（in terms of both heteroglossia and polyglossia;

Abstract

T his paper investigates the dialogic relational and dialogic linguistic nature of teacher knowledge through a critique of the first 25 minutes of a recording of a lesson in a semester-long elective course for third- year Japanese university English majors on the learning and performance of formal debate where both Japanese and English were used in the learning process but the end-of-term debates were performed in English. The critique, which in part is comprised of this practitioner’ s reflective account of the lesson, demonstrates that the pedagogy used is dialogic, following and instantiating the dialogic theory of Mikhail Bakhtin （Bakhtin, 1981; 1984; 1986; 1993; but see also the work of fellow Bakhtin Circle member, Valentin Voloshinov, especially Voloshinov, 1973）. The critique also shows that the chronotope （literally time space, expressed in this paper by time/space; see also below） organizes not only literary, but also real-life

（Holquist, 2002） and pedagogical conventions for perceiving time. The chronotope is the basis of human understanding and suffuses meaning with value. I posit that knowledge of the chronotope can be a used as an educational device for enlarging the scope and depth of intercultural interpretations of utterances and therefore increasing intercultural understanding while promoting language acquisition.

Next, the paper presents a preliminary dialogical analysis framework which has been created specifically to analyse discourse, i.e. actual utterances, where more than one historico-natural （national） language interacts

（in terms of both heteroglossia and polyglossia;

see below）. The focus on utterances-in-interaction and the interaction of more than one language;

the longitudinal nature of the study; its specifically language educational aims; its interpretation and use of the chronotope （see below）; and its emphasis

on multilevel linguistic analysis differentiate the preliminary dialogical analytic model presented here from Sullivan’ s （2012） first langu age model.

Introduction

Bakhtin’ s categories in dialogic theory of heteroglossia and chronotope constitute a theory of alterity and heterotemporality （Bakhtin, 1981; see also Sandwell, 1998） and are obviously on this basis crucial for improving and expanding the intercultural knowledge and interpretive capacities of language teachers working in and under the conditions and forces of heteroglossia and polyglossia. Furthermore, since together heteroglossia and chronotope both create and realize the linguistic forms of unique unrepeatable utterances that strive to achieve their intentions and effects in and on time, they are critical components in any interpretive framework that seeks to interpret the meaning（s） and meaning potentials of classroom discourse where two or more historico-natural, or national languages （cf. “named” language in Turner &

Lin, 2017） with different worldviews inte ract.

Dialogism

Dialogism is the term Bakhtinian scholars such as Michael Holquist use to describe Mikhail Bakhtin’ s integrated anthropological philosophy and philosophy of language, and his hermeneutics. According to Holquist, then, dialogism refers to a synthetic means for categorizing Bakhtin’ s thought and his methods for investigating dialogue that is, despite the “ism,”

nonetheless capacious enough to take into account the heterogeneity of that thought and those methods

（Holquist, 2002）.

Dialogue is the master principle upon which Bakhtin builds a dialogic theory of human ontology and

Catherine Matsuo

Heteroglossia and Chronotope in Dialogic Pedagogy and as Dialogical Analytic

Framework Components for Interpreting EFL/ELF Classroom Discourse

epistemology. Bakhtin ontologizes language-dialogue, which is to say that he inscribes it into the way he understands what it is, what it means, to be human.

Thus, the dialogic nature of language is an integral constituent of and reflects the dialogic nature of human being and human knowledge.

In dialogic theory, Being is the empirical world humans live in. Human reality consists of human beings living in and responding to Being where Being is also Being-with, which is to say Bakhtin starts from the assumption that the world and other people are real and that human life consists of interacting with this world and other autonomous human subjects （cf.

Heidegger, 2010）.

The mark of the dialogic is difference that is held in a relation. This is to say that for any human capacity to be evinced, or even for any human event to occur, the presence of other human beings is essential. The self, consciousness, our multiplicity of perception and perspective taking enabled by our tripartite schema of the self （Bakhtin’ s “I-for-myself,” “I-for-the-other,” and the “other-for-me”）, our orientations, language, ideas, the very events of the lifeworld all emerge only in and through encounters with other autonomous subjects.

Those encounters, including even the encounter with oneself, take place in discourse. （The Russian word slovo （слово） has a wide semantic range in that it can mean both word and discourse; furthermore, discourse usually refers to live speech in Russian.）

It is difficult to underestimate the extent to which human being is linguistic for Bakhtin. Linguistic here means language-as-dialogue. Language-as-dialogue enters Being and affects human being through uttered discourse: “The very being of man （both external and internal） is the deepest communion. To be means to communicate [original emphasis]” （Bakhtin, 1984, p.

287）. （See Sapienza, 2004, for the history of the word

“communion” in Russian rhetorical culture of the Third Renaissance of 1917 to the end of the 1920s and its influence on Bakhtin’ s possible interpretations of, and intentions for, using this word.）

Of course, Bakhtin also uses the word dialogue in the usual way to refer to speaking and exchange in interaction, but in dialogism the dialogic principle always creates dialogic relations, which are relations of differences in simultaneity （Holquist, 2002, p. 40） . Bakhtin’ s dialogic understanding of difference should not be confused with Derrida’ s radical idea of difference. In dialogism difference is better

understood as differentiation precisely because the word differentiation indicates an idea of relation in simultaneity. Thus, Karcevskij, on the asymmetry and simultaneity of the linguistic sign: “True differentiation presupposes a simultaneous resemblance and difference” （Karcevskij, 1982, p. 51）.

A parallel process of differentiation, i.e. resemblance and difference held in a relative simultaneity （see below and also the discussion of the chronotope） happens in real life dialogue. Empirical face to face dialogue unfolds in what we think of as real time, something that is conventionally understood as unfolding, moving forward. In time as it is conventionally understood, interlocutors are present to each other simultaneously.

