p.3 "Utterance," as Volosinov puts it, "is constituted between two socially organized persons and, in the absence of a real addressee, an addressee is presupposed in the representative of the social group to which the speaker belongs."

p.4 In striking parallel to the Peircian interpretation of inner speech, Volosinov suggests that closer analysis reveals that the units of inner speech join and alternate in a way that resembles an exchange in dialogue.

p.9 Any ideological product is not only itself a part of a reality (natural or social)... it also... reflects and refracts another reality outside itself. Everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is no ideology.

p.10 side by side with the natural phenomena, with the equipment of technology, and with articles for consumption, there exists a special world - the world of signs.

p.10 Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value.

p.11 This ideological chain stretches from individual consciousness to individual consciousness, connecting them together. Signs emerge, after all, only in the process of interaction between one individual consciousness and another. And individual consciousness itself is filled with signs. Consciousness becomes consciousness only once it has been filled with ideological (semiotic) content, consequently, only in the process of social interaction.

p.11 Idealism and psychologism alike overlook the fact that understanding itself can come about only within some kind of semiotic material (e.g., inner speech), that sign bears upon sign, that consciousness itself can arise and become a viable fact only in the material embodiment of signs.

p.12 Signs can arise only on interindividual territory... It is essential that the two individuals be organized socially, that they compose a group (a social unit); only then can the medium of signs take shape between them. The individual consciousness not only cannot be used to explain anything, but, on the contrary, is itself in need of explanation from the vantage point of the social, ideological medium.

p.13 The only possible objective definition of consciousness is a sociological one... Consciousness takes shape and being in the material of signs created by an organized group in the process of its social intercourse. The individual consciousness is nurtured on signs; it derives its growth from them; it reflects their logic and laws. The logic of consciousness is the logic of ideological communication, of the semiotic interaction of a social group. If we deprive consciousness of its semiotic, ideological content, it would have absolutely nothing left.

p.15 the word functions as an essential ingredient accompanying all ideological creativity whatsoever. The word accompanies and comments on each and every ideological act. The process of understanding any ideological phenomenon at all... cannot operate without the participation of inner speech. All manifestations of ideological creativity - all other nonverbal signs - are bathed by, suspended in, and cannot be entirely segregated or divorced from the elements of speech.

p.15 This does not mean, of course, that the word may supplant any other ideological sign... every single one of these ideological signs, though not supplantable by words, has support in and is accompanied by words, just as is the case with singing and its musical accompaniment.

p.21 Every sign, as we know, is a construct between socially organized persons in the process of their interaction. Therefore, the forms of signs are conditioned above all by the social organization of the participants involved and also by the immediate conditions of their interaction. When these forms change, so does the sign.

p.22 In order for any item, from whatever domain of reality it may come, to enter the social purview of the group and elicit ideological semiotic reaction, it must be associated with the vital socioeconomic prerequisites of the particular group's existence; it must somehow, even if only obliquely, make contact with the bases of the group's material life... only that which has acquired social value can enter the world of ideology, take shape, and establish itself there... Let us agree to call the entity which becomes the object of a sign the theme of the sign. Each fully fledged sign has its theme.

p.26 The reality of the inner psyche is the same reality as that of the sign. Outside the material of signs there is no psyche... Psychic experience is the semiotic expression of the contact between the organism and the outside environment. That is why the inner psyche is not analyzable as a thing but can only be understood and interpreted as a sign.

p.26 For [Wilhelm] Dilthey, it was not so much a matter that subjective psychic experience existed, the way a thing may be said to exist, as that it had meaning.

p.28 experience could hardly come about other than in the material of signs. After all, meaning can belong only to a sign; meaning outside a sign is a fiction. Meaning is the expression of a semiotic relationship between a particular piece of reality and another kind of reality that it stands for, represents, or depicts.

p.28 A sign is a particular material thing, but meaning is not a thing and cannot be isolated from the sign as if it were a piece of reality existing on its own apart from the sign. Therefore, if experience does have meaning, if it is susceptible of being understood and interpreted, then it must have its existence in the material of actual, real signs.

p.28 not only can experience be outwardly expressed through the agency of the sign..., but also, aside from this outward expression (for others), experience exists even for the person undergoing it only in the material of signs. Outside that material there is no experience as such. In this sense any experience is expressible, i.e., is potential expression.

p.29 Any psyche that has reached any degree of development and differentiation must have subtle and pliable semiotic material at its disposal... the semiotic material of the psyche is preeminently the word - inner speech... it is the word that constitutes the foundation, the skeleton of inner life.

p.31,33 The problem of the psyche will never find a solution until the problem of ideology is solved. These two problems are inextricably bound together... The bases for the treatment of both problems must be established simultaneously and interconnectedly. We are suggesting that one and the same key opens objective access to both spheres. That key is the philosophy of sign... The ideological sign is the common territory for both the psyche and for ideology, a territory that is material, sociological, and meaningful. It is on this very territory that a delimitation between psychology and ideology should be worked out.

p.34 Every sign as sign is social

p.38 Closer analysis would show that the units of which inner speech is constituted are certain whole entities somewhat resembling a passage of monologic speech or whole utterances. But most of all, they resemble the alternating lines of a dialog.

p.39 In conclusion, then, we believe that the problem of the mutual delimitation of the psyche and ideology can be solved on the unitary territory of the ideological sign which embraces both.

p.66 Thus a synchronic system, from the objective point of view, does not correspond to any real moment in the historical process of becoming. And indeed, to the historian of language, with his diachronic point of view, a synchronic system is not a real entity; it merely serves as a conventional scale on which to register the deviations occurring at every real instant in time.

p.68 The process of understanding is on no account to be confused with the process of recognition... Only a sign can be understood; what is recognized is a signal. A signal is an internally fixed, singular thing that does not in fact stand for anything else, or reflect or refract anything, but is simply a technical means for indicating this or that object... or this or that action... Under no circumstances does the signal relate to the domain of the ideological; it relates to the world of technical devices, to instruments of production in the broad sense of the term.

p.80 any real utterance, in one way or another or to one degree or another, makes a statement of agreement with or a negation of something.

p.96 The outwardly actualized utterance is an island rising from the boundless sea of inner speech

p.99 Let us call the significance of a whole utterance its theme.

p.100 Theme is a complex, dynamic system of signs that attempts to be adequate to a given instant of generative process. Theme is reaction by the consciousness in its generative process to the generative process of existence. Meaning is the technical apparatus for the implementation of theme.

p.172 Compared with external speech, inner speech appears disconnected and incomplete.

p.179 As Volosinov asserts, everything ideological is semiotic, and every sign, as sign, is a social phenomenon.