A principle or condition of interconnecting performative differences underpinning all forms of communication according to Bakhtin, Mikhail. We cannot understand how meaning is produced, Bakhtin argues, unless we grasp that the meaning of individual words is the result of a negotiation, not only between actual speakers in dialogue with one another, but also with language itself. All language users shift and reshape the meaning of words according to the demands of their situation. Dialogism is, in this sense, an extra-linguistic function inasmuch as it is not intrinsic to words or any of the other parts of speech, yet it is also the sphere where language lives (as Bakhtin puts it) so it cannot be separated out and treated as surplus to linguistics. It is always possible, however, for language to sink back into a monologic state, such as one finds in official discourse. So it is the task of literature, Bakhtin says, to strive to produce dialogism at every level by orienting it towards anotherâs discourse with the aim of creating what he calls double-voiced discourse. Hence his interest in the carnivalesque, which by its very nature is doubly-determined: it juxtaposes the official order of things with its subversive transgression. For Bakhtin, the pinnacle of this type of writing is arrived at when the authorâs own voice disappears and the characters appear to be autonomous, as though speaking for themselves. Bakhtin first conceived of the concept of dialogism in his book on Dostoevesky, whom he considered a master of this form of writing. See also carnivalesque; heteroglossia; polyphony. Further Reading: K. Clark and M. Holquist Mikhail Bakhtin (1984). M. Holquist Dialogism (2002). D. Lodge After Bakhtin (1990).