Everyday Creativity is Always Dialogical in Bakhtin’s Sense
Traditional definitions of language have often categorised creative activity in the ‘canonical’ literary uses we see in artistic works. However, contemporary definitions no longer confine creativity with language to the work of the novelist or poet. It is a well argued point that the seeds of such literary language reside in what may be described, as the mundane, practical uses of ‘everyday’ talk and writing. This shift in opinion and approach to language study may be largely attributed to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, who developed a social theory of language. Bakhtin’s main argument was that there should not be a special category in which to place literary language, as different and superior to the everyday, but that “literature was just one set of genres out of the wide range of different speech genres within social life” (Maybin, 2006, p.418). Bakhtin’s concern was not with the formal properties of language alone, but also in the recognition of the many genres of language, how it works and how it is affected by social, cultural and historical factors. (2006)
It is Bakhtin’s arguments, in relation to ‘everyday’ creativity that I shall consider here, focusing particularly on a key concept of his theory: ‘dialogism’. In this essay, I intend to argue that the nature of everyday creativity in language use is always dialogical. I will highlight examples from the work of others that support Bakhtinian concepts, in addition, I will contrast the inherency approach of Roman Jakobson and his notion of the poetic function of language with the more sociohistorical approach of Bakhtin.
Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism has significantly influenced the study of language and several other disciplines.
“[…] Dialogism is the idea that culture, or even existence[…], is inherently responsive,[…] involving individuals acting at a particular point in time […] in reaction to what has gone before and in expectation of what is to follow.” (http://homepages.nyu.edu/~klc1/)
In terms of language, dialogism describes the way all uses of language, spoken and written, are in some way a response to previous uses, whilst at the same time always addressed to an ‘audience’ in anticipation of its’ own response. (2006) A related concept is heteroglossia, for Bakhtin language consists of many voices, any word or phrase will always carry connotations from previous use in various social contexts as well as “a taste of previous speakers’ intentions.
Use of dialect and colloquial language, this involves the use of informal language in literature work (Irmscher, 1975). Throughout the story, "Their eyes were Watching God" there is the use of these form of language which played a role in establishing
Butler, Octavia. “Speech Sounds.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susun X Day, and Robert Funk. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2008. 408-417. Print.
Amy Tan talks of the English she grew up with. Tan describes an English her mother uses and an English she shares with her husband. Tan sprinkles in the emotional intricacies of a personalized language that is burdened by misconceptions and apprehensively describes this language as “broken,” but expression through the use of a “broken language doesn’t invalidate what is being said, it doesn’t devoid passion, intention or imagination it simply differs from a normality. Envisage expression as ubiquitous. The differences rest in the vessels used to express. Here, I am using the English language, a grandiose entangling of words and a structured system, to indite my thoughts.
...ossible lives of its speakers, readers, writers,” (20) Morrison describes. The limits of what language can do are indefinite, unachievable, and inaccessible. For, really, there are no limits to language--no limits to knowledge--no limits to power--the power of the mind. “ ‘The future of language is yours,’” (23) Morrison tells us. It is in our hands. This is why we must hold the life of language sacred--the life of this bird, which has wings to make it soar.
Bataille suggests the use of cultural theory to attack and analyse language. Therefore, the characteristic theme
Diction plays a critical role in the development of the tone in a story. The type of words the author uses directly leads to the tone of the entire literary work. If ...
Language is like a blooming flower in adversity – they are the most rare and beautiful of them all as it struggles to express itself. It blooms and flourishes in strength, awe, and passion as the riches of thought is imbibed from the seed and into a finished beauty. For others, a non-native person speaking in a language that they are not familiar with sprouts out like a weed – the way its thorns can puncture sympathy and comprehensibility. Amy Tan, however, addresses the nature of talk as being unique under its own conditions. In Tan's “Mother Tongue”, she discusses how her mother's incoherent language is “broken” and “limited” as compared to other native English speakers. When focusing on Amy Tan, she grows noticeably embarrassed with her mother's lack of acuteness in the language, which then influences Tan to “prove her mastery over the English language.” However, she soon learns from herself and -- most importantly -- her mother that a language's purpose is to capture a person's “intent, passion, imagery, and rhythm of speech and nature of thought.” With such an enticing elegance...
In "The Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image," one encounters a piece of the twentieth-century discussion of the philosophical considerations of language. One can say that Paul de Man really takes the view of Romanticism akin to that of Martin Heidegger's view of poetry in general. Heidegger states that poetry must be a kind of "speaking being" or the creation of something "new" through language.(Note 1) Language itself stands upon itself in poetry according to Heidegger. De Man picks up the broad discussion of what language is with his discussion of the Romantic image. The main thesis of this essay lies in the difference between the everyday consciousness that one has of the concrete world and the consciousness which one achieves through the Romantic image. De Man says that these two functions of the consciousness differ and that the objects one finds in concrete nature are essentially different from those found in Romantic imagery.
Language has a personality and a mood, created by the behavior of the speakers and their cultural identity. Moreover, this includes the tools speaker use to communicate through i.e. sign language. Languages can be described by human emotions and feelings; therefore, language is personified and dynamic. Historical events have lead to changes in languages in caused flexibility and dynamicity of language. Globalization and colonization also had an effect in word borrowing, and many languages have been altered due to this. Languages are also interpre...
Structuralism employs terms to help in the understanding of one of the most complex literary theories (McManus, 1998; Brizee and Tompkins, 2011). All words in any given language are either classified as parole or langue (McManus, 1998). Barbara McManus is an expert on literary criticism, has authored two books on the subject, is a retired professor of Classics Emerita, including the topics of Feminism and general literary criticism courses, from College of New Rochelle who defines the two terms as “any particular meaningful use of spoken or written language (also called ‘performance’)” and “the underlying system of sounds, forms, and rules of combination of a language which make meaningful communication possible (a speaker's implicit knowledge of this system is called ‘competence’),” respectively (McManus, 2003; McManus, 1998). McManus later states that “[Structuralists are] interested in langu...
Trudgill, P. (2003). A glossary of sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
Language, according to Owens (2012, p. 6), “can be defined as a socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combinations of those symbols”. Language is thought to be a complex system; however, it can be broken down into three different components. These three components consist of content, form, and use. Within these three components, language has five main components which includes semantics, morphology, phonology, syntax, and pragmatics (Owens, 2012, p. 18).
Sociolinguists such as Eckert (2000) and Milroy (2004) have made provocative efforts to incorporate linguistic-anthropological concepts into sociolinguistic explanation (Woolard, 2008) and foundational studies by Creese (2008) include major works describing the paradigm. Rampton (2007), described the methodological tenants behind LE. LE research is yet a developing discipline that serves as a way of enriching a fundamentally linguistic project. In fact, the formulation of LE covers a large and older body of scholarship on language and culture (Rampton, Maybin, & Roberts, 2014), while simultaneously necessitating and interdisciplinary collaboration of theories and skills, thus blurring the boundaries between branches of variationist, sociological and ethnographic sociolinguistics (Tusting & Maybin, 2007). LE research on language change (Ekert, 2000) and a cultural model of cognition (Levinson, 1996) are worthwhile examples. However, the examples in the following sections serve more as a focus on contributions of LE to the field of
Shea, Renee, Lawrence Scanlon, and Robin Scanlon. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2013. 525-529,546-551. Print.
The New Critics, just like Wimsatt and Beardsley put forward in their essay, also believed in the ‘organicity’ of the text. In the essay, they write, “A poem should not mean but be.” And, since the meaning of the poem or the text is the medium through which it can exist, and words, in turn, is the medium through which the meaning is expressed, the poem or the text b...