However, if we consider the face to face dialogue scenario in terms of time/space （i.e. the chronotope; see also below）, no one’ s “here and now” coincides exactly with another’ s. Of necessity, interlocutors are located not only in different physical positions, but also in a different time/space where their experience of time is also differential. Of necessity, these interlocutors also hold different semantic positions. To hold a different semantic position is not merely to have a different

“opinion;” different semantic positions are unavoidable and again they are a function of time: each and every person has a historico-biographically differential experience of the acquisition of language and of the various realms of culture （Bakhtin, 1993）. Heteroglot language-dialogue “reflects the heterotemporality of social existence” （Sandwell, 1998, p. 197）

At the same time, the highly evolved human

capacity for cooperation enables the speakers to

create a relation of intersubjectivity to each other. The

tension generated in the interaction “is like an electric

spark that occurs only when two different terminals

are hooked together” （Voloshinov, 1973, p. 102）. The

tensions of generating utterances also affects the

material—the words, their syntax, the tone—of the

interlocutors’ utterances. Even though the partners in

conversation are “hooked together” （which in Bakhtin’ s

terms means they enter the other’ s conceptual, or

ideological, system, where ideological refers to their

system of ideas; see discussion below）, and even if

they utter the “same” word during their conversation

or dialogue, this “same” word will never have exactly

the same meaning, because each time it is uttered it

will be occupying a different place in time and space

and because the interlocutors always hold different

semantic positions and are operating on the basis of or

through different chronotopes .

Meaning is multiple and it is continuously and minutely changing. But the interaction of speakers who are “hooked together” through their intersubjectivity, means that interlocutors create their meaning together in and through this dialogized process of intersubjectivity, where meaning is always accompanied by emotion and by value, or what Bakhtin calls “emotional-volitional tone [original emphasis]”

（Bakhtin, 1993, p. 33）. At every moment, each interlocutor suffuses their own particular historico- culturally developed （but always provisional and subject to alteration during a given interaction）, word ideas with emotion-volition.

Human meaning is co-produced, such that meaning actually inheres in “the in-between.” During the act of communication: “The speaker breaks through the alien conceptual horizon of the listener, constructs his [sic] own utterance on alien territory, against his, the listener’ s apperceptive background” （Bakhtin, 1981, p.

282）. Human ontology is dialogic because our psyches and cultures are porous.

One further important point to make about meaning and meaning making is that meaning is once-occurrent. In the tension created through intersubjectivity, meaning can only be grasped by the interlocutors at the moment of its unfolding, which is to say, as the speaker constructs their utterance “on alien territory” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 282）. The force of differentiation in simultaneity and the capacity of every linguistic sign to include and create multiple meanings means other meanings are always inherently present and/or potential in utterances.

Regarding the nature of human epistemology, for dialogism knowledge inheres in and is created by the processes and products of the myriad different forms of communication which create different kinds of knowledge each accompanied by their habitual respective values and emotional-volitional tones.

Dialogism is also therefore an architectonics, a theory of how knowledge is systematized.

Systematization takes place historically as processes ongoing in various forms of communication cohere at certain points in historical time to yield provisionally stable knowledge products. A dialogic architectonics can never be stable or fixed—finalized, in dialogic terms—because the relations of its components are always in flux. Human existence in space and time is subject to, and unfolds in the presence of,

always-embattled centripetal and centrifugal forces, respectively the centralizing forces of stasis versus decentralizing forces of change.

Bakhtin’ s dialogism investigates the workings of these forces on specific and particular human individuals. The particular individuals Bakhtin analysed were literary authours and their heroes.

Although Bakhtin would almost doubtless have analysed empirical utterances if the tape recorder had been invented in his time and/or he had had access to one in later life, the novel does provide access to “live dialogues” because novels are created contemporaneously with real life. Authours will be constructing discourses that are “structured on an uninterrupted mutual interaction with the discourse of real life” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 383）. Crucially, the novel, particularly in the hands of a highly artistic literary consciousness, reveals to us the condition of the human world and the “image” of a language.

The image of a language reveals the potential of a language, “its ideal limits and its total meaning conceived as a whole, its truth together with its limitations” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 356）. Bakhtin’ s method of dialogically analyzing the language of the novel demonstrates that language-dialogue is the paradigmatic example of human capacities and limitations that exist in, and to a great extent because of, language.

Language-dialogue in the empirical material form of the unique utterance is the arena where the workings and effects of centrifugal and centripetal forces are brought to bear: every time a person makes an utterance, both in real life and in the novel, the centrifugal and centripetal forces are brought to bear on each and every “concrete utterance of a speaking subject” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 272）. Also just as in life, the novel contains heteroglossia—the multiplicity of

“languages” that co-exist within one supposedly unitary historico- natural/national language （see also discussion of heteroglossia below）. The novel can also show polyglossia—the simultaneous presence of more than one historico-cultural natural/national language, for example, the presence of Russian and French in Tolstoy’ s novels. Both heteroglossia and polyglossia are capable of exposing both the seemingly “mythic” power of language and the limitations of language （again, see discussion below）.

In dialogism human thought （and therefore

knowledge） is also overwhelmingly constituted by

language: linguistic signs constitute both inner and outer speech. Linguistic signs are ideological. （The word ideology in Russian refers to idea systems and does not have the restricted political sense the word

“ideology” tends to have in English.） Ideas are

“sociological phenomena” （Voloshinov, 1987, p. 24）

and by this Voloshinov means not just that the content of thought consists of historico-cultural and socio-ideological signs but also that our very thought processes are “modelled in specific historico-economic and cultural systems” （Petrilli, 2014, p. 168）.

Any given speaker of a national language, then, is going to reflect aspects of that language’ s axiology in their knowledge and verbally expressed behaviour.

At the same time, it must be remembered that the specificity of every individual lies in our being a discrete biological organism as well as in our historical development as members of society, where each of us absorbs different proportions of different realms of culture （Bakhtin, 1993）. In this way, in Bakhtinian dialogism, all communication between human persons is already intercultural, even within a national language.

At the same time, human cultures and psyches are porous and so we are capable of assimilating diverse languages and chronotopes （see below）.

Heteroglossia

H eteroglossia, its related and—under certain conditions of linguistic consciousness—inter-animating concept of polyglossia, and the chronotope are three of Bakhtin’ s numerous neologisms which retain a strongly Bakhtinian flavor and are still deeply associated with their original specific theoretical context （Scholz, 1998）.

These three categories of Bakhtin’ s philosophy of language are most intensely explored in essays written mainly in the 1930s and 1940s, published in Russian in 1975, the year of Bakhtin’ s death, and published in English in 1981 as The Dialogic Imagination.

The specific theoretical context is Bakhtin’ s creation and development of a historical poetics adequate for analyzing the novel. Bakhtin regards contemporary stylistics of the novel as having in fact left out of its purview most, if not all that is significant to such a stylistics. The overhaul of stylistics requires in its turn a new conceptualization of the philosophy of language, one that is capable of dealing with “the life and behavior of discourse in a contradictory and multi- languaged world” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 275）.

