Rosa Lichtenstein
28th November 2010, 11:43
In fact, I have summarised some of my criticisms of Voloshinov here:
http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=49044
I was replying to specific point about meaning in language (as Voloshinov sees it).
Here it is again:
Well, one of my main objections to Voloshinov is that it is impossible to decide what he believes since he is hopelessly confused.
For example, there are many different senses of 'meaning' which Voloshinov conflates. Here are a few:
(1) Personal Significance: as in "His Teddy Bear means a lot to him."
(2) Evaluative import: as in "May Day means different things to different classes."
(3) Point or purpose: as in "Life has no meaning."
(4) Linguistic meaning: as in "'Vixen' means 'female fox'", "'Chien' means 'dog'", or "Recidivist" means someone who has resumed their criminal career.
(5) Aim or intention: as in "They mean to win this strike."
(6) Implication: as in "Winning this dispute means that management won't try another wage cut again in a hurry."
(7) Indicate, point to, or presage: as in "Those clouds mean rain", or "Those spots mean you have measles."
(8) Reference: as in "I mean him over there", or "'The current president of the USA' means somebody different at least once every eight years."
(9) Artistic or literary import: as in "The meaning of this novel is to examine political integrity."
(10) An indication of conversational focus: as in "I mean, why do we have to accept a measly 1% rise in the first place?"
(11) An expression of sincerity or determination: as in "I mean it, I really do want to go on the march!", or "The demonstrators really mean to stop this war."
(12) The content of a message, or the import of a sign: as in "It means the strike starts on Monday", or "It means you have to queue here."
(13) Interpretation: as in "You will need to read the author's novels if you want to give new meaning to her latest play", or "That gesture means those pickets think you are a scab."
(14) Import or significance: as in "Part of the meaning of this play is to change our view of drama", or "The real meaning of the agreement is that the bosses have at last learnt their lesson."
(15) Speakers' meaning: as in "When you trod on her foot and she said 'Well done!' she in fact meant the exact opposite."
(16) Communicative meaning: as in "You get my meaning", or "My last letter should tell you what I meant", or "We have just broken code, hence the last message meant this..."
(17) Explanation: as in "When the comrade said the strike isn't over what she meant was that we can still win!"
[That is not to say that some of the above do not overlap, or that this exhausts all its possible senses.]
Many of Voloshinov's confusions arise from failing to consider these distinctions.
He then compounds this by making total mess of what he calls 'theme'.
"Let us agree to call the entity which becomes the object of a sign the theme of the sign. Each fully fledged sign has its theme. And so every verbal performance has its theme.
"An ideological theme is always socially accentuated. Of course, all the social accents of ideological themes make their way into the individual consciousness (which, as we know, is ideological through and through) and there take on the semblance of individual accents, since the individual consciousness assimilated them as its own. However, the source of these accents is not the individual consciousness. Accent, as such, is interindividual....
"The theme of an ideological sign and the form of an ideological sign are inextricably bound together and are separable only in the abstract…." [Voloshinov (1973), p.22.]
*
"A definite and unitary meaning, a unitary significance, is a property belonging to any utterance as a whole. Let us call the significance of a whole utterance its theme…."
[Added in a footnote: "The term is, of course, a provisional one. Theme in our sense embraces its implementation as well; therefore our concept must not be confused with that of a theme in a literary work. The concept of 'thematic unity' would be closer to what we mean."]
"…The theme must be unitary, otherwise we would have no basis for talking about any one utterance. The theme of an utterance is individual and unreproducible, just as the utterance itself is individual and unreproducible. The theme is the expression of the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance. The utterance 'What time is it?' has a different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with our terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical situation ('historical' here in microscopic dimensions) during which it is enunciated and of which, in essence, it is a part.
"It follows, then, that the theme of an utterance is determined not only by the linguistic forms that comprise it -- words, morphological and syntactic structures, sounds, and intonation -- but also by extraverbal factors of the situation. Should we miss these situational factors, we would be as little able to understand an utterance as if we were to miss its most important words. The theme of an utterance is concrete -- as concrete as the historical instant to which the utterance belongs. Only an utterance taken in its full, concrete scope as an historical phenomenon possesses a theme. That is what is meant by the theme of an utterance.
