http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/bakhtin/chap2c.html After the Rabelais dissertation was rejected, Bakhtin continued teachin in !

aransk, where he be an work on one of the most important essays of his career, a fuller e"amination of his earlier concept of the utterance. #his essay, $#he %roblem of !peech &enres,$ was not published in the !o'iet (nion until )*+*, well after his re'i'ed status as a noted thinker, and was later translated into ,n lish in a collection entitled Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. -ritten between )*.2 and )*./, $#he %roblem of !peech &enres$ is one of Bakhtin0s most succinct ar uments a ainst !aussurean lin uistics, a subject first touched upon in The Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. But unlike the 1ostoe'sky book, $!peech &enres$ i'es us an in2depth description of metalin uistics, which depends on what Bakhtin felt was the smallest lin uistic unit of conte"tual meanin within an e'eryday situation of speech 22 the utterance. 3or Bakhtin, the utterance is: a unit of speech communication . . .d etermined by a chan e of speakin subjects, that is, a chan e of speakers. Any utterance 22 from a short 4sin le2word5 rejoinder in e'eryday dialo ue to the lar e no'el or scientific treatise 22 has, so to speak, an absolute be innin and an absolute end: its be innin is preceded by the utterances of others, and its end is followed by the responsi'e utterances of others . . . . #he speaker ends his utterance in order to relin6uish the floor to the other or to make room for the other0s acti'e responsi'e understandin . 4+)5 By comparin this concept of the utterance to those units of speech defined by traditional lin uistics 22 sentences, phrases, words, and phonemes 22 Bakhtin demonstrates the strikin ly narrow limitations of pre'ailin lin uistics in analy7in the conte"tual en'ironment of speech and lan ua e. 3or Bakhtin, the isolated sentence lacks $semantic fullness of 'alue8 and it has no capacity to determine directly the responsi'e position of the other speaker, that is, it cannot e'oke a response$ 4+95. (tterances are characteri7ed by a chan e of speakers in a $specific finali7ation$ determined by three aspects of a whole utterance: semantic e"haustion of the theme8 the speaker0s plan or speech will8 and eneric, compositional forms of finali7ation 4+:2++5. -hat Bakhtin means by these three characteristics of the utterance is fairly simple. 3irst of all, an utterance0s $relati'e finali7ation$ is determined by $specific authorial intent$ 4++5. #hat is, an utterance reaches its end when a speaker intends it to, when the impulse of speech has momentarily e"hausted itself and either e"plicitly or tacitly asks for response from the listener. ;losely linked to this intent is the listener0s perception of the speaker0s speech plan: <-=e embrace, understand, and sense the speaker0s speech plan or speech will, which determines the entire utterance, its len th and boundaries. -e ima ine to oursel'es what the speaker wishes to say. And we also use this speech plan, this speech will 4as we understand it5, to measure the finali7ation of the utterance. 4++5 >ost importantly for Bakhtin, thou h, is how the utterance0s finali7ation is often determined by our choice of a particular speech enre, enres which are relati'ely stable but of which we are often unconscious. As Bakhtin states, we ac6uire lan ua e $from concrete utterances that we hear and that we oursel'es reproduce in li'e speech communication with people around us$ 4+*5. #hrou h these socially ac6uired speech enres, a listener is able to anticipate the len th and compositional structure of another0s speech from its 'ery first words, thereby formin a sense of the whole e"pression, $which is only later differentiated durin the speech process$ 4+*5.

Bakhtin feels that if we had not tacitly inte rated these enres into our consciousness throu hout our li'es and instead had to $construct each utterance at will for the first time, speech communication would be almost impossible$ 4+*5. Bakhtin0s theory of utterance counters the pre'ailin lin uistics of his time by denyin that utterances 4parole5 are $completely free combination<s= of forms of lan ua e$ and therefore $purely indi'idual acts,$ while the system of lan ua e 4langue5 is a social phenomenon 4?)5. 3or Bakhtin, both !aussurean terms are socially deri'ed, and in his 'iew, most lin uists of his day saw in the utterance $only an indi'idual combination of purely lin uistic 4le"ical and rammatical5 forms . . .$ 4?)5. #he conscious or unconscious choice of an indi'idual speech enre, accordin to Bakhtin, is determined by both the speaker0s semantic plan and by his emotional e'aluation of the utterance0s semantic content8 this is one area of speech that most lin uistic systems fail to address: ;an the e"pressi'e aspect of speech be re arded as phenomenon of language as a system@ ;an one speak of the e"pressi'e aspect of lan ua e units, that is, words and sentences@ #he answer to these 6uestions must be a cate orical $no.$ Aan ua e as a system has, of course, a rich arsenal of lan ua e tools 22 le"ical, morpholo ical, and syntactic 22 for e"pressin the speaker0s emotionally e'aluati'e position, but all these tools as lan ua e tools are absolutely neutral with respect to any particular real e'aluation. 4?95 Bne means of relayin the e"pressi'e aspect of lan ua e is intonation, which is present in oral speech, but does not e"ist in the system of lan ua e itself: $Both the word and sentence as language units are de'oid of e"pressi'e intonation$ 4?.5. Cnstead, e"pressi'e intonation is present only in the utterance as a whole, thou h indi'idual words and sentences can be entire utterances if they elicit a listener0s acti'e response. As e"pressed so far, it may appear that Bakhtin0s utterance is merely composed of lan ua e units defined in traditional lin uistics8 howe'er, Bakhtin belie'es that when we form e"pressi'e utterances, $we by no means always take them from the system of lan ua e in their neutral, dictionary form,$ but instead appropriate them from other utterances we ha'e heard in our indi'idual e"perience of lan ua e 4?+5. Bakhtin0s theory of the utterance is hi hly dependent, as are his other theories of lan ua e, on the dialo ic nature of the word8 in our use of lan ua e, the word e"ists on three different le'els: )5 as a neutral, lan ua e system word belon in to no one8 25 as a word present in the utterance of others8 and /5 as a word of the indi'idual, used in a particular situation with a particular speech plan 4??5. But re ardless of how words are used, the utterance $is filled with dialogic overtones,$ which Bakhtin felt must be taken into account in any lin uistic analysis 4*25. -hile the utterance is a dialo ic $link in the chain of speech communication, and...cannot be broken off from the precedin links that determine it,$ Bakhtin also felt the utterance was tied to subse6uent links in this ne'er2endin chain throu h what he calls $addressi'ity,$ which is essentially the same as audience analysis, but with a reater emphasis on active listener response in shapin the utterance 4*92*.5. #he addressee0s influence on a particular utterance 'aries from speech enre to speech enre, but within each utterance there e"ists this responsi'e impact of the addressee. Cn fact, addressi'ity is another feature that distin uishes the utterance from lan ua e units, which $belon to nobody and are addressed to nobody$ and are $de'oid of any kind of relation to the other0s utterance, the other0s word$ 4**5. #hou h indi'idual words can be directed toward someone, Bakhtin felt they then become completed utterances consistin $of one word or one sentence, and addressi'ity is inherent not in the unit of lan ua e, but in the utterance$ 4**5.

