee l ings, and even whole trains of reasoni ng" can be expressed by means of i ntonational variants i n pronouncing a single obscen ity. Subsequently, the same passage from Dostoevskij was quoted by Volo�inov i n h i s d iscussion of the i nterre lationsh i p between i ntonation and meaning; curiously enough, i t was a lso used in Lev Vygotskij 's Mys!enie i ret ' [ Thought and language ] ( 1 934) , a suggestive Russian contribution to psychology that i n many respects brings tq m ind not only J akubinskij 's study of d ia logue but a l so Volo�i nov's ph i losophy of language . I n genera l , i t appears that the formal ist, Lev J akub i nski j , more than any other investigators of d ia logue and the speech act, exercised an important impact on the Russian i ntel lectual e l ite in the 1 920s and ear l y 1 930s, short ly before the Marxist mechanists and reflexologists began to dominate i ntel lectual l ife in the Soviet Un ion.

The study of d ialogue not on ly provided a new approach to the structural characteristics of an u tterance but, for both Volo� inov and Vygotsk ij , became a b asis from which to venture i nto the mysteries of i n ner speech and its relationsh i p to human thoughts. "On l y by ascerta in ing the forms of who l e utterances and, especia l ly, the forms of d ialogue speech ," Vo losinov argues, "can l ight be shed on the forms of i nner speech and on the pecu l iar logic of their concatenat ion in the stream of i nner speech." Lev Vygotskij 's observations d isplay the same d isposition of m ind :

1 72 Ladis/av Matejka

Our experiments convinced us that i nner speech must be regarded , not as speech m inus sound , bu t a s an entirely separate speech function: I ts ma in d istinguishing trait is its pecu l ia r syntax. Compared with external speech, in ner speech appears d iscon nected and i n complete.25

Volo�i nov came to the.conclus ion that i nner speech was profound ly d ifferent from its imp lementat ion i n utterances. " I t i s c lear from the outset," he c la ims, "that without exception a l l categories worked out by l ingu i stics for the analysis of the forms of externa l language-speech (the lexico logica l , the grammatica l , the phonetic) are inappl icab le to the analys is of i nner speech , or i f app l icab le , are app l icable on ly in thoro ugh ly and rad ica l l y revised vers ions. " A nd Vygotsk ij i n obvious agreement with Vo lo�inov says :

A l l our observations ind icate that i nner speech i s an autonomous speech funct ion. We can confidently regard i t as a d istinct p l ane of verbal though t. I t is evident t hat t he transition from inner to external speech is no t a simp le translation from one l anguage in to another. It cannot be achieved by m erely voca l iz ing s i lent speech. I t is a complex, dynamic p rocess involving the transformation of the p redicat ive, id iomatic structure

· of i nner speech into syntactica l l y articu lated speech i n tel l ig ib le to others!6

Utterance and d ialogue also p layed a fundamental rol e in the sem iotic anal· yses of M. M. Baxtin , who obviously he ld many v iews on verbal comm u n icat ion i n common with V. N . Volo�inov and was capab le of e laborati ng some of them w i th admi rab le luc id ity. In h i s book on the verbal .art of Dostoevskij (Problemy tvortestva Dostoevskogo, Len ingrad, 1 929) , Baxtin demonstrated that the var i ous types of relationsh ip of one speech act with another were of p ivotal importance for the u nderstand ing of verbal art-prose fiction i n particu lar. I n the i ntroduction to the theoretical part of h i s book, Baxt in writes:

A set of certai n verbal d evices used i.n l iterary art has recently attracted the special attention of i nvestigators. Th is set comprises sty l izat ion, parody, skaz ( i n its strict sense, the oral narration of a n arrator) , and d ialogue. D esp ite the fundamental d ifferences among them, all these devices have one feature in common: in all of them d iscourse mai ntains a double focus, a imed at the referential object of speech, as in ord i nary d iscourse, and s imultaneously at a second context of d iscourse, a second speech act by another addresser. I f we rema in ignorant of th is second context , if we accept styl ization or parody as we accept ord inary speech with i ts s ingle focus on its referent ial obj ect, then we shal l fail to grasp these devices for what they real ly are: we sha l t take sty l ization for straight sty l e and read parody as poor w rit ing.27

The role of dia logue, of verbal interaction, and of doub ly oriented d i scourse continued to be a productive standpoint for Baxt in after several decades of bruta l ly enforced si lence. I n his b ook, Tvorcestvo1 Fransua. Roble, [Rabe/ais and his

25 . Lev Semenovich Vygotskij, Thought and Language, translated by E. Hanfmann and G. Vakar , p . 1 38 . M IT P ress, Cambridge, 1 962.

26. Ibid., p. 1 48 . 27 . Readings in Russian Poetics, p . 1 76 .


world ] 28 pub l i shed first in 1 965 , Baxtin employed the ana lytic framework of dia logue and verba l interaction to i l l um inate Rabe la is ' inge n ious creativ ity , st i l l conv inced, as he h ad a lways been, that t h e analys is of verbal art offered t h e best opportun ity for i l l u strating the creative aspect of language usage and, imp l icit ly, the most fundamenta l characteristics of verbal sem iot ic.

4. A l though Vo lo�inov i n h i s book, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, used lengthy references to N . J a . Marr's thoughts about language and anthropology, he was in apparent d isagreement w ith the Marristic dogma about the c lass character of l anguage and about the causal relationship between language and class struggle. I n h i s book , Vo lo� inov argues that "cl ass does not coi ncide with sign commun i ty" that "var ious d ifferent c lasses wi l l use one and the same language" and that "the word is neutral with respect to a specific ideological function . " I n contrad isti nction, N . ) a. M arr, i n h i s d i scussion of Marxi sm and j aphet ic theory i n 1 930, apodictica l ly repeats that human language has been a c lass language from its very origin and that there i s no human language wh ich is c lass less. And, as a matter of fact, one cou ld speculate that the d iscrepancy between Marr's Marxism and Volo'Si nov's Marxism m ight h ave b een one of the reasons for Volos inov's downfa l l .

T h e mechanists, reflexologists, a n d Marri sts, who i n the 1 930s ga ined absol ute control over a l l aspects or humanist ic stud ies in the Soviet Un ion, were hardly flattered by Volosi nov 's assert ion that l i ngu i stics rema ined "at a stage of pred ia l ectica l , mechan i stic mater ia l ism, one expression of wh ich is the cont inued hegemony of mechan istic causal i ty in al l domains of ideo logical stud ies." The powerful guard ians of official Marxi sm were obvious ly not ready to accept with equanim ity Vo lo� inov's d ictum , "The range of app l icat ion for the categories of mechanical causal ity is extremely narrow, and even with in the natura l sciences themselves it grows constant ly narrower, the further and more deeply d ia l ectics takes ho ld i n the basic princi p les of these sciences. " I t is apparent that Volosinov was u nable to persuade his powerfu l opponents about the true Marx ist nature of

· his d ia lectical synthesis which, l i ke a rainbow, arched over the polar opposition of Cartesian and Humboldtian l i ngu i stics. H is comb i nation of the b inary concept of sign with the i ncessant, immanent flow of the generative process of language became a suspicious concept i n pr inc ip le. Vo losi nov 's specia l emphasis on the socia l character of sign, on the socia l character of l anguage, on the socia l character of the ind iv idua l consciousness, and on the socia l character of i nner speech and human thi nk ing in general were a l l to no ava i l . I n the 1 930s in the Soviet Un ion, the b inary nature of the sign and the incessant generative process of language creativity became subjects too dangerous to tack l e if one wan ted to survive. A lthough the deta i l s are obscure and w i l l probab ly remain obscure forever, it is c lear that Vo losinov d id not survive. He d i sappeared in the 1 930s and,

28. M i k ha i l B ax t i n , Rabelais and His World, translated b y H. l sw o lsky. M I T Press, Camb ridge, 1 968.


together w ith h im, h i s Marxism and the Philosophy of Lqnguage1 as wel l as h is Freudianism1 were doomed to s ink into ob l iv ion . The pro legomena to semiotics became a prolegomenon to an intel lectual tragedy. For decades, the concept of the s ign was taboo. I n the 1 950s1 when it became apparent that the technolog ica l advances of data processing devices were i ntrinsica l l y related t o the ach ievements of modern semiotics l ingu i stics, logic, and app l ied a lgebra, the conservative guardians of Marxist "Truth" loosened their gr i p to a l low the Soviet Union to catch up w i th the West in the app l ication of soph i st icated data processing to i ndustrial ization, to the exp loration of the u n iverse, and , of course, to modern warfare. Sti l l , in 1 959, in a programmatic artic le pub l ished by several authors in the lzvestija Akademii Nauk U.S.S.R. , the officia l pub l i cat ion of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the l i ngu ist V. V. Vinogradov openly stated that scientists continued to be a pprehensive of semiotics?9 As a matter of fact, V . V . V inogradov was the first (or perhaps one of the first) who subsequently dared to give any credit to Y. N . Vo.lo�inov. Unt i l n ow, references to Volo�inov's contribution have been rare. Even authors who approached the prob lems of semiotics as, for example, d id A. G . Vol kov i n h is Language as a System of Signs (jazyk kak sistema znakov) , pub l i shed by the Moscow University Press i n 1 966, d i d not have the courage to mention Volo�inov's name. Th i s is a l so genera l l y tru e about the majority of recent stud ies on semiotic in Voprosy Filosofii [ Prob lems of Ph i losophy ] , an official j ournal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. A l so, the First International Conference on Sign and the System of Language, wh ich took p lace i n Germany in 1 959, fu l l y avoided mentioning Volo�inov's name, a lthough many R u ssian scho l ars and many Marxist and non-Marx i st sem ioticians took part i n the d i scussions. Volo�inov's name was even avoided in V. Zvegincev's paper, "Man and S ign" (Ce!ovek i znak ) , pub l ished in 1 967 in the "Festschr ift," To Honor Roman jakobson (The H ague : Mouton ) , a lthough V. Zvegincev, a we l l - informed editor of Soviet Russian surveys of modern l i ngu istics, mu st have been aware of the honorab le credit Roman J akobsen had given to Vo lo�inov's contr ibut ion to semiotics. Thusthe daring, penetrating views of Valent in Vo lo� inov have been only sem i resurrected, and h i s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language continues to be a controversial b ook-wh ich, i ndeed, it i s. I t is a controversial book but, at the same time, it i s a book of bri l l iant observations about the paramount impor· tance of sign for human community, for h uman consciousness, and for that wh ich makes peop le human; it i s a boo k about the miracle of language w hich, being a generative process, "can only be grasped with a id of another generative process."

29. See R . A . Budagov, V. V. V inogradov, B . V. Gornung, M . M . D esnick aja , and B. A . Serebren ikov, "Teoreticesk ie voprosy j azykoznanij a," lzvestija A . N., XV I I , (1 959 ) , p . 2 1 6.

A P P E N D I X I I

The Formal Method and the Sociological Method

(M.M. Baxtin, P.N. Medvedev, V.N. Volosinov)

in Russian Theory and Study of Literature

I . R. Titunik

During the 1 920s, espec ia l l y the l atter ha lf of the decade, massive attention i n the world of Russian l i terary studies was focused on the work of the so-cal led formal method or formalist school. The contingent of bri l l iant young scho lars of language and l i terature who came to be known as the formal i sts had begun operating about 1 9 1 6, as Opojaz, 1 the ir primary un ify ing concern having been the estab l i shment of an autonomous science of l i terature based on "concrete poetics," that i s, on the specific, intr insic character i stics of verbal art. Unquest ionably, forma l i sm was the most scientifical ly advanced , the most dynamic and i nfluentia l movement in Russian l iterary thought of the t ime. Neutrality toward the cha l lenge of the new schoo l was a practical impossib i l ity.

The situation that supervened around 1 925 was, however, far from a s imple marsha l i ng of pro and con forces. The formal ists had by t hat t ime attracted to their work hosts of d iscip les, partisans, and fe l low trave lers of various k i nds and degrees. But among the new adherents were many "epigones" and "ecclectics" whose schol arsh ip betrayed mi sconception of what the movement's scientific orientation was, and who created spurious brands of forma l i sm from wh ich the Opojazists, though repeated ly and outspokenly crit ica l , found it d ifficult to disassociate themselves. 2

1 . Opojaz is the acronym for Obscestvo izucenija poeticeskogo jazyka [ Society for the S tudy of Poetic Language ] . It was one of the two groups compris ing the formal ist movement; the other group , the Moscow L i ngu istic C ircle, ceased functioning as such in the ear ly 1 920s. A d etailed account of the " h istory and doctrine" of Russian formal ism, p lus b ib l iography, is given in V. E rl ich , Russian Formalism (The Hague, 1 95 5 ) . The anthology , Readings in Russian Poetics (Formalist and Structuralist Views) [ hereafter R eadings ] , edited by L. Matejka and K. Pomorska. M IT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 97 1 , presents E ng l ish translations of many of the most i mportant formal.ist stu d ies in l i terary theory and analysis. The book also i ncludes essays on R ussian formal ism by the editors.

2. See B. Ejxenbaum, "The Theory of the Formal Method" in Readings, pp. 5 and 1 8 .

1 75

1 76 I. R. Titunik

O n the other s ide were the movement's numerous opponents, no l e ss m ixed in character. Some opponents were uncomprom ising foes, out to d iscred it' and demol ish forma l i sm at a l l costs, who d i d n ot hesitate to feature in the ir arguments aga inst it the "formal i sm" espoused by the movement's m isgu ided new enthusiasts. At the same time, there were many other critics of formal i sm who, wh i l e disagreeing on major princip les, evinced admiratio n for certa in aspects of the formal ists' work and even a w i l l ingness to come to terms with them. I n both these variants of opponent, Marxists of various stamps and stand ings were represented.