Bakhtin’ s actual project then is in fact the creation and development of a dialogic linguistic and metalinguistic theory—a metalinguistics—which is capable of explicating human life and language as it really exists in all its complexity: in its concrete materiality and yet flux created over time by tiny, tiny alterations in form and content, and which is at the same time sensitive to and capable of addressing individual specificity of lived experience in what is the

“immense plurality” （Holquist, 1981, p. xx） of human beings’ experiences. Bakhtin’ s metalinguistics, which will address the world’ s contradictoriness and multi- languagedness will constitute a Galilean philosophy of language comprising heteroglossia as the main category along with the related polyglossia.

Language teachers can approach and use the concept of heteroglossia in the following ways. First, heteroglossia rendered in Russian as raznorechivost’

indicates that what we call language, and think of as being unitary is actually an ongoing dynamic state or condition of diverse “speechedness”—“a living mix of varied and opposing voices” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 49）.

Thus heteroglossia as rasnorechivost’ refers to intra- language multi-languagedness in its diversity of speech.

It is also “as close a conceptualization as is possible of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide” （Emerson & Holquist, 1981, p. 428）. Language’ s nature as a system is continually subjected to the clash of centripetal forces that try to keep the system intact and the centrifugal forces that pull the system apart. It is a mistake to conceive of a historico-natural/national language as unitary just as it is a mistake to conceive of a speaker as having an unmediated relation to “their”

unitary language. The unity of a seemingly unitary language is only ever a relative unity and to conceive of a speaker as having an unmediated relation to that unitary language is another fallacy because again, language as “a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, lies on the borderline between oneself and other. The word in language is half someone else’ s （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293）. Heteroglossia as raznorechiye refers to multi-languagedness in terms of dialogues between and among speech types （one of whose definitions corresponds to the European-North American notion of “discourses”） within a language. I also see heteroglossia as raznorechiye referring to smaller historico-social combinations of linguistic forms that Bakhtin would later call speech genres （Bakhtin, 1986）.

Polyglossia, in Russian mnogorazychie （многоязычие）,

literally “many languages,” refers to multiple historico- natural/national languages （cf. Turner & Lin, 2017, who refer to natural/national languages as “named”

languages）.

Together, heteroglossia and polyglossia explicate not only the nature, impulses, workings and effects of this multi-languaged world but should also create a Galilean linguistic consciousness. A Galilean linguistic consciousness is one which can create a perspective of outsidedness from which to view one’ s own language, and it is also capable of viewing one language through the eyes of another. Such perspectives strip away the myth of language as monolithic, and as constituting a completely unified system. They also shine a light on the myth and tyranny of a way of thinking that regards one’ s own language as being the only language or the highest one in yet another myth—

palpable, but nonetheless a myth—that sets up a hierarchy of historico-natural/national languages （cf.

Turner & Lin, 2017）. It follows, also, that if language is really merely “brute materiality” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 340）, then not only does it not contain mythical power, but it also does not contain within it an eternal and incontrovertible “truth.” （See below for the two Russian words for “truth:” pravda （правда）, and istina

（истина）. Eternal and incontrovertible truth would be istina.）

Active polyglossia achieves the most fully creative linguistic consciousness because the differences between and among historico-natural/national languages is starker and thus more conspicuous than heteroglossia’ s intra-language speech diversity of speech—again, raznorechivost’ , and intra-language dialogues among speech types—raznorechiye. Active polyglossia opens up more space between a language and the reality it supposedly represents. Also, and especially if the natural/national languages in question are linguistically, culturally, and until recently historically distant, polyglossia can more readily reveal a historico-natural/national language’ s axiology, but it is important to note that heteroglossia also is capable of achieving these operations. To repeat, both heteroglossia and polyglossia are capable of exposing the brute materiality of language which reveals both a language’ s power and its limitations.

However, heteroglossia is the central category within Bakhtin’ s dialogic linguistics and metalinguistics because it shines light on the struggles of human existence as acts carried out in language-in-（inter）

action. Throughout history, billions of us have been expressing our knowledge and identities to others and in the process, word and word-combination meanings have continuously been modifying while at the same time leaving within them “traces” of previous meanings or “sclerotic deposits” of historical intentions for those words. Over time, words and their meanings become multiple or relativized, through a process of dialogization. Heteroglossia, both in its meaning as different-, various-, or diverse-“speechedness”

or diversity of speech—raznorechivost’ , and in its meaning as a dialogue of languages or speech types

—raznorechiye—ongoing within the open eco-system of a historico-natural/national language, creates, over historical time, dialogized heteroglossia. Dialogized heteroglossia is the atmosphere or environment of the human world into which every utterance enters.

Even if an utterance turns out to be monologic, the environment it enters is always one of dialogized heteroglossia. In the atmosphere of dialogized heteroglossia, words always participate in more than one value system so monologue is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain. However, the relativizing of linguistic consciousness “in no way requires a corresponding relativizing in the semantic intentions”

of a speaker （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 324）, which intentions can be “unconditional.”

Knowledge of heteroglossia and polyglossia improve the quality and efficacy of language pedagogy because they explain the nature of language as it really exists. Heteroglossia and polyglossia expose pernicious myths surrounding language and knowledge of them should impel practitioners who have not done so already to dispense with any attitude to language learning that approaches it from a perspective of learner deficit or national language hierarchies, because heteroglossia and polyglossia, which latter is more ancient than monoglossia （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 12）, demonstrate that every culture contains in its own, supposedly unitary language, the traces of “another’ s speech in another’ s language” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 324）.

Heteroglossia as centripetal and centrifugal forces bear down on teachers’ and learners’ utterances alike and teachers should orient to learners’ utterances as a resource for building our own and our learners’

knowledge about the dynamic interrelations among

language systems （Matsuo, 2017a）. Heteroglossia in

conditions of polyglossia opens the possibility of learner

utterances having the potential to unlock latent formal

and semantic possibilities in the L2 （Matsuo, 2017a）.

Because multiple languages exist within a national language （internal heteroglossia）, there can be no one-to-one correspondence between a sign and its meaning. Autonomous linguistics is unequal to the task of interpreting meaning made by live speech because it measures significance against the background of system, which results in neutral signification and semantic fixity. According to Bakhtin （1981）, what really happens during meaning-making in live speech is that:

actual meaning is understood against the background of other concrete utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view and value judgments—that is, precisely that background that, as we see, complicates the path of any word toward its object. （p. 281）

As noted, heteroglossia is “the locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide” （Emerson &

Holquist, 1981, p. 428）. It is heteroglossia that “insures the primacy of context over text” （Emerson &

Holquist, 1981）. Context is always changing but speech genres （which I understand as shorter combinations of historico-socially established linguistic forms which in aggregate create discourse speech types）

constitute readily available but historically prior ways of resolving a social situation through historically and socially stabilized linguistic combinations in speech.