"...Together with theme or, rather, within the theme, there is also the meaning that belongs to an utterance. By meaning, as distinguished from theme, we understand all those aspects of the utterance that are reproducible and self-identical in all instances of repetition. Of course, these aspects are abstract: they have no concrete, autonomous existence in an artificially isolated form, but, at the same time, they do constitute an essential and inseparable part of the utterance. The theme of an utterance is, in essence, indivisible. The meaning of an utterance, on the contrary, does break down into a set of meanings belonging to each of the various linguistic elements of which the utterance consists. The unreproducible theme of the utterance 'What time is it?' taken in its indissoluble connection with the concrete historical situation, cannot be divided into elements. The meaning of the utterance 'What time is it?' -- a meaning that, of course, remains the same in all historical instances of its enunciation -- is made up of the meanings of the words…that form the construction of the utterance.
"Theme is a complex, dynamic system of signs that attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative process. Theme is reaction by the consciousness in its generative process to the generative process of existence. Meaning is the technical apparatus for the implementation of theme. Of course, no absolute, mechanistic boundary can be drawn between theme and meaning. There is no theme without meaning and no meaning without theme. Moreover, it is even impossible to convey the meaning of a particular word…without having made it an element of theme, i.e., without having constructed an 'example' utterance. On the other hand, a theme must base itself on some kind of fixity of meaning; otherwise it loses its connection with what came before and what comes after -- i.e., it altogether loses its significance….
[Quoting Marr] "'But was such an all-meaning word in fact a word?' we might be asked. Yes, precisely a word. If, on the contrary, a certain sound complex had only one single, inert, and invariable meaning, then such a complex would not be a word, not a sign, but only a signal. Multiplicity of meanings is the constitutive feature of a word. As regard the all-meaning word of which Marr speaks, we can say the following: such a word in essence has virtually no meaning; it is all theme. Its meaning is inseparable from the concrete situation of its implementation. This meaning is different each time, just as the situation is different each time. Thus the theme, in this case, subsumed meaning under itself and dissolved it before meaning had any chance to consolidate and congeal. But as language developed further, as its stock of sound complexes expanded, meaning began to congeal along lines that were basic and most frequent in the life of the community for the thematic application of this or that word.
"Theme, as we have said, is an attribute of a whole utterance only; it can belong to a separate word only inasmuch as that word operates in the capacity of a whole utterance…. Meaning, on the other hand, belongs to an element or aggregate of elements in their relation to the whole. Of course, if we entirely disregard this relation to the whole (i.e., to the utterance), we shall entirely forfeit meaning. That is the reason why a sharp boundary between theme and meaning cannot be drawn.
"The most accurate way of formulating the interrelationship between theme and meaning is in the following terms. Theme is the upper, actual limit of linguistic significance; in essence, only theme means something definite. Meaning is the lower limit of linguistic significance. Meaning, in essence, means nothing; it only possesses potentiality -- the possibility of having a meaning within a concrete theme. Investigation of the meaning of one or another linguistic element can proceed, in terms of our definition, in one of two directions: either in the direction of the upper limit, toward theme, in which case it would be investigation of the contextual meaning of a given word within the conditions of a concrete utterance; or investigation can aim toward the lower limit, the limit of meaning, in which case it would be investigation of the meaning of a word in the system of language or, in other words, investigation of a dictionary word.
"A distinction between theme and meaning and a proper understanding of their interrelationship are vital steps in constructing a genuine science of meanings. Total failure to comprehend their importance has persisted to the present day. Such discriminations as those between a word's usual and occasional meanings, between its central and lateral meanings, between its denotation and connotation, etc., are fundamentally unsatisfactory. The basic tendency underlying all such discriminations -- the tendency to ascribe greater value to the central, usual aspect of meaning, presupposing that that aspect really does exist and is stable -- is completely fallacious. Moreover, it would leave theme unaccounted for, since, theme, of course, can by no means be reduced to the status of the occasional or lateral meaning of words." [Ibid., pp.99-102.]
