Musings on Language and Theory

Summary: For Bahktin, Language almost exists of its own volition. He introduces the concepts of heteroglossia, dialogism, and chronotype in order to describe the forces at work in the making of meaning from language and vice versa. He urges readers not to centralize concepts of language 
because language is a dynamic living process with historical strata that all exist simultaneously in the process of languaging. Bahktin introduces many extremely influential concepts in the study of language theory. Heteroglossia, literally meaning "many tongues," is the concept that knowledge develops from multiples voices which are contextual constructions (social, historical and psychological). Stratification builds upon this concept, explaining that the different voices are products of time space layered on top of each other so that history is built up in every single layer
of an idea. Other key concepts include dialogism, the interplay of centripetal (unifying/generalizing)  and centrifugal (diversifying) forces of language.

Response: 
I find myself most interested in Bahktin's description of language as a living, organic process. I particularly like the following analogy: "The chronotope is the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied. It can be said without qualification that to them belongs the meaning that shapes narrative" (Kindle Locations 3573-3574). The understanding of the context unlocks the understanding of language and its origins. Knowledge involves the creation and destruction and recreation of knowledge and this creation and destruction is invariably connected to the connections of time and space (context).

Connections/Questions: For Bahktin, "the word" lives on the boundary between the alien and the known. Language needs ambiguity in order to be alive. This idea is fundamentally different from the views of language that Pierce, Volosinov, and Vygotsky suggest. These authors tend to think of text as alphacentric (letters, words, components), believing that language needs to be systemitized or scientized in order to be properly understood and discussed.  

Language necessitates centrifegal and centripetal forces.

Summary: Pierce explains phenomenology as the conscious study of appearance, which is two-sided. The interplay between the two sides of consciousness -- effort and resistance -- (76) forms the basis for breaking conscious experience into three categories of being: firstness, secondness, and thirdness. The categories are difficult to understand (Pierce seems to intentionally create this difficulty), but seem to mean the following. Firstness seems to be those qualities that are of themselves. The example Pierce uses is "redness." The quality of firstness exists as an abstract idea unto itself. The quality is not a form of being until the object of this "firstness" is specified. Secondness seems to be the pure abstract quality recognized in physical appearance, such that the physical appearance of the quality shapes our understanding of the firstness. Finally, thirdness is the synthesis of information recognized in secondness with our initially understanding of the ideal (first). 

Response: Pierce uses firstness, secondness, and thirdness to create a system of generalizations which may be used to discuss the intricacies of our unconscious construction of being. Firstness might be thought as x. It is a form of apriori. It is the principle that notes a particular event in experience as having happened. It must be assumed to exist in order to discuss the continuity of reality at the level of a unit of experience (i.e. the experience of redness). But x is only x in so far as it point to y, which is secondness,the subject in which x experienced (i.e. red vase). Thirdness describes the process of experiencing secondness in firstness.  It is experience through generalization and differentiation. 

Connections/Questions:  

Vygotsky speaks about conscious experience from the perspective of a psychologist. Volosinov speaks about the construction of knowledge from the perspective of sociology. Pierce speaks about construction of experience from the perspective of logic. While all of the texts we've read so far are about language, consciousness, and being. All of the texts come at the problem from different methodological angles. Even though the authors didn't identity themselves along disciplinary lines and inquiry was an inter-disciplinary process, the methodologies implied in their studies point to discipline from which they come.