Dialogic theories: reading and extra-textual interfaces

An old review, revisited. As fresh as ever...

 



by

Maria A. Silva

 

ARROJO, Rosemary. A desconstrução do logocentrismo

e a origem do significado. In:___.  O signo

desconstruído. Implicações para a tradução, a

leitura e o ensino. Campinas: Pontes, 1992.

121 p. p. 35-39

 

NYSTRAND, Martin & WIEMELT, Jeffrey. When is a text

explicit? Formalist and dialogical conceptions. (Essay)

 

Dialogical theory has become one of the most powerful critical approaches to contemporary studies. Deriving especially from Bakhtin's works on "marginal" origins of literary genres, the dialogic imagination can't disguise its linguistic groundwork, despite the fact that its primary concern, as a new theory, was to offer a counterpart to traditional conceptions of language and discourse. Bakhtin's denial of formalist method stresses its failure at attempting a convincing definition of the relation between textual (form and content) and non-textual series (historical, sociological, philosophical scopes).

 

Any reffusal to formalist theory should, however, consider its great effort to build a reliable method for literary criticism, either "contaminated" by other analytical perspectives, usually strange to literary matter, or lost within a tight web of impressionist conjectures. Rather than emphasize the idea of a fixed meaning, the formalist method intended to identify and analyse, in a systematic way, the "stable" elements which distinguish a specific genre or text; a point-of-view that, from then on, would interfere in and transform the history of occidental literary criticism.

 

Both Arrojo's and Nystrand/Wiemelt's essays focus the opposite outlooks drawn by formalist and dialogic theories, at the same time that try to emphasize the role that reading action plays in cognitive process. From the strict linguistic perspective (Nystrand/Wiemelt) to a philosophical approach (Derridas's deconstruction, in Arrojo), both texts accord special treatment to dialogical theory, since it has as one of its prior features the study of reading procedures in deep, simultaneous relation with individual and cultural environment. The same way as writers, readers are "text-makers", conveying meanings into and through extra-textual reference, be it a personal or a cultural interface.

 

Yet, some controversial aspects remain unsolved. Neither Arrojo's nor Nystrand/Wiemelt's comments remark the dialectical tension inherent in dialogical concept of heteroglossia. Saussure's opposition between langue and parole may not fit anymore but in dialogical theory, as Bakhtin has conceived it, the interactive relation between language and discourse takes place in a similar dual motion: on the one hand, the notion that every text exists in accordance with some fixed rules; on the other hand, the conviction that, thanks to its historical nature, language shall be a dynamic prehomenon, and, therefore, will never crystallize into forms of a static system.

 

Moreover, in those essays the concept of utterance deserves a better explanation, for, still according to dialogical theory, both oral and written speech (we have named it discourse) can be seen as analogue utterances, always expressing a plenitude of meanings through multiple voices (polyphony).


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