Heteroglossia

Heteroglossia means different ‘speech-ness' or differentiated speech. A given language is not unitary but stratified; heteroglossia is a mix of languages and world views. The idea of heteroglossia is associated with the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975), who saw everyday speech as a conglomerate of ‘sublanguages', always used from a particular perspective and context and directed towards another. This draws attention to how we hear and speak.

Heteroglossia describes the stratification of language into different genres, dialects, generations or sociolects based on age group, gender, socio-grouping, discipline or profession and so on. There are languages that are tendentious and those that represent the voices of authorities, various circles and particular fashions. These different languages are appropriated in everyday speech.

Each stratification as a language within languages is historical, contextual and continually evolving. People do not remain within a given genre or other stratification. Rather, they are continually borrowing from different stratifications, each influencing the other. A group of professionals from a given discipline with their own particular jargon, for example, lawyers, engineers or doctors, will have their own technical language stratification. However, this is used in the context of everyday speech, which is made up of multiple stratifications. A particular professional or technical language mingles with everyday speech-ness so that it is not spoken as a separate entity but, rather, coalesces with other languages. Thus, professional jargon is itself influenced by values and norms across everyday languages.

These languages are socially unequal and therefore hierarchical. Each language has its own strategic intent, values and meaning. In heteroglossia, words or utterances are never neutral; their meanings are always context driven. Context in this sense refers not just to the speaker and the words used but also extends to the wider, more diffuse environment, for example, day of the week or time of day. Context in this wide sense colours the intended and created meanings of words.

Language is also ideological in the sense of advancing ideas. Every utterance reflects a separating out of a value from the past and is directed towards the future. Every utterance responds to that which was uttered previously and is coloured by the anticipated response. A response to an utterance comes from a myriad of possible responses reflecting particular values, weighting and an invitation to answer in that given moment. Everyday speech is thus imbued with the speech of others as we interact with one another.