Bakhtin and Shpet – Inheritance and Transcendence

2.1 Definition of “symbol”

Neither Bakhtin nor Shpet gave a complete definition of the symbol, but discussed it from their respective perspectives.

The term “semiotics” first appeared in Shpet’s History as a logical object in 1915. In this work, he pointed out that “history as a science recognizes only one source of understanding, that is, discourse. Discourse is a form in which historians can find and scientifically study the realities of their academic frontiers, and is such a symbol that historians can also transform to their own unique objects, which constitutes the meaning or the significance of this symbol” (Xiao 2007). Therefore, “history as a science is related to the discourse as symbols [...]” (Xiao 2007). The concept of history is regarded as an expression of a certain meaning, and its logic essence should belong to semiotics in nature (Shpet 1915: 203). In his view, semiotics was “generally an ontological theory of symbols” (Shpet 2007: 230), while discourse was a meta-symbol, whose “theory as symbols was to function as the task of formal ontology [...]” (Shpet 2007: 208). At this time, he was inspired by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and tended to equate semiotics with explanation and interpretation. Later, in the 1920s, he wrote the book Language and implications, which described semiotics as a science about “symbols-understanding” (Shpet 2005: 476). He opposed following the formal logic of Kant and the study of expressions without comprehension or understanding. In addition, he tried to find a basis for his material ontology and social existentialism on symbols (Shpet 2002: 03). It is well documented that Shpet interpreted semiotics in a general social and historical sense, and the features of his social semiotics and historical semiotics could be seen as well.

What is more, this view was later confirmed by Bakhtin. Bakhtin focused on the issue of symbols in his book Marxism and the philosophy of language in 1929 and further developed Shpet’s semiotics. Since he studied semiotics from the perspective of super-linguistics and interpersonal interactions beyond the language system, Bakhtin criticized both structuralism as represented by Saussure, which regarded the symbol as a static and closed system, and Russian formalism for advocating static synchronic research on language. Hence, he particularly emphasized the materiality, historicity, sociality, and ideology of symbols (Qian 1998: 541). As the Chinese scholar Hu Zhuanglin concluded, the four characteristics of symbols Bakhtin discussed were: 1) materiality: symbols have their own material basis, that is, objects are interpreted by objects, through which meanings are produced; 2) historicity: any symbol of ideology is related to the era in which it is located; 3) sociality: a symbolic environment may only be formed between individuals when they are collectively organized; 4) ideology: when an image is transformed into a symbol, it constitutes an ideology (Hu 2001).

Of course, Bakhtin talked about symbols from the perspective of ideology. And he pointed out, “Every ideology makes sense. And it represents, expresses, and replaces something that exists outside of it, that is, it is a symbol” (Shelogurova 2000: 358). Therefore, it can be concluded that ideology is the symbol. Bakhtin believed that “discourse is, actually, an ideological phenomenon and the whole reality of which is completely absorbed in its symbolic function” (Shelogurova 2000: 358). That is, discourse also has a symbolic function. In his view, any discourse has its “internal dialogue” (Shelogurova 2000: 208), so he advocated combining linguistic methods with sociological ones and studying language from a dynamic aspect, and then proposed his own unique discourse theory with “dialogueism” as the core.

Bakhtin also believed that discourse existed in any activities about both understanding and interpretation. What was needed for spiritual phenomena was not to explain its cause and effect, but to understand (Bakhtin 1998: 311). This view clearly followed Diltech’s hermeneutic thought, which regarded “understanding and interpretation” as the methods applied to spiritual science. In addition, it also reflected Shpet’s expression that semiotics was a “science of understanding symbols” as well.

2.2 Symbol and “object”

Shpet first examined the symbol forms from the perspective of sociality. It ought to be said that Shpet’s method, whether conscious or not, was consistent with Karl Marx’s sociological approaches. He claimed that symbol was a social phenomenon. The first question he was interested in was: If all “objects” have their “symbolic attributes,” “what we should study are the objects represented by the given symbol, just like the symbol itself of some other objects” (Shpet 2005: 492). Shpet believed that a symbol itself, on the one hand, represented a relationship, and, on the other hand, was an “object.” Is there anything existing in the object that can be attributed to its semiotic properties? Are all objects or could all of them be “symbols”? What makes an “object” a “symbol”? Is what the symbol expresses the “object” or the “attribute” (see Shpet 2005: 512–513)? All the above were the problems that Shpet proposed and tried to solve. In his view, the symbol showed us both symbol itself and some physical objects related (Shpet 2005: 493).

