How Much Saussure Is There in Bakhtin’s work? A Study Based on a Comment on the Translation of Rabelais into Russian

ABSTRACT This article proposes an interpretation of the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure and Mikhail Bakhtin that seeks to relate them not through an epistemological point of view, but based on a concept proposed by Henri Meschonnic, according to which one author can be linked to another without an explicit reference to an affiliation between them. The starting point is a comment made by Bakhtin about the translation of François Rabelais’ work into Russian, which Meschonnic cites in his anti-structuralist interpretation of Saussure. Finally, a reflection is made on the relevance of addressing metalinguistic comments that discuss the condition of the speaker, which can be the object of an enunciative-anthropological theorization.