As the decade of the 1 920s ended and that of the 1 930s began, t he formal ist movement and the controversy in which it was embroi led came more and more u nder the effect of changes occurring in the pol itical and governmental l ife of the Soviet Union. The i n terests of argument, of free-whee l ing debate and polemics, were being gradua l ly supp lanted by the demand s of dogma. Increasingly, formal ism was put i n the position of a " heresy," but the more s in ister results of th i s tren d were to become real ities of Soviet l ife only somewhat later. I n the interim, though loyalty to the stand taken by dogma was a prerequis i te, it was sti l l possi b le to contend wi th formal ism in rational terms. During this periodthe late 1 920s and early '30s-a certain group of young, self-avowed M arx ists (whose M arxism, however, was to prove other than the regu lation k ind , and who were to suffer dire consequences despite, or more l i ke ly on account of, their Marx ism) were carry i ng out i nvestigations in the theory of l anguage and l iterature or, more broad ly and accurately, in the fie l d of sem iology with particu lar emphasis on language and l iterature. The principal of this group was, apparently, M. M. Baxti n ; the membersh ip included P. N . Medvedev and V. N. Vo losinov.3

What exactly the re lationsh i p of the Baxtin group with the formal ists was i s a q uestion that a l lows of no easy answer, and perhaps can never be answered in fu l l as regards the actua l , h i storical s i tuation . True, a l l three of the scho lars named d id, to one degree or a nother, art icu late antiforma l ist posit ions, and d id

3. I t w a s not u n t i l fa ir ly recently that t h e very existence of t h i s group beca m e � matter of p u b l ished i nfo r m ation. B r ief m e n t ions of a B ax t i n " group," " c ircle," "schoo l " a p peared i n two books on psycho l i ng u i st i cs by A. A. Leon t'ev (Psixolingvistika, L e n i ngra d , 1 9 6 7 , pp. 8 6 -8 8 ; a n d jazyk, rec', recevaja dejatel'nost', M oscow, 1 9 69, p . 7 9 ) . C u r i o u s l y enough, a l l q u otations represe n t i n g the B ax t i n point of v iew in Leont'ev's books are fro m Volosi nov's Marksizm i filosofija jazyka. T he f u l lest acco u n t of the Baxtin group to date is t h e report of a meeting held at M o scow U n iversity i n honor of M . M. Baxtin 's 7 5 th b i rthday, p u b l ished in Voprosy jazy!wznanija, 2 , 1 97 1 , p p. 1 60-1 62. The report s u m marizes the c o nte nts of fou r speeches given a t t h at meet ing. I ncluded in the remarks of the sec o n d spea k e r was t h e fol l o w i n g i de n tification of the B a x t i n grou p : " M . M . B ax ti n 's i m med iate entou rage consisted of such people as his stu d e n t, fo l lower, and col laborator, V . N. V o l osinov , the l i terary sch o lars P. N . M e dvedev and L. V. P u m pj a nskij , the indologist M . I . T u bj a nsk ij , the b io l ogist 1 . 1 . K a n aev, the w riter K . V aginov , the musicologist I . I . S o l ler t i n sk ij ." T he r e l a t i o n o f Baxtin to the Opojaz is a lso b r iefly d iscussed there.

Appendix 2 Formal and Socio!og!ca! Methods 1 77

so purported l y as Marx i st opponents of formal ism for whom no compromi se was possib le. At the same time, com pletely defens ib le c la ims to another effect can be made : that the Baxtin group and the formal ists shared a number of crucial concerns in common; that formal ist theories had nurtured and stim u lated the th ink ing of the Baxtin group-and not on ly by way of reaction ; that in certain respects, specifica l ly and concretely w i thin the domain of poetics, the Baxt in group was operati ng with concepts very close to ones that were sti l l being formu lated, qual ified, and further developed by the formal method as it continued to evolve; final l y, that the two l i nes were bound to converge, and d id in fact converge, but on ly e l sewhere and u nder d ifferent auspices-in the structura l i sm of the Prague Schoo l and e specia l l y in the work of j an M ukarovsky.

However, the conc lusion that the Baxtin group were rea l ly forma l i sts or neo· formal i sts operating u nd er cover of Marxism and antiformal i sm for the sak e of professional survival wou ld not on ly be an exaggeration and distort ion of t h e facts, b u t wou ld a l so obscure t h e rea l main issue. C learly, what the Baxtin group wanted was a fresh start on new prem i ses-the premise s of a Marx ist semio logy or, as they termed i t, a Marxist study of ideo logies (nauka ob ideo!ogijax) . I n their view, on ly on the basis of such a study and with in its overal l context could a proper theory and study of l iterature be constructed. In contrad i st inction to the formal method, they declared theirs to be the sociological method. Acknowledgment of over lapping and paral le l ism between the two methods was neither circumstantia l l y expedient nor real l y to the point. The point was contradiction: contradiction i n basic outlook and orientat ion with a l l the consequences that i ssued therefrom. Thus the ut i l ity and necessity of contending with forma l ism arose, not as a matter of demol i shing formal ism, but of using it to set perspect ives in which the "right" prem i ses wou ld be shown in concrete contrad ict ion w ith the "wrong" ones.

This task-specifica l l y, the adumbration of a Marx ist theory and study of l iterature v ia critical analysis of formal i sm-was carr ied out by P. N. Medvedev. I n 1 928 he produced a study u nder the title Formal'nyj metod v literaturovedenli (The formal method in l i terary scho larsh ip ] , symptomatica l ly subtit led Kriticeskoe vvedenie v socio!ogiceskuju poetiku [A cr itical introduction to socio logical poetics ] .4 The book was i ssued by the I n stitute for Comparat ive H istory of Occidental and Orienta l Languages and Literatures in its series, "Problems of

4. A pparently this study d id not s it too wel l with the authorities. A second version was pub l ished in 1 934 under the new tit le, Forma/izm i formalisty [ Formalism and the formalists ] . It is essentia l ly the same study , but sandwiched in between viru lently worded, o utright condemnations of forma l ism. It d id not, however, save Medvedev from being, as the Kratkoja literaturnaja encik/opedija [Concise L i terary E ncyclopedia] (Vol . 4, Moscow, 1 9 67 , p. 7 23 ) p uts it, " i l legal ly repressed" soon thereafter. I n the present essay, a l l q uotation s are from the 1 928 version. For the sake of convenience, page numbers referring to that ed ition a ppear in brackets after quotations.

1 78 I. R. Titunik

Methodo logy and Theory of Language and L iterature," the very same series in . w h ich, the next year, V. N . Volosinov's Marxism and the Philosophy of Language appeared . The two books sign ificantly complement each other, share complete i dentity of assumptions and outlook, concepts and term inology, and even c losely coincide i n the very word i,ng of the argument in a number of passages. The nature and scope of concern with forma l i sm was, of course , qu ite different. For Volosinov, crit icism of the ep istem�logica l and methodological bases of formal ism in 'general , what h e termed "abstract objectiv ism," comprised one part of a twofo ld critical analysis out of wh ich a new Marxist conception of language as the med ium of ideological creat iv ity par exce l lence was supposed to take shape. In Medvedev's case, the Russian formal method was the primary mater ia l whose treatment was meant to serve the purpose of de l i neating, by contrast ive analysis, a Marx ist socio logical poetics, conceived, i n fu l l accord with Volosinov, as one of the branches of that vast, overa l l "study of i deo logies . . . w h ich encompasses, on the basis of un i tary pr inci p l e i n conception of object of study and u n itary method of study, a l l the domains of mankind's ideological creativ ity [p. 1 1 ] . "

The key problem, both i n the general study of i deo logies and i n t he particu lar study of l iterature, was what Medvedev called the "problem of specification." As he saw it, the very bases for the study of ideo logies and a l l i ts branches were a l ready firm ly grounded i n the u n itary, monist ic ph i l osophy of Marx i sm , wh ich endowed a l l domains of ideology defin i tive mean ing, function, and re lat ionsh ip i n h uman society and h i story and, h ence, constituted no problem. The prob lem lay instead in the specific properties of each of the domains, i n the e l uc idation of that wh ich d i st ingu ished one from the others. The u rgency of this prob lem was attested to by the fact that between hol i st ic (Marxist) theory and concrete analysis a peri lous d isju ncture had occurred and, as a resu lt, any object under i nvestigation inevitab l y e i ther was d ivested of its specific ity or had its specificity i so lated from a l l soc ial connections and treated as a va lue on its own. A way o ut of this d i lemma was precisely what Medvedev sought:

What is lack ing is a proper ly worked out sociological study of the specif ic p rop erties of the materia l , forms and goals belongi ng to each of the domains of ideological ere· ativity. Each of them, after all, commands its own " language," with i ts own forms and operations, and i ts own specific laws for the refraction of the u n itary real ity of existence. T he specificity of art , sc ience, ethics, and re l igion must not, of course, obscure their ideologica l u n ity as superstru ctures over the one, common basis, each of them i nfused w i th u n itary socioeconomic coherency; but neither ought the i r specificity be effaced for the sake of general formulations of that coherency [ pp . 1 1 -1 2 ] .

I n the fie l d of l i terary study, the problem of specification became the v ita l point of contradiction between the formal and the socio logical methods precise l y because here d ifferent sets of premises confronted one another i n pursu it of t he same aims. T he formal ists, who, a s Medvedev w i l l i ng ly declares, had "come for-

Appendix 2 Formal and Sociological Methods 1 79

ward preci�e ly as specifiers" and had "succeeded i n imparting to the problem of specification in l iterary science considerable acu ity and theoretica l beari ng [p . 54) ," represented a chal lenge wh ich the Marxist sociological method could not afford either to i gnore or dismiss. The accompl i shments and/or pretensions of the formal i sts in "specification" had created an arena for vital, productive contrad iction over one and the same o bject, an arena which afforded the Marxi sts the proving grounds for their own conceptions:

Marxist study of l iterature makes contact with the formal method and comes i nto confl ict w i th it on the grounds of the paramount and most u rgent problem common to both-the problem of specification. Therefore, criticism of formal ism can and shou ld be " immanent" in the best sense of the word. Each of the forma lists' arguments should be exam ined and d isproved on its own p roper grounds-the grounds of the d isti n ctive characteristics of l i te rary fact. The very obj ect of study itse lf-l i terature in all its un iqueness-must abrogate and cast off the defin itions of the formal ists as defin itions inadequate to it and i ts un iqueness ( p . 55 ] .

Or, as Medvedev asseverates i n the final words of h is study (an extraord i nary and courageous tribute under the circumstances) :

We be l i eve that Marxist science ought to be gratefu l to the formal ists, gratefu l because the forma l ists' theory can stand it in good stead as an o bject for serious criticism in the process of which the bases for Marxist l i terary scholarsh ip can be e l u cidated and should come out a l l the stronger. Every young science-and Marxist l iterary scholarship is very young-must m uch more h igh l y prize a good foe than a poor a l l y ( p . 2 32 ] .

What, i n the M edvedev-Volosinov Marxist view, made l iterature amenable to objective study, and what made that study necessari l y sociological was, of course, l i terature 's ina l ienabl e social quality. Social q ua l ity was pred icated over the whole of ideological creativity. As Volosinov asserts, everyth ing ideo logica l is semiotic, and every s ign, as sign, i s a social phenomenon. I t was precise ly the soc ial qual ity of a l l ideo logical product s that other approaches and method spositivistic, formal ist, subjective-psychologica l, idea l i stic-had fa i led, ind eed were u nequ ipped, to appreciate, w ith the result that they i nevitably m i srepresented and m i sconstrued the objects of the ir study.

At the same, however, the social nature of l iterature was open to m is interpretation even from a sociological v iew. That is, l iterature cou ld be seen merely in terms of social content and relat ionsh ip, a s a d i rect reflectio n of social l ife or as an agency for register i ng the effects of other i deological systems. S uch i nd eed had been the point of v i ew and practice of."social -minded" l iterary crit icism and scholarsh ip in Ru ssia from the m id-1 9th century on. The consequences of th i s b rand of " l iterary sociology" were a naive identification of l i terature w i th "real l ife" and a comp lete loss of contact with the specific, d ist inctive properties

1 80 I. R. Titunik

of l i terature itse lf. Even u nder Marxism this notion had survived in the doctr i ne that l i terature d er ives d i rectly from the socioeconomic basis.5

L iterature, Medvedev argued, not only partic ipates in the socia l process, it i s i n and of i tse l f a special social entity :

Liter�ture enters i nto the m i l ieu of id eological activity as one of its autonomous branches, occupy ing a specia l p lace in i t as a set of d ist inctively organ ized verbal prod uct ions w ith structure of a k ind specific and pecu l iar to such productions a lone. Th is structu re, as any other i deo logical structure , refracts the generative process of socioeconomic existence, and does so in its own particular way . . . . I n its content , l i terature reflects the id eological pu rview, i.e., o ther, nonartistic ( ethical , cognitive, e tc.) ideological formations. Bu t in reflecting these other signs, l iterature itself creates new forms, new signs of ideologica l commun ication ; and these signs-works of l iterature-become a function ing part of the ;;u rrou.nding socia l reality. At the same time as reflecting something outside of themselves, works of l i terature constitute i n and of themselves phenomena of the ideological m i l ieu w ith autonomous value and d istinctive character. Their functional ity does not amount merely to the aux i l l iary-technical role of reflecting other ideologies. They have an autonomous ideological role and a type of refraction of socioeconomic existence entire ly their own ( pp . 27 -29 ] .

