ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will examine relationships among the key notions of literature, language and linguistics in the theories of Russian formalism, Prague school structuralism, Roman Jakobson, Bakhtin, and Lotman. I will attempt to demonstrate that these are the notions which more than any others separate the theories of Bakhtin and Lotman from those of their immediate predecessors. Insofar as "logocentrism" has been characteristic of so much of twentieth-century criticism and literary theory--formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstructivism, etc.--this must be seen as a crucial area for detecting and understanding differences and similarities. The decision concerning which theoretical positions were to be examined was motivated by two primary considerations. First, both Lotman and Bakhtin made serious and significant efforts to clarify their positions and define a stance relative to Russian formalism, while the Prague school is obviously closely related to the latter. The historical-genetic and geographical link is therefore manifest. Secondly, other major traditions such as the French schools of Kristeva, Barthes, Todorov, and the deconstructivists, for example, as mentioned above, simply do not have a great deal in common with the theories of Lotman and Bakhtin. Thus a principle of exclusion applies here.
