Bakhtin’s Dialogism and Vossler’s Stylistics

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the possible relationships between two theoretical trends of the early 20th century: Bakhtin’s dialogism and Vossler’s stylistics. Despite not mentioning Vossler’s theory in his grammar teaching notes, Bakhtin does include it in his classroom practice with some variations, which is a result of the dialogue between the two. Thus, this article aims to analyze Vossler’s theory so as to observe how Bakhtin interacts with Vossler’s concepts of grammar and style and to consider the extent to which some of these concepts are used in his classroom notes.