A Study On Dialogic Nature Of Non-literary Written Texts In English

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a former Soviet Union scholar, is ranked among the most well-known scholars in the 1900s. Among his extensive and profound theories, the theory of utterance is of the essence. Though proposed as early as in the periods of the 1920s and 1930s, Bakhtin's theory of utterance as well as dialogism, a key concept in it, did not draw due attention of western scholars until the 1960s. So far, however, the study and employment of dialogism at home and abroad have been largely confined to literary texts. It is not until the recent five years or so that Chinese scholars have become increasingly interested in studying dialogic nature of non-literary texts.Thus, the author intends to present in this thesis the theory of dialogism mainly in non-literary texts in general. With twenty illustrative English samples which are complete-whole in meaning, dialogue-building devices at word level, sentence level and discourse level are closely examined in four basic non-literary text types—descriptive, narrative, expositive and argumentative texts, with an aim to reveal the interactive and dialogic nature of non-literary written texts, which seem to be static and monologic in surface. It is rewarding that dialogue-building devices are found widely distributed across all four types of non-literary written texts and applied at different organizational levels. At word level, dialogism in written texts can be realized through devices of naming, addressing and modality. At sentence level, interrogatives, pseudo-cleft structure, imperatives and elliptical sentences are effective embodiments of dialogues between writers and potential readers. At discourse level, readers are also involved in meaning generation in the sense that they are guided by textual patterns and various voices are ingeniously incorporated in texts.In the light of a theoretical review and practical analysis, it could be first of all concluded that non-literary written texts are all dialogic in nature. Second, the distinction between dialogic and monologic texts is a matter of degree which depends on the extent to which and the way in which the addresser indicates the amount of attention he paid to the addressee and/or the presence of other voices.The current study bears theoretical as well as practical significance. In theory, it unpacks the dialogic nature of written texts and expands the scope where the theory of dialogism could be employed. In practice, this study provides a novel perspective and effective devices for teaching writing and reading.