Essentia l ly, what Medvedev propounds i s a n e laborate and dynamic " system of systems" (to borrow a term from a context that w i l l be brought i n to the discussion l ater on) wherein each ideological domain i s an autonomous system of a specific k i nd in a comp l ex (mediated) interrelat ionsh ip and interaction with a l l other systems and i n an equal l y complex, u lt imate dependence on the one common " socioeconomic bas is ." L i terature i s to be regarded as j u st such a member-system. It i s composed of works of l i terature-ideological productions with a structure pecu l iar and d i sti nctive to themselves-operating with i n the immed iate m i l ieu of l i terary cu l ture at some particular stage in the deve lopment (generative process) of some particu lar l i terature, the m i l ieu of wh ich is only one of a whole atmosph ere of m i l ieus, so to speak, governed by the u n itary socioeconomic bas i s, l i kewise in process of generation, wh ich " knows how to speak the language of l i terature j ust as i t k nows how to speak a l l other i deo logical languages [ p. 43 ] ." Thus thi s "system of systems" is permeated through and through w ith socia l qua l ity, and a l l of it, from the smal l est techn ical deta i l s to the most e l aborate nexus of interrelationships, fa l l s under the competence of sociological study.

What is needed for the con struct ion of a proper science of l i teratu re i s, according to Medvedev, a sociological poetics whose. concern w i l l be precise ly to contend with the prob lem of specifi cation in l i terature, to find the so lut ion to such questions as:

What is a l iterary work, and what is its structure? W hat are the e lements of t hat structure, and what are the artistic functions of those e lements? W hat is genre, sty le , p lot,

5. See Volosinov's crit icism of this doctr ine , p . 1 8 of this book.

Appendix 2 Formal and Sociological Methods 1 8 1

theme, motif, hero, meter, rhythm, m elod ies, etc.? How i s the id eological p urview reflected in the content of a work , and what functions does that reflection have in the whole of the work's artistic structure [ p. 45 ] ?

And coup led with sociological poetics, i ndeed, i n n ecessary rel iance on and d ia lectical re lationsh i p with it, is a sociological h i story qf l iterature that stud ies:

the concrete l ife of a work of art in the un ity of the deve lop ing l i terary m i l ieu; the l iterary m i l ieu with in the process of generation of the ideo logical mi l ieu with wh ich i t is encompassed; and, finally, the ideological m i l ieu in the p rocess of generation of the soc ioeconomic m i l ieu with which it is permeated [ p. 42 ] .

Such is the general scheme for th e construction of a theo ry and study of l i terature presented by Medvedev.

Natura l l y, the contradiction between the formal i st and sociological points of view had to be expressed in categori cal terms. There was no room for compromise in Medvedev's argument. The formal ists' premis€s were either r ight or wrong, and everyth ing e l se depended on premises. A lt hough the formal ists themsel ves never propounded a unified " school theory" and i ndeed del iberate ly eschewed doing so, some fundamental position had to be postu lated for them-and not merely postulated but fixed and "galvan ized ."6 The formal ists' position was declared to be basical l y that l iterature was an extrasocia l phenomenon, or rather, that that which constitu ted the " l iterari ness" of l iterature-its specificity-was someth i ng se lf-va luable, self-contained, and self-perpetuating that should and must be isolated from the socia l surroundings in which i t ex isted in order to be made an object of knowledge ; that wh i le social forces and events cou ld, and did , sometimes even drastica l l y, affect l iterature from the outside, the rea l , intrinsic nature of l i terature remained immune, exclusively and forever true to itse lf a lone; that, therefore, proper and productive study of l i terature is possib le on ly in " immanent" terms.

Th i s was he ld to be, of course, the basis for a program of l iterary specifi cation, but a basis which hypostasized the prob lem, thereby contrasting and confl icti ng with the basic outlook of the sociological method on the same prob lem :

6. T he problem was that the formal method was not a "methodology" or "doctrine" properly speaking, as B. Ejxenbaum cogent ly explains in "The Theory of the Formal Method." In order for the Marxist soc iological doctrine to confl i ct with a formal ist "doc· tri ne," the latter had to be spelled out as such. To this end, M edvedev d id not hesitate to construe formalist work ing hypotheses as invariab le pr incip les and formal ist focuses of atten tion as val ue j udgments. Thus the h istory of the formal method was viewed, not in evol utionary terms, as Ejxenbaum had insisted it shou ld be, but as the systematic f i l l i ng in of a preconce ived program. A nything in forma l ist writ ings not consistent with th is "program" was taken as evi dence of " betrayal " of the i r own doctrine on the part of this or that forma l ist. The picture of the formal method obtained by this procedure does not reflect the way the formalists actua l ly operated. They d id, of course, have a general theory; on ly it was a general theory .i n ( to crib a phrase) a continuous p rocess of generation.

1 82 I. R. Titunik

The specificating trends of our formalists are diametrical ly opposite Marxist trends. The formal ists conce ive specification to be a matter of isolati ng a part icu lar ideological domain and seal i ng it off from all the other forces and energies of ideological and social l ife. They conceive of specificity, of un iq u eness, as a static force u nto itself, hosti le to everyth i ng else; i.e., they conceive u niqueness in nondia lectical terms and, therefore, are i ncapab le o( i ncorporating i t with the v ita l processes of interaction occu rr ing in the concrete u ni ty of social, h istorical l ife [ p. 5 4 ] .

Such, i n Medvedev 's presentation, was t h e nature of t h e essential contradict ion between the basic stand of the formal method and that of the sociological method. The imp l icat ions and consequences of the formal ists' basic stand were a l ready concretely represented by an e laborate set of theories and ana lyses produced over a period of a dozen years or so and covering v irtual l y the entire range of i ssues with i n the domain ofpoetics. If those theories and analyses were to be subjected to criticism from the sociological point of v iew, i t wou ld presumably be possib le to refute the formal ist interpretation of the issues and, at the same time, to hammer out their sociological i nterpretation , i .e., construct a socio logical poetics. And exactl y that was the task Medvedev u ndertook to carry out v ia long, complex, deta i led, point by point argument. To summarize that argument in the same manner wou ld be a form idabl e task i tself and a far greater bu rden than the present essay i s designed to support . At the risk of depriving the argument of much of i ts real substance, attention w i l l be focused here on ly on certa in o f i t s aspects-aspects wh ich correlate w ith concepts advanced by V. N. Volosinov in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, and wh ich may be identified under the terms "utterance," "form of the whole" and "generative process."

The formal ists, Medvedev argues, wh i l e correct in wanting1o d isclose the specific ity of l i terature, made a fundamental error at the very outset of their investigations by see king that specificity in the not ion of "poetic language." [ Hencefo rth, without further ind ication, th i s summary i s p resented from Med- . vedev's point of view . ] The error stemmed from the forma l i sts .. re l iance on l ingu istics and its categor ies (phonetics, morpho logy, syntax) and the ir adopting the tendency of l i ngu i st ics to divorce form and meaning, appropriating the former as the proper object of study and re legat ing the latter to other d i sc ip l ines . Meanwh i l e, the fact i s that no such thing as poetic language rea l l y ex i sts, e ither in the d ialecto logical sense or as a matter of the opposition, postulated by the formal ists, between " poetic language" and "practical language ." Language cannot be said to break down i n to poetic and nonpoetic languages but can on ly be sai d t o carry ou t d ifferent functions, the poet ic function among them. What determ ines the poetic function of language is poetic context-works of l iterature:

"Poetic properties are acqu ired by language o nly i n concrete poetic constructions. These p roperties be long not to language in its l i nguist ic capacity but precise ly to the construction, whatever k ind of construction that m ight be [ p . 1 1 7 ] ."


Therefore, the proper point of depa rture for i nvestigation into the specificity of l i terature is not poetic l anguage (a fiction in any case) but poetic context, poetic construction-l iterary works of art themselves.

Once th is is estab l ished, then the entire l i nguist i c apparatus that the formal ists appl ied to the ir study of l i terature is revea led to be irre levant. The basic verbal components of poetic constructions cannot be, and a re not, the u n its of I i nguistic analysis (phoneme, morpheme, syntagma) but must be, and are, the rea l un its of speech-utterances. The l iterary work of art is a special k ind of whole utterance or organ ization of utterances. And since the u tterance by i ts very nature is ideological, the prob lem of meaning, i n stead of being relegated e l sewhere, is made a central factor of tJoetic construct ion; and a whol ly d ifferent conception of poetic construct ion than that hel d by the forma l ists is requ i red .

The proper approach to the prob lem of poetic construction l ies not i n defin it ion of its exc lusivity ( i .e . , in terms of the poetic versus the ideologica l ) , but in d i sc losure of its integration :

of that element in a poetic work wh i ch wou ld be integral both wi th the materia l actua l ity of word and w ith word significa tion, wh ich, as a medium, would un ite depth and commona lty of meaning with the given actua l i ty of uttered sound , [and the refore wou l d ] make poss ib le coherent and consistent transition from the peripheries of a work to its i nner meaning, from outer form to i n ner ideological significance [ p. 1 62 ] .

And that medium is "social evaluat ion," the h i storica l l y generated, assumed, common code that defines the menta l ity and out look, the choice, range, and h ierarchy of interests, i .e., the ideologica l purview, of a given social grou.p at some parti cular t ime i n i ts ex istence. I t is social eval uation that mediates between form and performance; it i s socia l evaluation that endows every part icu lar speech act-each and every utterance-with its rea l , h ere and now mean ing, "defin ing its ind iv idua l, c lass and e pochal phys iognomy [ p. 1 65 ] . "

The special character of t h e poet ic utteran ce consists i n the fact that, where: as utterances in a l l other ideolog ica l domains are organ ized for purposes ly i ng outside verbal expression, in l i terature "socia l eva luation is whol ly rea l ized, ach ieves final ized structure, i n the utterance itse lf . . . . The entity of the utterance here is not meant to serve any other entity. Social evaluation here i s mo lded and fu l ly structured in pure expression [ p . 1 72 ] . "

On th i s basis arises the prob lem of the "form of the whole," in wh ich card inal importance be longs to the concept of genre. The forma l i sts had come to the problem of genre on ly after having worked out the components of l iterary construction on the grounds of poetic l anguage and without reference to any notion of genre. I nevitably, they construed gen re as a mechan ica l assemb lage of devices -a fixed set of devices w ith some part icular dominant. Thus the forma l i sts en- ·

t irely missed the real significance of genre.

1 8 4 I. R. Titunik

Genre i s not that wh ich is determ ined and defined by the components of a l i terary work or by sets of l iterary works, but that wh ich , in effect; determ ines and defines them. Genre Is "an archetypa l form of the whole of a n utterance, the whole of a work . A work rea l ly exi sts on ly in the form of some p articu l ar gen re. The constructiona l va lue of each and every e lement of a work can be un derstood on ly i n connection with genre [ p. 1 75 ] ." I t i s genre t hat gives shape and mean i ng to a work of l iterature, as a who le entity, a n d to a l l the e lemen ts of wh ich that entity is comprised. G enre i s that area where construction and theme meet and fuse together, the area prec ise ly where social eva l uation generates forms of that fina l ized structured ness [zaversenie, zaver5imost'} w hich is the very differentia specifica of art.

Genres are d efinab le in terms of specific combinat ions of features stemming from the doub le orientation i n l ife, i n real ity, wh ich each type of art i st ic "form of the who le" commands-an orientation at once from outside i n and from in s ide out. What i s at stake in the first instance is the actual status of a work as a social fact: its defin ition i n real t ime and space; its means and mode of performance; the k i nd of audience presupposed and the re lat ionsh ip between author and aud ience estab l ished; i ts association with socia l i n st itutions, socia l mores, and other ideo log ica l spheres; in short-its fu l l " situationa l " defin itio n .

On t h e other side, what i s i nvolved i s t h e work ' s thematic orientation, its thematic u n ity. Each genre has the capacity to deal with on ly certai n aspects of real ity; to each be long certa in pr incip les of se l ection, certa in manners of envis ioning and conceptua l iz ing rea l ity; each operates w ith i n a certa in sca l e of depth and range of treatment. These two k inds of orientation are i n separab ly l i n ked and i n terdependent. Such a concept of genre offers a dynam i c, creative pr inc ip le for the in terpretation and i n tegration of a l l components of construct ion , i nc lud ing a l l those components which the formal ists had featured i n t heir stud ies but wh ich they had deprived of a l l contentual meaning and had reduced to ready-made en · tities w ith fixed functions capab le of operati ng on ly w ith i n a conventional set of ru l es, thereby making l i terature, in effect, who l ly ana logous to a game of chess.

The forma l ist doctr ine on the evo lu tion of l iterature, on l i terary h istory, suffered from the same deficiency as their genre theory; i ndeed, that deficiency was in their very conception of l iterature and it man ifested i tse lf at every l eve l of analys i s. Thus the stages i n the formation of their doctr ine on l iterary h i story cou ld be summarized in the fol lowing way : on the basis of i nvestigat ion of poetic language the formal ists arrived at the notion of the device as the basic component of l i terature ; l i terary works were defined as assemb lages of dev ices; specific types of such assemb lages defined l i terary genres, schools, movements; the h istory of l i terature was, then, the h i story of the a ssemb l i ng, d isassemb l i ng, and reassemb l i ng of devices (the same devices! ) .

T o exp la in how th is process of h i storical change came about, t h e formal ists brought to bear their princ ip les of "automatization" a nd "percept ib i l ity. " These


princip les, despite the forma l ists' avowed intent to study l iterature as an "entity external to consciousness," amounted in fact to a crude sort of techno-psychologist ic notion of artistic percept ion. I nstead of d i spensing w ith the subjective consciousness, the formal ists constructed a theory that presupposed a subjective consciousness wh ich "feels" artistic effect and loss of effect. Moreover, by necessity, th i s "feel i ng" occurs w ith i n the confines of one ind ividual consciousness or, at best, the i nd iv idua l consciousnesses of one and the same generation of persons, for "there can be absolute l y no connection between automatization and perceptib i lity spread over two ind iv idua ls fol lowing one another in t ime, j ust as there can be no connection between one man's nausea and another man's g luttony [ p. 203 ) . " Furthermore, the formal i sts' scheme of l i terary evo l u tion, wh ich i ssued from these princip les and wh i ch was represented by them as a dia lectical process, amounted to noth ing more than the play of two forces that a lternate as "ju nior" and "senior" l ines, and must go on doing so ad infin itum. Thus it was not psychologism the forma l i sts had rid themselves of, but h i story and ideology.

