Dialogue and Creativity

The beginnings of the dialogic theory of language can be found in an early article by the Russian linguist Yakubinsky (Yakubinsky & Eskin, 1997 [1923]). Yakubinsky's work represents the first attempt to develop a theory of dialogue and dialogic interaction as the basis for the study of language. It predates the work of Bakhtin and Voloshinov on this topic, and anticipates many of their most important ideas. In brief, Yakubinsky emphasises the naturalness of dialogue and contrasts this with the artificiality of monologue. He argues that monologue is allied to power and authority, and suggests that it precludes the speaker's psychological growth, since it does not allow for any response by listeners. In contrast, dialogue is characterised by its constant interruptibility. He points out that, during the interval between one utterance and another, a participant in dialogue must simultaneously attend to their interlocutor's utterance and prepare their response. He describes this as the 'apperceptive moment' in speech reception: our understanding of another's utterance is grounded in our turn of mind, our existing mindset, which is in turn governed by the entire history of our prior experience of interaction, or 'apperceptive mass', in Yakubinsky's terms:

We may feel that 'apperceptive mass' is not a happy expression; perhaps 'complex' or simply 'stance' would be a better way to capture the idea. But the point Yakubinsky is formulating is a significant one: the degree to which two speakers' perspectives or outlooks on life are matched governs how well they understand one another, and affects (or finds expression in) the relative terseness or explicitness of their discourse. This insight essentially anticipates the concept of ‘speaker alignment’ in conversation analysis (CA) and the sociology of everyday life (Goffman, 1981).