Heteroglossia

Heteroglossia is a concept in Bakhtin's theory of language and literature describing the coexistence within a single utterance or text of multiple social voices, languages, and registers. Introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin in the early 20th century, the term is central to his broader ideas of dialogism and polyphony. Heteroglossia arises from the social diversity of language: different speech genres (slang, formal discourse, professional jargon), regional and social dialects, and ideological standpoints intersect in a single discourse, producing a texture in which no single voice has unchallenged authority.

In practice, heteroglossia means that a text contains voices that reflect distinct social groups, classes, or ideological positions, and that these voices interact, contest, and refract one another. The authorial narrator may steer the discourse, but the embedded voices retain their own tone, grammar, and worldview, generating meaning through dialogic tension rather than monologic exposition. The result is often a polyphonic texture in which readers hear competing worldviews.

Dostoevsky's novels are commonly cited as classic demonstrations of heteroglossia, with voices from criminals, clergy, officials, peasants, and intellectuals embedded within a single work. More broadly, the concept has been applied to analyze everyday speech, media discourse, and multilingual literary practices, including postcolonial and translation studies, where languages and ideologies coexist and collide in text and talk. While related to polyphony and dialogism, heteroglossia specifically foregrounds the social multiplicity and ideological contest encoded within language itself.