Therefore, and especially because the problem of resolving a social situation requires a future-orientation, speech genres, which were created in the past, are never wholly adequate to the task at hand and so are continually being modified.

A speech genre is a specific socially and historically constructed combination of linguistic forms that are stable-for-the-moment but always subject to change because the condition or environment of the human world is dialogized heteroglossia. Speech genres create particular views of reality （chronotopically organized meaning） for the native-speaker of a historico- natural/national language. But different historico- natural/ national languages do not construe and resolve situations in the same way precisely because of the differential influence of particular histories and cultures and the continual bringing to bear of centripetal and centrifugal forces on a natural/

national language. As noted, greater awareness among language teachers of the existence of heteroglossia

and polyglossia would explain and make it clearer how and why meaning is not chronotopically organized in the same way across different national languages, particularly, as noted above, if those languages are culturally, linguistically and until relatively recently, historically distant. In the language learning classroom, especially one that operates along the borderzones of EFL and ELF, where the teacher’ s priority is given over to trying to understand the possible meaning（s）

or meaning potentials of a student’ s utterance more than to monitoring grammatical correctness, knowledge of and alertness to heteroglossia and the chronotope are crucial components of a teacher’ s interpretive and interculturally responsive repertoire.

Chronotope

The chronotope or khronotop （хронотоп） is a category within dialogism that recognizes the necessity of time/space in human perception but refers to and emphasizes its assimilation over history by material, immediately real linguistic signs which accumulate meaning historically in a historico-natural or national language.

T h e r e a r e r ea l m s o f h u ma n a c t i v i t y o r cognition which do not require spatial and temporal determinations, for example, what Bakhtin calls the

“semantic” elements of science, art and literature

（Bakhtin, 1981, p. 257）. Also, although we use mathematical concepts to measure spatial and temporal phenomena, spatial and temporal determinations are not intrinsic to those mathematical concepts ,which are the “object of abstract cognition” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 257）.

Holquist （2002） remarks that Bakhtin is unusually and uncharacteristically explicit about his sources for the concept of the chronotope （cf. Poole, 2001）.

Bakhtin dates his first encounter with the concept of the chronotope to 1925, when he attended a lecture in Leningrad by the prominent physiologist, Alexander Ukhtomsky, on the subject of the chronotope in biology. Bakhtin’ s translation of chronotope as “time space” （rendered in this paper as time/space） shows his indebtedness to Einstein, although he does not use or conceptualize time space in the way space-time is used in Relativity Theory.

Bakhtin’ s main source for the chronotope is

Immanuel Kant. Bakhtin says he agrees with Kant’ s

definition in the Transcendental Aesthetics section

of his Critique of Pure Reason of space and time as

indispensable “forms of any cognition, beginning with elementary perceptions and representations” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 85）. However, he differs from Kant in taking them not as “ ‘transcendental’ but as forms of the most immediate reality” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 85）.

Regarding Bakhtin’ s characterization of Kant’ s definition of space and time as forms of cognition, P. Cheyne （personal communication, September 23, 2018） feels Bakhtin is being a little imprecise in his use of terms when he calls time and space “forms of ...cognition.” For Kant, according to P. Cheyne （personal communication, September 23, 2018）, “time and space are forms, i.e. modes or channels, of intuition, which are the preliminary forms that are necessary for cognition.” For Kant, these forms are transcendental, which again, for P Cheyne （personal communication, September 23, 2018） means “they are not empirically real, or more plainly put, that we neither encounter them in themselves, nor can we be sure that they exist in reality beyond us. All we can know of them is that they necessarily exist in the mind.”

Bakhtin, however, is adamant that time and space are indeed forms of the most immediate reality, as already recounted above. I think Bakhtin’ s insistence on this characterization is due not only to his intense drive always to be concrete but also shows his impatience with Kant’ s abstraction （hinted at in Concluding Remarks added to the chronotope essay in 1973, so almost 40 years after the original essay was written）, which is of course in direct conflict with Bakhtin’ s idea of the tasks of a -philosophy of live concrete utterances as human ontology and epistemology. For Bakhtin （1981）, whatever the status of the forms turn out to be, he is clear on one thing:

in order to enter our experience （which is social experience） they [the forms that allow us to endow phenomena with meaning] must take on the form of a sign that is audible and visible for us...Without such temporal-spatial expression, even abstract thought is impossible. Consequently, every entry into the sphere of meanings is accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope. （p. 258）.

The chronotope then is an essential element in constructing the ways, which is to say how we bring forth and arrange the linguistic forms, in which knowledge is to be expressed in a given utterance.

The chronotope is also a form of both social and individual knowledge in that the linguistic forms of a

particular utterance will depend, in the individual’ s case, how they as a speaker or writer have assimilated time and space so far and includes how they have experienced and/or assimilated national literatures.

An individual’ s particular and unique socialization and acculturation would constitute their historico- biographical chronotope.

Thus, as already noted, the linguistic forms of an utterance, which come pre-prepared in the ready- to-utter form combinations of speech genres and the speech types of heteroglossia, will almost certainly have to be modified as every individual calibrates moment-by-moment their apperception of the here-and- now, i.e. what counts to them as or in an event or social situation and how they want to resolve it. A person’ s historico-biographical chronotope influences how that person assesses and assigns meaning and value in the present but this chronotope is not completely decisive because the present is always inconclusive and yet-to- be-determined, and further, there will always be more than one chronotope in play. This is not just because different interlocutors will be operating on a different historico-biographical chronotope. Individuals will have various chronotopic gateways available to them to reach through in order to bring forth meaning. The very unfinalizability of speech reflects what is the

“multi-temporalized [original emphasis] texture of social existence” （Sandwell, 1998, p. 197）. It is thus that chronotope and heteroglossia account for alterity and heterotemporality （Bakhtin, 1981; Sandwell, 1998）.

Chronotope, and heteroglossia （including speech genres） are obviously intrinsically connected because assigning meaning in live speech is simultaneously assigning value （Bakhtin, 1981）. Genres are the manifestions of how the chronotope thematizes situations Furthermore, as noted above, because of the chronotope, language assimilates history; words accumulate meaning historically so that language becomes a “treasure-house of images” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 251）. Thus, in any given instance of communication, a certain conceptualization of time/space may cause an interlocutor to use a particular word with a very specific and not necessarily contemporary meaning.

