Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov (russian: Валенти́н Никола́евич Воло́шинов; June 18, 1895, St. Petersburg – June 13, 1936, Leningrad) was a Russian Soviet linguist, whose work has been influential in the field of

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...

and

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

theory of ideology.

''Marxism and the Philosophy of Language''

Written in the late 1920s in the USSR, Voloshinov's '' Marxism and the Philosophy of Language'' ( tr.: ''Marksizm i Filosofiya Yazyka'') attempts to incorporate the field of linguistics into Marxism. The book's main inspiration does not come from previous Marxists, whom Voloshinov saw as largely indifferent towards the study of language. Voloshinov's theories are instead built on critical engagement with Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of language as a continuous creative or "generative" process, and with the view of language as a sign-system posited by

Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...

. To some extent, Voloshinov's linguistic thought is also mediated by the analyses of his Soviet contemporary Nicholas Marr. For Voloshinov, language is the medium of

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...

, and cannot be separated from ideology. Ideology, however, is not to be understood in the classical Marxist sense as an illusory mental phenomenon that arises as a reflex of a "real" material economic substructure. Language, as a socially constructed sign-system, is what allows consciousness to arise, and is in itself a material reality. Because of this belief that language and human consciousness are closely related, Voloshinov holds that the study of verbal interaction is key to understanding social psychology. Voloshinov further argues for understanding psychological mechanisms within a framework of ideological function in his book ''Freudianism: A Marxist critique''. Voloshinov argues that it is a mistake to study language abstractly and synchronically (i.e. in an unhistorical manner), as Saussure does. For Voloshinov, words are dynamic social signs, which take different meanings for different social classes in different historical contexts. The meaning of words is not subject to passive understanding, but includes the active participation of both the speaker (or writer) and hearer (or reader). While every word is a sign taken from an inventory of available signs, the manipulation of the word contained in each

speech act In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?" ...

or individual utterance is regulated by social relations. In Voloshinov's view, the meaning of verbal signs is the arena of continuous

class struggle Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The forms ...

: a ruling class will try to narrow the meaning of social signs, making them "uni-accentual", but the clash of various class-interests in times of social unrest will make clear the "multi-accentuality" of words. By virtue of his belief that the "struggle for meaning" coincides with

, Voloshinov's theories have much in common with those of Italian Communist

Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a ...

, who shared an interest in linguistics. Voloshinov's work can also be seen to prefigure many of the concerns of

poststructuralism Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...

. Voloshinov devotes the last portion of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language to a treatment of reported speech in order to show social and temporal relations between utterances to be integral properties of language. This was taken up by Roman Jakobson in an essay entitled: "Shifters and Verbal Categories," and influenced the development of the Prague School of functional linguistics as well as linguistic anthropology. Through an entirely parallel evolution, Voloshinov's model of dialogism, of meaning being functionally contextual and of cognition/consciousness emerging from verbal behaviour, prefigured the empirically derived poststructuralist model of language and cognition Relational Frame Theory which emerged in the 1990s, and upon which CBT and ACT therapies are based. Some scholars believe that works bearing Voloshinov's name were actually authored by his colleague Mikhail Bakhtin, although the topic is still the subject of debate; a few of these works have been added to reprinted editions of Bakhtin's collected works.Bakhtin M.M. (1994). ‘’The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, and Voloshinov’’, ed. Pam Morris, Academic Press, .

References

External links

Voloshinov archive at Marxists.org
* ttp://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj75/parring.htm Discussion of Voloshinov from Issue 75 of "International Socialism"br>The Bakhtin CircleMarksizm i filosofija jazyka
secondary bibliography, overview, influence on & of, new terminology (in French) (Notice: Corpus des textes linguistiques fondamentaux) {{DEFAULTSORT:Voloshinov, Valentin 1895 births 1936 deaths Academics from Saint Petersburg People from Sankt-Peterburgsky Uyezd Linguists from Russia Russian philologists Marxist theorists Linguists from the Soviet Union 20th-century linguists 20th-century philologists

''Marxism and the Philosophy of Language''

See also

References

Further reading

External links