Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

Yaaay! Language as the medium of ideology! Class struggle as the struggle to decide who gets to make your own (not their own) meanings! The ruling-class/oppressed-class dialectic as analogous to Bakhtin's centripetal/centrifugal thing, which it strikes me now is a good argument to say that Bakhtin didn't write Voloshinov: if he had been inclined to make the class connection that explicitly, why wouldn't he have done it in one of the essays in The Dialogic Imagination? Bakhtin is more magisterial on the issue of language, maybe, and of narrative certainly, but I'm not convinced he was ever a Marxist. (And no wonder; they were dicks to him, dude).

Anyway, this inspired (or just precursed?) half of Gramsci, and is so anti-formalist - language IS social interaction, and that's all that's ever made sense, and please to put that in your pipe, Saussurean lingistics. But then Voloshinov also fights hard for the good half of Saussure, the diachronic sign.

Finally, Voloshinov is freakier than you think. (Per "Flight of the Conchords," I think the opposite of "drinking the Kool-Aid" - believing in the unreal in a way that frees rather than subjugates you - should be referred to as "wearing the freaky freaky eyepatch.") “Quasi-direct discourse” – IS or FIS where, “clearly, it is the [character’s] own . . . thoughts that are being transmitted. It is his speech, but it is being formally delivered by the author.” Your books are speaking you! the hero escapes from the page!

And the thing where utterance can be "too colourful" for indirect speech. It's gnomic, but it comes close to locating the power of speech report in affect more than, or in preference to, authority (represented by verbatim). That is almost "I believe because it's absurd" - not the Tertullian, but the way it's often been misread: "I believe because it's cool and it empowers me." Voloshinov is the David Bowie of reported speech study. Read this and see yourself - on stage - inside out! ( )