Who Watches Over a Teacher? On Knowing and Honoring a Teacher and Her Third Listener

This article introduces a teacher as a being of relations—both internal and external—by exploring the nature of a figure of the internal plane that accompanies a teacher in her pedagogical adventure. This figure is a superaddressee, 1 1. “Superaddressee” is one of the notions introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin (1986). The term is treated in “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis,” alluded to in Valentin Voloshinov (1976), and expanded upon by Frank Farmer (2001). a third listener, who, as the author argues, should be expected to enter a classroom together with a teacher. A superaddressee plays at least two roles. First, it serves as a shortcut to a meaningful relationship and, in this role, takes care of a teacher's need to be known, as well as helps further dialogic relationships. Second, it offers a loophole from imperfect understanding and, in this role, addresses a teacher's need for noncoincidence and protection, as well as protects a pedagogical relationship from a proverbial dead end. It is argued that one of the ways for students to honor their teacher as a being of relations is to know and honor his or her superaddressee(s). In turn, a teacher is responsible for honoring her own superaddressees. In the end, both a teacher and students benefit from an enhanced relationship.