The Uncertainties of Conversational Exchange:

Dialogue Monitoring as a Function of the Narrative Voice

(7,442 words)

by Terence Patrick Murphy

Dept of English

Yonsei University

Seoul, Korea

120-749

tmurphy@yonsei.ac.kr

May 2005

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Introduction

In their Introduction to Textual Linguistics, Robert de Beaugrande and

Wolfgang Dressler propose a view of the text as a self-regulating cybernetic system as a

means for resolving some of the difficulties associated with text processing.1 As they

suggest: “Beaugrande (1980a) concludes that a text constitutes a CYBERNETIC system

which continually regulates the functions of its constituent occurrences. Whenever a

textual occurrence falls outside the participants’ systems of knowledge about language,

content, and purpose, the STABILITY of the textual system is disturbed and must be

restored by REGULATIVE INTEGRATION of that occurrence, e.g. via additions or

modifications to one’s store of knowledge. Text utilization is blocked only if regulative

integration fails, e.g. if irresolvable discrepancies persist” (36). For Beaugrande and

Dressler, such a model will work “under normal conditions” where “preference

knowledge” is shared by a “communicative community” and where in time any

“noticeably idiosyncratic outcome” will be regulated (36). Though the model is one that

sets definite limits to what a text can do, the authors reject the idea that the model

creates a compulsion to conform. This is because “a text whose format and content were

entirely in conformity with established knowledge would possess an extremely low

degree of informativity” (36). The payoff for the imposition of limits appears to be big.

As Beaugrande and Dressler contend, the cybernetic textual system allows for “the

constant removal and restoration of stability through disturbing and resuming the

continuity of occurrences” (36). Under one kind of interpretation, the removal and

restoration of stability offers itself as a workable understanding of creativity. Moreover,

in the opinion of Beaugrande and Dressler, preference knowledge “merely enables

participants to find an orientation for creativity and to provide or recover its motivations

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within a given textual system” (37). Nevertheless, the delayed payback for this view of

the text turns out to be extremely high also. This is because the functional principles of

the system Beaugrande and Dressler are proposing turn out to exclude whole classes of

utterances from consideration. Untroubled by the implications of these exclusions, the

authors justify that this is necessary because “certain classes of occurrences” are likely

to “impede utilization or to render it hard to control” and are “therefore considered

inopportune” (37). The utterances Beaugrande and Dressler suggest for exclusion

include “ambiguities, contradictions, or discrepancies” and “in-jokes and paradoxes”

(37).

It is an unfortunate upshot of the theory of the text as a self-regulating

cybernetic system that conversational exchange between characters in narrative fiction

is therefore considered “likely to impede utilization or to render it hard to control” (37)

Perhaps inadvertently, what Beaugrande and Dressler have ruled out are exactly those

aspects of narrative fiction that makes its reading so interesting. Examples of ambiguity,

contradiction, discrepancy, in-jokes and paradox in novelistic conversational are not

hard to find. Take as a typical instance Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. The frequency

of each of these classes of occurrences is noticeably high. Oliver’s reply to Sowerberry

after his initiation to the funeral business, for example, is an instance of ambiguity:

'Well, Oliver,' said Sowerberry, as they walked home, 'how do you like it?'

'Pretty well, thank you, sir' replied Oliver, with considerable hesitation. 'Not very

much, sir.' (Dickens 50)

Contradiction in serial dialogue also occurs in the early pages of the novel:

'Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,' said the red-

faced gentleman in the high chair.

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'So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock,' added the surly

one in the white waistcoat. (Dickens 25)

Discrepancies too, such as the meaning of the word ‘beak’ in the following exchange

are a common feature of Oliver Twist:

'Walking for sivin days!' said the young gentleman. 'Oh, I see. Beak's order, eh?

But,' he added, noticing Oliver's look of surprise, 'I suppose you don't know what a

beak is, my flash com-pan-i-on.'

Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird's mouth described by the term

in question. (Dickens 62)

On a number of occasions, conversational exchange involves characters making in-

jokes, particularly at the expense of Oliver:

'Not so heavy as they might be,' said the Jew, after looking at the insides carefully;

'but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious workman, ain't he, Oliver?'

'Very indeed, sir,' said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed uproariously;

very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to laugh at, in anything that

had passed. (Dickens 69)

Finally, Dickens’s early novel also contains at least one prominent example of

deliberate paradox, as demonstrated in the Artful Dodger’s reply to Oliver’s question

about a certain mill:

'What mill?' inquired Oliver.

'What mill! Why, THE mill—the mill as takes up so little room that it'll work inside

a Stone Jug; and always goes better when the wind's low with people, than when it's

high; acos then they can't get workmen…”. (Dickens 62)

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Plainly, the accumulative evidence provided by these examples of uncertain

conversational exchanges suggests that the self-regulating cybernetic model of the text

proposed by Beaugrande and Dressler is unworkable. Far from “impairing or blocking

the text’s utilization,” the informed processing of such typical conversational exchanges

as these from Oliver Twist is what makes reading this novel so enjoyable. The reader’s

processing of uncertain, ambiguous or discrepant conversational exchanges, his or her

recognition of in-jokes and paradoxes, are a central aspect of novelistic comprehension.