Chronotope and heteroglossia materialize different understandings and ratios of time/space. Utterances are the material reality that evince the alterity and heterotemporality created by chronotope and heteroglossia.

Bakhtin is best known for using the chronotope as

a literary category but the discussion of heteroglossia above shows that one way Bakhtin was using literature was as a way to revolutionize how we understand language, not just for the purposes of more grounded and responsible literary criticism but to better understand human existence itself, and the power of language upon our lives, including its less understood limitations and its dangerous “ability” to appear mythical and sacrosanct. Similarly, therefore, literary chronotopes have more profound uses and powers beyond their ability to assimilate real historical time and space, or to show us how certain epochs understood and attached value to their own time.

Literary chronotopes literally show us how humans materialize time in space: they offer us, should we wish to inspect them, a treasure trove that displays the material traces of past meanings in the linguistic sign and also material evidence of the traces and effects of other natural/national languages. To add Voloshinov’ s insights, words in literature show “the generation of language itself....the reflection of the social generation of word in word itself” （Voloshinov, 1973, p. 158）. Literary chronotopes show us the nature of our linguistic human reality and knowledge.

Renfrew （2015, p. 125）, says Bakhtin “invites us to draw a parallel between the chronotope’ s ability to

‘materializ[e] time in space’ and the fundamentally chronotopic nature of language as a phenomenon in which time is already and always inscribed.” But I would go further and say Bakhtin is not so much inviting us as urging us to do so in order that we can be more clear-headed about how language creates and uses knowledge, which always comes attached with value, and he wants us to be less in thrall to the power it has over us if we see language as something

“indisputable or sacrosanct” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 332）.

In fact, Bakhtin is calling for a revolution not just in the disciplines of stylistics and linguistics but in the way all of us understand and use language. Bakhtin chooses to analyse the novel precisely because it expresses a “Galilean perception” of language （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 360）. Heteroglossia and the chronotope in the novel can show us the possibility of achieving greater freedom of linguistic consciousness （and he is talking below about European language-cultures, but the same principles apply to language-cultures in other parts of the world）, even though that consciousness is “surrounded by a single [national] language, and [is] in the midst of [other] national languages that are

surrounded by a single culture （Hellenistic, Christian, Protestant）, or by a single cultural-political world （the Hellenistic kingdoms, the Roman Empire and so forth”

（Bakhtin, 1981, p. 367）.

Dialogic analytical frameworks

P aul Sullivan （2012） has developed a sensitive and clear dialogical approach to qualitative data analysis.

Although I make use of some of his work here, this is confined chiefly to his adaptation of Weber’ s notions of bureaucracy and charisma in qualitative research

（see below）. In fact, I purposely read only the first few pages of Sullivan’ s book in the several years since it was published because I wanted to develop a unique framework based on my own understanding of dialogic theory which I could tailor specifically to the analysis of interactions in language classrooms where more than one language （in terms of both heteroglossia and polyglossia） is present.

Sullivan （2012） looks to Bakhtin’ s own analyses of literary works in order to find a guide for how to proceed in a dialogical approach to qualitative analysis

（see below for my account of Bakhtin’ s own dialogic analyses and framework）. Sullivan’ s reading of Bakhtin results in his using genre, emotional register, time-space elaboration, e.g. chronotopic shifts, context, direct and indirect speech, double-voiced discourse, the insertion of invented utterances into an analysis and the application of Bakhtin’ s notion of carnival （cf.

Sandwell, 1998）.

It should be clear from my multi-language focus, and my description of heteroglossia and chronotope above, that I will focus much more than Sullivan does on various levels of linguistic analysis, including analysis at the level of the single word and short, linguistic form combinations of speech genres. My focus is also different because I am interested in empirical （not invented） interactions, and on using heteroglossia and the chronotope to understand the greater degree of heterotemporality, caused by heteroglossia, polyglossia and chronotopes, that is present in language education classrooms, and how an understanding of this should enhance language learning processes and language acquisition processes over time. I am interested above all in the dialogic interrelationships of discourse （as indeed was Bakhtin）

and how these may be affected by the presence of

more than one language.

Bakhtin carries out several dialogical analyses of excerpts of literary works in his book of essays published in English as The Dialogic Imagination

（1981） and in his book on Dostoevsky, Problems of Dosotevsky’ s Poetics （1984）. The preoccupation with the dialogic quality and capacities of discourse is a constant throughout Bakhtin’ s life and analyses of verses from Alexander Pushkin appear repeatedly, from his earliest works （Bakhtin, 1990; 1993）.

Bakhtin uses literary characters’ utterances to each other （as they appear within the single utterance of a written novel） or their interior dialogues to a distant or imagined other to demonstrate the dialogic quality of language when it becomes embodied and uttered as discourse. A single utterance may contain more than one point of view; half of a person’ s speech is made up of other people’ s words （Bakhtin, 1981）; rejoinders react so intensely to other persons’ words that someone’ s discourse will suck “in to itself the other’ s replies, intensely reworking them” （Bakhtin, 1984, p. 197）.

Bakhtin also asks us to imagine a dialogue between two persons where the utterances of the second speaker are “taken out” but in such a way that they do not affect the “dialogue’ s” general sense.

Although the second speaker’ s words are not present,

“deep traces left by these words have a determining influence on all the present and visible words of the first speaker” （Bakhtin, 1984, p. 197; see also Sullivan, 2012）.

Bakhtin is interested in dialogic interrelationships:

“discourse from the point of view of its relationship to someone else’ s discourse” （Bakhtin, 1984, pp. 200- 201）. The goal of his metalinguistics—the study of the entire sphere of dialogue—is to study dialogic interrelationships between utterances. From this perspective, the taxonomy of dialogic interrelationships of discourse that Bakhtin presents in the Dostoevsky book （1984, p. 199） is extremely helpful even though he characterizes the taxonomy as being “somewhat abstract in character.”

It is necessary before proceeding to repeat Bakhtin’ s assertion that the meaning of a unique and unrepeatable embodied utterance cannot be grasped beyond the moment in which the meaning was made

（Bakhtin, 1993; see also above）. A dialogical analysis of utterances, then, can only be an analysis of possible simultaneous meanings and meaning potentials; it can never tell us the definitive, “once and for all” meaning of an utterance because once and for all meanings do

not exist.

