Bakhtinian Dialogism Research Articles

English

Citation, as a central and integral issue in academic writing, has been the focus of many recent scholarly articles to highlight the significant role of this discursive practice in the realm of research article writing. Nonetheless, most of the previous studies, with notable exceptions, examined disciplinary influences on citation practices independently of ethnolinguistic influences, and vice versa. The present study investigates the doubly contrastive language-discipline perspective on the one hand and draws a distinction between disciplinary cultures and national cultures on the other. A corpus of 240 research articles sampled from leading Persian and English language medium journals of applied linguistics and psychology as representatives of soft sciences, and computer engineering and mechanical engineering as representatives of hard sciences, was examined drawing on Coffin’s (2009) integrative analytic framework. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the several aspects of citation features of Bakhtinian dialogism demonstrated some cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic similarities and differences. Pedagogical implications derived from these findings are discussed. Keywords: Citations; Persian and English Academic writing; writer stance; author integration; textual integration

Tristão e Isolda no sertão: dialogismo e adaptação no filme Romance, de Guel Arraes // Tristan and Isolde in the hinterland: dialogism and adaptation in the film Romance, by Guel Arraes

We aim to analyse the film Romance, by Guel Arraes, observing its intertextual relations from the standpoint of Bakhtin's dialogism. We are going to investigate these processes from Robert Stam studies within literature and cinema, in addition to examining data from the adaptation context also expounded by this researcher. We also analyse the characterization of the characters and the connections established between the film and other literary narratives and dramatic texts.

소수자 아동의 유아교육기관 적응: 바흐친의 대화주의를 중심으로

소수자 아동의 유아교육기관 적응: 바흐친의 대화주의를 중심으로

Toward an embodied account of double-voiced discourse: The critical role of imagery and affect in Bakhtin’s dialogic imagination

Abstract Drawing from Paivio’s (1986, Mental representations: A dual coding approach. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, Images in mind: The evolution of a theory. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2007, Mind and its evolution: A dual coding theoretical approach. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) dual-coding theory, I argue that an understanding of the structure and function of mental imagery and affect can lead to an embodied and more comprehensive account of the addressivity that characterizes Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse. A dialogic exchange between characters in Orhan Pamuk’s (2004, Snow. New York: Vintage) Snow provides a literary example of an intersubjective encounter to demonstrate that crafting consciousness in the novel and sustaining Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse relies on the cognitive capacity to access both verbal and non-verbal imagery. I position Bakhtinian dialogism within a historical overview of the nature of mind and mental imagery in western philosophy to elucidate the tenuous relation between Bakhtin’s dialogic existence and the principles of empiricism as expressed in Dewey (1987 [1934], Art as experience. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The later works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, vol. 10. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980 [1916], Democracy and education. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The middle works of John Dewey, 1899–1924, vol. 9. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press) and Mead (1934, Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, The objective reality of perspectives. In A. Reck (ed.) Selected writings, 312–314. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). With reference to Damasio’s (1999, The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. New York: Harcourt) neurobiological account of consciousness, Langer’s (1957, Philosophy in a new key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) evolutionary account of language, and Thompson’s (2007, Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) phenomenological account of empathy, I outline how Bakhtin’s dialogism differs from embodied theories of mind and consciousness in several fundamental ways to preclude a full appreciation of the other’s empathetic experience of oneself in authoring a socially shared existence.

Buñuel’s social close-up: An entomological gaze on El ángel exterminador/The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Abstract This article proposes a new interpretation of Buñuel’s film-making strategies by examining his training in entomology and his early theorization of the Griffithian close-up as a technique whereby edited film-making can be made to conceive in a way that simple images or continuous shots cannot. This technique, I argue, implies the opposite of Auerbach´s unipersonal subjectivism in modernist literature, requiring a cinematic multipersonal subjectivism that is covalent with Bakhtinian dialogism. In developing his multi-personal subjectivism into a rational tool for opening a window on the irrational world of the unconscious, I believe Buñuel´s entomological training led him to conceive and represent a dialogical parasitism, similar to the posthumanist philosophy of Michel Serres decades later, as being inherent in all human relationships, a view most clearly conveyed in El ángel exterminador/The Exterminating Angel (1962).

