Dialogic criticism suggests that narrative voices are constructed by past and future voices, since narration reacts to and anticipates other voices. Narration always reflects "heteroglossia," or multiple voices. The text, according to Bakhtin and dialogic criticism, is the site of dialogic interaction between different voices and discourses, past and present, that are the products of diverse social and cultural contexts. Therefore, the text is the product of a multivalency of determinants relative to class, culture and speech community.
Bakhtin articulates his theories of the dialogic with respect to the novel, which, he argues, epitomizes the eruption of multiple voices. Bakhtin critiques the novels of Leo Tolstoy, which seek to subordinate all the characters' voices to the controlling discourse of the author; and the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, which, in contrast, liberate characters to speak and express a multiplicity of independent, varying and divergent voices and consciousnesses. Bakhtin proposes that the novel (and the text) are always constituted by a multiplicity of social voices, as characters, the narrator and the author conflict with and contend against each other.
Dialogic criticism is often associated with deconstructionist criticism, which is also concerned with the limitations of language as a mode of representation. Dialogic and deconstructionist criticism reinforce the arbitrariness of words --- of language, more broadly --- and thereby undermine language's capacity to represent or express reality. Language depends, for its meaning, upon context, which varies between persons, times and complex social discourses.