The Effect Of Mode On Bakhtinian Dialogism

Martin & Rose (2007: 302):

It is tempting to move at this point from a consideration of turn taking resources to engagement, and consider the effect of mode on dialogism in something closer to the Bakhtinian sense of the term. We won’t pursue this here (see Martin and White 2005 for discussion), preferring to treat engagement at this stage as a resource for construing tenor, solidarity in particular. But in doing so we don’t wish to foreclose exploration of engagement in relation to mode.

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To be clear, in terms of mode, 'dialogue' just means that a text is created by more than one speaker. Bakhtinian 'dialogism', on the other hand, is the view that all texts — regardless of mode — are 'in dialogue' with the texts that precede and follow them. From the glossary of The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin:

Dialogism is the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole — there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the moment of utterance. This dialogic imperative, mandated by the pre-existence of the language world relative to any of its current inhabitants, insures that there can be no actual monologue. One may, like a primitive tribe that knows only its own limits, be deluded into thinking there is one language, or one may, as grammarians, certain political figures and normative framers of "literary languages" do, seek in a sophisticated way to achieve a unitary language. In both cases the unitariness is relative to the overpowering force of heteroglossia, and thus dialogism.