ABSTRACT
Volosinov’s sociology of speeches Volosinov’s connections with the themes of our argument are indicated by noting his discussion of Saussure’s approach.1 He states that at the time of writing, ‘the majority of Russian thinkers in linguistics are under the determinative influence of Saussure and his disciples’ (1973, pp. 58-9). Volosinov formulates Saussure’s main thesis as being, that ‘language stands in opposition to utterance in the same way as does that which is social to that which is individual.’ Therefore:
Saussure, in line with ‘the sociological school of Durkheim’, would ‘decisively cast aside’ the ‘individual act of speaking, the utterance (parole)’. This discarded element, however, makes its reappearance in the history of language which ‘is dominated by the “utterance” with its individuality and randomness’. Consequently, in a move of Saussure’s which Volosinov finds characteristic of his ‘abstract objectivism’, history must be excluded ‘as an irrational force distorting the logical purity of the language system’ (ibid., p. 61).
