Mikhail Bakhtin quotes

Mikhail Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher and literary theorist known for his work on dialogism and the philosophy of language. His concepts, such as the "chronotope" and "carnivalesque," have had a profound impact on literary criticism and the study of culture. He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the fields of literary theory and philosophy. Here are 3 of his quotes:

Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker's intentions; it is populated-overpopulated-with the intentions of others.

Mikhail Bakhtin

Not all words ... submit equally to this appropriation, to this seizure and transformation into private property: many words stubbornly resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in the mouth of the one who appropriated them and who now speaks them; they cannot be assimilated into his context and fall out of it; it is as if they put themselves in quotation marks against the will of the speaker.

Mikhail Bakhtin