ABSTRACT
Central to Bakhtin’s (1981) thinking about knowledge was the preoccupation with capturing human behavior through the observation of the use of language (in a broad sense),1 particularly in dialogue. His explanations of dialogue were both profound and complex, encompassing myriad theoretical constructs and guiding a variety of disciplines, such as anthropology, literary studies, linguistics, and so on. Schematically, for Bakhtin dialogue is composed of an utterance; a reply; and, most important, a relation between the two. This emphasis on the relational aspects of language underscores the sharedness of human experience, the simultaneity of self and other, and the relativity of meaning (concepts which we will further explore later in this chapter). Moreover, and simply put, Bakhtin’s interpretation of dialogue included above all the dialogue between mind and world. That is, it is through the dialogue between mind and world that, according to Bakhtin, the artificial dualisms between the inner and outer spheres of being are dismantled. Within these theoretical parameters the human activity of meaningmaking is inextricably connected to social interactions, which occur in a particular social, cultural, and political context and at a particular point in history. For Bakhtin, all of those aspects of a given interaction must be given jfull consideration. In many of those respects, his ideas were deeply implicated in the theoretical assumptions of some of his contemporaries, such as Lev Vygotsky, as well as others who theorized from a
1Bakhtin (1981, p. 430) defined language as “any communication system employing signs that are ordered in a particular manner.”
