Description
Book SynopsisVološinov’s important work, first published in Russian in 1929, had to wait a generation for recognition. This first paperback edition of the English translation will be capital for literary theorists, philosophers, linguists, psychologists, and many others.
Trade ReviewQuite simply one of the best general introductions to linguistics study as a whole. -- Fredric Jameson * Style *
This book is a masterpiece of theoretical thought. It anticipates the actual achievements of much of what we now call sociolinguistics. The ‘dialectic of the sign’ and of the verbal sign in particular as it is presented in the book acquires great suggestive value in the light of today’s debates about semiotics. -- Roman Jakobson
In this one book a reader can discover the ideas of Bakhtin and his circle about language, not as a conceptual metaphor, but as that aspect of human life which is in fact the subject matter of a cumulative science. Its critical account of the state of linguistic thought in the first decades of the century is all that a sociological or Marxist critique can and should be: not a stereotyped application of received categories, but an attempt to think through from the foundation the consequence of taking social interaction; not the abstract individual speaker, as starting point… The empirical consequences developed in the course of the book…are just as valuable today as ever… Brilliant. -- Dell Hymes
This is, in my opinion, the central corpus in the work of the Russian semiotic tradition attributed to Bakhtin’s circle. -- Michael Cole
Table of ContentsTranslators' Preface, 1986 Author's Introduction, 1929 Guide to Translation Translators' Introduction PART 1: THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR MARXISM 1. The Study of Ideologies and Philosophy of Language 2. Concerning the Relation of the Basis and Superstructures 3. Philosophy of Language and Objective Psychology PART 2: TOWARD A MARXIST PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 1. Two Trends of Thought in Philosophy of Language 2. Language, Speech. And Utterance 3. Verbal Interaction 4. Theme and Meaning in Language PART 3: TOWARD A HISTORY OF FORMS OF UTTERANCE IN LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTORS (Study in the Application of the Sociological Method to Problems of Syntax) 1. Theory of Utterance and the Problems of Syntax 2. Exposition of the Problems of Reported Speech 3. Indirect Discourse, Direct Discourse, and Their Modification 4. Quasi-Direct Discourse in French, German, and Russian Appendix 1. On the First Russian Prolegomena to Semiotics Ladislav Matejka Appendix 2. 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 Index
