The Concept of Apperceptive Background in Bakhtin: a Dialogue with Yakubinsky

Abstract

This article takes an epistemological approach to examine the concept of the apperceptive field, or apperceptive background, based on the texts of Mikhail Bakhtin, considering its possible genesis in the work On Dialogic Speech by Lev Yakubinsky (2015 [1923]) and the interrelations of this formulation with other aspects of the dialogical perspective of language. The study is justified by its contribution to a deeper understanding of Bakhtin’s intellectual influences and to broader theoretical developments within the Bakhtin Circle. This bibliographic research draws primarily on Discourse in the Novel, The Problem of Speech Genres, and Dialogues I and II, works from distinct phases of the Russian thinker’s intellectual production. While the former addresses the novel as a genre, the latter works focus on the theory of speech genres. The results reveal a conceptual expansion in relation to Yakubinsky’s notions of perception and apperception; the apperceptive background emerges as a reference to the addressee’s socially and historically shaped knowledge and experience; and connections between this concept and various elements of Bakhtin’s theoretical universe, such as addressivity, responsive understanding, heterodiscourse, dialogism, extralocalization, and evaluative horizon.