International journal
ISSN 2311-0759 (Online)
ISSN 2311-0740 (Print)


М. М. Бахтин

An encyclopedic elucidation of speech genres (Review of the book: Balashova L. V., Dementyev V. V. Russkiye rechevyye zhanry [Russian Speech Genres]. Moscow, LRC Publishing House, 2022. 832 p. (Studia Philologica))

The monograph under review is an analysis of the modern state and perspectives of the Theory of Speech Genres development. This theory as offered and worked out by Michael M. Bakhtin belongs to a leading trend of the communication studies in Russia. The authors of the book are well known specialists in this field of the Humanities.

Saussure and Bakhtin

F. de Saussure determined rigid limits of priorities in linguistics and separated language from speech that has no system in his opinion. M. M. Bakhtin in his work «The Problem of Speech Genres» accepted the differentiation of language and speech (utterance in his system of terms) unlike V. N. Voloshinov but he considered the concentration on the problems of language insufficient and the study of speech necessary. In the field of speech he singled out the most stable component – speech genres that are set to speakers together with language.

Reformatskiy and Bakhtin on Speech Genres

The M. M. Bakhtin’s work on speech genres is wellknown. However this problem was examined by other outstanding Russian scholar A. A. Reformatskiy in his book «Technical editing of a book. Theory and method of work» published in 1933 (Bakhtin’s work was written twenty years later). Unlike Bakhtin Reformatskiy studied only a part of genres – genres of books – but his classification was more detailed and fixed main features of different genres depending on the aims of their publication.