Writers on Dialogue and Narrative

The problems created by attempting to read the text of Oliver Twist as

Beaugrande and Dressler suggest are not esoteric ones. Writers themselves have been

torn between an unconscious endorsement of the position of the text as a cybernetic

system and an equally strong opposition to it. In her criticism, for example, Virginia

Woolf, a writer not particularly well known for her partiality to such systems, was

concerned by the way in which dialogue tended to operate as an independent variable in

narrative fiction. In an essay on Ernest Hemingway, she commented: “A writer will

always be chary of dialogue because dialogue puts the most violent pressure upon the

reader’s attention. He has to hear, to see, to supply the right tone, and to fill in the

background from what the characters say without any help from the author. Therefore,

when fictitious people are allowed to speak it must be because they have something so

important to say that it stimulates the reader to do rather more than his share of the work

of creation” (208 emphasis mine). Other writers have been drawn to an equally extreme

rejection of the thesis. In a talk with students at the Glasgow School of Art in November

1996, for example, the Scottish writer James Kelman expressed his fear not of the

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unpredictability of the conversational exchange but rather of the potential

authoritarianism of the narrative voice. He argued, “In prose fiction I saw the distinction

between dialogue and narrative as a summation of the political system; it was simply

another method of exclusion, of marginalizing and disenfranchising different peoples,

cultures and communities. I was uncomfortable with 'working class' authors who

allowed ‘the voice’ of higher authority to control narrative, the place where the

psychological drama occurred” (40 emphasis mine). In his Discourse in the Novel,

Mikhail Bakhtin has offered a useful suggestion for why the division among writers

over the claims of conversational exchange and narrative voice occurs. “The language

used by characters in the novel, how they speak, is verbally and semantically

autonomous; each character’s speech possesses its own belief system, since each is the

speech of another in another’s language; thus it may also refract authorial intentions and

consequently may to a certain degree constitute a second language for the author” (315).

To the extent that writers do manage to create characters with verbal and semantic

autonomy, they must also utilize narrative voice monitoring and managing to enable the

reader to mediate successfully the occasional discordant lexical realizations of directly

quoted character speech. For Woolf, this recognition involves taking care not to let

those characters whose views contradict those of her narrative voice speak too often; for

Kelman, it means avoiding the extensive use of the narrative voice so as to minimize the

temptation to offer parodic forms of working class speech and ideology.

It would seem that whether writers align themselves with Virginia Woolf or,

more unusually, with James Kelman, the problems raised by the issue of the autonomy

of character belief systems are large. Centrally, however, these problems are all related

to the issue of how writers use the various devices of the novel to deal with

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conversational ambiguity and how readers respond to these devices. Beaugrande and

Dressler’s theory of the text as a self-regulating cybernetic system contains a useful pair

of concepts that will help to clarify these issues. The writers make a distinction between

what they call situation monitoring and what they term situation management. For

Beaugrande and Dressler, situation monitoring is a simple reaction to a situation in

which a text producer is “describing or narrating the available evidence” (123). For

these writers, “Situation monitoring … is akin to PROBLEM-SOLVING…. The text

producer notices some non-expected object or event and makes it the TOPIC of the text.

[…] Situation monitoring is thus extremely likely whenever different participants have

opposed notions about what is going on” (165). Situation management, on the other

hand, is “plan-directed”; it is “discourse action, which changes a situation” utilized

“whenever the text producer is trying to steer the situation toward some goal”

(Beaugrande and Dressler 123). The concepts of situation monitoring and situation

management are crucial in explaining just how the texts of narrative fiction are

regulated. In line with their concept of the text, Beaugrande and Dressler do not make a

distinction between the narrative voice of the text producer and the characters in a

conversational situation. As a consequence, they have no means for negotiating issues

that relate to the unequal status and power of the different characters in a conversational

situation. In line with the dominant views on the subject, Beaugrande and Dressler see

the function of the narrative voice as a neutral one, merely providing a “reasonably

unmediated account of the situation model” (163; cf. Hough 204; Leech and Short 334).

An alternative viewpoint is developed here. It is argued that in novels like Charles

Dickens’s Oliver Twist, the narrative voice becomes the situation monitor for each

particular conversational exchange, providing the reader with the necessary textual

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information for a correct processing of each uncertain or ambiguous dialogic situation.

Through a skilful deployment of the narrative voice, Oliver Twist most of the time

avoids presenting instances where readers are genuinely unable to process ambiguities,

paradoxes, discrepancies, contradictions and in-jokes.

Processing Conversational Uncertainty in Oliver Twist

In Oliver Twist, the narrative voice enacts a form of situation monitoring as a

local strategy for describing the available evidence for interpreting each individual

conversational exchange.2 Where there is an absence of uncertainty in the exchange, the

narrative voice’s task is comparatively simple. In consequence, a good deal of the time,

conversational interaction will be accompanied by a minimal monitoring of the dialogic

situation.

