Bakhtin and The Circle: Languages, Genres and Production of Meaning

The victory of one reigning language (dialect) over the others, the supplanting of languages, their enslavement, the process of illuminating them with the True Word, the incorporation of barbarians and lower social strata into a unitary language of culture and truth […] - all this determined the content and power of the category of “unitary language” in linguistic and stylistic thought, and determined its creative, style-shaping role in the majority of the poetic genres that coalesced in the channel formed by those same centripetal forces of verbal-ideological life. […] alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification go forward.

Mikhail Bakhtin (1981, p.271-272; our highlights)¹

Promoting and publishing research in the field of discourse studies are primary goals for Bakhtiniana. We are committed to scientific quality and its necessary social insertion: the articles that have been published show the responsibility and the responsiveness of authors before contemporary reality - often difficult, especially for scientific research and education.

Nonetheless, we are aware that, recently, the difficulties are not restricted to those fields. Another neglected (or mistreated) field - over the centuries of our constitution as a nation as a matter of fact - involves the native peoples and the preservation of their languages and cultures. Languages and discourses in native communities have long been forsaken, repressed, stifled by the public power, but not by linguists. Linguists strive to describe them and, thus, to display the cultures of the peoples who speak them, setting their world views in motion. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics - IBGE, there are 305 native ethnicities in Brazil who speak at least 274 languages.³

Hence, we highlight the relevance of investigations such as the one by Diego Michel Nascimento Bezerra (Unicamp), The Historical Discursive Production of the Name of the Apurinã Language, the first article of the present issue. Investigating the name of an “autochthonous language from the Brazilian Amazon” of a society “marginally inserted in the Brazilian scenario,” the author shows how the natives’ own voice, raw material of the research documents, means little in the documents because the construction of the name of the language attends to “a discursive construction of the referent on the part of the colonizer.”

The second article in this issue is directly linked to the studies that originated our journal. Forty years after the publication of the first work of Bakhtin and the Circle in Brazil - Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, in 1979 - newly translated in 2017, it is time for more detailed investigations on its reception in Brazil. That is accomplished by Beth Brait (PUC-SP/USP/CNPq) and Maria Helena Cruz Pistori (Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso) in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language: The Reception of Bakhtin and the Circle in Brazil. By investigating frame-texts in both editions, they discuss how Bakhtin’s work has been received and comprehended in the academic sphere throughout the years.

Reality is multiple, and language and discourses are realized in different genres. Doubtlessly, the Bakhtinian notion of speech (discourse) genre is consecrated in language studies, even if not always comprehended in the realm of the Circle’s works (see Brait, Pistori, 2012). In order to refresh its relevance, let us quote Medvedev (1991, p.135):⁴

[...] the reality of the genre is the social reality of its realization in the process of artistic intercourse. Therefore, genre is the aggregate of the means of collective orientation in reality, with the orientation toward finalization. This orientation is capable of mastering new aspects of reality. The conceptualization of reality develops and generates in the process of ideological social intercourse.

The concept of genre is fundamental in the analysis of four other articles in the present issue. Dancing is investigated by Marília Amorim (University of Paris 8) in Dance Discourse and the Concept of Genre - Some Interpretive Elements. Resorting to theoretical concepts of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov along with Rudolf Laban’s notion of dancing as language, Amorim presents visual and verbal-visual discourse elements of different genres - classic ballet, modern ballet, hip hop and street dance - to show how they act in the production of meaning. Her work widens the overall comprehension of dance, especially for amateur audiences without specific education who attend dance performances.

The seventh art is the object upon which Adriana Pucci Penteado de Faria and Silva (UFBA) concentrate in Hybridization and Speech Genres in Recife Frio, by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The Bakhtinian thought is also the theoretical basis for this investigation, focused on the process of genre hybridization in the picture to produce meaning and to stimulate a certain attitude in the interlocution with the audience. Scenes or sequences from the documentary are described and analyzed to guide readers in their reflection on the construction of the interplay between fiction and reality.

Literary art is the object of Autobiography and (Re-)Signification, an article by Yuri Andrei Batista Santos (USP) and Vânia Lúcia Menezes Torga (UESC-BA). Their reflections, supported by the convergence between the dialogical theory of discourse and studies on self-writing, highlight the crossing of senses, memories and experiences resignified in an autobiography, illuminated by what the subject has not only been but is now. Literature from the perspective of its readership is also an object of concern for Maria da Penha Casado Alves (UFRN) and Roxane Helena Rodrigues Rojo (Unicamp). These authors’ research generated the article Communities of Readers: Youth Culture and the Acts of Decollecting. Conceptions from The Bakhtin Circle as well as reflections by Néstor G. Canclini and Roger Chartier support the discussion of “good readings” outside the pre-established canon in schools.

In A Toast to the Intersection of Voices, by Eliete Hugueney de Figueiredo Costa (UFMT) and Simone de Jesus Padilha (UFMT), the presence of different voices is observed in a women’s magazine - A Violeta [The Violet]. Published in Cuiabá in the first half of the 20th century (1916-1950), the magazine’s issues circulated in the whole national territory and conveyed local, national and international matters, which composed the subject of utterances that expressed the level of political engagement of its writers, who were mostly elementary teachers. Also relying on Bakhtin and the Circle and the principles of verbal-visual analysis proposed by Brait (2010, 2013, among others), the authors focus on the utterance from one issue of the magazine to reveal the discursive-ideological tensions therein.

