Abstract
Metaphorically speaking, this volume is a ‘polyphonic space’ that pays tribute to many influential scholars, especially Bakhtin (1982), who held that every person is inescapably influenced by others through engagement and mutual addressivity, and that the dialogic process reveals the ‘truth’ inherent in real-world events. The book comprises an introduction and five parts with overarching themes. The introduction surveys the development of dialogism within the domain of polyphony and provides a brief sketch of the diverse collection of articles.
Part 1 (Chapters 1–3) discusses polyphonic phenomena that occur in casual conversation. Robert E. Sanders gives several examples of how competence in polyphony is acquired at a very early age. He supports Bakhtin’s proposal that children naturally display an anticipatory character in their utterances. Maria Christodoulidou uses the tools of conversation analysis and Goffman’s ‘frame’ to analyze polyphony as a diversity of points of view expressed through ironic evaluations within the context of a single occurrence. Beatrice Priego-Valverde examines the underlying complexities and ambivalence of humor, and the phenomenon of ‘double-voicing’.
Part 2 (Chapters 4–7) looks at polyphony in language acquisition and use. Aliyah Morgenstern observes how two French children shift between several different self-designations through a slowed setup of their notions about the subject, and how these shifts are associated with their evolving identities. Chapters 5, 6 and 7, written respectively by Claudio Baradi, Federico Farini and Rachel Showstack, examine the effects of polyphony in educational contexts to explain the dynamics of interpersonal misunderstandings observed in several primary schools and to better understand diglossia in American schools where English and Spanish native speakers interact. Interestingly, Farini shows how children subtly refuse to accept a teacher’s proposal by first responding affirmatively and then voicing their opposing views.
Part 3 (Chapters 8–11) studies polyphonic strategies used in electoral debates, parliamentary question time sessions and talk shows. Daciana Vlad explores how various polyphonic strategies, especially the echoing of words, are used in the strongly conflictive televised debates of a presidential election. In her study of political discourse in timed parliamentary debates, Maria Sivenkova reveals how strategies such as distortion of facts and opinions, digression and topic conflation are employed to advantage. Martin Havlic (Chapter 10) and Svetla Cmerjrkova and Java Hoffmannova (Chapter 11) dissect linguistic strategies such as prosody, rumor creation and wordplay that are used in television talk shows to produce ironic and entertaining effects.
Part 4 (Chapters 12–14) addresses the broader scope of socio-cultural discourse. Margareta Manu analyzes the promulgation of rumors in written journalism by distinguishing source(s) from spreading agents and by analyzing textual markers such as evidentials. Ana Ene presents a contrastive intertextual analysis of several translations of the same poem to illustrate how translation is a dialogue between languages and cultures. Yosi Anaya strikingly proposes that Bakhtin’s broad view of heteroglossia can be applied to the weaving of textiles by examining how Meso-American women reconstruct different themes of their community’s cultural and spiritual life by creatively integrating traditional motifs into woven textiles.
Part 5 (Chapters 15–18) follows in Bakhtin’s footsteps in its discussion of polyphonic voices in literature. Chapters 15 and 18 present studies of polyphony in novels. Flore Parpala delves into two works of the Irish author Flann O’Brien, while Ilaria Riccioni and Andrzej Zuczkowski investigate monologues as manifestations of an individual’s internal world. Chapters 16 and 17 attract readers with their studies of polyphony in poetry. Challenging Bakhtin’s claim that poetry is a monophonic discourse, Emilia Parpala discusses ethos and reported discourse in late 20th-century Romanian poems to illustrate the dialogization of poetic enunciation. Carmen Popescu focuses on Romanian poetry of the 1990s to show how strategies such as the inclusion of fictional conversations and hybridization of languages are employed to accomplish the effects of irony or parody.
This book is distinguished by its broadening of the scope of polyphony to society and culture, and by its penetration into the rarely discussed genre of poetry and the radically new genre of textile creation. Translation, as a dialogue between texts and cultures, involves many ‘voices’. Dialogism is seen both in conversational genres where speakers take turns and in the interaction of a text with its socio-cultural context. In many ways, this book has greatly expanded the space within which polyphony can be identified and discussed. This trend will likely continue in the future as ever more genres – for example, digital genres and multi-modal forms – are explored from this perspective.
In addition to its wide range of socio-cultural perspectives and its penetration into new genres, what is equally remarkable is the omnipresent nature of polyphony exhibited in the various articles of this collection. Vlad points out how words are often expressed, contradicted and then ironically quoted by an opponent to win a political debate. To illustrate his concept of ‘second degree dialogism’, he reveals how the internal monologue of one debate participant interacts with the external dialogue of the two opposing candidates. Riccioni and Zuczkowski emphasize that a person’s inner world consists not of one unified voice, but rather of several psychological ‘Subjects’, each of which can enter into an external dialogue. Readers can therefore only marvel at how polyphony can occur within a person’s internal world, between this internal world and external discourse, in discourse between persons, and in dialogue between one or more persons and a society or culture.
All in all, the lively dialogism and colorful array of voices in this book make it an exciting and memorable ‘polyphonic journey’. It represents a valuable resource for students and scholars of dialogue analysis, literary analysis, linguistics and intercultural communication who seek to broaden their knowledge of the field beyond their specialization.