SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
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The Political Function of Reported Speech I 71<br />
4<br />
The Political Function of<br />
Reported Speech<br />
case that linguistic structure and use depend essentially on language's ability to<br />
refer to itself along many dimensions.<br />
Although it was not his primary focus of interest, Bakhtin recognized the<br />
importance of examining what he called "authoritative utterances" as one pole<br />
of the continuous interaction between an individual's speech and the language of<br />
others:<br />
Authoritative Speech<br />
<strong>IN</strong> THECOURSE of his discussion of discourse in the novel, Bakhtin (1981)<br />
points out that the social-historical fact of the "internal stratification" of language<br />
into dialects, jargons, and speech genres is the prerequisite for the stylistic<br />
"heteroglossia" of the modern polyphonic novel, in which authorial speech, narrator's<br />
speech, and the speech of characters enter into complex "interanimation."<br />
Many of Bakhtin's specific analyses of literary techniques found in novelistic heteroglossia<br />
can be transferred to the anthropological study of language in its social<br />
context. In particular, in the novel as in social life, speech constantly takes as an<br />
object of reference or representation previous speech, as in direct and indirect<br />
quotation of the actual utterances of others. As Bakhtin notes, "The topic of a<br />
speaking person has enormous importance in everyday life. In real life we hear<br />
speech about speakers and their discourse at every step. We can go so far as to<br />
say that in real life people talk most of all about what others talk about—they<br />
transmit, recall, weigh and pass judgment on other people's words, opinions, assertions,<br />
information; people are upset by others' words, or agree with them,<br />
contest them, refer to them and so forth" (Bakhtin 1981:338). But in addition,<br />
as Jakobson (1980b), Sanches (1975), Silverstein (1976, 1981b, 1985b, 1993),<br />
and others have argued, metalingual activity goes beyond reporting token utterances,<br />
since language also has the potential for becoming a comprehensive metalanguage<br />
with respect to higher-level semiotic phenomena such as semantic and<br />
pragmatic meaning (as in glossing), conventional rules of speaking (as in performatives),<br />
and the parameters of the contexts of speaking (as in deixis). In this<br />
broader sense Silverstein (1976) has distinguished the realm of "metasemantics,"<br />
that is, language about the relatively decontextualized meaning of forms, and the<br />
more encompassing realm of "metapragmatics," that is, language about the indexical<br />
or pragmatic relationship between linguistic signals and their contexts of<br />
use. Rather than being highly unusual aspects of language use, these two types<br />
of metalinguistic representation are more accurately seen as statistically widespread<br />
and structurally crucial in language. In other words, it is not merely a<br />
social fact that dialogicality characterizes linguistic utterances but it is also the<br />
In each epoch, in each social circle, in each small world of family, friends,<br />
acquaintances, and comrades in which a human grows and lives, there are always<br />
authoritative utterances that set the tone—artistic, scientific, and journalistic<br />
works on which one relies, to which one tefers, which are cited, imitated,<br />
and followed. In each epoch, in all areas of life and activity thete are particular<br />
traditions that are expressed and retained in verbal vestments: in written<br />
works, in utterances, in sayings, and so forth. There are always some verbally<br />
expressed leading ideas of the "masters of thought" of a given epoch, some<br />
basic tasks, slogans, and so forth. (Bakhtin 1986:88—89)<br />
In another passage Bakhtin comments on the resistance of authoritative speech<br />
to being creatively assimilated by another speaker or author:<br />
The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our<br />
own; it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us<br />
internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused to it. The authoritative<br />
word is located in a distanced zone, organically connected with a past<br />
that is felt to be hierarchically higher. It is, so to speak, the word of the fathers.<br />
Its authority was already acknowledged in the past. It is a prior discourse. It<br />
is therefore not a question of choosing it from among other possible discourses<br />
that are its equal. It is given (it sounds) in lofty spheres, not those of familiar<br />
contact. Its language is a special (as it were, hieratic) language. It can be profaned.<br />
It is akin to taboo, i.e., a name that must not be taken in vain. (Bakhtin<br />
1981:342)<br />
As language clothed in "verbal vestments," authoritative speech<br />
confronts<br />
speaker and writers as unquestionable, distant, and powerful. For Bakhtin, such<br />
language exists at the opposite end of a continuum from the rich, multivoiced<br />
quality of novelistic discourse, since it not only blocks any modification or "analysis"<br />
by an authorial intention but also projects its own worldview upon the reporting<br />
voice (Morson and Emerson 1990:220-21). This point is taken up<br />
specifically by Volosinov in his work on reported speech:<br />
Political rhetoric presents an analogous case [to judicial language]. It is important<br />
to determine the specific gravity of rhetorical speech, judicial or political,<br />
in the linguistic consciousness of the given social group at a given time. Moreover,<br />
the position that a specimen of speech to be reported occupies on the<br />
social hietarchy of values must also be taken into account. The stronger the<br />
feeling of hierarchical eminence in another's utterance, the more sharply de-<br />
70