Reflections on a dialogic pedagogy inspired by the writings of Bakhtin: an account of the experience of two professors working together in the classroom

The practice of a dialogic pedagogy inspired by the writings of Bakhtin is increasingly popular in different parts of the world. This article is an account produced in the spirit of such pedagogy. Two professors (one from Brazil, the other from the United States), both members of an international dialogic pedagogy study group, write together to discuss the work they developed in partnership under this educational paradigm when teaching a course on “Diversity in secondary education” in the School of Education of the College of Education and Human Development of the University of Delaware, USA. After presenting brief introductory information on who they are, how they met and how they happened to work together, the two scholars present classroom interaction data followed by reflections on to what extent certain forms of classroom interaction they identified in the data promote or inhibit the practice of a truly Bakhtinian Dialogic Pedagogy. In other words, what the readers will find in this article is not a traditional empirical study, but a telling case of two educators learning from one another about what counts as dialogic in the classroom, while at the same time using the aforementioned course as an anchor for multiple discussions.

Can You Hear Me Now?: Monologue, Dialogue, and the Other Voices in Lolita’s Sexual History

This essay revises and expands my earlier view of Lolita ( Nabokov Studies , Vol. 8 2004) as a feminist work that utilizes the 1950s scientific discourse of sexology to challenge Humbert’s exploitative use of mythic discourse. Building upon critical responses to my original article, I here use Bakhtin’s aesthetic and sociological conception of the dialogism of the novel to consider how Humbert attempts, but fails, at reducing the rich dialogism of the novel to a self-justifying monologue. The critical consequences of this irreducible dialogism extend beyond the confines of my original view of the novel as a feminist critique of misogynistic mythic discourse; ongoing attempts to place Lolita into an aesthetic, realistic, or ethical framework stifle the dialogism of the novel in a similar way as Humbert suppresses dialogue and dialogism about Lolita’s controversial sexuality. Nabokov’s novel synthesizes the moral, social, and aesthetic dimensions of dialogue and Bakhtinian dialogism, both for characters and critics alike, in its representation of Humbert’s failed monologue and of the critical voices speaking in as well as beyond the novel.

The concept of “other” and the problem of tolerance in the Russian public discourse on migration to Siberia in the 1850-1890’s (based on publicistic materials)

Based on publicistic materials of the second half of the 19-th century, the article analyzes the interpretation of Siberian colonization in the Russian public discourse in the form of a crossroad of a “civilization frontier” and entrance into the space of “other”. Following M. Bakhtin dialogue theory, the dialogue between “own self” and “another”, accompanying the migration to Siberia, was thought to be not an “introduction” to identification, but identification itself. In this aspect, the Russian discourse on migration to Siberia developed in accordance with the polyglossia law. The issues of the colonization process idealization of Siberian land and its participants were at the top of the discourse. The idea of Siberia colonization was commonly considered as a way to discover a new better life for the given territory and the central Russia. There was an idea of Siberia as “a Promised Land”, which was opposed to another tendency in the public discourse, i.e. demythologization of Siberia and development of “own self” and “another” dialogue. The conclusion is made concerning the fact that the research material presented can be interpreted as an important stage in the complex history of identification and self-identification in Siberian region in the form of a special territory both geographically and culturally.

Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature: Ethics and the Reconstitution of Subjectivity

Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature: Ethics and the Reconstitution of Subjectivity

Dialogism versus Monologism: A Bakhtinian Approach to Teaching

Dialogic education is a teaching method which is in stark contrast with monologic teaching methods. Nowadays, the educational systems all around the world characterize monologic education in which the ideas and voices of the teachers are the first and last ones uttered in the classrooms, textbooks are aimed so that students learn how to speak and write “correctly” and the time extent of the class is so short that teachers are struggling to cover all the “important” points mandated in the textbooks and by educational authorities. In contrast in dialogic education, the teacher shares his or her authority with the students; the voices of the students are heard and their opinions are valuable. In a dialogic class, the students are divided into groups to practice “exploratory talk” and “think reasonably”. The aim in discussing different opinions is just that; discussing different opinions not winning or losing. The role of the teacher is to facilitate the process; he or she is not a judge or referee, he or she is simply a guide. A dialogic environment is like a carnival; to borrow from Bakhtin. There are no omnipresent powers. The current study shows that different components of Bakhtin's dialogism concept can be a very good starting point for a modern and effective theoretical framework for learning and teaching processes.

Bakhtinian Dialogic Concept in Language Learning Process

The relationship between learning and teaching is so much complex. Some studies carried out on language teaching process confirm that learning a language is one of the most serious concerns for human beings. Recently, scholars have used Bakhtinian concepts in language studies because some of Bakhtin's concepts can act as tools to help the teaching process, for instance Bakhtin's concept of dialogue shows how in the process of teaching, the teacher can have communication with his or her students to transform meaning. Furthermore, Bakhtin's concept of dialogue is used to analyze classroom discourses, whereas, teachers control all the learning and teaching activities in the classroom. A classroom with this kind of positive environment will be based on the dialogic model, in contrast to the traditional, predominantly monologic and teacher-centered classrooms where students mostly work individually with authoritative texts.

Bilingual typography considered from the standpoint of Bakhtin’s dialogism

AbstractThis paper deals with the issue of formal-material relation across bilingual letterforms with reference to Bakhtin's dialogism to which the notion of polyphonic form is central. It is commonly held that bilingual typography consists in the coexistence of two linguistically distinct sets of letterforms. Under close observation, this crude definition proves defective for two reasons. First, it does not recognize the characteristic distinction between typographic and written bilingualism. To work out this problem the paper draws a distinction between two categories of properties constitutive of letterforms: linguistic content and formal-material structure. Of these the latter is valorized as the primary object of typography, be it monolingual or bilingual. Second, it takes no account of dialogic quiddity of bilingualism. The coexistence as a relation of simultaneity and contiguity constitutes the necessary but in no way the sufficient condition for bilingualism. This is further elaborated through the...

Senelick, Laurence (ed., trans.). Stanislavsky: A Life in Letters (review)