A dialogical analysis can interpret possible meanings and meaning potentials by relating the actual linguistic forms used in the particular utterance to the following factors that impact meaning making in language-dialogue: meaning making occurs only between socially developed persons, who mutually recognize signs by virtue of their socialization; it operates on the boundaries or along the borderzones of semantics and pragmatics; the dialogical nature of language means that a single utterance is not only capable of addressing multiple present and non-present addressees but can also hold within it multiple voices;

and different kinds of dialogic interrelationships can enter into the internal construction of discourse.

An analysis should proceed only once the utterance has been exposed “as a contradiction-ridden, tension-filled unity of two embattled tendencies in the life of language” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 22）, which is to say the centripetal and centrifugal forces that operate on language-discourse.

Transcription Notation

The transcription which appears here strives to reach a workable balance between the degree of detail and the readability of the text that it affords.

In common with many other qualitative researchers, the transcription notation used here is derived from the most widely used system in Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis, the Jefferson system of transcription notation （Jefferson, 2004; see also Atkinson & Heritage, 1984）.

I do not use all the symbols in Jefferson’ s full system because much of the immediacy of the utterances would get lost. The transcription notation is designed to capture and convey both what was said and how it was said. Note the difference between underlined words or parts of a word and words written in capitals. Respectively the underline denotes a raise in volume which is caused either by normal syllable stress or because when I use English I am using what is, for the students, an L2, so I raise the volume- stress to make a word clearer, easier to distinguish and thus more intelligible and comprehensible.

However, where a word appears in the transcript in

block capitals, this means that the word is stressed

because it is heard as being marked by a degree of

emotion. As has been noted above, in dialogic theory

emotion-volition accompanies all utterances and there is always a degree of tension between interlocutors, registered in our psycho-physiognomy. A word written in capitals indicates that there is an increase of emotion beyond the normal level of emotional- volitional tension. The particular emotion that is being felt cannot be transcribed, of course, and nor can it be determined by the analyst with a high degree of accuracy. Where pertinent, I will use my memory and written reflections, and also “simply” listen again to the recordings to try to determine what the emotion was, but with the following caveats: the once-occurrent nature of the making of a meaning coupled with the fallibility of memory and the impossibility of knowing for sure exactly what a self, and even more so another self, is or was feeling or their motivations for a given utterance will always cause difficulties in determining emotions precisely, at the time and/or after the fact.

The decision was taken in this study not to use video, meaning that much valuable data is not available. Again, a compromise had to be made; this time the compromise was between richness of data and the desire for the research not to interfere with the education going on in the classroom and the

“eventness” of the classroom, which is created by spontaneous, genuine utterances. I felt that if a video was used we would become more self-conscious and this would interfere too much with my pedagogical acts and with the students’ responses and their desire and/or willingness to make them.

Transcription notation key

（0． 4） A number inside brackets denotes a timed pause. This is a pause long enough to time and subsequently show in transcription.

[   ] Square brackets denote a point where overlapping speech occurs．

（  ） The words were too unclear to transcribe.

_Underlined words or part of a word denotes a raise in volume or emphasis

CAPITALS Where capital letters appear it denotes emphasis created by emotion-volition : Colons represent elongated speech， a stretched sound

Key moments in data

Sullivan, adapting Weber （Sullivan, 2012） notes that there are two tendencies in qualitative analysis:

the bureaucratic and the charismatic. To sum these up we could say that the bureaucratic is the tendency to try to proceed in the manner of the positivist science that is conducted in the natural sciences, e.g. being objective, following rules and procedures, carrying out systematic and exhaustive treatment of the data, achieving verifiability of the data, and using an impersonal style. The charismatic, in brief, would be behaviours that damage or destroy the scientific rigour of the analysis, e.g. using language in a way that gives weight to the data that it does not have.

Sullivan （2012） makes the important claim that both the bureaucratic and the charismatic tendencies have a part to play in a dialogical analysis. For example, the transcription notation system used is bureaucratic because it strives for rigour and its widespread use speaks to its reliability and validity.

On the other hand, all discourse, even positivist scientific discourse, comes from an embodied position, which is why I initially wanted to put the phrase

“being objective” （above） in quotation marks. The charismatic tendency is an inevitable function of our location as subjects in a unique place and time with unique biographies, so expressing ourselves by using an impersonal style to project objectivity could conversely and somewhat ironically instead be construed as disingenuousness.

Bakhtin himself is always interested in the overall

“bigger picture,” which is that the state of the human world is dialogic and the atmosphere into which every utterance enters is dialogized heteroglossia. As noted above, any analysis of an utterance would first of all have to expose it （any utterance） “as a contradiction- ridden, tension-filled unity of two embattled tendencies in the life of language” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 272）, which is to say the centripetal, unifying forces and the centrifugal forces of heteroglossia that try to decentralize a unitary language （see above）.

If we expose the contradiction-ridden unity of an utterance, we are forced to make a distinction, as Bakhtin and the Russian language do, between the kind of truth（s） that a dialogical qualitative analysis can reveal. Russian has two words for truth: pravda

（правда）, and istina, （истина）. A dialogical analysis

will generally deal with pravda, since this indicates

subjective or personal truth, a sense of being correct, as in “not mistaken,” and it also contains an ethical element of being right—just or justified. Istina, on the other hand, is a cosmic truth, one that is eternal and incontrovertible, and therefore less likely to emerge from a dialogic analysis than pravda. That said, however, Bakhtin does use istina to describe the kind of truth that is born between people [original emphasis]

collectively searching for truth. What I say next has no intention of commenting on whether the Hebrew and Christian Bible is an eternal and incontrovertible truth but simply attempts to give more of the flavor or ring of istina: istina, rather than pravda, would tend to appear in Russian translations of “truth” which appear in the Bible （see Sapienza, 2004）.

One juncture where the charismatic tendency in qualitative research cannot really be avoided is in the choice of what Sullivan calls “key moments” （Sullivan, 2012, pp. 72-73）. Some kind of reduction of the data is always necessary in a qualitative approach and this can be done by choosing significant utterances.

