INTERACTION, DIALOGUE, POLYPHONY
Rhetorical approaches to argumentation focus on monological data, whereas dialectical approaches, focus on conventionalized dialogues. Interactional approaches apply the concepts and methods of verbal interaction analysis to everyday argumentation as needed.
Argumentation is necessarily two-sided, developing as both monological and interactional activities. Opposing these two types of argumentative activities would be pointless. Argumentative issues can be relevantly discussed in a variety of speech formats, ranging from philosophical treatises to internet forums to the dinner table conversations, see argumentation (I).
1. Interaction, Dialogue, Argumentative Dialogue
Dialogues and conversations, are two types of verbal interactions. They are characterized by the use of oral language, the physical presence of face-to-face interlocutors, and a key feature: an organized, continuous chain of alternating turns of speaking.
Dialogue is first practiced between humans, and, by extension, between humans and machines. This is not necessarily the case with interaction: particles interact, but do not engage in dialogue. You can refuse dialogue, but not interaction. Social organizations necessarily interact, and they may engage in dialogue to advance their respective interests or resolve their disputes.
Dialogue implies an egalitarian situation. The concept of interaction considers the inequalities of the participants’ the social status and their specific contributions to the ongoing common task. Interaction focuses on coordinating language with other forms of action (cooperative or competitive) that the participants carry out in complex material environments, including objects manipulation. At work, language is interactional, not conversational. Work conversations tend to exclude work, or overlap with purely automatic work.
The interactive perspective paved the way for studying argumentation in the workplace and its role in acquiring and developing scientific knowledge in laboratory activities. In these activities, argumentative sequences are produced as regulatory episodes, in coordination with the manipulation of objects.
Dialogue has an “aboutness” that distinguishes it from ordinary conversation, which tends to jump from topic to topic. In ordinary usage, the word dialogue has a quasi-prescriptive positive orientation: dialogue is good, we need dialogue. Philosophies of dialogue tend to be strongly humanistic. Those open to dialogue oppose fundamentalists who are closed to it. When two parties engage in dialogue, they commit to negotiation, and ending the dialogue can lead to violence. In this sense, as suggested by the title of Tannen’s book, The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue (1998), debate, as a potentially acrimonious and vindictive argument2 virtually devoid of reasoning, can be contrasted with reasoned dialogue. We see a progress in the transition from the former to the latter.
Formal approaches to argumentation as a dialogue game first appeared in the second half of the 20th century, as a development of the Aristotelian dialectical rules, see dialectic; logic of dialogue.
2. Dialogism, Polyphony, Intertextuality
The concepts of dialogism, polyphony and intertextuality allow us to apply an interaction-based view of argumentation to be applied to monological argumentative discourse and written texts. Monological discourse is defined as a possibly long and complex, spoken or written discourse by one speaker .
Socrates defines thinking, in its essence, as a special type of dialogue,
a talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration. (Theaetetus, 189e) [1]
This definition can be used to characterize thinking as an argumentative process in natural language.
2.1 Dialogism
In rhetoric, dialogism is a figure of speech that involves the direct reproduction of a dialogue as a passage within a literary or a philosophical composition.
Mikhail Bakhtin introduced the concept of dialogism, or polyphony, to describe a specific type of fictional arrangement. From a nineteenth-century classical perspective, the fictional characters are, in a sense, either puppets , or supervised by the narrator. Their actions and speeches are framed according to how they contribute to the plot. In a dialogic disposition, however, the narrator is less dominant, and the characters tend to develop autonomous discourses and are relatively free from the obligation to contribute to the plot.
2.2 Polyphony
In music, polyphony « consists of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with only one voice, monophony » (Wikipedia, Polyphony).
Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism and polyphony, polyphony can be used metaphorically to describe phenomena corresponding to the monological presentation of a dialogic situation by a single speaker, called the animator of speech, in Goffman’s vocabulary (Ducrot, 1988).