SEER, 93, 3, JULY 2015 548 Of less interest to most Slavists will be Bagshaw’s assessment of Bakhtin’s potential to solve a methodological conundrum afflicting contemporary religious studies known as the ‘insider/outsider debate’. The problem concerns the possibility, desirability and legitimacy of adopting the faith perspective of practitioners of a religion which is the object of study (the ‘insider’ approach) as opposed to maintaining an external, observer, perspective only. Bagshaw ably delineates the historical and theoretical contours of the debate before proposing Bakhtin’s aesthetic concept of outsideness (vnenakhodimost´) as a tool to theorize the intermediate, or even synthesizing, position held by many in the field. According to what Alina Wyman has called Bakhtin’s theory of ‘active empathy’, both intuitive penetration of another’s inner condition and withdrawal to an external position from which the observer’s ‘surplus of vision’ can be exploited are necessary to form a complete image of that other, and indeed an image that is richer than the other is capable of forming about herself. Since this move involves a challenge to a more ambitious claim for Bakhtinian dialogism’s applicability to the field (by Gavin Flood in Beyond Phenomenology, London, 1999), it represents the most original and independent position adopted by the author in this book. Department of Russian Studies Ruth Coates University of Bristol Senelick, Laurence (ed., trans.). Stanislavsky: A Life in Letters. Routledge, London and New York, 2014. xvi + 653 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £24.99 (paperback). This expertly translated and annotated selection from Stanislavskii’s correspondence covers a wide range of topics, persons and historical moments between his birth, in 1874, and his death in 1938. These include the emergence of the Moscow Art Theatre; the discovery and promotion of plays by Chekhov and Gor´kii; experimental work before the First World War; response to Revolution and Civil War; the impact of an American tour during the early 1920s; adjustment to Soviet conditions after 1917; the tortuous publication history of Stanislavskii’s theatrical writings and, lastly, official acclaim during the 1930s, which was also a period of prolonged ill-health. The epistolary style remains fairly consistent throughout — a combination of quasi-Victorianhigh-mindedgravity,religioussentimentand,whenaddressing those closest to him, a grandiloquent intimacy. There are moments of selfdeprecating humour but an especially severe and didactic tone is reserved for his strictures on the social significance of theatre, which he conceives as an enclave endowed with religious significance, a ‘pulpit’ and a ‘temple of the REVIEWS 549 human spirit’ (p. 272) to which, in a 1908 diary entry, he consecrates fifteen ‘Commandments’ (p. 248). The image of the man that emerges is twofold: the first is of a prophet crying in the wilderness, a self-styled ‘madman and a dreamer’ (p. 272) as, one by one, his disciples fail to live up to his ideals, or to understand his message, desert him, or are snatched away by untimely death; the second image is of Doctor Stockmann in Ibsen’s Public Enemy, a role he performed in 1900. Rather like the play’s protagonist, who attempts to alert society to the pollution in its midst represented by the contaminated public baths, Stanislavskii sought to cleanse the Augean stables of traditional theatre by administering a purified essence of theatrical performance centred on the ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ of the actor. Described as ‘a preacher of beauty and truth’ (p. 139) this ideal performer was to be devoid of artifice and stylized falsehood, expressing authentic emotion that stemmed fromthe‘organiclawsofnature,truthandartisticbeauty’(p.526)—aconflation of the natural and the human conceived in distinctly unproblematic terms. Stanislavskii also shares with Stockmann his (some would argue misplaced) sense of conviction, his feeling of isolation, his naivete, his eccentricity, his disregard for the unexceptional (‘the crowd […] are sheep’, p. 282), a belief in an aristocracy of the spirit, a messianic fervour which can frighten on occasion (the theatrical entrepreneur, Nezlobin, is branded the ‘antichrist’, p. 292), and a dependence on family support plus willing disciples. Like the contaminated baths, theatrical stereotypes are seen as a ‘disease’ a ‘contagion’ (p. 289), the ‘diseased places’ needing ‘to be brought to light’ (p. 605). His kind of theatre is...

Dialogism and Carnival in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse: A Bakhtinian Reading

Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism in a novel promises the creation of a domain of interactive context for different voices which results in a polyphonic discourse. Instead of trying to suppress each other, the voices of the novel interact upon the other voices in a way that none of them tries to silent the other ones, and each one has the opportunity to express itself. In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse , although some voices attempt to be more dominant, all are allowed to be heard and interact with the other ones. In this way Mrs. Ramsay acts like a link that helps to create a dialogic discourse by respecting the voices of all the other participants. Consequently a carnivalesque narrative discourse is established through which the voices that yield to be dominant, which is mainly Mr. Ramsay’s voice, could not be established as a hierarchical position and even it loses its authoritative position as the other characters attend the dialogue in the context of the novel. The present article will take it to track the policies of dialogism and carnival in Woolf’s novel and to search the production of meaning via the emergence and development of these policies. The activity in it of dialogism is the cause of unfinalizability which is the vital feature of dialogism that allows the permanent operation of dialogue upon the course of time and prevents the establishment of hierarchical positions of power. The article will also take to extrapolate the different phases in the creation of this sense of dialogism in the novel and especially highlighting the role of Mrs. Ramsay in the fabrication of such a sense. Keywords : Bakhtin, Woolf, To the Light House , Dialogism, Carnivalesque, Unfinalizability

