M. M. Bakhtin’s Concept of the Word in the Context of Modern Literary Criticism

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of the central problems of modern philological science – the problem of the artistic word, in the understanding of which we see the fruitful intersection and interaction of literary criticism and linguistics. The work systematizes the concepts relevant for the modern study of the artistic word, revealing its specific nature, and defines the general tendencies characteristic of each of the existing approaches (word as a sign, word as ontological significance, and word as separate aesthetic reality). The author focuses on the word concept by M. M. Bakhtin, which overcomes the extremes, characteristic of the sign and ontological approaches, and clarifies the basic differences between Bakhtin's categories of communion and dialogue. The article substantiates the definition of the artistic word as a two-vector semantic structure (the "sign" and "objective-substantial" components), in which being-communion consists and unfolds.