Theory & Criticism
Dialogism
Dialogism is the central category of Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophy of language and theory of literature, according to which every utterance is by its nature dialogic: it is always addressed to someone, takes others' words into account, responds to prior utterances, and anticipates a reply. The word lives on the boundary of one's own and another's context; it is 'double-voiced.' Bakhtin opposed dialogism to monologism — the authoritarian word that admits no equal foreign voice. The conception was developed in 'Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics' (where the concept of the polyphonic novel is introduced) and 'Discourse in the Novel.' Dialogism is connected with the concepts of polyphony, heteroglossia, the foreign word, and answerability. Bakhtin's ideas influenced semiotics, the theory of intertextuality (Julia Kristeva), narratology, and cultural studies, becoming one of the cornerstones of 20th-century humanistic thought.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two of Bakhtin's concepts — a whole and its embodiment. Dialogism is a GENERAL philosophy of the word: every utterance is by nature addressed to another, "double-voiced," responds and anticipates a reply. Polyphony is a CONCRETE type of novel in which this dialogism is embodied as a plurality of independent, unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a full dialogue of equal positions (Dostoevsky). Dialogism is a principle of language in general; polyphony, its realisation in the genre of the novel.
