ABSTRACT

Language is an aspect of human behaviour rather than an object. The idea that a language is a relatively homogeneous object has led most linguists to treat literary language as marginal. On this view the 'real' language is the language of the 'ordinary person' involved in 'normal, everyday communication'. Language is unitary only as an abstract grammatical system of normative forms, taken in isolation from the concrete, ideological conceptualizations that fill it. The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized. The contrasting view that language is a heterogeneous phenomenon derives from a long tradition of study of language in society. It has been articulated particularly clearly by the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin. Literature is seen as a highly specialised use of language, highly restricted in terms of its producers and consumers.