ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Mikhail Bakhtin's conception of the sociality of language in all its perplexing complexity and draws out the necessary implications for his definition of the novel. It demonstrates how this concept, or rather its omission, can affect the transmission of Bakhtin's thought. Sociality, understood as the social aspect of language, thought, and self-consciousness, is present at every level of dialogism, from the very rudimentary necessity of another in identity formation, to the more complex relationship of the individual with society and of the individual thought with ideology. The archaeology of Bakhtin's sources dramatically attenuates his originality as a thinker. In his essays on the novel of the 1930s Bakhtin expounds his vision of language, mainly his concepts of heteroglossia and heterology, and their relationship with the novel. Raznorechie is rather safeguarded from the inflation in equivalents of greatly varying quality with a mere three translations, namely: heteroglossia, heterology, and social diversity of speech types.