The criteria I used for choosing among my data are as follows:

・What I noted as cogent in my written reflections on a class;

・What I remember as I listen to a recording, including what a suddenly retrieved memory causes me to anticipate as an upcoming event in the lesson;

・What seems cogent in the context of the entire lesson （and which may or may not align with the contents of a particular lesson plan）;

・What seems to be cogent because a student refers to it in an e-mail, or in person to me after a particular class;

・What turns out to be cogent because it is taken up again in subsequent lessons;

・Chronotopic factors: When and how a word’ s meaning modifies over time, e.g. as happens when a word that seems to have “disappeared”

reappears in a subsequent lesson and its necessarily different coordinates in time and space require that a different relevant set of time/space coordinates must be deployed to interpret it;

・Chronotopic data interpretation: the volume of the data was too great for it to be transcribed within a short period of time; each subsequent new interpretation involves different time/space coordinates, and therefore re-evaluations of data.

Before proceeding further, I need to note the following points. First, on a point of procedure, I did not, except on one occasion, listen to the recordings after class, and even on the one occasion where I did listen to the recording, I did not listen to the entire lesson. My reason for not listening to the recordings after class was that I did not want a recording to influence what I taught in the following class, but wished to proceed through the lessons of a syllabus as teachers usually do, i.e. by using records and reflections of a lesson to create the lesson plan for the following lesson.

The second point is a caveat. Part of my data involves student e-mails. However, I do not always find all of these e-mails to be reliable data in terms of telling me “truth,” （pravda, a subjective truth）. This is because I requested students to e-mail me after each class. My motivation in asking this of them was to find out their particular understanding （their personal truth, or pravda） of what had happened in the class and their appraisal of it. Some students unfortunately but understandably interpreted my request chiefly in terms of their having to do a homework. Sometimes, then, I felt some students were being perfunctory:

they sent me an e-mail in order to be considered as a student who had completed the homework. I felt the perfunctory nature of some e-mails （judged from their content and the timing of their arrival in my in-box）

compromised the content as data and this feeling on my part affected how much weight I gave to particular students’ e-mails regarding what they considered cogent in a class. My prioritizing my own feelings in this way is of course indicative of a charismatic research tendency. On the other hand, sometimes students asked questions or made comments that I felt genuinely compelled to respond to, suggesting to me that the student in question was not simply dutifully doing a homework but was actively engaging with me in a dialogue, which is what, ideally, a homework should be.

Finally, a caveat to the preceding caveat: the

passage of time and the occurrence of particular

events may render an e-mail that I had previously

considered merely perfunctory to subsequently appear

cogent.

Key moment in context

The text I will focus on as a key moment is taken from the second lesson of the debate course. In some ways, this second lesson was actually the first debate lesson proper because the chronologically first lesson featured a talk from one of the alumni of the university whom I had met a day or two before. This person agreed to come and talk to the class about their experience of work. （I considered preparation for the world of work to be an integral part of my debate course.） I then asked our guest to tell me if what they had learned in this course when they took it the previous year had turned out to be useful in working life.

It was only towards the end of this chronologically first lesson that I turned towards the students in the present course. A current student, Alice （a pseudonym） said: I cannot accept the opinion that you should never smack [children]. （This utterance had its roots in the first semester when we had studied intra- group communication and one of the topics had been the corporal punishment of children.）

I knew at this moment that I had found an organic entry into debate for the following week’ s lesson. By organic, I mean that I could seemingly naturally call on Alice the next week and ask her if she could recall what she had said the previous week regarding hitting children, or else ask another student if they could recall what Alice had said. （I regard this natural-seeming request for recall as a technique of dialogic pedagogy because it renews or breathes new life into utterances which might otherwise seem to be

“dead,”—forgotten— even though no word ever dies according to dialogic theory specifically, because of the chronotopic nature of language.）

My intention for the lesson was going to be to focus on “cannot accept” and use it to discuss the difference between discussion, which the students had learned about and carried out in the first semester, and debate. I wanted to draw attention to the possible social consequences of the phrase “cannot accept.”

I intended to ask Alice whether her feelings about smacking were strong enough for her to want to make a change in the Japanese law so that the smacking of children by their parents or guardians would become illegal. If she were to reply in the affirmative, or even if she replied in the negative, I would then have found a way to talk about the rationale for carrying out a

policy debate, which is of course to make a change in the law subsequent to deliberation on a question, which in debate terms is a motion, resolution or a proposition. If the students’ concentration was not yet flagging by this time but they were still willing to hear some more theory, I also intended to review with the students the Habermasian Western European/North American concepts of private and public sphere, which they had studied briefly in their first year.

However, this is not what happens. I go into class and decide to start by re-asking the students’

consent to use their utterances in my research. To make it clear what this means in terms of real world consequence, what will actually happen if they give consent, I say that, for instance, in my upcoming conference presentation I might use Alice’ s utterance of “I cannot accept the opinion that you should never smack”—I might include it in a PowerPoint presentation. I therefore do use Alice’ s utterance again in this lesson, but not for the purposes of my original intentions of: 1） distinguishing between debate and discussion; 2） introducing policy debate and the reasons for it; and 3） discussing the Western European/North American conceptualizations of the public and private spheres. Of course, I can still make use of Alice’ s utterance again later, and arguably, if I do so it will be re-used more efficaciously because it will already have been freshly “renewed” in the students’ minds.

The students give their consent to my request

to be able to use their utterances in my research

and some of them, like Alice, seem, to be wondering

why I am asking again when they already gave

their consent in the first semester. Thinking about

my upcoming presentation at a US conference on

Intercultural Communication （see Matsuo, 2016）, the

subject of Intercultural Communication reminds me

that the previous day, I had taught an Intercultural

Communication seminar class and my mind jumps

briefly to recall that class’ s contents. I tell the debate

class that in yesterday’ s seminar class （which some of

the students in this debate class also attend） we talked

about the influence of culture on language, by which

I mean how a culture lays down what one generally

says in various situations—not, at this point anything

to do with the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis but

rather a cultural script of a sort that elicits the use

in the L1 of speech genres or the speech types of

heteroglossia.

I do not elaborate at all at the outset on what I mean by “the influence of culture on language,”

however, and two minutes into the lesson, I ask Junko

（a pseudonym） because she looks unsure: “Do you think we talked about that, Junko, or do you think we didn’ t talk about that?” There is a pause—Junko is unsure. But during this pause another student who takes the class is nodding vigorously to affirm that we did indeed study the influence of culture on language and when I then repeat the question, Junko also agrees that this is in fact what happened. She perhaps had not been able to make out the English word forms of the question, or else she was not sure what I meant by “culture influences language” because of course, those three words are carrying a huge weight and breadth of culturally particular and discourse-specific knowledge and information and worded this way it is understandably too much of a shorthand for her to be sure she has got my meaning. So although it is not clear at this point why Junko could not immediately answer my question, by the time I repeat the question she answers in the affirmative: we did talk about the influence of culture on language. I should say that I am using this shorthand because this is what we often do（see the use of “China” and “Japan” in the text analyzed below） when we communicate. But also I use a shorthand because in my mind, “culture influences language” was a summary of what I had taught and a theoretical abstraction for the concrete examples we had discussed. And indeed, as I have noted, one student had immediately recognized what I meant by this, understanding and affirming that the “shorthand”

summarized the theme of the previous day’ s lesson.

