2 - Involvement in discourse

Summary

The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Johnny Mathis singing “It's Not For Me To Say.” When I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit gum making me feel like I was going to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.

Lynda Barry, The good times are killing me, pp. 42–3

This book is about how repetition, dialogue, and imagery create involvement in discourse, especially conversational discourse. In this, it tells only part of the story. Repetition, dialogue, and imagery work along with other linguistic (and nonlinguistic) strategies to create involvement. My thesis is that such strategies, shaped and elaborated in literary discourse, are spontaneous and pervasive in conversation because they reflect and create interpersonal involvement. This chapter is devoted to discussing the nature of involvement in relation to linguistic strategies.

Involvement

On the first page of the Introduction to his book Discourse strategies, John Gumperz (1982:1) observes:

Once involved in a conversation, both speaker and hearer must actively respond to what transpires by signalling involvement, either directly through words or indirectly through gestures or similar nonverbal signals.