Mikhail Bakhtin's "Speech Genres and Other Late Essays" argues that spoken and written utterances are shaped by specific, recurring forms called speech genres. These genres, whether primary (everyday conversation) or secondary (complex literary works), are not mere stylistic choices but deeply embedded in social and historical contexts, carrying particular ways of thinking and expressing. The essays, written in Bakhtin's later years, demonstrate a lifetime of analysis and reflection on this material, drawing from his "Esthetics of Creative Discourse."
Readers will gain an understanding of how language functions through distinct, historically formed genre systems. The book reveals that these genres influence the content, structure, and style of our communication, providing a lens through which to analyze the nature of utterance and its relationship to consciousness and the world. The collection presents six short works, all but one from Bakhtin's later period, reflecting a thinker at the height of his intellectual powers.
Key concepts
- Speech genres — Recurring, socially and historically conditioned forms of utterances that shape communication.
- Primary genres — Everyday, immediate forms of speech like simple dialogues.
- Secondary genres — More complex, culturally developed genres such as novels and plays.
- Esthetics of Creative Discourse — Bakhtin's broader theoretical framework for understanding aesthetic phenomena in language.
- Utterance — A concrete, bounded instance of language use, shaped by its specific context and author.