Voloshinov, V. (1973), Marxism And The Philosophy of Language (Harvard University Press).
Questions multiply rapidly here: Is "theme" the property of a sign, or an utterance? What is this "object" mentioned at the beginning? Is it the point of an utterance (i.e., why it was said), or is it what it was directed toward (e.g., the listener perhaps, or the topic of conversation)? Is "theme" thus the significance of an utterance or of an object? And, in view of its transient existence, is "theme" a sort of trope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trope_(philosophy))? If each sign has its own "theme" and so does each utterance, do "themes" combine and act in consort in some way? Is each utterance (or "verbal performance") a sign, or each word?
[When following the above link to "trope", use the 'Quick Links' near the top to jump to 'Trope theory in philosophy (metaphysics)'.]
Here, "theme" appears to belong to a whole utterance (perhaps as its meaning or significance), while at the same time it is also the "entity" that becomes the "object" of a sign, and an "expression of the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance"! With the best will in the world, it's not easy to make much sense of this, and it's little use searching through the writings of those who look to Voloshinov for guidance in this area, since they totally ignore these difficulties!
But, when we read further, the mystery only deepens, for Voloshinov then says:
"...Only active understanding can grasp theme -- a generative process can be grasped only with the aid of another generative process." [Ibid., p.102.]
According to this, "theme" is not:
"...the entity which becomes the object of a sign..." [Ibid., p.99.]
but a "generative process"!
It would, of course, be unfair to criticise Voloshinov too much for the sketchy nature of these comments since he admitted his ideas were provisional. In addition, he was prevented from developing his theory into full coherence by the fact that he disappeared during the Stalinist purges, which took place soon after he wrote his book.
However, it's worth pointing out at the start that Voloshinov supplied his readers with little or no evidence to substantiate this distinction between "theme" and meaning (or, indeed, much else that is dogmatically asserted in his book). In fact, readers will find no experimental results, tables, graphs or figures to support a single substantive conclusion in the entire work. That alone ought to worry comrades who regard Voloshinov's work as a major contribution to the science of Linguistics.
Anyway, given the nature of what Voloshinov actually said, no evidence could ever have been, or could ever be found to support his claims. This is because by definition "theme" is inaccessible since it is essentially occasion-sensitive. This means that not only is "theme" inaccessible to scientific enquiry, it is inaccessible to each and every party to a conversation. In that case, it can serve no part in effecting communication, since, as Voloshinov himself admits, "theme" is affected by the microscopic differences between cases:
"[T]heme must be unitary, otherwise we would have no basis for talking about any one utterance. The theme of an utterance is individual and unreproducible, just as the utterance itself is individual and unreproducible. The theme is the expression of the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance. The utterance 'What time is it?' has a different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with our terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical situation ('historical' here in microscopic dimensions) during which it is enunciated and of which, in essence, it is a part." [Ibid., p.99. Bold emphases added.]
If this is indeed the case, it might well be wondered how anyone could possibly tell whether an utterance does or does not have a "theme"; if something is intrinsically unique, has a transient nature and is ephemeral in the extreme, how might its existence even be detected, let alone confirmed?
Ex hypothesi, that is all that Voloshinov could have offered anyway, since whatever evidence there might have been for the existence of a particular "theme" must of necessity have arrived far too late on the scene for it to be of much use to anyone. A split-second delay would be far too long to wait, if, as Voloshinov says, even microscopic changes alter "theme". Hence, by the time any of this elusive 'evidence' became apparent, the alleged "theme" would have changed, or would have disappeared. Naturally, this means that it would be impossible for anyone to confirm this aspect of Voloshinov's theory. Even film, video or recorded evidence would be of no use; these could not possibly preserve the microscopic details surrounding the original utterance.
