Bakhtin's "ventriloqution"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Apr 24 03:24:35 UTC 2001


At 10:58 AM -0400 4/25/01, susan wrote:
>Can any of you help with a definition of Bakhtin's "ventriloqution"
>and where he first introduces the term and defines it? I have two of
>his books as well as a bunch of Bakhtin papers and, although the
>word pops up now and again, I cannot, for the life of me, find its
>original appearance in his texts.
>Thank you very much,
>Susan Gilbert
>
>
I'm interested in the spelling.  Is it really rendered as
"ventriloqution" and not "-cution" in translations of Bakhtin?  This
doesn't seem possible to me, given the normal rules of English
orthography.  "qu" is elsewhere invariably followed by a vowel or
semivowel (as in "ventriloquy", "ventriloquist").  Cf., for example,
"eloquent" vs. "elocution".  Exceptions are always, to my knowledge,
from the commercial realm or otherwise self-conscious innovations
("qube", "qute").

larry
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