Heteroglossia: Bakhtinian Dialogism within a Play's Monologue

This study tries to expand the richness of Bakhtin’s theory of novel by showing the reader that its thorough features could be traced back in a play rather than a novel, considering it more than what is usually the basis of “historical poetics” mainly in the form of a novel accentuating the constitution of a social ideology besides an individual one while gesturing dialogically in the interaction between representation in its textual form and particularities of its proper probable forces in their socio-historical stratifications within notions such as dialogism, intertextuality, heteroglossia and polyphony. To do so a successful Irish play of exuberance is invited to be served by a thinker from the past Soviet. Since the references are written in an artistic language, a language near to a poetic one tries to tinker rationality to irrationality. In the light of O’Halloran’s eccentric nostalgia which tries to handle a play all in all monologically from the voice of just a single character, one may seem to be listening to the symphony of Bakhtin’s polyphonic heteroglossia stratified within the architectonics of both authors’ interillumination.

Exploring Young Children’s Writer Identity Construction through the Lens of Dialogism

Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogism and interactional sociolinguistics, the author explored how young English language learners become writers over time. With a focus on the children’s dialogic writing processes rather than their products, the author aimed to trace the children’s journey in becoming writers and make evident the evolvement of their identity as writers. In this light, their interactive discourses within and across particular but connected literacy events were studied. Discourse analysis was undertaken on the video segments and transcripts of three literacy events selected from different writing units across an academic year. It was found that the young writers evolved from “others as authors,” to “self as an author,” and to “self as a reflective writer” and the process of becoming a writer was ongoing and actively engaged multiple voices of the children, their teacher, and others. Further, the findings suggested that the dialogic becoming processes opened possibilities for young writers to discover and bring their different voices and selves to their writing and enhanced motivation relative to learning to write and writing to learn.

Dialogic understanding of teachers' online transformative learning: A qualitative case study of teacher discussions in a graduate-level online course

Teachers are expected to implement new educational technologies and adapt to new teaching environments. However, it involves a complex learning process that can lead to their perspective transformation. We have developed and taught a discussion-based online course to facilitate teachers' transformative learning. This qualitative case study examines teachers' perspective transformation in our course to understand the nature of effective online teacher-to-teacher discussions. Based on a theoretical framework that integrates Mezirow's transformative learning model and Bakhtin's dialogism, this paper builds on previous literature on teacher-to-teacher discussions as well as providing a fresh perspective to inform the current globalized teacher education context.

Spanish Reception of Russian Narratives, 1905–1939 by Lynn C. Purkey (review)

