ABSTRACT
Mikhail Bakhtin has been handy in discussing a wide range of research subjects and theoretical approaches in composition studies. And Bakhtin is handy in composition studies, in a number of respects. In fact, Bakhtin has been particularly handy in composition studies for challenging any manner of "received" form. So, while Bakhtin has seemed so right to social constructionists in composition studies, his insistence on the "conflictual" and "contested" nature of "discursive practices," in other words his dialogic view of rhetoric, is also useful to those who would move from social constructionism to an "externalist" perspective. The "deaf ear" turned toward Bakhtin's hero and answerability by composition theorists may be rehabilitated as externalism becomes a more vocal force in composition studies. A more thoroughgoing attention to answerability would involve seeing answerability in relationship to Bakhtin's concepts of addressivity, dialogism, and carnival.
