The social production of language

a reading of Mikail Bakhtin (V . N . Volochinov) , Marxism and philosophy of language

Abstract

Faced with the problem of lying foundations for the semiotic production inside the capitalistic social and economic formation and even inside the first phase of the establishment of socialim, Bakhtin, or his disciple Volochinov, discusses the propositions of Linguistics along the line of the saussurian tradition and the propositions of the vosslerian individualistic subjectivism; he avoids the pretendedly marxist mechanicism and proposes establishing the social and ideologic instance of the formation of discourse. After formulating the general principles of the social production of signs, Bakhtin analyses the indirect discourses which have been gradually elaborated in the French bourgeois literature since the 18th century.