Sunday, 31 January 2021

Misunderstanding The Mode Distinction Between Monologue And Dialogue

Martin & Rose (2007: 301-2):
Even where a response is not expected, as in prayers and various forms of public address, an interlocutor may be invoked as in Helena’s quoted prayer for example:
And both Mandela and Lingiari exhort an audience in their speeches, without giving up the floor:

Written discourse can also imitate dialogue, for rhetorical effect, as when Tutu asks a question, then answers it himself; or when Mandela replaces a mistaken proposition with its contradiction:

For something virtually monologic we probably need to turn to the Act, where propositions and proposals are enacted as performed. There is no right of reply:

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the mode distinction between monologue and dialogue is the distinction between a text being created by one speaker and a text being created by more than one speaker. Each of these texts is a monologue, in terms of mode, because each is created by one speaker, namely: Helena, Lingiari, Mandela, Tutu and Mandela respectively.

[2] To be clear, these examples misrepresent the original texts by placing the speakers (material order) in the texts they project (semiotic order), as if they were characters in a play, further demonstrating the inability of Martin & Rose to distinguish different orders of experience.

[3] To be clear, since 'enact' and 'perform' are synonyms, this is, at best, a tautology.

[4] To be clear, a 'right of reply' is irrelevant to the mode distinction between monologue (single-authored text) and dialogue (multi-authored text). In this instance, what is true is that, in terms of Hasan's original model, the graphic channel does not afford process sharing; see previous post.

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