Unmonitored Conversational Exchange

Although wholly unmonitored conversational interaction does not exist in Oliver

Twist, it is nevertheless important to recognize this as one end on the continuum of

conversational exchange. Wholly unmonitored conversational exchange are those

interactions between characters where, as Virginia Woolf suggests, the reader is left “to

hear, to see, to supply the right tone, and to fill in the background from what the

characters say without any help from the author” (208). Within narrative fiction, the

most studied practitioner of the unmonitored conversational exchange in both his short

stories and his novels is Ernest Hemingway. A classic example of unmonitored

conversational interaction is the extended exchange between the two waiters in

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Hemingway’s short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”. In this example, all but the

first line is unmonitored conversational interaction:

"Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.

"Why?"

"He was in despair."

"What about?"

"Nothing."

"How do you know it was nothing?"

"He has plenty of money." (Hemingway 29)

Virginia Woolf is right in her recognition of this mode of speech presentation as an

extreme. If this mode of speech presentation were the norm in narrative fiction, there

can be little doubt that the reader would be unsuccessful in processing the many

uncertainties of conversation interaction it would give rise to. While the model for the

entirely unmonitored conversational exchange is the drama, there are obvious limits to

its extended utilization within narrative fiction. The widespread use of the parallel with

the drama, even where it is heavily qualified, is unhelpful in this respect (Booth 149-

153). Within the drama, it is the behaviour and the gestures of the dramatic actors in

performance that serve as the chief means for resolving the potential conversational

uncertainties contained in the dramatic text. In the short story or novel, with nothing but

a continuing stream of entirely unmonitored dialogic interaction, the reader would soon

be at a loss. Indeed, in the specific instance of this Hemingway passage, David Lodge

has suggested that the impossibility of deciding which of the two waiters speaks first is

part of Hemingway’s overall strategy. Lodge suggests that Hemingway’s conscious

intention is to make the careful reader consider at least two equally plausible

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interpretive solutions to the uncertainties of the dialogue (193). But clearly, such

esoteric binary interpretations are rare in fiction.

Monitored Conversational Exchange

In Oliver Twist, dialogic situation monitoring begins with those relatively simple

instances where the narrative voice supplies only those aspects of the immediate context

needed for accurate processing. As the character whose destiny is being most centrally

managed by the narrative voice, the monitoring of Oliver’s conversation thus turns out

to be minimal. The narrative voice thus frequently presents Oliver’s responses using

minimal monitoring, extending this on occasion to include the character’s major

behavioural responses, particularly when these are being affected by power negotiation.

This narrative voice strategy is particularly clear when aspects of the overall

conversational situation are striking or unusual:

'I suppose yer the new boy, ain't yer?' said the voice through the key-hole.

'Yes, sir,' replied Oliver. (Dickens 42)

The minimal monitoring of Oliver then extends to include all those instances of the

conversational situation which include descriptions of the behavioural colouring that

accompany Oliver’s direct responses to the questions put to him:

'Hush!' said the gentleman who had spoken first. 'You know you've got no father or

mother, and that you were brought up by the parish, don't you?'

'Yes, sir,' replied Oliver, weeping bitterly. (Dickens 25)

These instances also involve Oliver’s adherence to Grice’s principle of co-operation,

demonstrating the use of direct responses to questions or the immediate rendering of

assistance (Beaugrande and Dressler 118-23).

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'Open the door, will yer?' cried the voice which belonged to the legs which had

kicked at the door.

'I will, directly, sir,' replied Oliver: undoing the chain, and turning the key. (Dickens

42)

Up to this point, Beaugrande and Dressler’s model of the text as a self-regulating

cybernetic system encounters no major difficulties. Moreover, the text as self-regulating

cybernetic system can be extended to cover instances where flouting is explained as the

upshot of an overall context of situation beyond a particular character’s control:

'Well,' said the old gentleman, 'I suppose he's fond of chimney-sweeping?'

'He doats on it, your worship,' replied Bumble; giving Oliver a sly pinch, to intimate

that he had better not say he didn't. (Dickens 34)

Mentally, readers need to provide their own momentary rationale for why the old

gentleman does not see Bumble’s sly action or for why he does not question Oliver’s

silence or indeed Bumble’s interruption. Within the course of the next half-page,

however, the reader will discover that though the gentleman is short-sighted, he is not

entirely indifferent to Oliver’s fate. Bumble’s dishonesty will be defeated when the

magistrate finally sees Oliver’s “pale and terrified face” and declines to hand him over

to Gamfield to be employed as a chimney-sweeper (Dickens 34). The rehearsal of these

examples brings the discussion to the issue of genuine uncertainty—situations in which

character interaction issues forth in one of the five different types of ambiguity noted by

Beaugrande and Dressler.