The last two articles, whose analyses also rely on the Bakhtinian thought, approach educational matters. The first, Memes in Teaching Material: Considerations on the Teaching and Learning of Speech Genres, by Marina Totina de Almeida Lara (UNESP) and Marina Célia Mendonça (UNESP), discuss the ephemerality of the genre meme and whether that characteristic influences (or not) the possibility of its use in textbooks. Next, The Constitution of the Subjectivity of the Child Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, by Rita de Cassia Fernandes Signor (Joana de Gusmão Children’s Hospital - Speech Therapy, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina) and Ana Paula de Oliveira Santana (UFSC), assumes postulates of Bakhtin and the Circle to show how children’s self-image is built from the gaze of the other and the effects of pathologizing in the formation of subjectivity.

Two book reviews close the issue. In the first, Orison Marden Bandeira de Melo Júnior (UFRN) introduces us to Paulo Bezerra’s new translation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s essays: BAKHTIN, M. Teoria do romance III: o romance como gênero literário [Theory of the Novel III: The Novel as a Literary Genre]. Translated and commented by Paulo Bezerra. Russian edition organized by Serguei Botcharov and Vadim Kójinov. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2019. 144 pp. The review allows us a better understanding of this new collection of texts, all related to Bakhtin studies on the novel, pointing to important new features of the translation and the Translator Notes. Then, Cibele Cheron (PUCRS) presents a stimulating work for those who wish to explore the origins, limits and differences in the concept of dialogue, key in the Bakhtinian thought: GUILHERME, Alexandre Anselmo; MORGAN, W. John. Philosophy, dialogue, and education. Nine Modern European Philosophers. London: Routledge, 2018. 190 pp.

The traditional balance ends the present introduction to highlight its 11 texts and 17 authors, representing 12 institutions (Unicamp, PUC-SP, USP, Paris 8, UFBA, UESC, UFRN, UFTM, UNESP, UFSC, Joana de Gusmão Children’s Hospital, PUC-RS); not to mention the several translators involved in the different texts. We invite readers to enjoy these texts and include them in their research. This is how Bakhtiniana actively participates in the national and international cultural and academic life.

The number of submissions as well as their rigorous selection, conducted by competent and collaborative reviewers (ad hoc and members of our board of reviewers) have allowed us this excellent result: Bakhtiniana remains steadfast in its commitment to always promoting dialogical possibilities between national and international research devoted to language studies. Therefore, we are grateful for the invaluable and constant support, assistance and recognition from MCTI [Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation]/CNPq [Brazilian National Research Council]/MEC [The Brazilian Ministry of Education]/ CAPES [Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education] and PUC-SP, through their Plano de Incentivo à Pesquisa (PIPE’q) [Research Incentive Plan] (PIPE’q) / Publicação de Periódicos [Journal Publication] (PubPer-PUCSP) - 2020.

REFERÊNCIAS

• BAKHTIN, M. O discurso no romance. In: BAKHTIN, M. Teoria do romance I: o romance como gênero literário. Tradução, posfácio e notas Paulo Bezerra. Organização da edição russa de Serguei Botcharov e Vadim Kójinov. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2015.
• BRAIT, B. Literatura e outras linguagens São Paulo: Contexto, 2010.
• BRAIT, B. Olhar e ler: verbo-visualidade em perspectiva dialógica. Bakhtiniana, Revista de Estudos do Discurso, São Paulo, v. 8,n. 2, p.43-66, dec. 2013. Disponível em http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2176-45732013000200004&lng=en&nrm=iso Acesso em 01/03/2020.
  » http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2176-45732013000200004&lng=en&nrm=iso
• BRAIT, B.; PISTORI, M. A produtividade do conceito de gênero em Bakhtin e o Círculo. Alfa, Revista de Linguística (São José Rio Preto), São Paulo, v. 56, n. 2, p. 371-401, dec. 2012. Disponível em http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1981-57942012000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso Acesso em 29/02/2020.
  » http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1981-57942012000200002&lng=en&nrm=iso
• MEDVIÉDEV, P. N. (Círculo de Bakhtin). O método formal nos estudos literários: introdução crítica a uma poética sociológica. Tradução, a partir do russo, e Nota das tradutoras Sheila Camargo Grillo e Ekaterina Vólkova Américo. Apresentação Beth Brait. Prefácio Sheila Camargo Grillo. São Paulo: Contexto, 2012.

• 1
  BAKHTIN, M. Discourse in the Novel. In: BAKHTIN, M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Edited by Michael Holquist; translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981. pp.259-422.
• 2
  https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-51229884
• 3
  BAKHTIN, M. M.; MEDVEDEV, P. N. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics. Translated by Albert J. Wehrle. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
• Translated by Larissa de Pinho Cavalcanti - [e-mail]

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 Apr 2020
• Date of issue
  Apr-Jun 2020