PUR KEY, LYNN C. Spanish Reception of Russian Narratives, 1905-1939. Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2013. 203 pp.Jose Diaz Fernandez's El nuevo romanticismo: polemica de arte, politica y literatura (Madrid: Zeus, 1930) is a book of critical essays aimed at describing the voice of a new generation of writers in Spain of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was written in response to influences both within Spain and without, and while applauds many of the formal innovations of the avant-garde, especially the aesthetic notions of Ortega's arte deshumanizada, rejects the thematic limitations that ignore the social, political, and economic realities of the moment. Lynn Purkey's book focuses on a powerful external influence, addressing the question of thematic structure by examining the relationship between Russo-Soviet literature of the period and some of the major writers and works of the New Romanticism movement.From a theoretical stance, Purkey relies on Mikhail Bakhtin's theories on the novel, focusing especially on various concepts contained within Bakhtin's work on dialogism or the dialogical principle. She sets out to demonstrate how an understanding of several of the narrative works of the authors of New Romanticism is enhanced by comparing and contrasting certain of their characteristics with Russo-Soviet narratives. This between the works serves to illustrate the affinity that the Spanish authors felt with their Soviet counterparts, and underlines the impact of an evolving Soviet literature on Spanish narrative prose also in transition.An introductory chapter summarizes the artistic environment in which New Romanticism emerged and establishes Diaz Fernandez's essays as the theoretical framework for what Purkey describes as a generation ... but rather a movement that coincided with the general politicization of Spanish letters before and during the Second Republic (7). She then refers to Diaz Fernandez's praise of Russian Futurism, especially through the voice of Vladimir Mayakovsky, as an entrance into her analysis of the dialogue sustained between various writers of New Romanticism in Spain and several of the social art models emanating from Soviet Russia. This introduction is a helpful synthesis of selected aspects of El nuevo romanticismo within the context of the rapid evolution of Spanish letters during the period.The book moves from an example of Bakhtinian dialogics as seen through translations and travelogues of the period through a series of thematically similar Soviet and Spanish narratives within the overarching themes of the novel of consciousness, utopia and dystopia, the new woman, and pacifist and war prose. The section on travelogue and translation underlines particularly the Spanish fascination with revolutionary Russia and aims to legitimize the subsequent literary adaptations of Soviet social art among the New Romantics. A brief summary of the key points contained in Bakhtin's Dialogic Imagination focuses on three main characteristics that lead to his description of the novel as a dialogized system and Purkey's conclusion that it is logical that Russian narratives served as an import source for the dialogic discourse on Nuevo Romanticismo (11). With regard to travelogues, Purkey rightly points out that the response of left-leaning intellectuals who visited the Soviet Union was not entirely favorable, and accurately reflected the distance between liberal democrats and anarchists among the Spanish Republican intelligentsia. This assertion strengthens her subsequent analyses of the narrative works by underlining a broadly political and artistic interest in Soviet social art, rather than a primarily ideological approach. The Russian counterpart to these Spanish travelers is Ilia Ehrenburg and his controversial Espana, republica de trabajadores. That book was sufficient to establish the emergence of the common themes of electrification, industrialization, urbanization, the equality of the sexes, and the cultivation of political consciousness that characterize subjects of the various dialogues between the two national narratives. …

Collision of Authority and Resistance in a Juxtaposition of the Past and Present: Re-visioning Voices of the Nation in Kee Thuan Chye's Swordfish then the Concubine

Kee Thuan Chye in his play Swordfish then The Concubine has reconstructed history in order to situate it into contemporary era. He has utilised and manipulated specific historical narratives from the Malay Annals; the second story of Hikayat Damang Lebar Daun and the tenth story Hikayat Hang Nadim. The analysis of this play will be based on the tenets of Pierre Macherey's theory of literary production as well as New Historicism. Both of these theories shall be used to justify Kee's notions and views in his act of re-visioning historical narratives. Apart from that, the notions of Bakhtin's dialogism are adopted to study the two main voices, authoritative and resisting, that have emerged in this play. Lastly, the strategies of re- visioning shall also be adopted in order to explore the representations of Kee's characters and how these characters are willing to break from the norm and tradition when they were awarded with significant voices and agency. It is found that these two main voices illustrated by Kee contain concealed speech and dynamic interaction that are engaged in opposition and struggle. This multiplicity of voices indicate Kee's resistance towards authoritative voice and his attempts in reducing authorial power as featured in this play.

There Is No Alibi in Designing: Responsibility and Dialogue in the Design Process

This paper explores a potential relation between architecture and ethics intrinsic to design processes when understood in terms of dialogue or conversation. We draw on separate but related research interests: one focused on the design process, especially the significance of drawing, and the other on the ethics of designing for the public realm, with reference to Bakhtinian dialogism. Our investigation concentrates on two aspects of the design process both of which can be thought of in terms of conversation – first, the relation between architect and Other, and second, the act of drawing. Through this, we support the idea that in design the ethical and the aesthetic cannot be meaningfully separated from one another. Instead, their relation must be understood as a dialogue in and of itself, as well as part of the dialogue between all participants in the design process.