The Default Serial Processing of Conversational Uncertainty

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Default serial processing of conversational uncertainty refers to the reader’s use

of unmarked comprehension strategies to resolve conversational ambiguities. The list of

unmarked comprehension strategies includes deferring to the words of the character

who speaks last or to the words of the character who has the greater social power or to

the character whose words are couched in standard English. The reader’s utilization of

default comprehension processing is particularly rapid and unremarkable when the

possibility for replacement occurs in an immediately succeeding speech. In the instances

where conversational uncertainty takes the form of two parallel utterances, there would

seem to exist a strong tendency for the reader simply to accept the second speech as

definitive.

Simple Serial Resolution

'Hush!' replied the Dodger. 'Do you see that old cove at the book-stall?'

'The old gentleman over the way?' said Oliver. 'Yes, I see him.' (Dickens 72)

The interpretive processes of readers confronted by exchanges such as this are possibly

multi-layered. In this instance, for example, the reader may process the uncertainty by

the general mental operation of replacing the first phrase by the second. The reader may

also be performing the alternative mental operation of replacing the unfamiliar with the

familiar or of replacing slang with plain English. Since each of these operations results

in the same outcome, the reader is somewhat spoiled for choice. A slightly more

complex example of default serial processing relates to Oliver’s ambiguous reply to

Sowerberry regarding the undertaking business:

'Well, Oliver,' said Sowerberry, as they walked home, 'how do you like it?'

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'Pretty well, thank you, sir' replied Oliver, with considerable hesitation. 'Not very

much, sir.'

'Ah, you'll get used to it in time, Oliver,' said Sowerberry. 'Nothing when you ARE

used to it, my boy.'

Oliver wondered, in his own mind, whether it had taken a very long time to get Mr.

Sowerberry used to it. But he thought it better not to ask the question; and walked

back to the shop: thinking over all he had seen and heard. (Dickens 50)

Oliver’s stated uncertainty moves from “pretty well” to “not very much,” but the young

boy does not take any immediate action to change his situation. In this instance,

Sowerberry’s reply thus offers itself as a temporarily more powerful monitoring of the

dialogic uncertainty. Since Oliver then says nothing in reply, the reader is left to accept

Sowerberry’s adult opinion as more or less definitive. However, the narrative voice’s

subsequent presentation of Oliver’s monitored thought indicates Oliver’s continuing

uneasiness about the funeral business. It is possible that readers mentally store such

localized doubt in anticipation of major plot development. When, at the end of chapter

seven, Oliver decides to run away to London, the reader may in consequence

retrospectively reinterpret the memory of this dialogic situation. In this respect, the

reader’s acceptance of Oliver’s decision to flee has been previously prepared by the

dialogic uncertainty.

Delayed Serial Resolution

Occasionally, Oliver Twist presents examples of conversational uncertainty that

are only resolved following a period of extended textual delay. This kind of textual

delay typically lasts no more than a few pages or so—probably an instinctual adaptation

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on Dickens’s part to the short-term memory capabilities of a majority of his readers. In

the following passage, there are two conversational uncertainties. The first is the use of

the term, “Greenland”; the second is Charley Bates’s use of the term “wipes”:

'Where did he come from?'

'Greenland. Is Fagin upstairs?'

'Yes, he's a sortin' the wipes. Up with you!' The candle was drawn back, and the face

disappeared.

Oliver, groping his way with one hand, and having the other firmly grasped by his

companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark and broken stairs: which his

conductor mounted with an ease and expedition that showed he was well acquainted

with them. (Dickens 65)

“Greenland” is processed by recognizing its metaphorical status. Since “being green” is

still a live metaphor for “being naïve” and Oliver is an Englishman, the reader

presumably resolves this uncertainty by reference to the immediate context of situation.

The second example is more complex, involving an instance of delayed serial resolution.

This resolution, by a term from the lexicon of plain English, is provided in two stages.

During the first stage, the narrative voice presents a situation monitoring of Fagin’s den,

which follows immediately after the uncertainty of the conversational exchange:

He threw open the door of a back-room, and drew Oliver in after him.

The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt. There was

a deal table before the fire: upon which were a candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle,

two or three pewter pots, a loaf and butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on

the fire, and which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were

cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old

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shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a

quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat

bare; and seemed to be dividing his attention between the frying-pan and the clothes-

horse, over which a great number of silk handkerchiefs were hanging. (Dickens 65)

Here, in line with Beaugrande and Dressler’s general comments on the use of situation

monitoring, the reader will seek to resolve the uncertainty occasioned by the use of the

term “wipes” in a process akin to problem-solving. This is done by focussing the

reader’s attention on some non-expected object or event (Beaugrande and Dressler 144).

Since the objects presented for immediate processing are the “great number of silk

handkerchiefs,” the reader may well accurately draw the inference that “wipes” is a

slang term for silk handkerchiefs. Dickens’ awareness of the complexity of this kind of

serial resolution of uncertainty, however, explains the still later occurrence of another

dialogic exchange. In this second instance, the term “wipes” is resolved in a wholly

monitored form:

'And what have you got, my dear?' said Fagin to Charley Bates.

'Wipes,' replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs.