The real, objective solution of the problem of l iterary h istory l ies in v iewing l i terature as it rea l l y i s i n actua l exi stence: a dynamic, generative process of a specia l k i nd with i n the dynamic, generative process of social interaction or communication. That is, the so l ution of the prob lem of l iterary h i story is to be sought in the "d ia lectics of the ' intrinsic' a nd the 'extrinsi c ' " :

The generative process of social commun ication condit ions a l l aspects o f l iterature and every single l i terary work w ith respect to its creation and reception. On the other hand, the generative process of commun ication is also conditioned by the generative process of l i terature, wh ich is one of its. factors. I n generative process, it is not at a l l a matter of combinations of e l ements of a work changing, wh i le the e lements remain self-identica l , but a matter of the e lements themselves changing, and of their comb inations together changing as wel l-of the whole configuration changing. The generation of l i terature and of an i nd ivid ua l work can be understood on ly with in the whole framework of the ideological purview. The further we remove a work from that context, the more certain the work wi l l turn inert and l ifeless with i n itself. The ideological pu rview , as we know, is i ncessantly in the process of generat ion . A nd this process of generation, j ust as any other such process, is d ia lectica l in nature. Therefore, at any given moment of that process, we sha l l d iscover confl icts and inner contradictions within the ideo logical p urview. I nto those conflicts and contradictions the l i terary work of art, too, is d rawn. The work a bsorbs and makes i ntrinsic to itse lf some elements of the i deological m i l ie u , whi le rejecting other e lements as extri nsic. Therefore the " intrinsic" and the "extrin· sic" i n the process of h istory d ialecti ca l ly change p laces, w ithout, need less to say, remaining a bsol ute ly identical a l l the wh i le. What appears today a fact extrins ic to l i terature-a piece of extraliterary real ity-may tomorrow enter l iterature as one of its in · trinsic structural factors. And conversely , wh'at was literary today may become a p iece of extraliterary real i ty tomorrow [ p. 206 ] . . . . The dialectica l conception of the "extrinsic" and the " i n trinsic" of l iterature and of extraliterary real ity ( ideo logica l and other) is the conditio sine qua non for the construction of a genu ine Ma rxist h istory of l iterature [ p . 208 ] .

1 86 I. R. Titunik

Such, i n brief out l i ne and w ith reference on ly to certai n key points, i s M ed vedev's argument. I n its own terms a n d for its own purposes, it declares the u ltimate, total irreconci l ab i l ity of the formal and sociolog ica l methods. However, from another perspective, this conc lus ion proves not a l together to be the case.

To begin w ith , the formal i sts actua l l y n ever did deny that l iterature was a socia l fact, though, of co�rse, they insi sted that it was a social fact sui generis, 7 one with specific ity and coherency pecu l iar to itself-a position ident ica l w ith that of Medvedev's sociological poetics. However, i t was not the problem of l i terature in its fu l l social d imensions that interested the formal ists at the outset. Their i n itial motivation was to red irect attention from what had been the main concerns of l i terary study-:-literature's cau se and effect, its creators, its social associations, and functions, its phi losoph ical or metaphysical significance-to that which had been obscured, min im ized or tota l ly n eglected by those concern s : the real , proper object of study-the l i terary mater ial i tse lf. The formal i sts operated, as Boris Ejxenbaum states in his l ucid summation of the formal method i n 1 925, with "theoretical pr incip les drawn from the study of the concrete material with its s pecific characteristics" and adh ered to those pr incip les " to the extent they are proved tenab le by the materia l . If the material requ ires the i r further e laboration or a lteration , we go ahead and e laborate or a l ter them . "8

What th is amounted to was not a doctr ine or even a " methodology," but a process of study descr ibable as beg i nn i ng from the beginn i ng w ith working hypotheses and proceedi ng step by step-a process wherein each successive step requ ires the qua l ificatio n and reassessment of the preceding ones, wh i l e the con text of study itself becomes constantly more comp lex and comprehensive. Therein precisely consisted the "factor of evo lution " in the formal method wh ich Ejxenbaum j ustly u nderscored time and time and t ime aga in .

In contrast, Medvedev 's sociological method may be described a s a process of beginning from the e nd , wh ich process requ ires a predetermined genera l theory that sets everyth ing in i ts appointed p lace beforehand and whose overal l , governi ng mode of operation mu st inevitably be eclecticism. And i nd eed , M edvedev does open ly and expl ic it ly declare eclecticism to be the way for the M arx ist; it is Marxism itself, he c la ims, that guarantees success [p. 42 ] . The forma l ists were a great deal more cautious i n th i s respect; they worked on the assum ption, aga in i n Ejxenbaum's words, "that there i s a difference between theory a nd conviction ."9

Thus the contradiction between soc iological poetics and forma l ism can be stated in somewhat d ifferent terms that do not prec lude a connection between

7. See "The Theory of the Formal Me thod," R eadings, p. 3 3. Curiously enough, the most extreme and expl ic it separation between l iterature and society was made by the M arxist soc io logist of l i terature, P . N. Saku l in , out of somewhat m isguided admi ration for fo rmal ist vieWs. See Medvedev, Formal'nyj Metod pp. 48 -50 .

8 . "The Theory of The F ormal Method," pp. 3-4. 9. Ibid., p. 4.


them : wh i l e sociological poetics, as conceived by M edvedev, must i mp lement the social nature (as determi ned by Marxist concepts) of l iterary fact from the very start of investigation and on a l l level s of anal ysis, forma l i sm maintained the position that l i terary fact had first to be studied as such before its fu l l social nature cou ld be understood properly. From this point of v iew, the evo lution of the formal method can be sai d in fact to have b een work ing, via the prob I em of specification, toward, if not socio logica l poetics str ictly speaking, certai n ly toward a conception of l iterature in its dynamic relat ionsh ip w ith social l ife.

I n 1 928, Roman J akobson and J urij Tynjanov, u ndoubtedly the two most profound th inkers associated with the formal ist movement, produced a ser ies of "theses" under the t it le "Problemy izucenija l iteratury i jazyka" [ Problems in the Study of L iterature and Language] wh ich spel led out a program str i k ingly s imilar in crucial respects to Medvedev's, but w ithout commitment to Marxist presuppositions. These "theses" represented not, of course, what the formal ists had begun w ith and had a l ready accompl ished, but what a l l of that, under new qual-

. ification and reassessment, was lead ing to. I n the interests of demonstrating the coincidences b etween Medvedev's sociological poetics and the stage that the formal method had reached by 1 928, the l i berty w i l l be taken here of str inging together a set of excerpts from the document composed by J akobson and Tynj anov :

The h istory of l iterature . . . being s imu ltaneous with other h istorical series, is characterized, as is each of those series, by an i nvolved complex of specific structu ra l laws. W ithout the e luci dation of those laws, it is imposs ib le to estab l ish i n a scientific manner the correlation between the l i te rary series and other historical series . . . . The l i terary and extral i terary material u sed i n l i terature may be i n troduced in to the orbit of scientific i nvestigation only when it .is considered from a functional point of view . . . . The opposition between synch rony and d iachrony was an opposition between the concept of system and the concept of evo lut ion; thus it loses its importance in p rincip le as soon as we recognize that every system necessari ly exists as an evolut ion wh i le, on the other hand, evol u tion is i nescapably of a systemic natu re . . . . An ind ifferent cataloging of coexisting phenomena is not sufficient; what i s im portant is their hierarch ica l sign ificance for the given epoch . • . .

An analysis of the structu ral laws of language and l iteratu re and their evo l ution inevitably leads to the estab l ishment of a l imited series of actua l ly existing structural types ( types of structural evo l u tion). A d isclosu re of the immanent laws of the h istory of l iterature a l lows us to determ ine the character of each specific change in l iterary systems. However, these laws do not allow u s to explain the tempo of evolution or the chosen path of evo l ut ion when several theoretical ly possible evolutionary paths are given. Th i s is owing to the fact that the immanent laws of l i terary evolution form an indete rm inate equation ; a l though they admit on ly a l im i ted n umber of possible solutions, they do not necessari ly specify a u n ique so lut ion. The question of a specific choice of path , or at least of the dominant , can be solved on ly by means of an analysis of the correlation between the l i terary series and other h istorical series. This correlation (a system of systems) has its own

1 88 f. R. Titunik

structu1·al laws, wh i ch m ust be submitted to invest igat ion. I t wou ld be methodologi ca l l y fatal to consider the correlation of systems w ithout tak ing i nto account the immanent laws of each _syste_m. 10

As evidenced by the j akobson-Tynjanov theses, certa i n concepts, coincid ing w i th points i n Medvedev'� program, were a lready i n process of formu lation and development by the formal method . The idea of "function" w ith regard to poet ic language had been advanced as ear ly a s 1 923 by j akobson. The functiona l ro le of meaning, i .e., the mean ing of words i n poetic contexts, was subjected to systematic i nvestigation in J u rij Tynjanov's first major work , Problema stixotvornogo jazyka [The Problem of Verse Language] (Len ingrad , 1 924) _1 1 I nd eed , functional ity became a key q ua l ification, wh ich ob l iged the formal i st s to convert gradual ly all static concepts of device , composit ion, genre, and l i terat�re itself i nto dynam ic ones. The u nderly ing pr inc ip le had been c learly enunc iated by Tynjanov :

The un ity of a work [ of l iterature] i s not a c losed symmetrical whole, but an unfo lding dynamic integri ty; between its e lements stand , not the static s ign of equation and addi tion, bu t a lways the dynam ic sign of correlation and integration. The fo rm of a l i terary work must be perceived as a dynamic ent ity . 1 2

And along w ith the concepts of "function " and "dynamiC integrity, " the essential h istor icity ( diachronism) of l i terature was posited. I n another art ic le of 1 924, Tynjanov had wr itten :

I t is exc l usive l y in terms of its evolution that we s h a l l be able to arrive at a n analytical ·�defi n ition" of l i teratu re. Once we take that posit ion , we discover that the properties of l i terature w hich seemed the basic, primary ones constantly change and d o not c haracterize l i terature as such. To this category belong the concepts of "aesthet ic qua l ity ," in the sense of " the beautiful." What remains stable turns out to be wh at had a lways been taken for granted : l iterature is a verbal construction wh ich makes itself fe l t precisely as a constru ction, i.e., l i terature is a dynamic verbal construction. The requ i rement of i ncessant dynamism is w hat br ings evolut ion about, see i ng that every dynamic system necessari l y becomes automatize d and a constru ctiona l pr in ciple of an opposite k i nd d ia lectical ly comes into p lay . 1 3

This tra in of reason ing requ ired the consideration of i ssues de l i be rately deferred at ear l ier stages i n the development of the forma l method. Theoretical

1 0. R eadings, pp. 79-8 1 . 1 1 . Two chapters from this book are translated i n Readings: " Rhythm as t h e Construc

tive Factor of Verse," pp. 1 26-1 35 , and "The M ean ing of the Word in Verse," p p. 1 36-1 45 . The latter chapter shows certain remarkab le resemb lances w i th po ints advanced by V. N . Volosinov i n Marxism and the Philosophy o f Language.

1 2. Ibid., p. 1 28. 1 3. " Literatu rnyi fakt" {L i terary F act ] , A rxaisty i Novatory (reprinted i n M un ich , 1 967 )

pp. 1 4- 1 5 .


cognizance of the dynamic, evol utive nature of l iteratu�e necessari l y posed the problem of the re lationship between l iterature and extra l i terary factors, or what in Medvedev's program would be the "d ia lectic of the ' i ntri n sic' and the 'extrinsic' ."

Such posing of new problems not on ly advanced and expanded the formal ists' context of study, but a l so, in the way h igh l y character istic of the formal method, requ ired reconsideration and reeval uation of their theoretical apparatus. Having begun their wor k w ith a sharp opposition between "poetic" and "p ractical" languages, the formal i sts gradual l y reordered their perspectives unti l i t became cl ear that language was i tself the nexus of the relationsh ip between l iterature and society, t hat l anguage p rovided the way of access to the stud y of l iterature in its fu l l socia l d imensions. The new perspectives were s ketched out in Tynjanov's 1 927 article, 0 literaturnoj evoljucii [On l iterary evo l ut io n ] , from which the l iberty once aga in w i l l be taken of presenting a series of excerpts:

In order to be able to investigate the basic problem [of l iterary evolutio n ] , one must agree i n advance that a l iterary work is a system and that l iterature is a system. O n ly once th is basic u nderstanding is accepted can a l i terary science be constructed wh ich does not review a chaos of manifold phenomena and orders of phenomena, but studies them. The issue i nvolving the ro le of orders of phenomena contiguous w ith l iterature in l i terary evo lution is by this very fact not cast aside but , on the contrary, posed . . . . I s the so-cal led " immanent" study of a work as a system poss ib le outside its correlation w i th the system of l i terature? Such an isolated study of a l iterary work would be an abstraction no l ess than the abstraction of iso lating e lements and examining them outside the work in which they appear. Ab stracting of that sort is constantly and effective l y appl ied by l i terary crit ic ism to contemporary works, since the corre· lation of a contemporary work with contemporary l i terature is a fact already assumed and merely not expressed . . . Bu t even with respect to contemporary l iteratu re the procedure of isolated study is not rea l l y possib le . The very existence of a fact as a literary fact depends on i ts d ifferential q ua l ity , that i s , on i ts correlation e ither with the l i terary or w ith an extraliterary order, in other words-on its function. What in one e poch is a l i terary fact would in another be a matter of general soc ial commun ication, and v ice versa, depending on the whole l it· erary system within which the given fact operates . . . . The system of the l i terary order is first and foremost a system of the functions of the literary order in incessant correlation with other orders. Orders change with respect to their constitution, but the d ifferent iatedness of h uman activities remains . . . . W hat constitutes the correlation of l i terature with contiguous orders? Moreover, 'what are the contiguous orders? We all have the answer ready at hand: social conven· t ions [byt ] . B u t i n order to solve the prob lem of the correlat ion of l iterature with social conven· tions we must ask : how and in what respects are social conventions correlated with l iterature? A fter a l l , social conventions are constitutive l y many-sided, m u ltifaceted, w ith on ly the function of all their aspects being, specific. Social conventions correlate with literature first of all through their verbal aspect. Exactly the same correlation

1 90 I. R. Titunik

app l ies from l i teratu re to socia l conve nt ions. The corre lation of the l iterary o rder with the order of social conventions is rea l ized a long verbal l ines; l i terature has a verbal funct ion with respect to social conven tions.14

Thus the forma l i sts pointed the way to the study of a "system with in a system" without recourse tci .the eclectic ism upon which Medvedev is ob l iged to rely.