Here is an excerpt from minutes 2 to 4 of this episode in the class. It turns out that I actually initially repeated “the influence of culture on language” and I wrote it on the board.

Excerpt

1. Teacher: Do you think we talked about that, Junko, or do you think we didn’ t talk about that?（5.00）

2. S:o in my opinion—yeah—w:e tal:ked yesterda:y in the seminar about the influence

3. of culture on language （0.2） ri:ght? （0.3）

YEA:H? OK. SO...{further talk occurs}

4. 　　　did we study that?

5. Junko: We didn’ t study directly but （0.4） the study （0.2） from yesterday lead to the

influence

6. 　　　of culture on language

It turns out, then, that my talk here does cause a give-and-take （for the seminar students involved here, at least） between lower-level thinking skills of concrete examples and higher level thinking skills of abstraction and categorization. This is also the start of a very rich dense fabric of discourse being created in the back and forth with the students, and in the weaving back and forth between different points in the past and the present.

Next, I proceed to create utterances about cultures’ influence on languages, how different cultures see and act on the world, and how the old target in language learning of the idealized native speaker is now being replaced by the target of Intercultural Speaker （see, for example, Byram, 1997）. I start moving through these points as conversationally as I can （asking genuine questions, not just “pedagogical”

or “display” ones, and also asking for and receiving student comments）. In doing so, I have a number of pedagogical intentions: 1） I am getting the seminar students to recall the previous day’ s lesson and thereby strengthen their understanding of it—I am hoping to make it at once more “concrete” and relevant by its being renewed, by being brought alive again; 2） by recalling the lesson of the day before that some of the students here had experienced, I am also figuring that I am getting the interest of the others, the interest of people who are not in my seminar but know they are “coming in in the middle of something”

that is already underway and therefore human curiosity （as much—or perhaps more—about what their fellow students are learning in their seminars as about the seminar’ s intellectual content） means these students in this class who are not in my seminar will want to know what their peers are studying and therefore they will listen to what we （I and the seminar students） are talking about—because we are having a conversation here; 3） I am using a chance to indirectly—in the sense that it is not the topic of the course, which is debate—teach students something about language, what it is and what it does; and 4） I am providing input that is not just comprehensible （see Krashen, 1982）, but interesting （I can discern this from the students’ faces and I can feel it when I listen to the recording）, and in which they are interested

—they have a stake: the ideal of an Intercultural

Speaker is more attainable, more liberating than the unattainable, because non-existent, target of idealized

“native-speaker.”

On the basis that the talk is interesting, meaningful and that the students have a stake in it, I posit that the “input” here is available for acquisition.

A dialogic pedagogy humanizes the social scientific discourse of traditional Applied Linguistics. What Applied Linguistics terms “comprehensible input”

should in reality be live words that someone actually and sincerely speaks: there is a voice, the quality of turning to someone, the tension of intersubjectivity, the emotional enrichment of “input”—these are the qualities that create and enhance “comprehensible input”—words become live and propulsive and pedagogy needs to use more of them.

Whether any or all of my intentions are communicated, or whether the students make the connections in their own minds that I am hoping they will make is not determinable at this point in the flow of events, and indeed, we can never really know exactly what gets communicated, or rather what meanings may have been made. We will get a better idea of, but cannot ever know for sure exactly what meanings were communicated, when we get the students’ responses. Those responses may be the ones they give immediately and/or they may respond later, including to themselves in inner dialogue, so perhaps not in outer speech to me. And/or they may respond in the e-mails I ask them to write to me after class or at least before the next week’ s class. Perhaps they will respond a year or more from now.

Account of context examined using dialogic theory

In dialogic theory, I can be certain that these utterances of mine will be responded to if my utterances are genuine and alive—if my discourse here is “living word” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 276）. What I cannot ensure, of course, is that I will be there to hear their responses or that their responses are what I would have intended when addressing the utterance to them.

（But even if a response to me did not match my intention for it when trying to convey a meaning, an unexpected response often triggers a learning moment for both the student and myself because we will be forced to ask new questions and perhaps encounter a new or different chronotope.）

In Bakhtin’ s thought, “the living utterance...

cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogical threads, threads woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance”

（Bakhtin, 1981, p. 276）. In the utterances I make in these first 15-20 minutes of the class, I talk with the students about my knowledge and they are engaged conversational partners. The dialogical threads we brush up against as I talk about a number of specific, concrete ways in which culture influences language are the contents of our individual, but also socio- ideologically developed “conceptual system” （Bakhtin, 1981, p. 284）.

In the first 15-20 minutes of the lesson, I use cognitive linguistic cross-cultural examples from both Japanese and English such as colour recognition and naming parts of the body, and the cultural scripts of speech genres used in particular social situations. I also use an intercultural example of a communication failure between Japanese and English speakers. As I talk, I am imagining, and with reason, in accordance with dialogic linguistic and metalinguistic theory, what

“living dialogical threads” of the students’ knowledge and understanding the discourse is activating, and thus making their listening active（see below）.

I will go on to talk, as I have just noted above,

about a communication failure that happened in an

instance of intercultural communication because

of what I had described to the students in terms

of cultural blind spots. To make my explanation of

cultural blind spots more concrete I told them about

a native-speaker of English apologizing to a Japanese

person using the cultural script of English apologies,

i.e. explaining the events and reasons that led up to

or caused the difficulty. （In hindsight, my example

certainly gained the deep interest and attention of the

students but the example was less an illustration of a

blind spot than an exchange of incompatible cultural

scripts.） In a Japanese cultural script, what counts

as an apology is the correct use of speech-genre

specific words for apologies and importantly, using

the appropriate body language for apologies. Japanese

are concerned to fulfill apologies in this way, and not

by giving an account: in a Japanese cultural script for

apology, “reasons” on the contrary sound like merely

self-serving excuses that end up negating the sincerity

of the apology. Japanese and English apologies have

different chronotopic histories and therefore organize

meaning differently. （This is not to say, however, that