(Dickens 69)

A second instance of delayed serial conversational resolution occurs following the

capture of Oliver on suspicion of theft:

'What's the matter now?' said the man carelessly.

'A young fogle-hunter,' replied the man who had Oliver in charge.

'Are you the party that's been robbed, sir?' inquired the man with the keys.

'Yes, I am,' replied the old gentleman; 'but I am not sure that this boy actually took

the handkerchief. I—I would rather not press the case.' (Dickens 75)

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Here, the reader may be able to interpret the unusual word “fogle” as a reference either

to the gentleman himself or to his stolen handkerchief. It is rather more likely, however,

that the attempted resolution will favour the actor rather than the attribute. The

uncertainty that continues to inhere in the processing of this conversational exchange

may be the reason why Dickens deploys the term “fogle” a second time a few pages

later in a more straightforward instance of serial conversational resolution:

'And always put this in your pipe, Nolly,' said the Dodger, as the Jew was heard

unlocking the door above, 'if you don't take fogles and tickers—'

'What's the good of talking in that way?' interposed Master Bates; 'he don't know

what you mean.'

'If you don't take pocket-handkechers and watches,' said the Dodger, reducing his

conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity, 'some other cove will; so that the coves

that lose 'em will be all the worse, and you'll be all the worse, too, and nobody half a

ha'p'orth the better, except the chaps wot gets them—and you've just as good a right

to them as they have.' (Dickens 129-30)

Monitored Serial Resolution

Once the reader recognizes the narrative voice as defining a centre of gravity for

the novel, the other speech forms will tend to be processed in relation to this norm. The

next example is particularly interesting because it involves two characters who

customarily speak in the narrative norm of “plain English.” It is therefore highly

significant that the narrative voice extensively monitors this particular conversational

exchange. The strategy here seems to be to reassure the reader that Mr Brownlow’s use

of the word “slops” does not indicate a substantial violation of the norms of plain

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speech. Instead, it is to be processed as a mild in-joke, a partially acceptable deviant

wording within the standard speech community.

'Good by,' said Mr. Brownlow, stoutly. 'Have you given him any nourishment,

Bedwin? Any slops, eh?'

'He has just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir,' replied Mrs. Bedwin: drawing

herself up slightly, and laying strong emphasis on the last word: to intimate that

between slops, and broth will compounded, there existed no affinity or connection

whatsoever. (Dickens 85-6)

The unequal presentation of this particular conversational exchange tends to suggest

that the reader will give greater credence to wholly monitored speech or speech with

some form of monitoring over that of simple directly quoted speech.

Monitored Anaphoric Resolution

The narrative voice in Oliver Twist also utilizes the default tendency of readers

to process consecutive conversational exchanges in the form of serial resolution for

purposes of surprise. In such instances, the monitoring of conversational exchange by

the narrative voice suggests the need to replace the default serial resolution of

contradiction by its monitored anaphoric resolution (Halliday and Hasan 281-84).

'Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,' said the red-

faced gentleman in the high chair.

'So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock, ' added the surly

one in the white waistcoat.

For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple process of picking

oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and was then hurried away

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to a large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep. (Dickens

25)

In this instance, the reader must suspend the interpretation of the two speeches as

indicating separate processes and accept that they are in fact different ways of indicating

the same thing, a hypocritical or “philosophical” way and a direct or “surly” way.

The successful interpretation of each dialogic exchange thus involves the reader

giving greater weight to the testimony of the narrative voice rather than to the speech of

any of the characters, including Oliver Twist himself.

'You haven't opened the parcel and swallowed one or two as you come along, have

you?' inquired Sikes, suspiciously. 'Don't put on an injured look at the question;

you've done it many a time. Jerk the tinkler.'

These words, in plain English, conveyed an injunction to ring the bell. (Dickens 105)

In this novel, this basic principle—that the narrative voice must be utilized to mediate

uncertainty—may then be extended to cover the many more elaborate instances of

novelistic ambiguity that occur.

A Question of Face: One-Sided Dialogic Monitoring

In Oliver Twist, one-sided monitored conversational exchange takes two major

forms. Both of these relate to the conversational misunderstanding of English speech. In

the novel, the rule is that the character who misunderstands is the one whose speech is

subsequently monitored. The major difference relates to whether the misunderstanding

arises from a misunderstanding of “plain English” or not. In this novel, there is a

distinction between those characters like Oliver who understand “plain English” (but

not the various forms of non-standard speech) and those characters who, out of

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suspicion of the motives of other characters, misunderstand “plain English.” In the

following example, the narrative voice monitors Noah’s speech because he has

misunderstood something that falls inside the norms of “plain English”:

'Did you want a coffin, sir?' inquired Oliver, innocently.