Bakhtin also made a similar point. He particularly emphasized the materiality of symbols and believed that there was a “symbolic world” outside the material world. Any object or tool of production itself was not a symbol, but if it was given a function of reflection or substitution, it could be accepted as an image of something and could be converted into an ideological symbol, such as bread and wine, representing both consumer goods and a religious symbol in the Christian rite of Communion.

Therefore, “any symbol of ideology is not only a reflection or a shadow of reality, but also a part of the material about the reality” (Shelogurova 2000: 354). “Symbols are also individual objects. As we have seen, each object about nature, technology, or consumption can be a symbol, at the same time, it has its own meaning as a single object. Symbols not only exist as a part of reality, but also reflect and refract another reality” (Shelogurova 2000: 354). Therefore, the symbol can distort or confirm this reality so that it could be accepted from a certain aspect, etc. There should be various ideological evaluation criteria for each symbol (hypocrisy, truth, correctness, fairness, kindness, etc.) (Shpet 2005: 354). It was in this sense that “the significance of the symbol was concluded in the entire ideology” (Shelogurova 2000: 354).

Of course, Bakhtin and Shpet had different understandings of “object.” Bakhtin regarded “objects” as “purely dead matters,” while Shpet referred them to “matters related to society,” that is, all the social attributes around people were unique. He believed that the essence lay not in the “object” or the “subject” but in a social existence called “conscience,” which, in fact, was completely consistent with Bakhtin’s ideas on morality in Art and responsibility in his early age.

2.3 Symbol and “meaning”

Shpet believed that language can provide universal symbolic codes and that literature was not a closed system of self-sufficiency. The issue of aesthetic experience was closely related to that of meaning in literature, which had always been ignored by formalists (Shpet 1989: 448). And this was the major difference between Shpet and the formalists.

Shpet pointed out that “symbol” was related to “meaning” (Shpet 2005: 512). But his understanding on this issue was essentially different from that of modern semiotics masters, such as Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), and Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848– 1925). They focused on the process of symbol-understanding, while Shpet based his theory on ontology. In his Language and meaning, he believed, “In the end, we regard the content the same as the meaning, but the criteria for judging mainly depends on whether we treat it from the perspective of the ‘object’ or the ‘symbol’” (Shpet 2005: 477). Obviously, Shpet looked at this issue from the perspective of ontology. Furthermore, he examined the relationship between symbols and meanings and then claimed that, just as the content was related to the form, meaning was connected with symbols, whereas the ontology of objects was, in fact, distinct from the logical form of symbols. The symbol had its ontological position, that is, a symbol itself was an object owning special significance. Meanwhile, it referred to a symbolic meaning of another object (Shpet 2005: 478). And the feature above was different from those in semiotics, hence, it could be called a kind of semantic feature.

In Shpet’s view, the ontological status of symbols “not only is the subject of relevance to meaning, but also declares some relationships implying its own terminology” (Shpet 2005: 520). In addition, the subject of the relationship was a static object and referred to the dynamic category itself as well. If a symbol as the subject of the relationship can be described by its own “external form,” the symbol referring to the relationship can naturally be described by its “internal form.” Shpet defined the “internal form” as the relationship itself and referred some “combination forms” related to the material aspects of symbols as “external forms.” Furthermore, he believed that each symbol was a means used to achieve a purpose and express ideas. Therefore, it was a transition from a static understanding of the external form to the realization of its own ideas (Shpet 2005: 553–554). In all, it was a dynamic process.

With the help of the simplest vocabularies and the structures of the expressions as examples, Shpet illustrated the dynamic of the discourse and pointed out that the “partial” discourse was tending to move toward the “full discourse,” and then approached the “relationship.” The “part” was included in the “whole,” “objects” were included in “relationships,” and the “relationships” were included in more advanced relationships. And no matter in which category the issues were discussed, they would always be dynamic and moving (see Shpet 2005: 584).

Here, words became understanding when they were as meaning-related symbols. Just as Shpet pointed out, “symbols are not means of expressing thoughts” (Shpet 2005: 554), but “concepts, opinions and content themselves” (Shpet 2005: 554). At this point, the “meaning” embodied in the symbol transformed into “significance.” According to Shpet, if the symbol was a means for its external form, then it would be the act of achieving the goal for its internal form.

