Talk Fiction: Literature and the Talk Explosion

Notes

219 Notes preface 1. Douglas Biber points out that whereas for twentieth-century linguists speech is considered primary over writing, the lay view is that written, literary language is true language (1988: 6). Robin Lako√ reports on fears of the triumph of illiteracy because of the resurgence of the oral and suggests that nothing of value will be lost by it (1982: 257, and my discussion of Lako√ in chapter 1). The work of Sven Birkerts illustrates this paranoia. And then there are academic views that not only take the end of print culture as a given, but celebrate it (e.g., Case 1996). Mitchell Stephens’s recent study, The Rise of the Image, The Fall of the Word (1998) o√ers hope of a more balanced assessment of shifts from literacy, particularly toward the visual, which can’t be my subject here. 2. Marshall McLuhan’s idea of the whole world as a single global village has been rightly criticized for glossing over real di√erences—especially with regard to access to technology—that exist in various places. While specifically aiming not to ignore cultural di√erences, I use McLuhan’s phrase to emphasize that there is indeed no place on earth today that has not been touched in some way by technology. In this sense, all cultures of the world do participate in secondary orality, though, granted, not in the same fashion . As Brian Stock puts it, ‘‘Societies do not evolve at the same rate nor in the same way under the influence of given media of communications’’ (1990: 9). 3. I have argued this point more fully in Kacandes 1997: 9. 4. The standard phrase is ‘‘talk in interaction,’’ that is to say, the role of talk in accomplishing interpersonal tasks. I modify the phrase to reveal one of its premises: that talk itself is interactive. 5. Whereas Nobel literary prizes have been awarded to two Greek poets, George Seferis (1963) and Odysseus Elytis (1979), no Greek novelist has been so distinguished. 1. secondary orality 1. On the idea of conversation as the foundation for other forms of communication , see Mannheim and Tedlock 1995: 1; Nofsinger 1991: 2, 4–5, 107; Zimmerman and Boden 1991: 18; Goodwin and Heritage 1990: 289; Chafe Notes to Pages 3–7 220 1994: 41, 49. The polemical idea that all language is produced dialogically is anathema to certain branches of linguistics that consider the individual actor to be the source of the parole and language to flow from active speaker to passive recipient. Goodwin and Heritage finger Saussure for bracketing out ‘‘the interactive matrix that constitutes the natural home for language’’ (285). Despite his inclusion of the conative function, Jakobson’s model, commonly cited by literary scholars, also propagates a notion of active addresser and passive addressee (1960). 2. For a helpful overview of Go√man’s rich career, see Burns (1992). 3. West and Zimmerman (1982) and Goodwin and Heritage (1990) o√er concise reviews of the development of conversation analysis and its basic principles. 4. For a convincing explanation of why such statements are so unnatural, that is to say, why we are highly unlikely to ever hear a sentence like this in spontaneous conversation, see Chafe 1994: 17, 84, 108. 5. On the idea of language games, see, for example, Wittgenstein’s Blue and Brown Books (1969: 77). Discussions of Wittgenstein’s notion can be found in Baker and Hacker (1980: 47√) and Harris (1988: 25–26). For an early use of the concept by Go√man, see Encounters (1961: 34–36); for a full deployment of the idea to understand talk, see Forms of Talk (1981, esp. 24). 6. Of course, there could be intermediate outbursts of applause or catcalling that register response to part of the ‘‘statement.’’ 7. See Jenny Mandelbaum’s concept of ‘‘shared storytelling’’ (1987; 1989; also Nofsinger 1991, esp. 160√). 8. See Goodwin and Heritage 1990:291. The list of such specifications is almost endless, but some examples include Go√man on radio, which will be discussed below (1981: 197–327); Greatbatch and Heritage on the television news interview (Greatbatch 1988; Heritage and Greatbatch 1991); Hopper on telephone conversations (1992); Atkinson and Drew on talk in judicial settings (1979); Byrne and Long (1976) or West (1984) on patients and doctors; and Whalen and Zimmerman on citizen calls to the police (1990). 9. The use of e-mail is now changing the nature of interpersonal communication once again. However, e-mail...