1. Buffy Hamilton
Response to Bakhtin
READ 8100
September 23, 2002
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In The dialogic imagination: Four essays by
M.M. Bakhtin (pp.259-422). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
I first ventured into this text Friday, revisited it Saturday evening, and wrestled with it
again on Sunday as well as tonight. I did find the glossary and introduction helpful in
orienting myself, but I still feel unsure of what I can comprehend at this point. It was
comforting to know that you all were feeling the same confusion and uncertainty that I
did. Prior to this reading, I did see Bakhtin referenced in works by Anne Haas Dyson
and Barbara Kamler (ELAN 7320 Writing Pedagogy with Dr. Majors) , but this is my first
reading of his actual work. The waves are still crashing about me as I experience what
Dr. St. Pierre would call “comfortable chaos”!
What might Bakhtin be saying about inquiry?
• (not in the last section, but this quote caught my eye) “…whatever these
meanings turn out to be, in order to enter our experience (which is social
experience) they must take on the form of a sign (is this like Vygotsky’s
notion of word and thought?) that is audible and visible for us (a hieroglyph, a
mathematical formula a verbal or linguistic expression, a sketch, etc.). Without
such temporal-spatial expression, even abstract thought is impossible.
Consequently, every entry into the sphere of meanings is accomplished only
through the gates of the chronotope.” (time-space) (p. 258)
• “The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even
diversity of languages) and a diversity of voices, artistically organized” (p. 262)
• “The authentic environment of an utterance, the environment in which it lives and
takes shape, is dialogized heterglossia, anonymous and social as language, but
simultaneous concrete, filled with specific concrete and accented as an individual
utterance” (p. 272).
• Dialogism: competition of several voices within a literary text
• “The dialogic orientation of a word among other words (of all kinds and degrees of
otherness) creates new and significant artistic potential in discourse, creates the
potential for a distinct art of prose, which has found its fullest and deepest
expression in the novel” (p. 275)
• “The living utterance, having taken a meaning and shape at a particular historical
moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against
thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness
around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active
participant in social dialogue.” ( p. 276)
• “If we imagine the intention of such a word, that is its directionality toward the
object, in the form of a ray of light, then the living and unrepeatable lay of colors
and light on the facets of the images that I constructs can be explained as the
spectral dispersion of the ray-word, not within the object itself...but rather as its
spectral dispersion in an atmosphere filled with the alien words, value judgments,

2. and accents through which the ray passes on its way toward the object; the social
atmosphere of the word, the atmosphere that surrounds the object, makes the
facets of the image sparkle” (p. 277) [Shades of Vygotsky???]
• “Understanding and response are dialectically merged and mutually condition each
other; one is impossible without the other” (p. 282).
• “Language lies on the borderline between oneself and other. It becomes “one’s
own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent,
when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive
intention” (p.293).
• “The tendency to assimilate others’ discourse takes on an even deeper and more
basic significance in an individual’s ideological becoming, in the most fundamental
sense. Another’s discourse performs no longer here as information, directions,
rules, models, and so forth---but strives rather to determine the very bases of our
ideological interrelations with the world, the very basis of our behavior…” (p. 342)
Reflections/Connections/Muddy Points/Questions
Some of these quotes remind me of the transactional concepts set forth by Rosenblatt---
especially the quotes from pp. 276-277. Everything that we transact with in our
environment affects our present and future experiences. Our social and cultural
backgrounds give us our linguistic reservoir (Dewey), and as the quote above illustrate,
help us find our words that we use to convey our thoughts (Vygotsky). If we draw upon
these influences to find our words, would the words they supply us affect our
thoughts/ideas (see the quote from p. 342)? So is the thought really ours, or is it a
thought molded by the “voices of others”?
Our cultural and social backgrounds give us our words----we simply take them and mold
them to work in the context of our own intentions. This is very much what Jameel did
in Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in a Primary School. For Jameel, he had
to have space to bring his “unofficial worlds” into the “official world” of school before he
could grow and move forward in school. Dyson also says on p. 19 in this text that
“Children do not learn language from dictionaries but from people in particular
situations. They also learn the values and authority structures of the social world within
which it has lived.” I also looked back at my reading log from June 26 of Dyson, and I
copied this quote:
p. 190 “In literacy education, we do value, as William seemed to know, child “voice”
or “self-expression” and child “ownership” of text. But individuals, including
children, do not have but one voice, nor do as they solitary selves “own” their texts.
Moreover, as Bahktin 1981 discussed, the social interaction between composer and
audience itself take place against a landscape of social and power relations.”
I am sorry to keep going back to Dyson, but recalling snippets of that reading helps me
have a context to try to conceptualize Bahktin in since she referred quite frequently to
his paradigm/thinking.

3. It sounds as though he is saying the novel is the medium in which the discourse that
allows space for all these voices, and that the novel is the best genre? Is a dialogic text
one that allows for the “multiple voices” of others from different social/cultural contexts
to be heard? It is not authoritative or the final say if something is dialogic, right? If this
is true, this mode of thinking fits right in with Rosenblatt’s transactional theory. It
seems it would allow multiple ways of knowing as well, which in turn, would seem to
favor an inquiry approach to learning as it would allow students to experience “words”
and “knowledge” in multiple ways, and hopefully, these experiences (Dewey?) would in
turn affect students’ intentions and thoughts?
I realize I am rambling a bit here, but I am sincerely groping in the dark for meaning.
Forgive me if I fumble it just a little! ☺