Shpet also distinguished between “meaning” and “significance.” He believed that the former was embodied in the dictionary and was uncertain and polysemy, while the latter was related to the specific context and had unique meaning. The view was inherited by the Russian language culture school in the late 20th century. And in this school, “meaning” was regarded as the internal significance of the language unit, while “significance” was the sum of all the meanings of the language units and non-verbal units, that is, the conceptual words studied by this school. It “was not the meaning of words in contextual compositions, nor that in language aggregates, but that in culture aggregates” (Yang 2007: 74).

Perhaps inspired by Shpet, Bakhtin also put forward the concept of “meaning” and distinguished between “meaning” and “significance,” which was also an important feature of his distinction from the formalists. But unlike Shpet, he defined “connotation” as “the topic of expression” (Bakhtin 1998: 452) and believed that the difference between “significance” and “meaning” lay in that between “topic” and “meaning.” In his view, the topic was the reaction of the changing consciousness to a change in existence, while the meaning was the technical device to realize the topic; the “topic” to be expressed was concrete and inseparable, yet the meaning can be broken down into the certain significance that entered into a series of linguistic components. He declared that “a work can be enriched in its meaning when comprehended so that it showed a variety of significance” (Bakhtin 1998: 405). In other words, in the process of understanding, the dual subjects of human cognition – the author (speaker) and the interpreter (responder) – communicate with each other, make the text (discourse) gain new meanings, and turn the worthy part into significance. Hence, significance is expanded through the enrichment of meaning. Bakhtin believed that “significance” was always the answer to certain questions, and whatever cannot answer any questions is meaningless, it is meaningless for its separation from dialogue. The “meaning” comes from dialogue and is taken from dialogue, which is a “hypothetical abstraction” and has the potential to be transformed into significance (Bakhtin 1998: 405). That is, the “significance” has more potential than the “meaning.”

2.4 “Human beings in semiotics”

Shpet also scrutinized discourse from the perspective of semiotics, providing insights about studying “people” in the field of semiotics. He treated people as the most important factor in the process of studying semiotics and looked for semiotic tools while analyzing the creation forms of human language. Hence, he proposed the concept of “internal form.” And this was the reason why his semiotics was clearly different from European semiotics as represented by Saussure as well as American semiotics as represented by Peirce. In Saussure’s and Peirce’s views, the symbolic world was prior and beyond human. According to Saussure, the symbol was arbitrary and the relationship between the “signified” and the “signifier” was described in the static category. For Peirce, the symbol was just meaningful to a certain subject. Although he introduced a certain subjective factor into semiotics, like Saussure, Peirce paid little attention to the human factor in semiotics and the dynamic process of how to realize the relationship between symbols and meaning. Shpet assumed the internal space of the symbol structure and analyzed its feasibility. More precisely, it was his concept of “internal form” that made it possible to analyze the introversion of symbols.

Shpet proposed the concept of “internal form” on the basis of aesthetic language. First and foremost, this was based on his great interest in factors of art creation in the index process. He believed that in all literary and art creations, every concept or image, that is, the composition of scientific concepts and the construction of literary images, was all planned to accomplish some intention, and the principle and the foundation of creation lay in the expression and transmission of the meaning (Shpet 1927: 98). According to Shpet, the dialectic of “meaning,” the dynamic development and the internal form of creation of the forms of concepts, such as, “internal image form,” “internal conceptual form,” and “internal poetic form,” can reveal the methodological implementation form of the corresponding organization of “significance” in the specific dialectical process (Shpet 1927: 141).

Shpet’s social semiotics had been founded on the Ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, as well as Russian traditional philosophy. At the same time, it was also imprinted by Saint Aurelius Augustinus, whose assertion that “symbol is an entity different from the objects” and the concept of “inner thought of human beings” undoubtedly had a profound impact on him. In terms of the methodology, Shpet borrowed similar elements from scholars such as, Leibniz, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), Lorenz von Stein (1815–1890), and Аlexander А. Potebnya (1835–1891). For example, the concept of “internal form” that he first proposed was in fact inspired by the philosophy on language of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Furthermore, he also absorbed the hermeneutics of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), Dilthey and Jerques Derrida (1930–2004), and the phenomenological methods of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) (Derrida 1999: 125, 139).

Bakhtin’s view of sociality, historicity, and ideology on symbols was exactly the same as those of Shpet. If it was divorced from the inspection of people or did not regard human beings as the important factor of semiotics or examine people’s activities in the social and historical context, then what on earth was so-called sociality, historicity, and ideology?