Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

by Mikhail Bakhtin, Vern W. McGee (Translator), Caryl Emerson (Editor)

Speech Genres and Other Late Essays presents six short works from Bakhtin's Esthetics of Creative Discourse, published in Moscow in 1979. This is the last of Bakhtin's extant manuscripts published in the Soviet Union. All but one of these essays (the one on the Bildungsroman ) were written in Bakhtin's later years and thus they bear the stamp of a thinker who has accumulated a huge storehouse of factual material, to which he has devoted a lifetime of analysis, reflection, and reconsideration.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Linguistics, Essays, Nonfiction, Language, Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1985

About the author

Very influential writings of Russian linguist and literary critic Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in 20th-century poststructuralism and the social theory of the novel included Problems of Dostoyevsky's Works (1929, see Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky) and The Dialogic Imagination (1975).

This philosopher, semiotician, and scholar on ethics and the philosophy of language. He on a variety of subjects inspired scholars in a number of different traditions of Marxism, semiotics, and religionand in disciplines as diverse as history, philosophy, anthropology, and psychology. Although Bakhtin acted in the debates on aesthetics that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, scholars rediscovered his not well known distinctive position in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail...

Reviews

[Bogi Takács]

Read this for work (I am writing a qualitative pragmatics paper somehow) and it was useful and insightful; I surprisingly appreciated the literary criticism parts even though those are not very relevant for my paper :D

Some of the chapters are just essay sketches that he did not manage to finish before he passed away. On one hand it was very interesting to see his thought process, on the other, argh sometimes he brought up topics with a kind of "I will add the discussion later" attitude and it was frustrating because I really really wanted to see the discussion! I can't quite... summon him?

I will read the work of his friends next, I know there is some speculation that some of them were also him, but just upon cursory looking, the authorship debate seems kind of pointless to me.

Source of the book: KU Watson Library

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bakhtin ties speech to types/genres. His linguistic/literary studies, while insightful, are thus descriptive/classificatory. He doesn’t give a philosophical analysis of a type.

[Francisca]

two out of five essays read (the two directly related to literary studies and not linguistics):

* response to a question from the "novy mir" editorial staff

* the bildungsroman and its significance in the history of realism (toward a historical typology of the novel)

[José Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A avaliação de cinco estrela vem do fato de que não há bem um juízo de valor a ser feito da obra. É um texto fundamental para um campo amplo de estudo desde a linguística à teoria literária. Dito isso, é uma leitura densa, escrita num estilo não muito diferente de uma exposição dialética (Marx, n’O Capital e outras obras). Um trecho exemplifica bem: “a língua passa a integrar a vida através de enunciados concretos (que a realizam); é igualmente através de enunciados concretos que a vida entra na língua”. Há coerência lógica, porque um elemento central do pensamento de Bakhtin é o “efeito provocador do enunciado” (dialogia). “Toda compreensão da fala viva, do enunciado vivo é de natureza ativamente responsiva (…); toda compreensão é prenhe de resposta, e nessa ou naquela forma a gera obrigatoriamente: o ouvinte se torna falante. A compreensão passiva do significado do discurso ouvido é apenas um momento abstrato da compreensão ativamente responsiva real e plena, que se atualiza na subsequente resposta real e em voz alta” (p. 25). O texto como enunciado, então, ganha dimensões de compreensão indefiníveis. Essa unidade é o que torna o texto algo conceitualmente diverso de um mero conjunto de signos (palavras): “Todo sistema de signos (isto é, qualquer língua), por mais que sua convenção se apoie em uma coletividade estreita, em princípio sempre pode ser decodificado, isto é, traduzido para outros sistemas de signos (…). No entanto, o texto (…) nunca pode ser traduzido até o fim, pois não existe um potencial texto único dos textos” (p. 76). O texto enquanto enunciado, portanto, é um fenômenos dialógico entre sujeitos, dentre eles o autor, que Bakhtin cliva conceitualmente entre o chamado “autor puro” (a pessoa que faz a obra) e a imagem do autor, o que se depreende do autor a partir da obra (panorama interessante pra se pensar a ideia de “morte do autor” muito difundida no campo da arte).

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dialogização que se estabelece em vários níveis e instâncias no discurso e suas consequências na classificação dos seus gêneros é o motto do livro, ao menos nas partes em que os escritos não parecem anotações esparsas do autor que necessitariam de pesquisa intensa para desvendar o significado.

[Walter Otto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Book, like almost everything Bakhtin wrote is profound and food for thought. Unfortunately, and this is the drawback with some of the English Language translations and compilations, it is also quite uneven, both in subject matter and content. The Reader should not be deterred. It is worth reading, because there are some fine insights buried in this book. --- I will only write about the so called Bildungroman Fragment here. It has become almost more legendary because of the fact that Bakhtin supposedly used the only surviving manuscript for Cigarette Papers and thus literally smoked his own work. However, any student of the Bildungsroman will immediately comrpehend its use in Bakhtin's reconstruction of the History of the Genre. Bakhtin begins with the origins in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and traces the development to the Classical Period of German Literature. Presumably, Goethes "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" was to be the pinnacle of development, but this is a part that is lost. What is important is that Bakhtin not only correctly names the Novels of the Genre we all should know, by authors such as Wieland, Herder, Keller etc., but he also names several very important Novels which are usually forgotten, and have been branded as obscure or eccentric by Critics and Scholars. I will name three: Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel: "Lebensläufe in Aufstehender Linie", Johann Karl Wezel: "Lebensgeschichte Tobias Knauts, des Weisen sonst der Stammler genannt" and Jean Paul: "Titan". I would suggest that Bakhtin's Essay is of importance because thanks to him these three Novels are being rediscovered by todays' readers, they have entered the Discussion of Literary of Criticism and have taken their place in the History of the Bildungsroman, which they rightly deserve.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

His ideas are interesting because he came up with the same ideas as Austin and Derrida, only he was trapped behind the Iron Curtain. He only had access to the ancient rhetoricians. Some of the readings are a bit hard to understand because it is simply his notes. He died before he had time to go back and edit them. Many of his students published under his name and so some of the chapters are written in a very different voice than his probably because they were not written by him.

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bakhtin saved my backside! The essay on Speech Genres totally blows the critics out of the water who to this day insist that Film Noir is undefinable, not a genre or some other such rot. It was amazing how it just helped my thesis fall right into place. Indebted to my professor for pointing me here.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

No me siento preparada para criticar un texto de esta envergadura, pero desde el punto de vista informativo es bastante esclarecedor y de lectura dinámica (dentro de lo denso del género). Bajtín pone sobre la mesa cuestiones muy interesantes y, sobre todo, las expone de una forma muy clara y ampliamente ejemplificada.

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

superior in its sustained moments, but some of the fragmentary bits come off as a bit too gnomic for me.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book for those who are interested in Bakhtin's theories of dialogic exposition.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is generally clear and lucid writing; even though the final two essays are literally ripped from the pages of his notebooks, you can largely track with his thought.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

totally love Bakhtin! Not just useful for analyzing speeches, but also good training for aspiring writers!

[Christina “6 word reviewer” Lake]

Just what I needed right now.

[Garret Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important work about heteroglossia and the dialogic self.