Caitlin

Active and Passive Roles of the Speaker and the Listener

Bakhtin describes active and passive roles by first indicating what he considers
problematic about the way current linguistics theory views the speaker and the listener
in speech communication, and his alternative interpretation of the behavior.
Still current in linguistics are such fictions as the listener and understander (partners
of the speaker)these fictions produce a completely distorted idea of the complex and
multifaceted process of active speech communication (p. 68). He goes on to specify
that courses in linguistics present graphic-schematic depictions of the two partners in
speech communicationthe speaker and the listener (who perceives the speech)and
provides diagrams of the active speech processes of the speaker and the
corresponding passive processes of the listeners perception and understanding of the
speech (p. 68).
According to Bakhtin, the roles of speaker and listener are distorted in this presentation
because The fact is that when the listener perceives and understands the meaning (the
language meaning) of speech, he simultaneously takes an active, responsive attitude
toward it (p. 68). In other words, Sooner or later what is heard and actively understood
will find its response in the subsequent speech or behavior of the listener (p. 69). We
should therefore assume that all real and integral understanding is actively responsive;
and constitutes nothing other than the initial preparatory stage of a response (in
whatever form it may be actualized) (p. 69).
From this assumption, we are to conclude that the listener who understands
passively, who is depicted as the speakers partner in the schematic diagrams of
general linguistics, does not correspond to the real participant in speech
communication (p. 69). By considering the active role of the other in the process of
speech communication as reduced to a minimum (p. 70) in linguistic theory, Bakhtins
specific criticism is that it does not account for the fact that Any understanding is

imbued with response and necessarily elicits it in one form or another: the listener
becomes the speaker (p. 68).
Furthermore, "Any understanding of live speech, a live utterance, is inherently
responsive... Any utterance is a link in the chain of communication" (pp. 68, 84). If we
fail to consider this aspect of the utterance, or to fail to consider the peculiarities of
generic subcategories of speech in any area of linguistic study leads to perfunctoriness
and excessive abstractedness, distorts the historicity of the research, and weakens the
link between language and life (p. 63).
When connecting Bakhtins views on the active and passive roles of the speaker and
listener to cultural theory discussed in the course, Heines description of the implicit v.
explicit uses of language across cultures comes to mind, in terms of the degree to
which people attend to the explicit meaning of what is said (Heine, 1445). This leads to
Heines hypothesis of linguistic relativity: The hypothesis that people s thoughts are
bounded by the language in which they speak has been one of the more controversial
research questions in psycholinguistics (Heine, 1446).
Primary and Secondary Speech Genres
For Bakhtin, it is of particular importance to draw attention to the very significant
difference between primary (simple) and secondary (complex) speech genres (p. 61).
He considers this difference very great and fundamental, but goes on to say that this is
precisely why the nature of the utterance should be revealed and defined through
analysis of both types (p. 62); it becomes a matter of adequately defining the complex
and profound nature of the utterance.
Secondary (complex) speech genresnovels, dramas, all kinds of scientific research,
major genres of commentary, and so fortharise in more complex and comparatively
highly developed and organized cultural communication (primarily written) that is artistic,
scientific, sociopolitical, and so on.

During the process of their formation, they absorb and digest various primary (simple)
genres that have taken form in unmediated speech communion (p. 62).
Consequently, These primary genres are altered and assume a special character when
they enter into complex ones. They lose their immediate relation to actual reality and to
the real utterances of others (p. 62).
In their linguistic operationalization they inform one another; for example, In each
epoch certain speech genres set the tone for the development of literary language. And
these speech genres are not only secondary...but also primary (p. 65). With regard to
the national language, the extraliterary strata and the speech genres through which
they are manifested result in a majority of cases becoming various conversationaldialogical genres, which leads to a more or less corresponding distinct diologization of
secondary genres, weakening of their monological composition, new sense of the
listener as partner-interlocutor, new forms of finalization of the whole and so on (p. 66).
As he indicates happens in behaviorist linguistics, one-sided orientation toward primary
genres leads to vulgarization of entire problem (p. 62). This echoes the problem
described earlier when the living complexity of the utterance is not examined. The very
interrelations between primary and secondary genres and the process of the historical
formation of the latter shed light on the nature of the utterance (and above all on the
complex problem of the interrelations among language, ideology, and world view) (p.
62).