On Dec 12, 2007, at 2:56 AM, Tahir Wood wrote:
> But I was referring to Bakhtin's notion, which has influenced me
> enormously, that the poeticising tendency is always on the
> conservative,
> official side of language, unless it is being explicitly debunked by
> common speech. That means that poetic speech, if it appears to be
> close
> to an authorial point of view (i.e. not being debunked in any way),
> serves a conservative function.
No doubt I should read more Bakhtin, but this sounds like nonsense. While there are certainly a lot of regular people who can use language in interesting ways, a lot of popular speech is very conservative, incorporating cliches of all sorts. A lot of it now comes out of advertising slogans, and not always appropriated in resistant ways. Poetic speech often uses language in surprising ways. The quote that Carrol posted still sounds fresh and unusual after all these centuries. You have to read it two, three, many times to understand it. Why does it need to be debunked?
Doug