The Thesis of the Intersubjective Nature of Meaning in Bakhtin and Wittgenstein (original) (raw)
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Bakhtin and Wittgenstein on Dialogue as a Methodological Concept and Theme
Journal of Dialogue Studies
The concept of dialogue is a central element of Bakhtin’s writings, whereas Wittgenstein’s references to dialogue are generally in the negative vein. However, there does not seem to be another modern philosopher who has actually employed the dialogic method. But Wittgenstein’s dialogic texts also include monologic aspects, such as sensation and private transition. Bakhtin, by contrast, sometimes blurs the boundaries between dialogue in language and dialogue as a criterion for literary value. The article shows how Wittgenstein helps clarify the role of the monological in Bakhtin’s dialogic approach and how Bakhtin can facilitate a better understanding of the dialogicity in Wittgenstein.
Bakhtin and Wittgenstein on Dialogue
2019
The concept of dialogue is a central element of Bakhtin’s writings, whereas Wittgenstein’s references to dialogue are generally in the negative vein. However, there does not seem to be another modern philosopher who has actually employed the dialogic method. But Wittgenstein’s dialogic texts also include monologic aspects, such as sensation and private transition. Bakhtin, by contrast, sometimes blurs the boundaries between dialogue in language and dialogue as a criterion for literary value. The article shows how Wittgenstein helps clarify the role of the monological in Bakhtin’s dialogic approach and how Bakhtin can facilitate a better understanding of the dialogicity in Wittgenstein.
BAKHTIN: THE DANGERS OF DIALOGUE ● BAKHTIN: OS PERIGOS DO DIÁLOGO
This article focuses on the relation to the Other - the underlying aspect of dialogism - in the works of Mikhail Bakhtin. His approach to heterology (science or knowledge of the Other) is fundamental to analysis of such themes of his oeuvre as carnival (laughter), history, and economy of human existence. On a certain stage it appears, that two configurations may be distinguished in Bakhtin's conception of the Other. First, the Other dominated and apprropriated by the subject, or Author, or Self in the dialogic relation – it is only a provisional Other. The second is the irreducible Other, outside the possibility of adequate knowledge and thus potentially excluded from dialogue. Thus, the end of dialogue, the silence remains as a dark shadow on the horizon of the meaningful discursive logic. Moreover, the concepts of meaning and truth itself seem to be jeopardized here, since «answers to questions is what I call 'meanings'» (Bakhtin). Nevertheless, Bakhtin never openly questions the fundamental values of knowledge and final truth; his position may be summed up thus: «The truth is out there. Only it is probably not cognizable to an individual. Or may be not to anybody».
Di̇l Felsefesi̇: Öncesi̇ Ve Sonrasiyla Wittgenstein
The Journal of Academic Social Science Studies, 2020
Language philosophy which is a discipline that investigates the nature of language conceptually, analyzes various meanings, deals with meaning, explaining how it is formed, explains the relation between language, language reality and language-communication. It has been the main field of philosophy since the beginning of the 20th century. In the course of history of philosophy, most philosophers have been concerned with the issue of language and language problems. Thus the fundamental views on language from the early periods into twenty first century has been grounded by the perspectives of prominent philosophers. This paper attempts to focus once again on the importance of Wittgenstein's studies in analytical philosophy, who is considered (by some) to be one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, played a significant role in 20th-century analytic philosophy, providing an important guide to one of the liveliest and most challenging areas of study in philosophy between the works of Wittgenstein's first period of Tracatus Logico Philosophilus and the second period of Philosophical Investigations. There are two recognized periods of Wittgenstein's thought-the early and the later. On the other hand, due to the difficulty of his works, he has not been well understood. However, it is the later Wittgenstein, mostly known in the Philosophical Investigations. In the Tractatus philosophical problems arise from misunderstandings of the logic of language, and he tries to illustrate what this logic is. However, in Wittgenstein's later work, he provides this concern with logic and language. With his language-games, he seems to go against the logical positivist's view of language of that period. This paper attempts to give an expository information on the fundamentals of philosophy of language between the two periods, outlining a thematic overview of the various approaches of Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein's Contributions to the Discourse of Language and Meaning
The role of language as a vehicle of thought makes way for human thinking to be as multifaceted and diverse as it is. This is for the reason that with language, one can describe the past or speculate about the future and so deliberate and plan in the light of one’s beliefs about how things stand. To cement this view, language enables one to imagine counterfactual objects, events, and states of affairs. In this connection, it is intimately related to intentionality, the feature of all human thoughts whereby they are essentially about, or directed toward, things outside themselves. If, as is the case, language allows one to share information and to communicate beliefs and speculations, attitudes and emotions, then, it creates the human social world, uniting people into a common history and a common life-experience. In the end, what we see is that language is an instrument of understanding and knowledge. Along these lines, the philosophical investigation of the nature of language—the relations between language, language users, and the world—and the concepts with which language is described and analyzed, both in everyday speech and in scientific linguistic studies become pertinent and absolutely imperative. On the whole, philosophy of language as an academic and philosophical discipline is distinct from linguistics. This is for the reason that its investigations are conceptual rather than empirical. But this, however, does not mean that philosophy of language will not call to mind the message in which linguistic and other related disciplines reveal. Of course, it must pay attention to the facts which linguistics and related disciplines reveal.