At this, the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce; and said that Oliver would want one

before long, if he cut jokes with his superiors in that way. (Dickens 43)

Since he has not yet been introduced to Noah, Oliver is genuinely inquiring whether the

other boy is a customer in the undertaker’s shop. Noah, because of his distrustful nature,

however, wrongfully believes that Oliver is threatening him. The decision of the

narrative voice to offer Noah’s reply in the form of monitored speech rather than as a

matching conversational pair demonstrates that monitored speech may be utilized as a

face-losing device. In this instance, the narrative voice signals a conversational defeat

for Noah Claypole in a situation where information is being equally negotiated. In

contrast, the narrative voice monitors Oliver’s speech only when he misunderstands

something that falls outside the norms of “plain English”. In this example, even if the

reader is aware that the word ‘beak’ can on occasion mean ‘magistrate,’ the narrative

voice requests that the word be processed as a departure from the narrative norms:

'Walking for sivin days!' said the young gentleman. 'Oh, I see. Beak's order, eh?

But,' he added, noticing Oliver's look of surprise, 'I suppose you don't know what a

beak is, my flash com-pan-i-on.'

Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird's mouth described by the term

in question. (Dickens 62)

There are two major reasons for the presentation of this dialogic exchange as a one-

sided monitoring of speech exchange. The first is a subtle indication to the reader

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(doubtlessly helped by the orthographically unusual idiolect) that the narrative voice is

inviting the processing of the Artful Dodger’s words as slang. Slang is an instance of

Gricean maxim flouting, since, from the standpoint of “plain English,” it offers a

graphic instance of the use of merely unusual vocabulary. The second is to extend the

lexicon of the novel to include the use of the word ‘beak’ in order to cover instances

where it is used in thief’s slang as a synonym for ‘magistrate.’ The decision to offer

Oliver’s reply in the form of monitored speech rather than as a matching conversational

pair to the Artful Dodger’s question is thus highly motivated. Monitoring here is a face-

saving device for the main character, preventing him from losing too much in a situation

where information is being unequally contested.

Strategies of Lexical Gradation: The Uses of Wholly Monitored Speech

The orthodox position on passages of free indirect discourse or what is here

termed wholly monitored speech is that it is deployed only “for summarizing relatively

unimportant stretches of conversation” (Leech and Short 324; Wales 266). Within the

literature, however, the issue of how a critic decides the issue of unimportant, relatively

unimportant and important stretches of conversation has not been widely discussed. In

effect, the choices already made by the writer—as evidenced in the finished text—are

simply taken as self-evident rather than analyzed as the complex strategies of successful

story-telling they actually are.3 A more complete view of the function of wholly

monitored speech, at least in Oliver Twist, is that such passages are employed as

situational preparation for subsequent plot transformations achieved via conversational

exchange. In other words, the narrative voice initially wholly monitors speech that

records preparatory attitudes which, although non-productive in themselves, are

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essential for the subsequent narrative economy. Wholly monitored speech is then often

utilized as a means for introducing the subsequent transformation of attitudes in

dialogue form.

Two examples of this distinction between a default situation presented in the

form of wholly monitored speech and a transformation of that default situation in

dialogue will serve to demonstrate this important point. The first is the distinction

between the passage that retails the discussion of the members of the board in contrast

with the transformation in dialogue of the subsequent negotiations with Mr. Gamfield:

The board then proceeded to converse among themselves for a few minutes, but in so

low a tone, that the words 'saving of expenditure,' 'looked well in the accounts,' 'have

a printed report published,' were alone audible. These only chanced to be heard,

indeed, or account of their being very frequently repeated with great emphasis.

At length the whispering ceased; and the members of the board, having resumed their

seats and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said:

'We have considered your proposition, and we don't approve of it.'

'Not at all,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

'Decidedly not,' added the other members. (Dickens 31)

A second example is the initial hostile reaction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat

to Noah Claypole’s crying, which is contrasted with his transformed conversational

reaction after he recognizes the name of Oliver Twist:

The gentleman's notice was very soon attracted; for he had not walked three paces,

when he turned angrily round, and inquired what that young cur was howling for,

and why Mr. Bumble did not favour him with something which would render the

series of vocular exclamations so designated, an involuntary process?

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'It's a poor boy from the free-school, sir,' replied Mr. Bumble, 'who has been nearly

murdered—all but murdered, sir,—by young Twist.'

'By Jove!' exclaimed the gentleman in the white waistcoat, stopping short. 'I knew it!

I felt a strange presentiment from the very first, that that audacious young savage

would come to be hung!' (Dickens 55)

The utilization of wholly monitored speech in such instances then shades over into a

second major function. This is the use of wholly monitored speech as the chief means

for downgrading or upgrading the conversational contributions of particular characters.

In this first passage, for example, Mr. Bumble finds himself in a position where he has

been asked to present an account of the life of Oliver Twist to interlocutors who know

nothing about him. From the point of view of the narrative voice, this situation presents

a problem. How can Bumble’s newsworthy language—which, merely by being

unchallenged, may become authoritative and the subject of future conversational

negotiation, be suitably discredited or downgraded? The narrative voice does this by

presenting the record of Bumble’s words in the form of wholly monitored speech:

Mr. Bumble put down his hat; unbuttoned his coat; folded his arms; inclined his head

in a retrospective manner; and, after a few moments' reflection, commenced his story.