As for Medvedev's accusatory ascription of crude "techno-psychologistic" notions to the forma l i sts' concept of l i terary evo l u tion, it i s a flagrant case of fai l u re (or refusal ) on his part to see his own p rincip l e s in operation . "Automatization" and "perceptib i l i ty" be long, of course, to the rea lm of socia l experience and not to private "feel i ng"; they are not subjective, but " intersubjective responses."15

What i s i nvolved here i s the i mmense ly important problem of norms. I t was the problem of norms, as suggested in the j akobson-Tynjanov theses, that he ld the key to productive, comprehensive study of l i te rary structure, to types of l iterary structures (genres), and to l i terary evo lution. J akobson had d evoted an early artic le, "0 xudozestvennom rea l izme" [On Rea l i sm in Art] , 16 e ssentia l l y to the top ic of norms, d rawing into h i s d i scussion the commun icative processes of verba l art and the participants in those processes . Thus the foundations were laid for the br idge from the formal method to the sem io log ical method of Czech structura l ism. It was a lso in the work of the Prague schoo l , wh ich prom inently featured, to borrow the title of one of j an M ukarovsky's major stud ies, "aesthetic function, norm, and value as social facts,"17 that the formal and socio logical methods may be sai d to have ach ieved the i r logical, i nevitab le synthesis .

1 4. R eadings, pp. 67 , 68-69 , 72 , 7 3 ( translation somewhat reworded) . The term byt ( here rendered as " socia l conventions") defies p recise translation into E ngl ish ; the c losest to it is " cu ltu re" or " mores" as used in the field of anthropology. D ifferent renderings of byt i n E ngl ish u nfortunate ly tend to obscure the relatedness of the concept i n d ifferent contexts. So, for i nstance, u nder Tynjanov's d i rect i nsp i rat ion, Ejxenbaum began i nvestigation of what they jo int ly ca l led literaturnyj byt; th is was rendered as " l iterary environment" i n Readings ( pp. 5 6-65 ) , s i nce that seemed the most su itable term for the part icu lar context. Tynj anov's concept of byt, moreover, comes very c lose to what Volosinov, i n Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, ca l l s "behaviora l " or "I ife ideology" (ziznennaja ideo/ogija) . For instance, in " L iteraturnyj fakt" (A rxaisty i Novatory, p. 1 9) , Tynjanov writes: "Byt teems with the rud iments of various i nte l lectua l activities. By its very makeup, byt is rud imentary sc ience, rudimentary art and technology. It differs from fu l l y developed science, art, a n d technology by its mode of operation ."

1 5 . See V. Er l ich, Russian Formalism (The H ague, 1 95 5 ) , p. 1 52 . 1 6, Translated i n Readings, pp. 38 -46. A s L . Matejka a n d K . Pomorska note (ibid., p. vii) ,

th is artic le appeared i n 1 92 1 in Czech and probab ly did not come to the attent ion of J akobson's R ussian col leagues unti l around 1 927 .

1 7 . J an M u karovsky, Estetickd funkce, norma a hodnota jako socialnl fakty (Prague, 1 936 ) . The work is avai lab le in E nglish translation: No. 3 in M ich igan S l av ic Contributions, A n n Arbor, 1 970. On Russian formal ism and the P rague school, see the chapter " Formal ism Redefined" in V. Er l ich , Russian Formalism, pp. 1 28-1 36 .

Appendix 2 Formal and Sociological Methods 1 9 1

The preced i ng s ketch of the re lat ionsh ip between the formal and sociological methods was meant to provide a gen eral basis for the contention that the Baxtin group, wh i l e operating with new and d ifferent premises and hence not deriving from the formal ist school , nevertheless d id share crucial concerns i n common with the formal ists and employed concepts of l i terature that sign ificant ly para lle led and overlapped with forma l i st concepts, thus making possib le the eventual convergence of the two "methods."

In the meantime, however, there were certain particu lar areas of study where, with considerable justification, the c la im can be made (and has been made) that members of the Baxt in group, especia l l y M . M . Baxtin h imself and V. N. Volosinov, were d irectly i n sp ired by formal i st investigations and d id function as "fol lowers" of the formal method ("fo l l owers" in the best spir it of the formal method i tsel f, i .e. , qual ifiers, reassessors, d evelopers) . I t was a l so precisely in these areas that Baxtin and Volosinov may be sai d to have made their most sub stanc tive concrete contributions to l iterary study. The general scope of the areas of study i n question can be identified v ia Vo losinov's defi n ition of " reported speech" : 18 " speech with in speech, u tterance wi th i n utterance, and at the same time speech about speech, utterance a bout utterance."

As early as 1 9 1 8, the formal i sts had entered on the agenda of l i terary study the prob lems of parody, sty l izat ion, and skaz. 19 Consideration of these problems held promise of open ing access to investigation of the vital styl istic operations of verba l art and the role of those operations in the construct ion of l i terary works and in l iterary evolut ion, particu larl y as regarded prose fiction. S uch problems were in fa-ct hand led as counterparts to the prob lems of sound texture and rhythm in verse that were the forma l i sts' pr imary concern. This was especial ly the case with skaz where i ntonation , tones of vo ice, verbal gestures, and pantomime were said to play crucial roles.

A further d imension of study was estab l ished via the concept of d ialogue, thanks, i n large measure, to L. J akub in sk ij ' s 1 923 article, "0 d ialogiceskoj reci [On D ia logic Speech] ," i n which the primacy of dia logue as the most " natura l" form of speech ( i n both the senses of man ' s b io logical and social "nature") was posited.20 To problems of monologue, viewed against the background of d ialogue,

1 8 . The Russian term cuzaja rec' means both " reported speech" in the technical sense and, l i tera l ly, " another's," or "other," or "a l ieh speech." Thus, the Russian term itself inc ludes the double frame of reference so v ita l to Volosinov and Baxtin's theories. That double reference could not be reproduced i n E ng l ish w ith any single term and had to be shared out between "reported speech" and "another's speech ."

1 9. The Russian term skaz, as a techn ica l l iterary term, has no E ng l ish equ ivalent. Genera l ly associated with oral speech or, rather, the i l l u sion of oral speech in the narrative of a l iterary work, it perhaps can best be described as narration with marked speech event features. The Russian term is retained here and throughout.

20. j akubinsk ij 's article has not, to my k nowledge, been translated into Engl ish . The Russian original appeared i n Russkaja rec ', I (Petrograd, 1 923 ) .

1 92 I. R. Titunik

as we l l as_ to the prob lems of parody, sty l ization, and skaz, V. V. Vinogradov devoted a whole series of i l l um inating theoretical and l iterary h istorical investigations, beginn i ng in 1 923?1 A l l these pioneering, sem inal stud ie s on the formal ists' part fai led, however, to arrive at a comprehensive pr incip le u nd er which the interrelationsh ip of th� various issues involved cou l d be fu l ly recogn ized and made the basis for a un ified fie l d of i nvestigation .

I n 1 926, V. N . Volosinov pub l ished an article entit led "S iovo v zizn i i s lovo v poezi i" (Word i n Life and Word in Poetry ] .22 Wh i l e its main, immed iate purpose was to ske tch the pre l im inary theory for the construction of sociological poetics ( i n w hich capacity it is-an important foreru nner to Medvedev's book) , it had the effect, in the course of its argument, of crysta l l iz ing a conceptual center for a l l questions involving monologue, dia logue, styl ization, parody, skaz, and, i n the strict sense, reported speech. In this way, it set the stage for Volosinov's own fundamental study of reported speech and Baxtin ' s magnum opu s on " po lyphonic structure."

Tak ing as h is po int of departure the idea that every in stance of verba l intercourse operates with in a system of assumed va lue j u dgments (the code of " social eva luation") , Volosi nov d escribes the work of poetry as a " powerfu l condenser of u narticu lated social val ue j udgements" in w h ich the v i ta l ro l es are p layed by the three participants in the event of d i scourse, termed "author," " l i stener," and "hero":

F i rst and foremost, va lue j udgements determine the author's selection of words and the reception of that selection ( co-selection) by the l istener. The poet, after a l l , selects words not from the d ict ionary but from the context of l ife, w here words have been steeping in and become permeated with value j udgements. Thus he selects the value judgements associated w i th the words, and does so, moreover, from the standpoi n t of the i ncarnated bearers of those value judgements. I t can be said that the poet works constant ly in conjunction w ith his l istener's sympathy or antipathy , agreement or d isagreement. F u rthermore, eva luat ion is ope rative also with regard to the o bject of u tterance-the hero. The simple se lection of an epithet or metaphor is a lready an active eval uative act with orientation in both those d irections: toward the l istener and toward the hero. L istener and hero are constant participants in the creative event which does not for a single i nstant cease to be an event of l iv ing commun ication involv ing al l three."

2 1 . None of the stud ies by V i nogradov relevant here has, to my k nowledge , b een translated i n to E nglish. The ir t it les are inc luded in the b i b l iography to V. Er l ich , R ussian formalism, p. 258 .

22 . Zvezda, 6 ( 1 926 ) , pp . 2 44·267 . Volosinov is a lso the autho r of a lengthy, three-part essay enti tled "5 t i l istika xudozestvennoj reci" (The Sty l istics of Verbal Art ] , Literaturnaja uceba, 2 ( 1 929) , pp. 46-66; 3 pp. 65 -87 ; 5 pp. 43-5 7. This essay essentially rehearses the basic ideas of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language for the particular p urpose of instructing and gu id ing novice w riters.

23. Zvezda, 6 ( 1 926 ) , p. 258 .


I n effect, the principle of dia logue has been predicated over a l l d iscourse, with particu lar and special meaning for verbal art. By "author," " l istener," and "hero" with reference to verba l art, Volosinov clearly and expl ic it ly means factors with in the arti stic structure of a l iterary work and not the actual, real-l ife writer, reference and reading pub l ic, wh ich are factors of a d ifferent order. "Author," " l istener," and " hero" are rather "the essential constitutive factors of a work of l i terature . . . the v ital forces that shape form and style and are comp lete ly d etectable by any competent scrut in izer. "24

Each of the partic ipants represents a context of d iscourse in active, dynamic relationship with the other two. The author's speech context is "dom inant" in the sense that i t coinc ides with the message as a whole , encompass ing the other contexts and incorporat ing them with i n itself. B ut at the same time as presenting the context of hero, the author estab l i shes a relationsh ip with that context through which he affects that context In some way or by wh ich h is own, a utho-

. r ial , context i s affected. Likew ise, at the same time as posit ing a l i stener, t he author enters i nto a re lationsh ip with t he latter's assumed or anticipated context of response

.whereby effects on the h ero's context ( l i stener-hero relationsh ip ) and/

or on the author's own (author- l i stener re lationship) are produced. Thus, the commun icative triad of the addresser of the message (speaker, author, sender, encoder, etc.) ; addressee ( l i stener, reader, receiver, decoder, etc. ) , to whom the message i s d i rected; and the message content (referent, object, "hero"), whom or what the message i s about i s registered as the prime organ izing center o f l iterary structure. The three are bound together by a comp lex network of h igh l y variable eva luative i nterrelat ionships; and that network becomes a u n ify ing focus of investigation for a very broad range of l i terary prob I ems.

I n the th i rd, final, section of h is Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Volosinov focused att ention on the fundamental principles govern i ng the p henomena of reported speech. H is concern was not strictly with verbal art, b u t i t was i n verbal a r t that Vo losinov saw the fu l l est and most i n tricate express ion of those princip les in operation. Thus wh i l e presented as a study of a specia l , "pivotal " prob lem i n syntax, Volosinov's i nvestigation into the dynamic i nterrelat ionship of reporting and reported messages has definite beari ngs on l iterary problems as wel l . I ndeed, Vol osinov v ivid l y demonstrates the v ita l i nterconnectedness of the stu dies of language and l i terature.

The l iterary imp l ications of Volosinov's analysi s have reference to at least two crucial areas, two d imensions, of l iterary study. F irst of a l l , the correlatio n between forms of reported speech (patterns and mod ifications) and the socio ideological generation of language has d i rect bearing on l iterary h istory. I n Vo losinov's v iew: " I t i s the function of society to select and make grammatical (adapt to the the grammatical structure of i ts language) j ust those factors in the active a nd

24. Ibid., p . 260.

1 94 I. R. Titunik

evaluative reception of u tterances that are socia l l y v ita l and constant and, hence, are grounded i n the economic being of the part icu lar commun ity of speakers [ page 1 1 7 in th i s book ] . " The forms of reported speech, therefore, a re important not as abstract grammatical categories but as l anguage processes in dynamic i n terre lation with other soc ia l P,rocesses :

We are far from c la iming that syntactic forms-for i nstance, those of d i rect and i nd i rect discourse-:directly and u nequ ivoca l ly express the tendencies and forms of an active, evaluative reception of another's u tterance. Our speech reception does not , of course, operate d i rectly i n the forms of i nd irect and d irect d iscourse. These forms are only standardized patterns for reporting speech. B u t, on the one hand, t hese pat· terns and their modifications could have arisen and taken shape on ly in accordance with the govern i ng tendencies of speech reception; on the other hand, once these patterns h ave assumed shape and function in the la nguage, they in turn exert an i nflu· ence, regu lating or i nh ib i ting in their deve lopment, on the tendencies of eva l u ative reception that operate w ith in the channel prescribed by the exist ing forms (pages 1 1 7-1 1 8 in th is book ] .