In addition, if the "microscopic" details surrounding an "utterance" are essentially unique then within nanoseconds of an "utterance" ending those involved in the conversation would be at a loss themselves as to what its "theme" had been --, that is, if it indeed had one. In fact, even as the sound waves carrying each utterance were travelling between speaker and hearer the "microscopic" details surrounding the original speech act would be altering, changing the "theme", or perhaps losing it forever. Worse still, during vocalisation the "microscopic" details proximate to each and every nascent speech act would be changing diachronically. This means that, while a speaker was speaking, the theme of what he or she was in the act of saying would be altering -- unless, of course, we are to suppose that each "theme" is timed to coincide with the end of what is said. Indeed, unless "themes" were timed to end miraculously like this, it would mean that each utterance must possess an indefinite number of "unitary themes" depending on how fast its originator spoke, how many micro-phonetic parts it contained, or how often a speaker coughed, sneezed, or was interrupted during in a conversation. Of course, anyone with a stammer would be doubly handicapped.
It could be objected that this is all rather unfair since Voloshinov speaks of a "unitary theme" belonging to each utterance, and he tells us that the "theme" of an utterance is "indivisible".
However, exactly what these phrases mean will, of course, depend on how we count utterances. Voloshinov appears to believe that "themes" and utterances can be paired-off, one-one. In fact, something like this would have to be the case, otherwise the ascription of a "unitary" and "indivisible" "theme" to an utterance would be entirely empty. If so, it might look as if "themes" could be individuated by the utterances they accompanied. But, that can't be correct since "themes" are circumstance-sensitive, which implies that any particular type utterance could in fact be the expression of countless different themes at different times for each of its tokens, as the "microscopic" details (etc.) surrounding them varied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type%E2%80%93token_distinction[/url] ]
Hence, each token utterance of the type "I'm hungry" means something entirely new. If so, they must presumably have different "themes". Indeed, as Voloshinov says:
"The theme of an utterance is individual and unreproducible, just as the utterance itself is individual and unreproducible. The theme is the expression of the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance. The utterance 'What time is it?' has a different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with our terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical situation ('historical' here in microscopic dimensions) during which it is enunciated and of which, in essence, it is a part." [Voloshinov (1973), p.99. Bold emphasis added.]
Since we are not allowed to consider the meaning of type utterances (the idea is foreign to Voloshinov, it seems -- but, meanings might be part of what he refers to as the "self-identical" aspects of an utterance; p.100), Voloshinov's theory appears to indicate that token utterances of a certain type are in fact pairable with an indefinite number of "themes" according to circumstances.
Conversely, the 'same' "theme" could be expressed by different type utterances (Voloshinov does not explicitly rule this out, even though this seems to be inconsistent with some of the things he says). So, the "theme" expressed by a child who says tom her mother "I'm hungry" (if it is one! -- who can say?) could in fact be expressed in a number of different ways. The child could say any of the following:
P1: "Please get me some food."
P2: "I'm starving/famished/ravenous."
P3: "Is it nearly time for dinner?"
P4: "I want a biscuit/apple/burger/banana/pizza…"
P5: "I want to eat."
P6: "My tummy's rumbling."
P7: "My stomach thinks my throat is cut."
And so on. In fact there are countless ways the child might express the very same "theme".
These possibilities now raise serious questions as to how the pairing of "themes" and utterances is supposed to work. More pointedly: Which "theme(s)" is/are to be paired with which utterance(s) if, in theory, an utterance might represent a 'different' theme at different times, and the 'same' "theme(s)" might be expressed by different utterances at same or different times? Indeed, how are we to rule out the possibility that one utterance could in fact express two or more "themes" at once (which seems to be a viable option since two or more "themes" -- as allowed for by the theory -- could be expressed by one and the same utterance on different occasions of use)
For example:
P8: "I'm hungry."
could indicate that the one saying it wanted feeding as well as expressing a veiled criticism of the one not doing the feeding. In that case, it would have two "themes" -- if, of course, this is what a "theme" is!
P8 could thus mean (i.e., speaker's meaning), "Get me some food" and "I think you are a rather poor carer". Indeed, there might be other "themes" 'themed' by this one sentence on the same occasion (such as "I'm more important than him/her, so feed me first", "You always treat me worse than him/her", or "You are my employee, do as I say!", and so on).