It would be tedious if given in the beadle's words: occupying, as it did, some twenty

minutes in the telling; but the sum and substance of it was, that Oliver was a

foundling, born of low and vicious parents. That he had, from his birth, displayed no

better qualities than treachery, ingratitude, and malice. That he had terminated his

brief career in the place of his birth, by making a sanguinary and cowardly attack on

an unoffending lad, and running away in the night-time from his master's house. In

proof of his really being the person he represented himself, Mr. Bumble laid upon the

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table the papers he had brought to town. Folding his arms again, he then awaited Mr.

Brownlow's observations. (Dickens 123-4)

The narrative voice’s downgrading of Bumble’s testimony involves two complex

strategies. The first is simply refusing the right of Bumble to speak in his own name.

While the actual rendering of the substance of Bumble’s testimony involves no

noticeable lexical deviance, the narrative voice severely truncates Bumble’s long-

winded style of speech, discrediting it as a violation of Grice’s maxim of brevity. The

second is the subtle invocation of the quasi-legal context of situation in which Bumble

is made to speak in the role of an unreliable witness. In this instance, the downgrading

of Bumble in the guise of wholly monitored speech is required in order to render his

otherwise unchallenged testimony concerning Oliver Twist as non-newsworthy.

In contrast, upgrading refers to the process by which the narrative voice seeks to

render the non-newsworthy speech of a character newsworthy. In upgrading the non-

newsworthy, the narrative voice paraphrases the lexical choices of a character in such a

way that the substitutes disguise the character’s substantial lack of purpose, goals or

knowledge. In the following passage, for example, the narrative voice is confronted

with the task of making Oliver look good in a potentially face-losing situation. By

wholly monitoring Oliver’s hesitation, the narrative voice is able to minimize the young

boy’s lack of confidence by cultivating the reader’s hostility toward the gentleman in

the white waistcoat:

Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made him tremble:

and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him cry. These two causes

made him answer in a very low and hesitating voice; whereupon a gentleman in a

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white waistcoat said he was a fool. Which was a capital way of raising his spirits,

and putting him quite at his ease. (Dickens 24-5)

Two forms of situation monitoring are at work here. The first is the monitoring of the

situation by a central participant, the gentleman in the white waistcoat. The second is

the narrative voice’s monitoring of the gentleman in the white waistcoat. In instances

such as this, it is the narrative voice monitoring that is ultimately decisive in the

reader’s interpretation of the conversational situation. Indeed, at a later point in the

narrative, it is the reader’s recollection of this initial narrative voice monitoring that

provides the means for the subsequent secure processing of a potentially ambiguous

conversational exchange:

'Boy,' said the gentleman in the high chair, 'listen to me. You know you're an orphan,

I suppose?'

'What's that, sir?' inquired poor Oliver.

'The boy IS a fool—I thought he was,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.

(Dickens 25)

Here, the gentleman in the white waistcoat repeats his monitoring of Oliver. In normal

novelistic circumstances, this outburst would prompt further narrative voice monitoring

to protect the dignity of Oliver. However, since the narrative voice has previously

indicated in the earlier passage a means by which the reader can process the opinion of

the waistcoated gentleman, a second monitoring becomes unnecessary. Even if what the

gentleman has to say threatens in a small way the overall discourse action of Oliver

Twist in its implication that Oliver is foolish (and hence unsuitable as the central

character in the novel), the gentleman will be allowed to voice his opinion anyway. The

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narrative voice has already informed the reader that conversational exchanges proceed

more smoothly when characters feel at their ease.

The Endophoric Resolution of Genuine Uncertainty?

Occasionally, genuine examples of conversational uncertainty occur in Oliver

Twist. In these instances, however, they typically emerge within the context of specified

patterns of deviant speech or sycophantic forms of communicative co-operation. The

character that is most prone to give rise to such dialogic uncertainty is Mr Bumble. In

these instances, the reader almost certainly resorts to an endophoric resolution of

uncertainty, through recourse to his or her own lexical stock (Halliday and Hasan 31-

34).

Mr. Bumble surveyed the little speaker, from head to foot, with indescribable

astonishment; and, turning to his companion, said, 'They're all in one story, Mrs.

Mann. That out-dacious Oliver had demogalized them all!'

'I couldn't have believed it, sir' said Mrs Mann, holding up her hands, and looking

malignantly at Dick. 'I never see such a hardened little wretch!' (Dickens 121)

Such instances of conversational uncertainty as this example illustrate provide relatively

few problems for the majority of readers since they offer a limited number of possible

resolutions. The first is shared ignorance among the characters; the second is

sycophantic deference. Since Mrs. Mann has previously demonstrated her willingness to

cede to the ignorant opinions of Mr. Bumble, it is possible to read her absence of

surprise at Bumble’s use of the non-standard expressions “out-dacious” and

“demogalized” as a continuation of this pattern. A paradoxical comment on the part of

the Artful Dodger, however, appears to resist even repeated scrutiny:

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'What mill?' inquired Oliver.

