p.4 We must now view everything (every 'thing') relationally, as
an internal 'part' of a particular, dynamically developing, complexly intertwined, and possibly contradictory, living
whole, a whole within which we ourselves are involved.
p.10 We must think of ourselves as living in a new world, a world within
which time rather than space takes precedence, a world of momentary events rather than of enduring things, events of inter-relation.
Where, in such a world as this, each momentary event, to an extent, is a first time occurrence, a world of beginnings and
beginnings and beginnings, a world in which the continual creation of novelty is routine.
p.13 "consciousness becomes consciousness," Voloshinov (1986) claims, "only
in the process of social interaction"
p.13-14 Thus, initially at least, rather than individuals
consciously or tacitly drawing upon any inner picture (of language as a structured object) to give shape to their utterances,
he suggests (as we have 14 already seen) that "the immediate social situation and the broader social milieu
wholly determine – and determine from within, so to speak – the structure of an utterance" (p.86). In
other words, rather than acting out of any already existing inner plans or structures, we
responsively act into a surrounding situation, partially at least, in an immediate, spontaneous, unself-conscious
and unself-controlled way. We answer without any prior thought in a bodily responsive way to 'its' calls, we act
according to 'its' requirements. And furthermore, should others around us question us, as we become sensitive to the nuances
around us to which we are sensitive, we can give others reasons for so responding. We can refer them, not to matters of linguistic
structure, but to how our expressions were interwoven into our other actions which were interwoven, in their turn, into their
particular surrounding circumstances... it is the prototype of a way of thinking and not itself the result of
thought... But it is just this – our unremitting involvement in a ceaselessly unfolding flow of relationally-responsive
activity of one kind or another, spontaneously originating in the active relations occurring between ourselves and the others
and othernesses in our surroundings – rather than anything in our individual consciousnesses, that Voloshinov takes
as his starting point.
p.15 "any true understanding is dialogic in nature"
p.26-27 Conclusions We have, then, moved into a new
world. Instead of world of externally related parts only in mechanical motion, i.e., in motion from one place
to another, we have moved into a world in a very different kind of motion. Instead of a world of things and
substances, we find ourselves as having our being within a living world of internally related, dialogically structured
events, events with their own unfolding, inner movement. Within the unfolding of such dialogically-structured events,
other events (events which are other to each other), play into each other in a complexly 'orchestrated'
movement to create further, such new and unique events. And, in the inner movement within
such events, rather than the mere locomotion of a set of constant, externally related parts into a new configuration,
we have – at least for a moment – a metamorphosis of a wholistic event into new whole, i.e.,
there is a complex movement in which, in the intertwining of events, a new dynamic form is created.
p.29 Voloshinov treats us as living and acting in a single,
dynamically unfolding, still developing world. Thus, rather than a world of separate, externally related parts, it
is a world articulated into a set of internally related, participant parts, all responsively
playing out their relations to each other.
p.30 the living whole itself owes aspects of its character to its (dynamic)
relations to its surroundings
p.30-31 what we do by our use of such words as mind and
matter, is to draw each other's attention, not to clues indicative of its hidden workings behind appearances,
but to the dynamic workings of the relationally-responsive, two-way processes of involvement, readily
sensed as functioning in the dynamically unfolding relations between us and our surroundings. Our expressive use
of words is simply a refinement of such unfolding processes as these.
p.31 In other words, in our responses to events in our surroundings, we
are always already going beyond the immediate situation, to respond to it not only in terms of its connections and relations
to other aspects of its surroundings, but also in terms of its openings to what-is-yet-to-be-achieved within it.
p.32 the traditions existing between us are never
monolithic in their systematicity, but, in being dynamically unfolding, dialogically-structured, indivisible wholes,
they always contain still as yet unrealized possibilities.
p.34 Wittgenstein... remarked that "when you are philosophizing
you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there"