Therefore, the concrete imp lementations of reported speech form s (the modifications and variants of pattern s) must be registered not o n ly among the primary d istingu i sh i ng character istics that mark the epochal sh ifts i n overa l l ideol ogical deve lopment, and, hence, also the epochs of l i terary h i story, b ut a l so m ust figure among the primary d ist ingu ish i ng character ist ics of a l l l i terary schoo l s, trends, movements; i .e., they must be regarded as fundamental const i tu ent features of the very process of l i terary evolution as such.

The ess�ntial point i s that the patterns of reported speech change h istorica l ly with respect to the weight, value, and the h ierarchica l statu s of reporting and reported messages i n thei r i nterre l ationship. D irect d i scourse in med ieval l iterature is not the same as d i rect d iscourse in, say, the l iterature of the Renai ssance or that of the second ha lf of the 1 9th century. Furthermore, u nder the impact of deve loping l i terary and extra l i terary tendencies, certain modificat ions and variants are advanced to a command ing, structure-organ iz ing posit ion. S uch, for i n stance, is the rol e of forms of q uasi-q uoted speech in modern prose fiction, forms that u nder l ie such th ings commonly referred to as " interior monologue" or " stream of consciousness." At the same time, such hard to define l iterary real ities as c lassicism, romanticism, rea l ism, symbo l i sm, etc., are a l so suscept ib l e to defin ition i n terms of coordinates of the h istorical variab les i n the interre lat ionship of reporting and reported contexts. This possib i l ity, firm ly e stab l ished in Volosinov's analysis of reported speech, has hard l y even yet been recognized in l iterary scholarship.

With i ts d istinction between the " l i near" and "p i ctor ia l" tendencies in the dynamism of the reporting-reported interrelat ionship, its exposit ion of opposed " referent-" and "texture-analyzing" orientations in i nd i rect d i scou rse, and its presentation of a whole system of modifications and variants of d irect d i scourse,


i nc lud i ng, importan tly, quasi -d irect d iscourse, Volosinov's treatmer)t of reported speech a l so p rovides focal poin ts for the concrete sty I ist ic analys is of texts, primari ly , but of course not exc lusively, texts i n the narro.tive gen res. Every text represents a sel ection and concatenation of reporting-reported procedures: Analysis of the specific organization of these procedures in a l i terary work reveals i ts sty l istic structure, not of course i n the sense of an i nventory of its sty l i stic i ngred ients, but precisely of i ts value-charged styl i stic mode of operation. Thus, for i n stance, i n connection with what he termed "antic ipated and d issem inated d irect d iscourse," Volos inov took a story by Dostoevskij , Skvernyj anekdot [A N asty Story ] , " and from analysis of it conc luded :

. . . almost every word in the na rrative ( as concerns i ts expressivity, i ts emotional color ing, i ts accen tu al position in the ph rase) figu res s imu l taneously in two i n tersecting contexts, two speech acts: in the speech of the author-narrator ( i ron ic and mocki ng) and the speech of the hero (who is far removed from i rony). Th is s imu l taneous partic ipati on of two speech acts, each d ifferently oriented in i ts exp ressivity, also exp la ins the cu rious �e n tence structu re, the twists and tu rns of syntax, the h igh ly origina l style of the story. I f only one of the speech acts h ad been used, the sen tences wou ld have been structu red otherwise; the sty le wou ld h ave been d ifferent ( page 1 36 in this book ] .

The range of procedu res ex tends from the re latively straightforward, sharp ly and mutual l y de l im i ted rel at ions 1of reporting and reported contexts to extremely comp lex, even h igh ly ambiguous, " m ixed" forms i n which the key role i s p layed by the phenomenon of "speech inte rference . " Needless to say, a l l procedures i nvolve evaluative processes, the s imp ler forms no less than the complex ones. Every l i terary work operates i n one or more registers of th i s ran ge ; many l i terary works, modern nove l s espec ia l ly, are characterized by systems of regi sters with varied and often subt ly nuanced transi t ions from one to another. To fai l to take account of th i s i nterrelation and i nterp lay of reporting and reported contexts, as do many d i scussions about "showing and tel l i ng," the dramatic or objective mode of narration, po int-of-view narration, " re l iab le" and " un re l iab le" authors and narrators, "stream of consciousness" techn ique and other, s im i lar topics, is to miss the central i n tegrity of the text.25

25. Volosi nov's ideas regard ing reported speech ( indee.d , the ideas of the B axt in group in

general) h ave found fresh and v ital reintroduction i n to Russian l i te rary scholarsh ip via the semiotic stud ies of the extraord inary, recently developing "Tartu" or " Lotman" school. (On this school, see the E ngl ish introdu ction to the B rown U nivers i ty repr int of j u . M. Lotman, Lektsii po struktural'noj po'etike [ Lectu res on S tructu ral P oetics ] , P rovidence, Rhode Is land, 1 968, pp. vii-x. ) A concrete case i n point is B. A. U spenskij, Poetika kompozicii [The Poetics of Composition ] (Moscow, 1 9 70). Uspensk ij no't on ly appl ies Volosinov's theories throughout h is study, bu t also, v i rtual ly for the first time in Russian l i terary scholarsh ip , gives Volosinov fu l l cred i t for them. S ymptomatica l ly enough, the new Russian semiotics of art makes exp l i c i t i ts debt not only to the B axtin group bu t also to formalist theorists, espec ia l ly Tynjanov, ) akobson, and V inogradov.

1 96 I. R. Titunik

I n h i s preface to Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Volosinov h imself noted that the objec t of study in Part I l l of the book

" the p roblem of u tterance with in u tterance, has a b road significance extend i ng beyond the confi nes of syn tax. The fact is that a n umber of paramount l i terary phenomena-character speech (the construction of character i n general ) , skaz, styl iza· tion, and p arody-are nothing else than d ifferent varieties of refraction of ' another's speech. ' An u n derstand ing of this kind of speech and i ts soci ol ogical governance is an essential cond ition for the p roductive treatment of al l the l i terary phenomena mentioned [Marksizm i fi/osof1ja iazyka, Leni ngrad, 1 930, pp. 1 1 - 1 2 ] .

However, Volosinov's own efforts d id not, and cou l d not (considering that syntax was the primary focus of his attention), inc lude fu l l treatment of the imp l ications of h i s theory for the study of l i te rature. I ndeed, styl ization, parody, and skaz are not dea l t with at a l l . I t was not Vo losinov but rather M. M. Baxtin who fu l ly and systematical ly elaborated the l i terary theory and analysis of "another's speech." Treatment of this topic forms the theoretical basis for Baxtin ' s extraordinary treatise on the art of the polyphonic novel as exem pl ified by the works of i ts great creator, Fedor Dostoevskij . 26

Baxtin argues that recogn i tion of dup lexity i n such phenomena as styl ization, parody, skaz, and any one utterance in a d ia logic exchange, i .e. , recogn ition that " i n a l l of them d iscourse maintains a doub le focus, a imed at the referential object of speech, as in o rd inary discou rse, and s imu l taneous ly at a second context of d i scourse, a second speech act by another addresser [ p. 1 76 ] ," a l re ady reveals the inadequacy of traditional sty l istics, with i ts excl usive "monologic" frame of reference, and cal l s for an entirel y new approach which takes the pr in cip le of dup lex ity i n to fu ndamental account.

The new approach is estab l i shed through a system of analysis based on the inte rrel ation of the contexts of " author's speech" and "another' s speech." Author' s speech is defined as speech having d irect and immediate reference to i ts object and expressing the "u l timate conceptua l authority." I t i s

" h andled sty l i stical l y as speech aimed a t i ts d i rect referential denotation : i t must be adequate to i ts objec t (of whatever n ature, poetic or other) ; it must be expressive, forcefu l, p i thy, elegant and so forth, from the point of view of i ts d i rect referential m ission-to denote, express, convey, or dep ict someth ing; and i ts sty l istic treatment is oriented toward the concurr ing comprehension of its referent [ p. 1 78 ] .''

26. Problemy tvorcestva Dostoevskogo [ P rob lems of D ostoevsk ij 's C reative A rt ] (Len ingrad, 1 929) . I n 1 96 3, after B axtin was " rehab i l i tated," a new, expanded ed it ion of this book came ou t u nder the title Problemy poe tiki Dostoevskogo [ P rob lems of D ostoevskij' s P oetics] . To my knowledge, n o transl ation of the fu l l text of ei ther edit ion h as yet appea red in E ngl ish. One chapter, h av ing to do with Notes from Underground, was translated for the Crowel l Criti cal L ibrary ed i tion of Notes from Underground, ed ited by R. G. D u rgy, p p. 203-2 1 6 (Crowell, New York, 1 �69) . The basic, theoreti cal chapter, a lso from the 1 929 edition, " Discourse Typology i n P rose," appears i n R eadings. P age n umbers in brackets ;1fter q uota· tions in the p resent essay refer to Readings.


To just such a con text of speech Baxtin assigns the term "monologue." The d i rect speech of another-the speech of the heroes, the characters i n a workwhi l e also having d i rect, referential meaning, occupies a d ifferent position, " l ie s on a d ifferent p lane," than the author's d i rect speech. I t i s i n fact i nc luded in and subordinated to the author's context and i s therefore su bject to d ifferent sty l i stic treatment:

The he ro's u tterance is hand led precisely as the words of an-oth e r add resser--as words belonging to a personage of a certain specific i n d iv idua l i ty or type, that is, it is h andled as an object of the au thor's intentions, and not at all i n terms of i ts own referen· tial aim ( p. 1 78 ] .

This type of u tterance Baxtin cal ls " represented" or "objectified" u tterance. M onologic u tterance (author's d i rect speech) and objectified utterance (char

acter's d i rect speech) are the first two degrees of dist inct ion in Bax tin ' s theory of speech forms. They are both, in h i s c lassification, "s ingle-voiced" utterances:

The unmediated, i n tentional u t terance is focused on i ts referen tia l object, and it const itutes the u l t imate conceptua l au tho rity with in the given con text. The objectified u tterance is l i kewise focused only on i ts referen tial object, but at the same t ime it is i tse lf the object of another, the au thor's, i n tent ion, St i l l , this other inten tion does not pene trate the objectified u tterance; it takes that u tterance as a whole and, w i th· ou t al tering i ts mean ing or tone, su bordin ates it to its own purposes. It does not impose u pon the objectified u tterance a different referen tia l mean ing. An u tterance wh ich becomes objectified does so, as i t were, w ith out knowing i t, l i ke a man w ho goes about h is business unaware that he is being watched. An objectified u tterance sounds just as i f it were a d i rect, i n ten ti_onal u tterance. Utterances both of the first and the second type of discou rse each have one i n tention, each one voice: they are s ingle-voiced utterances [ p. 1 8 0 ] .

F rom these basic "s ingle-voiced" u tterances, Bax tin proceeds t o "dou blevoiced" u tterances :

An au thor may u ti l i ze the speech act of another i n pu rsu i t of h i s own aims and in such a way as to impose a new i n ten tion on the u tterance, wh ich nevertheless retains i ts own proper referentia l inten tion. U nder these c i rcumstances and in keeping w i th the au thor's pu rpose, such an u tterance must be recognized as origi nating from another add resser. Thus, within a si ngle u tterance, there may occu r two i n tentions, two voices ( p. 1 8 0] .

Among such doub le-voiced utterances are inc luded sty l ization, parody and skaz.

Between sty l ization and parody, a c rucial d ifference in doub le-voicedness occurs. "Styl ization p resupposes sty le ; i t presupposes that the set of sty l istic devices it reproduces h ad at one time a direct and immediate i ntentional ity and expressed the u l timate conceptual authority [ p. 1 8 1 ) ." The effect of styl ization is to "conventional i ze" any such style. Therefore, styl ization imp l ies a certain concurrence, an agreement between the two voices involve d : "The author's

1 98 I. R. Titunik

i n tention, having penetrated the ot�er speech act and having become embedded in it, does not c lash with the other i n tent ion; it fol lows that i ntention in the latter's own d i rection, �n ly making that d irection conventional [ p. 1 85 ] ." Such a doub le-voiced u tterance is at the same time " unid i rectional ." Parody, i n contrast, i nvolves the p resence .w ith i n one u tterance of two not only different but opposed, c lash ing i n tentions: "The second voice, having lodged i n the other speech, c l ashes antagon i st ical l y w ith the origina l , host voice and forces i t to serve d i rectly oppos ite a ims. Speech becomes a battlefi e ld for opposing i ntentions [ p. 1 85 ] . " Baxtin designates such a doub le-voiced u tterance "varid i rectional." Skaz, identified s imp ly as " narrator's narration," occupies the same range as both sty l i zation and parody ; it is e ither un id i rectiona l (styl ized skaz) or varid i rectional (parodic skaz).