O Círculo de Bakhtin e a Linguística Aplicada
Bakhtiniana: Revista de Estudos do Discurso, 2012
O presente artigo busca apresentar relações entre as formulações do Círculo de Bakhtin e os debates contemporâneos que ocorrem no âmbito da chamada Linguística Aplicada (LA). Para tanto, se fará um breve panorama histórico da LA, serão apresentadas concepções basilares do pensamento do Círculo de Bakhtin e serão construídos possíveis diálogos entre as formulações dos pensadores russos com as questões centrais do debate contemporâneo em LA.
This text aims to reflect on some aspects of the relationship between language and literature, linguistic studies and literary studies. More specifically, it focuses on the means by which this relationship is present in Bakhtin's thought, being directly connected to issues related to dialogue and dialogism, which traverse and single out the works of the Bakhtin Circle. In this train of thought, it is possible to testify that this relationship between language and literature is discussed, explored and problematized not solely in the works explicitly signed by Mikhail Bakhtin, but also in the ones whose authorship is disputed, for they clarify the way the other members of the Circle, especially Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev, conceive this relationship and contribute to make it fundamental to the understanding of language and to the development of concepts, notions, and categories that make language study possible. KEYWORDS: Works of the Bakhtin Circle; Linguistic Studies and Literary Studies; Language and Literature; Dialogue; Dialogism
The seven essays collected in this volume address the sequence of sections §§ 1-88 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. They are intended to help the reader find her way through the forest of issues treated in this first sequence. They examine some of the ways in which the book’s characteristic modes of criticism are demonstrated, with special emphasis on “the method of § 2” (as Wittgenstein retrospectively calls it in PI § 48), also called the “method of language-games” (PI § 116). These essays develop, though in very different ways, the contention that language-games are exactly what Wittgenstein claims they are, namely, “objects of comparison” (PI §§ 130-131) or notational constructs, but not subparts of our language whose syntactical patterns dictate how we must talk on pain of lapsing into nonsense. Accordingly, many of the essays collected here, rejecting the suggestion that Wittgenstein was ever in the business of laying down a priori conditions of sense (restrictions on what we can think), attempt to extend to the text of the Philosophical Investigations the so-called “resolute” stance that some commentators have recently taken on the text of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. All of these essays evince the twofold conviction that the book’s form, being internal to its content, cannot be shunted to one side without courting exegetical disaster and, conversely, that the modes of criticism employing this form cannot be identified except through their enactment.
Dialogical Grammar: Varieties of Dialogue in Wittgenstein’s Methodology
Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 2015
The dialogical character of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations has received scant attention in the literature, given the work’s status in his total oeuvre, and is dismissed as a marginal as compared to the other differences between the Tractatus and the Investigations. The main lines of interpretation that have been proposed see dialogue as a rhetorical technique intended to present erroneous positions and then refute them, as an exemplification of what can be expressed in language (McGinn 1997; Rhees 1998), or as a reflection of Wittgenstein’s informal teaching method (Malcolm 2001; Savickey et al. 1990). The present article adopts the perspective that Wittgenstein’s use of dialogue makes it possible to track the various modes of language-acts, consonant with his directions to examine the daily use of language (Wittgenstein 2009, §116 and esp. §132), “when language is, as it were, idling.” In his later inquiries, Wittgenstein frequently considers the nature of mental state...