International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) was a Russian philosopher, scholar, and cultural theorist who devoted his writings to the study of language and social structure as it appeared in literature. He was educated in classical studies and taught as a schoolteacher before moving to a small town in Russia to escape the social and political revolution of 1917–1918. During this time he met two colleagues, Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev, with whom Bakhtin would study and debate politics and philosophy, and who formed the core of the “Bakhtin circle.” (The three men would inform one another's writings to such an extent that today there is continuing debate about the original authorship of many of their published volumes.) In 1929 Bakhtin completed his work Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics , as well as his essay “Discourse in the novel.” He later became a professor in a small college where he was little known until the 1950s and 1960s. Interest in Bakhtin spread when his major works were translated into English in the 1970s and 1980s. Bakhtin's name is now included among the most prominent social theorists of the twentieth century. Bakhtin's views on language contrasted with those of linguists who he believed misrepresented language by seeing it as a system of rules and failed to appreciate the function of language in its social and cultural context. Of Bakhtin's major concepts, ... log in or subscribe to read full text