Some notes on two kinds of understanding: Writing (Prose v. Literary Narratives) and Spoken (Conversational) – from Tannen (1989)
TWO STYLES OF SPOKEN AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
Writing (technical, i.e. expository prose) |
Conversational |
Uninvolved (at a distance) Monological “Retrospective-objective” Meaning as passive (static) reception Integration and detachment “Boiled down” |
Involvement (up close and personal) Dialogical “Relational-involved” Meaning as movement Fragmentation and involvement “Written or cooked up” |
TWO STYLES OF WRITING
Literary usages: a matter of selecting and elaborating involvement strategies already used in everyday conversation
Expository prose |
Literature (stories, narratives) |
Works to separate and distance author’s intended meaning |
Works to join, relate, and to create ‘contact’, to create a listener’s meaning, or a co-created meaning |
Created by: use of technical, abstract, general terms, systematic frameworks |
Created by: repetition, rhythm, imagery, dialogue, small details |
Passive understanding (requires interpretation) |
Active (expressive-responsive) understanding, spontaneously ‘moved’ or ‘struck’ |
Produces ‘ideas’ (pictures) in the head |
Engenders ‘feelings of tendency’ (William James - 1890), anticipations, expectations |
Represents what some ‘is’ (finished patterns, structures) |
Has a ‘point’ - gestures (mimics or indicates) something invisible, not yet finished |
Decontextualized, conventional meanings |
Relates to (points to) unique features in its surroundings, no rules or conventions, once-off |
With thought and feeling separated, and thought privileged |
Thought as felt, and feeling as thought |
Static picture |
Dynamic, moving scene |
A “narrative mode of thinking” which “strives to put its timeless miracles into the particulars of experience, and to locate the experience in time and place” (Bruner, 1986, p.13).
“It is not experience that organizes expression, but the other way around - expression organizes experience. Expression is what first gives experience its form and specificity of direction” (Voloshinov, 1986, p.85).