Television
Academic soap opera
Wendy Cope
This, if I have understood the professor correctly, is a monologic discourse. It uses a single voice to express a single point of view. A dialogic discourse, on the other hand, introduces other voices and other points of view. Anyone wishing to weave these learned terms into everyday con- versation should note that the `g' is pro- nounced as in logic, rather than as in monologue. It doesn't seem logical to me but that's how it is.
A television programme that is written and narrated by one person is also a monologic discourse. Big Words . . . Small Worlds (Channel 4) began as one of these, with David Lodge presenting an account of a conference on linguistics and literary theory at the University of Strathclyde. About a third of the way through, how- ever, the executive producer, Colin Mac- Cabe, interrupted one of Lodge's pieces to camera and suggested that they try and make the programme more dialogic. From then on we got the heads in boxes. Some of them belonged to people who hadn't said much at the conference, others to people who hadn't been there at all. The boxes were superimposed on Lodge's film after he had finished it. At the end of the programme, after the credits, we heard the following exchange between producer and presenter: 'Don't you think the interruptions really did make a kind of dialogic text of the programme?'
'Well, originally I didn't like the idea and I still don't like the idea.' Genuinely dialogic, you see.
It was ingenious and it reflected nicely what had happened at the conference. As David Lodge explained at the beginning, every conference has a plot. According to one contributor, the plot is much the same each time. At some point in the proceed- ings the audience gets fed up with listening to the authority figures on the platform and grows mutinous. A young man complained that nothing was being said about Thatcher and Reagan and the nuclear threat. Another regretted that the conference did not reflect the culture of Glasgow. Some people resented the presence of the televi- sion cameras. The main problem, how- ever, seemed to be that the speakers had more opportunity to speak than everybody else and that this was unfair. 'It was like Dallas,' somebody said, 'and we were the cattle.'
Jacques Derrida, the star of the occa- sion, has a fine head of white hair and does look rather like the kind of man who might appeal to Miss Ellie. Apart from that, it wasn't very much like Dallas, although it might have been, if we had been able to see what was going on behind the scenes. In Small World, David Lodge's novel about academic conferences, the formal business of speeches and debate plays quite a small part. Restricted to this aspect in the television programme, he demonstrated that he is one of those people who can make pretty well anything interesting.
The Brass Tacks programme 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' (BBC 2) could prob- ably be described as a monologic dis- course. Almost everyone selected to appear in it was of the opinion that smoking is terrible and disgusting and shouldn't be allowed, except possibly in the back garden. Some day they'll come out with a report saying that smoking in the back garden is bad for the flowers and vegetables and then I'll feel even more sorry for smokers than I do now. Mean- while the focus is on smoking at work and the newly-discovered danger from 'sides- tream' smoke — the smoke that goes straight into the office atmosphere without first being filtered through the smoker's lungs. One would have more sympathy with people who are worried about this if they displayed more understanding of the nature of nicotine addiction, in particular of the fact that a smoker can't be expected to work effectively in a place where smok- ing isn't allowed. Consideration and under- standing are needed on both sides and to call people disgusting is no help at all.
Perhaps this point of view was repre- sented in the dialogic follow-up program- me broadcast on Tuesday night, too late for this week's deadline. No doubt it also excluded more vociferous voices advocat- ing the persecution of smokers. What enabled me to give up the habit was the realisation that I could go on loathing the campaigners without continuing to damage my health.
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