Increasing awareness of dialogue?


It is impossible, of course, to know whether that anticipation of dialogue is actually there in the writer if there are no textual markers of it, such as direct terms of address.  It may be, for example, that the sequence of reflections written by Rebecca between her first one, posted on the wall in the class, and the subsequent postings on the Holocaust on October 9, the lecture on masks on the 29th, on the Michael Collins film on November 9, a talk on Aboriginal and Indonesian Music on the 14th, to the Micmac Poetry Reading on the 21st, embody a growing awareness of the dialogic nature of the situation, but I don't see much clear evidence.  There is the fact that the title of the last one ("MicMac Poetry Reading - An inspiration") advertises what her take on the occasion was; there is also, perhaps, a decreasing amount of purely descriptive information about the event and a shift toward information which carries a value expected to be understood by a reader who had shared in the occasion.  For example, her reflection on Rita Jo's reading includes this remark: "They begun the reading by  burning sweet grass which I thought was kind of different but also neat because it was a part of  their culture."  Does this indicate that what is important here is the discussion, clear elsewhere in the forum (for instance, in Becky's discussion), of the nature and effect of the sweetgrass ritual?  It is plausible, but it is not clear to me how to establish that it is part of the evolution of Rebecca's repertoire of genres.



Back to the main page