As mentioned earlier, Bakhtin0s criticisms of !aussurean lin uistics were based on incomplete interpretations of the !wiss lin uist0s 'iews. And at the time he wrote this essay, Bakhtin could not ha'e foreseen the reat strides made in modern lin uistics by someone like Doam ;homsky, whose concepts of lin uistic $competence$ and $performance$ ha'e deepened our understandin of lan ua e. -hat Bakhtin seems to be ar uin a ainst here are the limited Russian interpretations of !aussure0s works, and not lin uistics in any modern sense of the word. After !talin0s death in )*./, thousands of political prisoners were released from jail, and many of those in e"ile were rehabilitated 4;lark and Eol6uist /2*5. Eowe'er, Bakhtin0s situation remained 'irtually unchan ed, thou h he did recei'e promotion at the uni'ersity in !aransk. Bakhtin0s earlier works, howe'er, e'entually be an to recei'e belated reco nition. Doted lin uist Roman Fakobson, for e"ample, spoke on numerous occasions about Bakhtin as well as psycholo ist Ae' Gy otsky, whose works had also been all but for otten 4;lark and Eol6uist //)2/25. #hrou h these influences, raduate students at 'arious !o'iet uni'ersities be an to redisco'er the 1ostoe'sky book. Amon them was Gadim Ho7hino', who was surprised Bakhtin had sur'i'ed the !talinist pur es and ur ed him to re'ise both the 1ostoe'sky book and the Rabelais dissertation with an eye toward publication. After encounterin initial resistance, Ho7hino' was e'entually able to persuade !o'iet authorities to publish both books 4;lark and Eol6uist ///2 /.5. Iet as Bakhtin0s star be an to rise in the !o'iet (nion, his health be an to decline dramatically, as did that of his wife, who suffered heart problems. Cn addition to his continually worsenin osteomyelitis, Bakhtin also contracted acute emphysema caused by his years of hea'y smokin . ;oncerned that the couple were unable to care for themsel'es, friends arran ed to ha'e them mo'ed to >oscow, where they relied on state pensions and free medical ser'ices. Iet Bakhtin continued to work at his desk, writin in the )*+Js, for e"ample, a conclusion to his earlier essay on the chronotope and scribblin e"tensi'ely in his notebooks. #hese later notebook entries are interestin because Bakhtin seemed to be returnin to themes in his earliest essays. #he writin s are fra mented and stilted, as most notebooks are, but show a mind still clearly ambitious e'en as his health declined. Cn the last notebook entry before his death, Bakhtin concluded with this statement about the dialo ic nature of lan ua e: $#here is neither a first nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialo ic conte"t 4it e"tends into the boundless past and the boundless future5$ 4Speech Genres )+J5. Ct is this $boundless dialo ic conte"t$ that allows us to escape the prison house of lan ua e that so many poststructuralist thinkers ha'e erected for us durin the past two decades. [4] Accordin to Bakhtin, our indi'idual acts of lan ua e are tied indissolubly to all pre'ious and future acts of lan ua e in the ne'er2endin act of dialo ue with others. Aan ua e on a personal le'el is ac6uired from this stream of lan ua e, and durin the course of our li'es, we return to this stream a ain and a ain, i'in back what we ha'e taken from it. As we shall see in subse6uent chapters, this social 'iew of lan ua e opposes both the rationalist tradition of -estern philosophy and the e"treme lin uistic skepticism of recent poststructuralist thinkers such as 1errida. Bakhtin died on the mornin of >arch +, )*+., from complications of emphysema and was attended only by a ni ht nurse, who noted his final words as bein , $C o to thee$ 4;lark and Eol6uist /9/5. At a memorial ser'ice later that year in >oscow, a number of intellectuals athered to read his works and discuss the impact of his career. Amon those speakin was !hakespeare scholar A.,. %insky, who warned a ainst any sin le, authoritati'e interpretation

of Bakhtin0s works 4;lark and Eol6uist /995. -e would do well to remember %insky0s remarks when e"aminin Bakhtin0s influence in critical and rhetorical theory.