Polyphony theory conceptualizes monological discourse as a polyphonic space, that articulates a series of clearly identified voices, each singing its own tune, that is, expressing a particular point of view. These voices are not attributed to specific individuals, as they are in direct quotations.
A polyphonic approach to connectives and negation has proven particularly fruitful. For instance, the statement “Peter will not attend the meeting” presents two voices. The first voice affirms “Peter will attend the meeting”, and the second voice rejects the first with a “No!” The speaker identifies with the second voice, that of the Principal, assuming responsibility for what is said, see connective; denial.
Notably, a particular Animator can develop a two-sided discourse, that articulates arguments and counterarguments, as in a regular two-person argumentative interaction. This internalized argumentative dialogue is internalized, in an internal confrontation free from the constraints associated with face-to-face interaction. This occcurs when, a character engages in monologic deliberation, as in theater. The polyphonic speaker speaks in one voice, and then in an opposed voice. Finally this dual speaker rejects one side of the argument and accept the other, identifying with that voice.
According to Ducrot, the polyphonic speaker acts as a theater director, staging the voices, and choosing to identify with one of them, see role; persuasion. This concept of identification is central to the theory of argumentation within language. First, the speaker introduces the enunciators, the sources of the points of view evoked in the utterance. Next, the speaker identifies himself with one of these enunciators, this identification is indicated by the grammatical structure. For example, as in the case of denial (see above), in a coordinated stucture “P, but Q” the speaker stages two voices and identifies with one of them, here the second voice asserting Q and its implied conclusion. It should be emphasized that this concept of identification is completely different from to the psychological concept of identification that is discussed in connection discussed in the context of persuasion.
Polyphony is not limited to elaborate monologues. A conversational turn, which is dialogical by nature, can also be polyphonic, as demonstrated by the use of negation. Discrepancies between the interlocutor as a real person and the interlocutor as framed by the speaker can be seen from a polyphonic perspective, see resumption of speech.
The two adjectives, dialogic and dialogical, both refer to dialogue. It might be interesting to specialize the use of these words to cover distinct aspects of discourse. One could use dialogic, to cover the polyphonic and intertextual aspects of discourse on the one hand, and dialogical to cover the interaction-related phenomena (including their dialogic aspects) on the other. In any case, full-blown argumentation articulates two disputing voices, it is a dialogical activity.
2.3 Intertextuality
According to the classical monolithic view of the speaker, rhetoric considers the arguer to be the source of the speech which he controls and directs at will. However, according to the concept of intertextuality, speech and discourse have their own permanent reality and dynamics, that exist prior to their utterance by an individual. In this sense, speakers are secondary to their speech. Intertextuality diminishes the speaker’s role, considering them only as an agent that coordinates and reformulates discourses that have already been developed and solidified elsewhere.
Speakers are not the intellectual source of what is said, rather they are the conscious or unconscious vocalizers of pre-existing content. Discourse does not originate with the speaker, rather the speaker is produced by the discourse. Compared to the classical image of the creative orator « inventing » his arguments, this view of the speaker as a machine that repeats and reformulates inherited arguments and positions is particularly humbling.
In the case of argumentation, these intertextual relations are considered through the notion of an argumentative script, S. Script.
[1] Plato, Theaetetus (189-190). In Plato, Complete Works. Translated by M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett. 1997.
SOCRATES: Now by ‘thinking’ do you mean the same as I do?
THEAETETUS: What do you mean by it?
SOCRATES: A talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration. Of course, I’m only telling you my idea in all ignorance; but this is the kind of picture I have of it.
It seems to me that the soul when it thinks is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and answers them itself, affirms and denies. And when it arrives at something definite, either by a gradual process or a sudden leap, when it affirms one thing consistently and without divided counsel, we call this its judgment.
So, in my view, to judge is to make a statement, and a judgment is a statement which is not addressed to another person or spoken aloud, but silently addressed to oneself. And what do you think?
THEAETETUS: I agree with that.