Communicative approach to the interpretation of the nature of language in light of dialectic and dialogical traditions
In the beginning of the article the author notes that the term "dialogue" replaced the word "dialectic" as a universal notion of problem solving in modern scientific and everyday discourse. Nonetheless, the author of the article believes there is a serious threat of substitution of notions caused by the lack of an accurate definition of dialogue, criteria for defining its forms, indetermination of its argumentative structure and its blurred normative basis. The author also emphasizes the importance of correlation of the terms "dialectic" and "dialogue" and notes that among specialists there still exist different approaches to this problem. To the author's mind, the positions of M. Bakhtin and A. Losev on this issue are of most interest. Recently, many specialists regard the points of views of these philosophers as correlative rather than antagonistic. The author points out a possibility of certain convergence between their positions on the issue of invariance of communicative meaning in reference to denotative meaning which are embodied in the concepts of two-voice polyphony of M. Bakhtin and two-level polysemy of A. Losev. It is the author's opinion that in the communicative space of modern information society there is a threat of dialogue devaluation connected with getting over the dualism of the signifier and the signified realized by philosophy of postmodernism which makes the dialogue an "empty sign", a simulacrum. In this connection, the author notes the position of Bakhtin who equally rejected dogmatism and relativism, typical for formalism and later for structuralism, as excluding authentic dialogue. Further in the article, attention is given to the differences of M. Bakhtin's and A. Lo-sev's approaches which are revealed in their attitude to the culture of the Renaissance: predominantly negative for Losev and positive for Bakhtin who tried to find mediative and innovative components in it. The author supposes that a new work by M. Spranzi The Art of Dialectic Between Dialogue and Rhetoric: The Aristotelian Tradition (2011) throws light on this argument between the famous philosophers. Basing on the content of Renaissance tractates (among them paradigmatic one is by Carlo Sigonio) devoted to the nature of dialogue, Spranzi comes to a conclusion that dialectic and rhetoric constituents might be regarded as inalienable components of the dialogue form. The main idea of the author is that dialogue can be regarded, on the one hand, as a means of achieving the aims of dialectic; on the other hand, from the dialogue philosophy standpoint, dialectic itself can be interpreted as an instrument of the main purpose of dialogue, namely, achieving mutual understanding of its participants. The third possible variant is when both terms could be regarded as equal for interpreting the map of the communicative space of modern information society
Keywords
polyphony, simulacrum, two-voice polysemy, two-voice polyphony, rhetoric, dialectic, dialogue, симулякр, полифония, двухуровневая полисемия, двуголосие, риторика, диалектика, диалогAuthors
Name | Organization | |
Kirillov German M. | Penza State University | gekir10@mail.ru |
References

Communicative approach to the interpretation of the nature of language in light of dialectic and dialogical traditions | Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta – Tomsk State University Journal. 2015. № 393.