Perhaps an appeal to [i]meaning might help? But, again, if meaning is parasitic on "theme" (as we are told), we are no further forward. Maybe the physical properties of an utterance -- that is, the sound patterns associated with specific sets of vibrating atoms or molecules -- could supply the principle of individuation for "unitary themes"? However, criteria of individuation for sets of already identical atoms and molecules (distinguishable only by an appeal to even more problematic spatial and temporal coordinates, scalar energy and vector fields) are not all that easy to construct. And even if they were, that would still be of little assistance. That is because those criteria would have to be expressed in linguistic form, too, which would in turn attract the very same difficulties that bedevilled the alleged "theme" it supposedly accompanied!
Furthermore -- and returning to an earlier theme (no pun intended) --, if utterances are to be individuated by means of circumstances, and the latter are still microstate-sensitive, a finite set of words could conceivably represent a potentially infinite (or indefinitely large finite) set of such token utterances (since there seems to be no upper limit on the different circumstances surrounding each utterance if any one of the latter is paired-off with one of the former), all with their own "unitary themes". Hence, and once more, the question: "What time is it?" might in fact mean countless different things because of the indefinite set of surrounding circumstances that might accompany/occasion each utterance of it, all of which would presumably instantiate their own "themes". Naturally, this implies that since the meaning of "What time is it?" is not fixed by context-independent]/i] considerations (according to Voloshinov), it could exemplify any number of such "unitary themes", as the micro-details of each nascent utterance required -- including those indicated during vocalisation, or those attendant upon that utterance while it was in the process of being registered in a hearer's 'consciousness', and so on.
Consequently, unless far more clearly defined criteria are provided (by those sympathetic to Voloshinov's ideas) for counting, distinguishing, or identifying utterances and "themes" (etc.), it seems impossible to decide whether there are in fact countless "unitary themes" pairable, one-one, one-many, many-one, or many-many, with utterances (interpreted as identifiable spoken tokens, etc.) --, or whether there exist more complex sets of functional relations between utterance tokens and "theme" tokens, or between utterance types and "theme" tokens, and so on [I]ad nauseam.
Having said that, it is worth pointing out that the difficulties we face in comprehending what Voloshinov could possibly have meant are largely the result of the confused way in which he expressed himself. For example, on the topic in hand (i.e., the individuation of "theme"), he had this to say:
"The theme must be unitary, otherwise we would have no basis for talking about any one utterance. The theme of an utterance is individual and unreproducible, just as the utterance itself is individual and unreproducible. The theme is the expression of the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance. The utterance 'What time is it?' has a different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with our terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical situation…." [Ibid., p.99.]
From this, it looks like Voloshinov thought that an utterance could be individuated by its "theme":
"The theme must be unitary, otherwise we would have no basis for talking about any one utterance…." [Ibid.]
On the other hand, he clearly thought that "theme" was dependent on concrete circumstances:
"The utterance 'What time is it?' has a different meaning each time it is used, and hence, in accordance with our terminology, has a different theme, depending on the concrete historical situation…." [Ibid.]
But, he also appears to have believed that concrete circumstances were expressed by "theme":
"The theme is the expression of the concrete, historical situation that engendered the utterance." [Ibid.]
In addition, it looks like Voloshinov thought that not only was "theme" unreproducible, so were utterances:
"The theme of an utterance is individual and unreproducible, just as the utterance itself is individual and unreproducible." [Ibid.]
And yet, as noted above, he then spoke about utterances being repeated:
"The utterance 'What time is it?' has a different meaning each time it is used…." [Ibid.]
So, an utterance is and isn't repeatable, hence its "theme" is and isn't unreproducible, too!
Moreover, when Voloshinov said:
"The meaning of the utterance 'What time is it?' -- a meaning that, of course, remains the same in all historical instances of its enunciation" [Ibid., p.100.]
it also looks like he believed that meaning is fixed after all, but only when the same utterance is produced, something he had just said couldn't happen!
Unfortunately, the bemused reader will search in vain in the articles written by those who agree with Voloshinov for any help in comprehending [i]what on earth Voloshinov was banging on about!
I have several other objections to Voloshinov's view of language, -- more details, and further argument here:
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page_13_03.htm
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