Structuralism, contextualism, dialogism - Voloshinov's and Bakhtin's contributions to the debate about the "relativity" of meaning

In the 1930s lexical semantics came under the influence of Saussurean struc turalism and Gestalt psychology. The study of whole lexical fields and the structure of these fields replaced a historical semantics focusing on singl e words and the classification of the transitions between the meanings of t hese words over time according to different sets of criteria. At the same t ime contextualism, the study of meaning in its pragmatic context of languag e use began to attract the attention of linguists, philosophers, and psycho logists of language. Fully aware of the emergence of structuralism and cont extualism, Volosinov and Baxtin began to develop their theories of meaning, society and literature, later called dialogism. All three movements dealt with the relativity of meaning, as relativity in a semantic field, as relat ivity in social context, and as relativity in social interaction and dialog ue. This article demonstrates how, in a sometimes hidden dialogue with thei r Western contemporaries, Valentin Nikolaevic Volosinov (1895-1936) and Mix ail Mixajlovic Baxtin (1895-1975) developed new 'relativistic' theories of meaning, novel theories of pragmatics (speech acts), and modern theories of verbal interaction.