is called chatting where people says things to each other which
aren’t questions and answers and aren’t connected.
Then she said, ‘Even if it’s only because you are doing detective
work.’
And I said, ‘Thank you,’ again.
And I was about to turn and walk away when she said, ‘I have a
grandson your age.’
I tried to do chatting by saying,‘My age is 15 years and 3 months and
3 days.’
And she said, ‘Well, almost your age.’From The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Haddon 2003,
pp. 50–1)This is a very good example of dialogue which can occur when someone
either cannot, or will not, participate in the accepted conventions for
conversation. Christopher does not respond in the ‘normal’ way to Mrs
Alexander’s overtures, and does not trot out what might be considered
to be suitable replies. For example, his explanations of why someone
might not know they had killed Wellington (because they were mad or
had amnesia) are beyond what is required by the conversation. He also
says things, such as ‘I don’t like talking to strangers’, which are so frank
that social etiquette would normally require them to be suppressed.
And he is unable to engage in small talk which he calls ‘chatting’. Such
dialogue points to the ways in which Christopher cannot fulfil the
conventional social requirements of conversation. But it also highlights
the advantages of his mode of dialoguing. He transmits an honesty and
capacity for logical thinking often missing from conversation. In fact,
most daily conversation adheres to conventions which limit rather than
extend communication, and which can be a barrier to genuine under-
standing.
Communication in dialogue, however, is not only between participants:
there is also the question of how the reader or audience is positioned. In
Pinter’s plays characters do not really make contact with each other when
they speak. In Henry James’s novels and stories the characters often seem
to understand each other, but it is difficult for us as readers to catch the full
significance of the exchange. James uses dialogue as a way of perpetually
deferring meaning, of keeping the reader in a state of partial awareness.
Such dialogue points to complex situations and emotions which readers
cannot fully grasp because they do not have all the information required.
Here the game of communication is being played with the reader as much
as between the participants.
122 The Writing Experiment