Q.What time will you be home tonight?
A. As soon as I can.
(acquiescent)Q.What time will you be home tonight?
A.Time is in your throat but you cannot swallow it.
(poetic: reflective, not totally functional)Q.What time will you be home tonight?
A.What time will I be home tonight?
(repeating the question instead of giving an answer)All these mini-dialogues represent different types of social interaction,
alternative ways in which dialogue can be dialogic. If we try to imagine
these as exchanges which might take place in the middle of a play, there are
three important points to be made. First, there is the degree to which the
exchange suggests a realist genre of writing. Most of them do. But the reply
‘Time is in your throat but you cannot swallow it’ is more poetic and less
realist than the others. It is not the kind of reply you would expect to hear
in everyday life, and implies a type of writing which focuses on inner
rather than outer realities. Second, there may be emotional investments or
power struggles embedded even in a very simple exchange. For example,
when the answer to the question ‘What time will you be home tonight?’ is
‘What do you think?’ there is an attempt to evade the question and push it
back on to the questioner in a bullying fashion. More seems to be implied
here than a simple question and reply. There is a context beyond the ques-
tion, to do with the relationship and balance of power between these two
people, which is impacting on the exchange. Third, the exchange may
demonstrate low or high levels of communication, or may fall anywhere
between those two extremes. In other words, dialogue may not always be
dialogic in the sense of enhancing social interaction: sometimes it may
inhibit or displace it.
For Exercise 1 try doing this for yourself. Make up any question and
then create a range of responses to it. Construct extra types of response
from the ones I have created. If you feel inclined to do so, develop one of
the exchanges into a more lengthy dialogue.
REALISM RETREATS
Exercise 2 asks you to create two pieces of dialogue, one which is realist
and one which is non-realist: the second could be a rewrite of the first. In
Dialoguing 113