Speech Genres and Other Late Essays PDF
Preview Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays University of Texas Press Slavic Series, No. 8 General Editor Advisory Board Michael Holquist Robert L. Belknap Hugh McLean John Bowk Sidney Monas Edward J. Brown I. R. Titunik Victor Erlich Edward Wasiolek Robert L. Jackson Rene Wellek Speech Genres and Other Late Essays M. M. BAKHTIN Translated by Vern W. McGee Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN Copyright © 1986 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Twelfth paperback printing, 2010 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ©The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bakhtin, M. M. (Mikhail Mikhailov ch), 1895-1975. Speech genres and other late essays. (University of Texas Press Slavic series ; no. 8) Translation of: Éstetika slovesnogo tvorchestva. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Philology. I. Holquist, Michael, 1935- II. Emerson, Caryl. III. Title. IV. Series. P49.B2813 1986 410 86-11399 ISBN 978-0-292-77560-2 Contents Note on Translation vii Introduction by Michael Holquist ix Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff / The Btldungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism (Toward a Historical Typology of the Novel) 10 The Problem of Speech Genres 60 The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis 103 From Notes Made in 1970-71 132 Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences 159 Index 173 This page intentionally left blank Note on Translation This translation has benefited a great deal from being among the last rather than the first translations of Bakhtin's work. I have been able to take advantage of the careful consideration previous translators have given to many of the problematic terms and concepts that are so plen- tiful in Bakhtin's theory. In most cases I have borrowed the terms used in previous translations in the Slavic Series, such as “heteroglossia” (raznorechie), "speech" (rech), and "discourse" (slovo), among others, not only for the sake of consistency throughout the series but because I believe they are good choices. The essays offered in this volume also contain many of their own perplexing words and concepts, such as "outsideness" (vnenakhodi- mosi), which have never before appeared in translation—or in Russian for that matter. On these I have consulted with both native Russian speakers and recognized Bakhtin scholars. In each case the options were weighed carefully, and the one most appropriate in style and tone as well as the closest in meaning was chosen. With respect to style, I believe these essays show Bakhtin at his most Bakhtinian. The rough, unfinished quality that comes through in his previously translated work is even more in evidence here, because most of these essays were not actually prepared by Bakhtin for pub- lication. They show more the process of his thought than the final product. I have attempted to convey this quality in the translation. The transliteration system is a modification of the International Pho- netic Alphabet: those letters requiring a hachek have been changed to the variants that use the letter "h"—"zh,” "ch,” "sh,” "shch"; the IPA “c” is rendered as "ts" and the "x" as "kh." Proper names are rendered as they ordinarily are or would be spelled in English (e.g., Tolstoy, Dostoevsky). V. W. McG. For much of the material in the notes, we are indebted to the editors of the Soviet edition, S. S. Averintsev and S. G. Bocharov. —Editors Introduction "70 strive at higher mathematical formulas for linguistic meaning while knowing nothing correctly of the shirt-sleeve rudiments of language is to court disaster." Benjamin Lee Whorf, "Linguistics as an Exact Science," 1941 ". . . there can be neither a first nor a last meaning; [anything that can be understood] always exists among other meanings as a link in the chain of meaning, which in its totality is the only thing that can be real. In historical life this chain continues infinitely, and therefore each individual link in it is renewed again and again, as though it were being reborn." M. M. Bakhtin, "From Notes Made in 1970-71" The first recognition in the United States of Bakhtin's status as a major thinker came in 1968, when he was included among a group of inter- nationally known theoreticians contributing to a volume of Yale French Studies on the topic "Game, Play, Literature."1 The identification of Bakhtin provided in the notes on contributors has an unmistakable diffidence about it: "M. Bakhtin ... is reaching the end of a long ca- reer, but only recently have the boldness of his speculation and the breadth of his ideas been appreciated outside the restricted circle of his Russian friends and colleagues." Less than a mere two decades later, Bakhtin is being hailed as "the most important Soviet thinker in the human sciences and the greatest theoretician of literature in the twentieth century."2 And in March 1985, the executive director of the Modern Language Association announced a "trend-spotting contest to PMLA readers ... I will offer [a prize] to the first reader to locate the earliest mention in PMLA of any of the following: Bakhtin, Barthes, Derrida, Freud, Levi-Strauss, and Karl Marx."3 In the great market- place of ideas, Bakhtin has obviously risen very high. It is, however, a curious fact that of all the names listed in PAfLA's roster of trends, Bakhtin is surely still the least known, if only in the sense that much of his work is still unavailable in English translation. Although deceased, he is similar to the still living figures with whom
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