VOLOSHINOV’S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE: SIGNAL, SIGN, LANGUAGE, AND VERBAL INTERACTION

Abstract

In the 1920s, when Saussure's structuralism dominated linguistics around the world, the young Soviet linguist V. N. Voloshinov developed a completely different approach based on his thesis of the semiotic nature of all ideological phenomena. Voloshinov’s ideas become the basis for overcoming structuralism, which is of static and mechanical nature, to form a dynamic and dialectic approach to social phenomena, paving the way for many theories that revolutionize social sciences and humanities in general, linguistics in particular, including pragmatics and discourse theory. In its turn, the theory of discourse and discourse genres lead to new perceptions of literature. These are the points this paper wants to present so as to affirm Voloshinov’s theoretical importance in the afore-mentioned fields.