Marxism and the Philosophy of Language [Paperback]

V. N. Volosinov (Author), Ladislav Matejka (Translator), I. R. Titunik (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674550986 | ISBN-13: 978-0674550988 | Publication Date: July 21, 1986

Volosinov's important work, first published in Russian in 1929, had to wait a generation for recognition. This first paperback edition of the English translation will be capital for literary theorists, philosophers, linguists, psychologists, and many others.

Volosinov is out to undo the old disciplinary boundaries between linguistics, rhetoric, and poetics in order to construct a new kind of field: semiotics or textual theory. Matejka and Titunik have provided a new preface to discuss Volosinov in relation to the great resurgence of interest in all the writing of the circle of Mikhail Bakhtin.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Quite simply one of the best general introductions to linguistics study as a whole.
--Freric Jameson (Style )

This book is a masterpiece of theoretical thought. It anticipates the actual achievements of much of what we now call sociolinguistics. The 'dialectic of the sign' and of the verbal sign in particular as it is presented in the book acquires great suggestive value in the light of today's debates about semiotics.
--Roman Jakobson

In this one book a reader can discover the ideas of Bakhtin and his circle about language, not as a conceptual metaphor, but as that aspect of human life which is in fact the subject matter of a cumulative science. Its critical account of the state of linguistic thought in the first decades of the century is all that a sociological or Marxist critique can and should be: not a stereotyped application of received categories, but an attempt to think through from the foundation the consequence of taking social interaction; not the abstract individual speaker, as starting point…Brilliant.
--Dell Hymes

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (July 21, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674550986
• ISBN-13: 978-0674550988
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #291,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Language is the material of Consciousness, April 25, 2000

By 

Ramon Guillermo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Paperback)

This book is a great classic in the study of language and its relation to ideology. The hollow debates about its authorship falls to the wayside when one considers how this work has revolutionized the study of ideological phenomena. Instead of looking at consciousness as a kind of vacuum to be filled by ideological content, it regards consciousness itself as a kind of substance composed of linguistic matter and riven from within its very core by social contradictions. The synoptic view of linguistics as a discipline divided between the romantic irrationalist approach of Vossler and the systemic semiological approach of Saussure is quite enlightening and original. Although the second part of this book is too difficult for non-linguists with no knowledge of Russian, one can perhaps make some headway into it if one has enough gumption.