'What mill! Why, THE mill—the mill as takes up so little room that it'll work inside

a Stone Jug; and always goes better when the wind's low with people, than when it's

high; acos then they can't get workmen. But come,' said the young gentleman; 'you

want grub, and you shall have it. I'm at low-water-mark myself—only one bob and a

magpie; but, as far as it goes, I'll fork out and stump. Up with you on your pins.

There! Now then! Morrice!' (Dickens 62)

Here, the Artful Dodger’s statement of this paradox becomes subordinated to the larger

and more pressing issue of Oliver’s need for food. Since the young boy is half-starved

at the time of the conversational exchange, the reader too probably overlooks the fact

that the paradox is not immediately resolved. It is not until chapter thirteen that there

occurs a passage throwing a certain amount of light on this ambiguous exchange:

There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been taken up

for playing the flute, and who, the offence against society having been clearly proved,

had been very properly committed by Mr. Fang to the House of Correction for one

month; with the appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to

spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical

instrument (Dickens 93).

This passage, which occurs as Nancy is looking in vain for Oliver at the police station,

serves to indicate that “on the mill” is a shortened version of “on the treadmill”.

Although it does not entirely clear up the paradoxical nature of the Artful Dodger’s

comments, such passages as this—and there are relatively few of them in Oliver

Twist—indicate that the reader does process some examples of ambiguity by partially

sharing in the confusion of the marked character, Oliver Twist. Of course, it is possible

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to argue that the complexity of the paradox is more apparent to readers who have grown

unfamiliar with the practices of prisons that employ treadmills as part of their

philosophy of prisoner rehabilitation. Nevertheless, for the modern reader, it seems

reasonable to believe that this final uncertainty can only be resolved by focusing

intently on Oliver’s localized goal of securing something to eat, all the while placing

their trust in the narrative voice’s future intent to resolve all instances of temporary

conversational uncertainty. As the subsequent passage indicates, the reader’s trust is not

violated (even if Oliver himself, temporarily safe in the arms of Mr Brownlow, fails to

share in the partial resolution of the paradox). The general line of thought, however,

provokes a fresh line of inquiry. How do narrative fictions such as Oliver Twist

integrate these localized uncertainties with the more global uncertainties that result from

the presence of multiple character goals? One future task for scholarship would then

involve examining Beaugrande and Dressler’s other suggestion—by analyzing the way

in which the narrative voice also functions as a stage manager for the discourse action

of Oliver Twist as a whole.

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29

Works Cited

Beaugrande, Robert. Text, Discourse and Process. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing

Corporation, 1980.

Beaugrande, Robert and Wolfgang Dressler. Introduction to Text Linguistics. London:

Longman, 1981.

Beaugrande, Robert de Critical Discourse: A Survey of Literary Theorists. Norwood,

NJ: Ablex Publishing Company, 1988

Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd

ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Ed. Fred Kaplan. New York and London: W.W. Norton

and Co. Ltd., 1993.

Grice, H. Paul. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics III: Speech Acts,

edited by Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press,

1978.

Halliday, Michael and Ruqaiya Hasan Cohesion in English. London and New York:

Longman, 1976.

Halliday, Michael. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd

Ed. London: Edward

Arnold, 1994.

Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean Well-lighted Place” in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and

Other Stories. New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Hough, Graham. “Narrative and Dialogue in Jane Austen.” Critical Quarterly. 13.3

Autumn (1970): 201-229.

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Kelman, James. “And the Judges Said…”. And the Judges Said… London: Secker and

Warburg, 2002.

Leech, Geoffrey N., and Michael Short. (1981). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic

Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman.

Lodge, David. “Hemingway’s Clean, Well–Lighted, Puzzling Place,” in The Novelist at

the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism. London: Routledge

and Kegan Paul, 1971.

Wales, Katie. A Dictionary of Stylistics. 2nd

Ed. Harlow: Longman, 2001.

Woolf, Virginia. “Ernest Hemingway”, in A Bloomsbury Group Reader ed S. P.

Rosenbaum (Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1997).

Endnotes

1 Beaugrande credits the idea of the text as a self-regulating cybernetic system to

Wolfgang Iser’s The Act of Reading. See Robert de Beaugrande, Critical Discourse: A

Survey of Literary Theorists. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company, 1988 (150).

2 My analysis of the speech forms in Oliver Twist is a modified version of the

framework developed by Graham Hough in “Narrative and Dialogue in Jane Austen.”

3 Leech and Short distinguish among three zones on a cline of ‘interference’ in reporting.

The two extremes on this cline are those in which the “narrator [is] apparently in total

control of the report” and that in which “the narrator [is] apparently not in control of

report at all” (Leech and Short 1981: 324). For his part, Raymond Chatman, states that

“[Indirect speech] is often used simply to convey information which is supposed to

come through speech but which is given for its own sake rather than for any

development of character or plot” (226). These statements are congruent with Virginia

Woolf’s idea that characters should not speak unless they have something important to

say.