What un i tes the un id i rectional and varid irectional variants of th i s third, dou blevoiced type of d iscourse i s the passiv ity of the " other vo ice" : " . . . in sty l i zation, narrator' s narration and parody the other speech act is completely passive in the hands of the author who avai l s h i mself of i t. He, so to speak, takes someone e l se's speech act, which is defenceless and submissive, and imp lan ts h i s own i ntentions i n i t, making i t serve h i s new aims [ p. 1 90 ] ." I n th i s respect, they contrast w i th another set of variants of the same th ird type where the relationsh ip between the two speech acts i s active. H ere are found such forms as h idden polemic and h i dden dia logue, i ndeed the forms of d ia logue itse lf and a l l forms of speech affected by " awareness of another speech act." I n these variants, " the other speech act remains outside the bounds of the author's speech, b u t i s imp l i ed or a l l u ded to i n that speech. The other speech act i s not reprodu ced w i th a new i ntention, but shapes the author's speech wh i l e remain i ng outside its boundaries [ p. 1 87 ] ." These active variants of the th i rd type of d iscourse p l ay particu l arl y important roles in creating po lyphonic structure.

Polyphonic structure takes i ts special shape and meaning against t he background of, and in contrast to, "homophon ic" structu re. They contrast precise l y as monologic and dia logic structures in t he sense the terms " mono logue" and "d ia logue" acqu ire i n Bax tin ' s system of analys i s. In homophonic structure, "whatever the types of d i scourse emp loyed by the author-monologist and whatever thei r compositional deployment, the author's i ntentions must dominate and must consti tute a compact, u nequ ivocal whole."27 The author 's voice, as the bearer of the u l timate conceptual authority, constant ly regu lates and u l timatel y resolves any interplay o f other voices i n the text ; i ndeed, i t i s from its u ni tary pos i tion that a l l othe r voices are meant to be perceived and j udged (T o istoj can be c i ted as a parti cu lar ly egregious case). I n po lyphonic structure, the other voices in the text come i nto their own, as it were ; they acqu ire the statu s of fu l lfl edged verbal and conceptual centers whose re lationship, both among themse lves

27. Problemy tvorcestva Dostoevskogo, p. 1 34.


and with the author's voice, becomes i ntense ly dia logic and not susceptib l e to subordination to " th e verbal-conceptual d ictatorsh ip of monologic u n ity of style and tone."28

The theory of d i scourse and system of analysis e l aborated by Baxtin h ave a mean ing far broader, of course, than that as i nstruments for the exposition of Dostoevskij ' s polyphonic art (al though Baxtin 's immense ach ievement i n that regard ought not be overlooked}. Together with Volosinov, Baxtin fu ndamental ly reoriented the whole fie ld of sty l istic i nquiry from componential, taxonomic description to systematic d isclosure of speech formations i n the dynamic terms of " speech within speech and speech about speech," for on ly in those terms can the actual structure of such formation s be grasped. Therein, too, of course, consists the essential socio logical d imens ion to the study. As Baxti n states i t :

The problem of the orientation of speech toward another u tterance h as a socio l ogical significance of the h i ghest order. The speech act by its nature is socia l . The word is not a tangible object, but an always sh ifting, a lways changing means of social communication. I t never rests with one consci ousness, one voice. I ts dynamism consists in movement from speaker to speaker, from one context to another, from one generation to another. Th rough i t all, the word does not forget i ts path of transfer and cannot complete ly free i tse lf from the powe r of those concrete contexts i nto which i t h as entered. By n o means does each member of the community apprehend the word as a neu tral medium of the language system, free from in tentions and u ntenanted by the voices of i ts p revious users. I nstead, he receives the word from another voice, a word ful l of that other voice. The word ente rs h is context from another context, permeated with the i n tentions of other speakers. H is own i ntenti on finds the word al ready occupied. Thus the orien tation of word among words, the various perceptions of other speech acts, and the various means of reacting to them are perhaps the most crucia l problems in the soc iol ogy of l anguage usage, any kind of l anguage usage, i nc l ud ing the artistic [ p . 1 95 ] .

Baxtin cal led h i s study of polyphon ic structure an " immanent-sociol ogical analysis," the immanent-sociological character of l i teratur e resid ing, as i nd icated, in language usage. Unm istakab ly, th i s point of v iew and the point of v iew, mentioned above, arrived at by j u rij Tynjanov fundamenta l ly coincide. Fu rthermore, noth ing even remotel y suggesting the n ecessi ty for eclecticism appears in Baxtin 's argument. Whi le admi tting that his study does not even begin to constitu te a sociol ogical exp lanation of the l iterary phenomenon in question, Baxtin i nsisted that it is an ind ispensable prerequis ite for such an exp lanation :

"The very material to b e made the su bject o f sociol ogical exp lanation must first b e iden tified and e luc idated a s a n i ntri nsic social p h enomenon, for only in that case can sociol ogical explanation be in accord wi th the structure of the fact i t attempts to explain ."29

28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., p. 2 1 3.

200 I. R. Titunik

With i ts symptomatic difference i n terminology, i ndicating a d ifference not so much of basic pr incip l es as of basic emphases, th i s statement of Baxtin ' s fu l l y correlates w i th the J akobson-Tynjanov theses and further substantiates the c la im that the sociological poetics of the Baxtin group (minus M edvedev ' s ec lecticism ; that i s, m inus M arxist presu,Ppositions) and the formal method, both of them en rou te to complex, comprehensive study of l i terature as a system of signs with i n a system of signs, represented paral le l , over lapp ing, interdependent, and u ltimate ly complete ly reconci lab le methods.

Index

A

Abstract objectivism, 48 , 5 2-6 1 , 65-67 , 7 1 , 77 , 79 , 80-82 , 1 09, 1 45 , 1 5 2, 1 78

Addressee, 85-87 , 90, 1 93 , see also Listener/reader, Aud ience

Addresser, 86 , 1 43 , 1 93 , see also S peaker, Author

Aesthetics, 3 1 , 5 1 -5 2 A l ien word , 7 1 -7 7 An tipsychologism , 3 1 -3 2 Aud ience, 86 , 96 , 1 05

inner, 86 Author, 1 05 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 8 , 1 30-1 32 , 1 38,

1 43-144, 1 93 , 1 96 Authoria l context, 1 05 , 1 1 8 , 1 22, 1 27 ,

1 5 7 , 1 93 , 1 97 Author itarian dogmat ism , ·1 20, 1 2 1 , 1 23

B

Ba l ly , Ch . , 5 8 , 1 22 , 1 44-1 46, 1 47 , 1 48 , 1 52 , 1 62

B audou i n de Cou rtenay, ) . , 1 6 1 , 1 62 Baxtin, M . M . , 1 67 , 1 70 , 1 72, 1 77 , 1 9 1 ,

1 97-1 99 Behavioral commun ication, 1 4 Behavioral ideology, 83 , 9 1 -93 Behavioral genres, 20-21 , 96-97 Belyj , A., 1 2 1 , 1 22 , 1 35 B io logical pr inc ip le , 25 B loomfie ld , L . , 1 Bogatyrev, P. , 5 B rentano, F . , 29, 3 1 B rugmann, K . , 62 Buh ler, K . , 68

c

Cartesianism, 2 Cartesian l i nguistics, 5 7 , 1 07 , 1 27 , 1 63 ,

1 67-1 69

Cassirer, E., 1 1 , 47 C l ass struggle, 23 Cohen, H . , 28 Communication, 3 , 1 3-1 4, 2 1 , 23 , 47 , 86 ,

95 , 1 1 2 , 1 85 verbal , 1 9 , 20, 2 1 , 8 1 , 95-96, 1 1 2 , 1 23

Concrete poetics, 1 7 5 Cond itioned reflex, 29 Connotation , 1 02, 1 05 Consciousness, 1 1 -1 5 , 20-22, 28 , 3 1 , 3 3 ,

8 1 , 88 , 90-91 i nd iv idual/subjective, 9 , 1 2 , 1 4, 22 , 3 1 ,

34, 54 , 56-5 7 , 6 1 , 65-67 , 84, 1 44 l inguistic/verbal , 70-7 1 , 75 , 1 46

Creative i nd iv idua l ity, 93 Creativity versus formal ism, 78 Critical i nd iv idual ism , 1 23 Croce, B . , 5 2 Czech structu ra l ism, 1 90 , see also P rague

school

De l bruck, B., 62 Denotarum , 1 02, 1 62 Descartes, R. , 5 7

D

Dia lectical materia l ism, 3 , 1 7 , 27 , 40 D i alectics, 1 7 , 2 1 , 23 , 24, 39 , 4 1 , 69 , 80,

82, 99, 1 06 of the " i n trinsic " and the "extri nsic,"

1 85 , 1 89 D i alogue, 4 , 38, 80 , 95, 1 02 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 6-1 1 7 ,

1 70-1 7 3 , 1 98-1 99 D ietrich , 0. , 62, 94 D i l they, W. , 26-28 , 3 0 D i rect d iscourse, 1 26 , 1 33- 1 40, 1 45 , 1 46 ,

1 4 7 , 1 5 1 , 1 5 7 , 1 94 antic ipated , 1 35 concealed , 1 35 d isseminated , 1 22 , 1 35 particul ar ized, 1 34 p reset, 1 34 s'u bstitu ted , 1 38-1 39

201

202 Index

Oostoevskij , F . , 1 3 , 1 2 1 -1 22 , 1 3 1 , 1 34 , 1 35 , 1 56, 1 90 , 1 95

D u rkhe im, E . , 6 1

E

Eclecticism , 1 86 , 1 90 , 1 99-200 Ejxenbaum , B., 1 86 , 1 90 Emp iricism , 2 Energeia versus ergon, 48 , 9 8 , 1 46 , 1 48 , 1 68 Engel 'gardt, B ., 49 , 1 22 E renburg, 1 . , 1 35 E rmatinger, E. , 2 7 , 32 Eth ics, 9 , 3 1 , 54 �thn i c psychology, 5 0 Evaluation, 1 03 , 1 06 , 1 55 , see also

Soc ial eva luation Eval uative accent, 22 , 8 0-8 1 , 99, 1 03 ,

1 05 ' 1 5 5 Experknce , 27-30 , 35-36 , 39 , 84, 90 , 93 ,

1 1 8 , 1 47, 1 85 Expression, 52 , 84-8 5 , 89 , 1 3 1 Expressivity, 28 , 84, 1 1 9

F

Figures of thought {figures de pensee) , 1 44-1 45

Form of the whole, 1 83 , 1 84 , see also U tterance as a whole

Formalism, 78 , 1 59 , 1 75 , 1 78 R ussian ( formal method, formal school,

formal ists) 1 65 , 1 75-1 80, 1 8 1 -1 83 , 1 9 1 , 200

Fortunatov, F . , 1 6 1 F rench , 1 2 1 , 1 26 , 1 27-1 28, 1 4 1 , 1 46

M iddle, 1 20 , 1 5 1 O ld , 1 5 0

F reud , 5. , 4 , 3 3 , 8 8 F reud ianism, 4, 26 , 88 F riedmann , K . , 1 2 1 Functiona l psychology , 29-3 1

G

Generative process 4 , 1 7 1 8 7 2 7 7-78 96, 98 , 1 00 , 1 02, 1 06, n'o, 1'5s ,

'

1 80 , 1 82

Generative process/generation of l anguage, 2, 5, so, 56 , 63, 75, 96, 98, 1 5 3 , 1 58 , 1 73-1 74

Geneva school , 1 6 1 Genre ( l i terary ) , 90, 1 83-1 84 German, 1 26 , 1 4 1 , 1 46 Gogol', N ., 1 2 1 , 1 26 , 1 3 1 Grammar, 48 , 74, 1 1 7 , 1 28

and style , 5 1 , 1 25-1 27 G rammatical categories, 1 1 1 , 1 72 Gruzdev, 1 . , 1 22 Gundolf, W. , 2 7 , 32

H

Harris, Z . , 1 Hero's con text, 1 38-1 39, 1 93 Hierarchical factor, 2 1 , 1 23 von Humboldt , W., 2, 3, 47 , 48-49, 1 67 Humboldtian l ingu istics, 2-3 48-49

1 67-1 6 9 > I

Husser ! , E . , 32

I dealism, 1 1 -1 2, 27 , 1 22 I deological accent, 22 I deological commu nication/i n tercourse, 13,

1 4, 1 8 , 9 7 , 1 1 9 I deological creativity 1 2 1 4-1 5 1 7 1 9

23, 85 , 96 , 1 5 3 1 I I 1 I

I deological evalu ation 1 0 I d eo logical form, 23 , fl7 I deological pu rv iew, 1 80 , 1 83 , 1 85 I deological science(s) , 26 , 3 6 I deological sign , 9-1 0 1 5 1 9 2 1 23 24

33 , 3 5 , 39 1 46 , 90 I I I I I

I deological system , 35 , 9 1 -92 I deological u nderstand ing, 25 , 3 7 I deological value , 2 9 , 57 I deology , 9-1 5 , 1 7 , 2 1 , 22-24, 3 1 -34,

40 , 68, 9 1 I d eology a n d the psyche, 3 1 -34 , 4 0-41 l nd i rect d iscourse, 1 02 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 5 - 1 1 7 ,

1 26� 33 , 1 37 , 1 44 , 1 5 1 analytica l transmission of, 1 28-1 33 consecutio temporum i n , 1 26 , 1 5 1 , 1 58 impressionistic, 1 33-1 34 referent-anal yzing, 1 30-1 3 1 , 1 33 , 1 99 texture-analyzing, 1 22 , 1 3 1 -1 33 , 1 3 7, 1 94

Index 203

I nd ividua l istic subjectivism, 48-52 , 5 6 , 82 , 83-85 , 8 7 , 93-94, 1 45-1 46, 1 52, 1 54

I nd iv idual i ty , 34 I ndo-Eu ropean school/stud ies, 72 , 79 , 1 05 I nh ib i tion , 90 I nner experience, 25 , 28 , 90 l nner contex� 30 , 36 I n ner d ia logue, 38 I nner i n tonation , 87 I n ne r l ife, 14 , 27 , 29 I nner s ign, 9, 1 4 , 33-39, 46, 69 , 85 l nner speech , 4 , 1 1 , 1 4, 1 5 , 1 7 , 25 , 28-29 ,

37-39, 87 , 96, 1 1 8 , 1 30 , 1 38 , 1 72 I nner style, 8 7 I n ner word , 14, 1 9-20 , 90 , 93 I n ternal speech, 1 33 I ntonation , 83 , 8 7 , 89 , 1 00 , 1 03-1 04,

1 1 2 , 1 30 , 1 33 , 1 7 1 I n trospectionjself-observation, 25 , 33 ,

36-37

J akobsen , R., 5 , 1 60 , 1 87-1 88 , 1 90 , 200 ) akub inskij , L ., 1 1 6 , 1 1 8 , 1 45 , 1 7 1 , 1 91

K

Kalepky , Th., 1 26 , 1 42 , 1 43-1 44, 1 46 Karcevski j , S . , 1 62 , 1 67 Kazan school, 1 6 1 Kruszewsk i , M . , 5 9 Krylov, 1 . , 1 27

L

La Bruyere, ) . de , 1 5 1 L a Fontaine, ) . de , 1 23 , 1 48 , 1 5 1 Langue, 2 , 59-60 , 1 46 , 1 64 Language creativ i ty , 2, 48 , 5 0-5 1 , 5 3 , 98 ,

1 68- 169 Language system , 52-57, 1 45 , 1 64 Le ibn iz, G ., 2, 5 1 Lerch , E ., 50, 1 44 , 1 47 , 1 52 , 1 54, 1 55 Lerch, G . , 1 1 6 , 1 1 9 , 1 4 1 , 1 49-1 52 Levi-Strauss, C. , 1 66 L inguistic categories, 1 09-1 1 1 , 1 82

L inguistic fantasy , 1 46, 1 48 , 1 50 , ) 54 L inguistic form, 7 0-74, 96

formes /inguistiques, 68, 1 44-1 45 Linguistic norm , 53, 56 , 65-66, see also

Normative iden tity, Normative system L inguistic posit ivism, 50 Linguistic taste, 5 0 , 56 , 1 46 .. L inguistics, 1 -2 , 4 , 47 , 7 1 , 7 5 , 78 , 1 09-1 1 1 , .

