You may want to make one of the participants adopt low status initially,
while the other adopts high status. Bear in mind that the balance of power
in any such struggle can easily change, within a few exchanges.
THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNICATION
Exercise 4a asks you to create a dialogue which progresses from low levels
of communication through to high levels of communication, or vice versa.
Most domestic and global problems are created by ineffective com-
munication, whether deliberate or unconscious. Communication between
friends, nations and different cultures, and within families and institu-
tions, is often unsatisfactory, sometimes to a catastrophic extent. War
signals the ultimate breakdown of communication: the substitution of
weapons for words. With respect to smaller-scale social interactions, com-
munication may be rather one-sided. One participant may dominate the
conversation, for example, by pouring out personal revelations without
leaving much room for similar confessions from the listener. On the other
hand, when two participants are communicating well they are in ‘call and
response’ mode. The dialogue is mutually interactive, genuinely dialogic,
so both participants feed ideas to each other. Questions are asked to elicit
significant information and increase understanding; answers are given
which can then be the source of further questions. In this kind of dialogue
there will normally be a progression, because each call will build upon the
previous response. An important point here is the accumulative nature of
the process, the progression towards mutual understanding. In Charlotte
Bronte’s Jane Eyre the proposal scene between Jane and Rochester starts
with limited communication between the characters because both are
hiding their true feelings (that they love each other). However, as Jane
starts to show her emotions, Rochester is able to reveal his own, and there
is a steep rise in understanding (Bronte 1985, pp. 279–85). This results in
a consummation of communication as they each realise that they are loved
by the other and can talk directly about their feelings. Important here is
the way they respond more and more to each other’s calls as the scene pro-
gresses, and also the high degree of emotional investment they both have
in the outcome.
Some playwrights—most notably Harold Pinter—present dialogue as
entirely non-communicating. In Pinter’s short revue ‘Last to Go’ (1990),
for example, the two participants (a barman and a newspaper seller) do
not call and respond, rather they keep repeating each others’ words so that
the conversation stagnates. Questions are asked, and answers are given, but
there is no attempt to elicit or give real information. In fact, as Deirdre
120 The Writing Experiment