Talk:Heteroglossia

Linguistics, insofar as it is an attempt to systematize language, must always ignore or conceal this reality

This claim is rather stunningly false re any branch of Linguistics that examines variation synchronically or diachronically, and anathema to Sociolinguistics. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 02:30, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

You must have a rather low stun threshold: it's a wikipedia article, not a taser. In context, the sentence isn't really "claiming" anything, it is summarising an aspect of Mikhail Bakhtin's thought on the subject of heteroglossia, viz. that linguistics, to the extent that it operates on the presumption that language is a system, inevitably obscures the fundamentally heteroglot, asystematic nature of language as it is actually lived and practiced by human beings in their day to day realities. There is no suggestion that linguists don't study language variation at particular points in time or as an evolving phenomenon; only that if they assume systematicity, they miss the point. I am not a linguist but I imagine Bakhtin's theory of language would, potentially, be of great interest to sociolinguists.

The passage is based on Emerson and Holquist's glossary entry for heteroglossia in The Dialogic Imagination: "At any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of conditions - social, historical, meteorological, physiological - that will insure that a word uttered in that place and at that time will have a meaning different than it would have under any other conditions; all utterances are heteroglot in that they are the function of a matrix of forces practically impossible to recoup, and therefore impossible to resolve. Heteroglossia is as close a conceptualisation as is possible of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide; as such, it is that which a systematic linguistics must always suppress." I find Bakhtin difficult to summarize (and indeed to understand at all) so if you think it can be better expressed please make a suggestion. Harold the Sheep (talk) 05:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

My stun threshold seems to be pierced upon encountering blatant nonsense (though in this instance I confess that the intensity of the stun may be conditioned by my own decipherment of the intention of insofar). That aside, thanks for the helpful contextualizing background. Unfortunately, none of it is contained in the peremptory declaration of the last sentence of the lead, nor is it clear that the declaration is meant as a cryptic summary of Bakhtin's view specifically. Emerson and Holquist seem to do a good job of summarizing, a summary that could pass as an attempt to describe e.g. (linguist) J.R. Firth's approach -- with the exception of characterizing the matrix of forces as impossible to recoup, and assuming that "systematic linguistics" is doomed to suppress centripetal and centrifugal forces. // I'll tweak the offending text slightly for the nonce, but it's still unsatisfactory in at least one respect: most linguists attempt to discover systematicity, not, as seems to be implied, impose it. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:24, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

For Bakhtin, the linguist's search for systematicity in language is a kind of imposition: language becomes an object that is interpreted from the point of view of the search, as opposed to being understood in its living, unfinalized, multi-voiced, heteroglot reality - the way a novelist like Dostoevsky, for example, would understand it. If systematicity is "discovered", then what has been discovered is the result of the myriad previous operations of the centripetal forces of culture, precisely the order-imposing forces that have collided, more or less 'successfully', with the centrifugal forces to establish a unitary language. Such systematicity is not fixed and definitive, since it is always, in every utterance, subject to heteroglossia, and it is always something that is posited, not given. This is according to Bakhtin, as I understand it, based on "Discourse in the Novel" and the secondary literature.

You've added the words "according to Bakhtin" to what you call the "stunningly false" "blatant nonsense" of "the offending sentence", but you're saying that it's still unsatisfactory because linguists attempt to discover systematicity, not impose it. But that's not according to Bakhtin, it's according to you. I'm not suggesting you're wrong or that other linguists wouldn't agree with you, or even that Bakhtin would dispute it: it's just that the sentence, like the rest of the paragraph, is summarizing what Bakhtin thinks, not what you or others think, which is why, presumably, you added the words "according to Bakhtin".

I would argue that it is obvious from context that the sentence is referring to Bakhtin's view: the paragraph starts with a quotation from "Discourse in the Novel" followed by the words "For Bakhtin…"; the preceding introductory paragraph has just situated the concept in his theory of language, and the rest of the article is doing the same thing. Emerson and Holquist's glossary entry is drawn entirely from Bakhtin’s explication of heteroglossia in "Discourse in the Novel". Harold the Sheep (talk) 04:47, 22 June 2023 (UTC)