1 62-1 8 2 comparative , 1 09 d iachronic , 6 1 , 1 60 , 1 65 sociological orientation i n , 1 1 2-1 1 3 , 1 64 synchronic, 6 1 , 1 65

Listener/reader, 2 , 46, 7 0, 1 1 1 , 1 64 , 1 92-1 93 , see also Addressee

Locke, ) . , 1 61 , 1 63 Lorek, E . , 50 , 8 3 , 1 2 1 , 1 26 , 1 4 7-1 49 ,

1 50 , 1 52 , 1 54 , 1 55 , 1 59 Lotman, ) u ., 1 95

M

Mann, Th. , 1 5 2 Marr, N ., 72 , 76 , 1 01 , 1 73 Marty, A . , 47 , 62 , 1 05 Marx, K. , 1 Marxism , 1 , 3 , 5 , 1 5 , 1 7 , 20 , 25 , 1 7 6-1 77 Marxist ph i losophy of language, 45-63 Meaning, 9 , 28 , 79-80, 99-1 06 , 1 82-1 83 Mechanistic causal i ty , 1 7 , 24 Mechanistic material ism, 1 3 Medvedev, P . , 1 76 , 1 77- 1 8 7 , 1 89-1 90, 200 Mei l let, A . , 6 1 , 67 Meinong, A . , 29 Monologic u tterance, 72-73 , 78 , 84 , 94, 1 1 1 Monologue , 3 3 , 1 7 1 , 1 97 Morphological categories, 1 1 0 Morphologization of syn tax , 1 09 , 1 70 Mukarovsky , ) . , 5 , 1 77 Mu l tiaccen tual ity, 23 , 8 1 , see also

Evaluative accent

N

Native language/word, 7 5 , 8 1 , 83 Neoclassic ism, 83 N eogrammarians, 62 Neo-Kantian ism , 1 1 , 32

204

Norm {soc ial , ethical, l iterary ) , 3 7 , 66 , 98 , 1 9 0

i n l anguage, see L ingu is ti c norm Norrnative identity, 52-5 3 , 57 , 6 5-68 Normative system , 54, 6 7

0

Objectification, 84-85 , 8 7 Objective psychology , 1 2, 1 3 , 2 5 Opojaz, 1 75

p

Paragraph, 1 09, 1 1 1 -1 1 2 Parody , 1 96-1 97 Parole, 2 , 59-6 1 , 8 1 , 9 3 , 1 46 , 1 64 Peirce, C . S . , 3 , 1 63 Persona l i ty , 1 5 3 Peskovskij , A. , 1 1 2 , 1 27 -1 28 Peterson, M ., 47 , 59 , 6 1 , 1 62 Phenomenology, 3 1 -32 Ph i lologism , 7 1 -73 Ph i losophy of langu age, 3 , 9-1 5 , 24 , 45-5 2,

56-5 7 , 7 5 , 97 , see also M arxist ··

ph i losophy of langu age Ph i losophy of sign , 3, 3 3 , 38 Phonetic emp iricism , 40 , 46 Phonetics, 48, 7 4 , 1 82

comparative, 1 09 experimental , 46

Physiological process, 26 , 29 , 46 Poetic function , 1 82 , 1 88 Poetic l anguage ; 1 82-1 8 3 Poetics, 1 7 7 , 1 82 Polyphonic structu re , 1 98-1 99 Polysemanticity, 80 Positivism, 1 7 , 5 0 Potebnja, A . , 4 9 , 1 69 P ragmatists, 3 P rague school , 5 , 1 67 , 1 90 Proletariat, 1 5 4 Psyche, 25-26 , 29-3 1 , 33-3 7 , 39-4 1 , 48 , 49 Psychoanal ysis, 4 Psychologism, 1 1 -1 2, 25 , 3 1 -32 , 39 Psychology, 1 3 , 25-39, 1 7 1 Puskin , A. , 1 38-1 40 , 1 55

Index

Q

Quasi-d i rect d iscourse, 1 1 6 , 1 22 , 1 26 , 1 34 , 1 37 , 1 39-1 40, 1 4 1 -1 52 , 1 5 4-1 58 , 1 95

R

Rationa l i sm, 1 5 , 87 Rationa l ist ic dogmatism , 1 20, 1 2 1 , 1 23 Real istic ind iv idual ism , 1 21 , 1 23 Reflexology, 2, 68 , 1 7 1 Relativistic i nd iv idua l ism , 1 22-1 23 Rem izov, A., 1 2 1 Renaissance, 8 3 , 1 5 1 Reported speech, 5 , 1 1 2- 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 -1 2 3,

1 25-1 40, 1 5 1 � 5 5 , 1 57 , 1 92� 95, see also D i rect D iscourse, I nd i rect d iscourse, Quasi-direct d iscou rse

depersonal ization of, 1 1 9-1 20 factua l commentary in , 1 1 8 , 1 20 , 1 22 interna l retort in , 1 1 9 l inear sty le of, 1 20 , 1 30, 1 5 7 patterns and mod ifications of, 1 1 9,

1 25-1 26 p ictorial sty l e i n , 1 20, 1 27 , 1 5 7

Rhetoric, 1 22-1 23 , 1 27 , 1 59 Rhetor ical q uestion and exclamation,

1 3 7-1 38 Rickert, H ., 32 Rod i n , A. , 1 32 Ro l l and , R . , 89 Romanticism , 83 , 1 67 Russian language , 1 26-1 27, 1 28 , 1 32 , 1 33 ·

Old Russian, 1 33

s

Saussu re, F . de , 2 , 58-6 1 , 67 , 1 6 1 Saussu re school, 58 , 61 Scerba , L. , 1 62 , 1 7 1 Sechehaye, Ch . , 59 , 1 62 Semantic p aleontology, 23, 1 00 Sem iotics, 1 6 1 -1 63, 1 66 , 1 69- 1 70, 1 74

see also 5 ign S ign , 3 , 9-1 5 , 22-23 , 26-29, 34-37 , 39, 5 0,

68 , 1 6 1 , 1 64 , 1 73-1 74, 1 80 , see a!so I deological s ign, I nner s ign, P h il osophy of sign

S ign and signal , 68-69 , 7 1

S ignal i ty and recogn i t i on , 68-69 S i m m e l , G., 3 9 Skaz, 1 9 1 , 1 97 - 1 9 8 Socia l accent, 2 2 , 4 1 Socia l eval u a ti o n , 8 7 , 1 8 3 , 1 9 2 Socia l i n teracti o n / i n tercou rse, 1 7 , 4 6 , 9 0 ,

9 8 , 1 63 Social m i l i e u , 1 1 , 4 7 , 8 6 , 9 3 , 9 7 Social psycho l og y , 3 , 1 9-20, 4 1 , 1 6 3 Social p u rview, 8 5 , 1 06 Social s i tuatio n /setti n g , 3 8 , 8 5 - 8 7 , 1 7 1 Socioe c o n o m i c b as is , 1 7 - 1 9 , 1 06 , 1 80 Socio i d e o l ogical i n teror ie ntatio n , 1 1 9 , 1 4 3 Socioideo l ogical c o m m u n i cati o n , 1 23 , 1 4 3 Sociological method ( i n the stu d y of

l i te ratu re) , 1 7 7-1 7 9 , 1 8 1 -1 8 2 , 1 86 Socio logica l poet ics , 1 80 , 1 8 2, 1 8 6-1 8 7 ,

1 92 S o logu b , F ., 1 2 1 Sor, R . , 4 7 , 5 9 , 9 8 S peaker, 2 , 4 6 , 7 0 , 8 6 , 1 02 , 1 2 9 , 1 3 3 ,

1 42 - 1 4 3 , 1 64 , 1 92 - 1 9 3 S pecif icat ion, 1 7 8 - 1 8 0, 1 8 1 -1 8 3 S peech act, 3 , 4 8 , 5 7 , 9 0 , 1 64, 1 69 S peech i n te�ere n ce , 1 25 , 1 3 7 , 1 5 6 S peech p e rfor m a n ce , 1 9 , 9 6 , 1 04 , 1 1 0 S peech receptio n , 1 1 7- 1 1 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 8 , 1 5 4 S pet, G . , 4 9 , 5 0 , 1 05 Spitzer, L . , 5 0 , 8 3 , 8 9 , 9 4 , 1 7 0 S p ranger, F. , 3 2 Stei n t h a l , H., 4 7 , 4 9 S t u d y of i d e o l o g i e s , 9-1 5 , 1 7 , 2 1 , 1 7 8 Stu m p f, K . , 24 Style indirect fibre, 1 4 5 Styl ist ics, 5 1 , 1 25 - 1 2 7 , 1 43 - 1 4 4 , 1 95 ,

see also G ram mar a n d style Sty l izat ion, 1 9 6-1 98 S u p e rstructures, 1 7 -1 8 , 2 4 S y n c h ro n i s m , 1 6 6 S y n c h rony and d i a c h ro n y , 5 4 , 1 65 -1 6 7 S y n tax, 4 -5 , 7 9 , 1 09-1 1 2 , 1 55 , 1 8 2

T

T h e m e , 2 2 -23 , 99 - 1 0 3 , 1 1 5 au ton o m ous, 1 1 5

Tob l e r , A . , 1 4 2 - 1 4 3 Tol stoj , L., 1 3 1 , 1 3 5 Turge n e v , 1 . , 1 3 1 , 1 3 5 Tynjanov, j u . , 1 64 , 1 66 , 1 8 7 , 1 89 , 1 99

Index 205

u ·

U n d ersta n d i n g, 1 1 , 1 3 , 6 8 , 6 9 , 7 3 , 1 02 U n d e rsta n d i n g a n d i n terpret ing psychology,

2 6 -2 7 . .

Uspenski j , B., 1 95 U tterance, 3 , 2 0-2 1 , 40-4 1 , 6 7 , 7 0 , 72 , 7 9 ,

8 1 , 8 2 , 8 6 -8 7 , 9 0 , 9 3 , 9 4 -9 8 , 9 9-1 00, 1 1 0-1 1 1 , 1 1 5 , 1 20, 1 64 , 1 6 9 , 1 97-1 9 8 , see also Parole, S peech a c t , S p eech performance

fo rms of, 20-2 1 h ierarch ical factor i n , 2 1 , 1 2 3 poetic, 1 8 3

U tterance as a w h o l e , 7 8 -7 9 , 9 6 -9 7 , 9 9 , 1 1 0-1 1 2 , 1 7 1 -1 7 2

v

V e r bal i n terac t i o n , 3 , 1 9 , 9 4-9'8 , 1 7 0 , 1 7 2 , see also Co m m u n icat ion

V i n ogradov, V. , 1 1 6 , 1 22 , 1 65 , 1 7 6 , 1 92 ·

V o l k ov, A. , 1 7 4 V o l osinov, V . , 1 -6 , 1 62 , 1 67 , 1 7 6 , 1 9 1 -1 96 ,

1 99 Vol u n tarism , 4 9 Vossler, K . , 3 2 , 5 0 , 5 1 , 7 9 , 8 3 , 1 4 9 Vossler schooi/Vossl e r i tes , 5 1 , 7 0 , 8 6 , 9 4 ,

9 8 , 1 2 6 , 1 44 , 1 46 .

Vygotsk i j , L., 1 7 1

w

W a l z e l , 0. , 2 7 , 3 2 Weif) i nger, 0 . , 3 8 Wolffl i n , H ., 1 2 0 Word , 3 , 9 , 1 3 - 1 5 , 1 7 , 1 9 , 4 1 , 45 , 7 0 , 8 2 ,

1 04 , 1 1 0-1 1 1 , 1 5 7-1 5 9 ideol ogical n e u tral ity of, 9 , 1 5

Word-utterance, 1 5 8 W u n d t, W . , 3 2 , 4 7 , 49

z

Z o l a , E. , 1 2 2 , 1 45 , 1 5 2 Zvegnicev, V . , 1 74

Voloshinov Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

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