Commentary on Excerpt F

Despite Frank's continued resistance to the conclusion endorsed by his friends at the conclusion of this segment, I think all four make progress of a sort in the course of the segment. They do so by way of a process of conversation that is at once decidedly ancient and yet appropriately postmodern. It is not a fully open, unstructured conversation--which is one sense of "dialogue" (Swearingen, 1990)--but neither is it the highly staged, highly controlled type of exchange found in Plato's represented dialogues (Maranhao, 1990).

In the excerpt Laura initiates the spirit of dialogue by directing her initial question to Frank rather than to Dave. What matters uppermost in the conversation between Frank and Dave, she seems to be saying, is not the conclusion Dave has reached but the conclusion Frank himself has reached. Implicitly, then, she is defining the situation as an opportunity for problem-solving and learning rather than judging and sentencing.

Still Laura is angry. She brings to the segment a distinct feeling of having been mistreated by Frank, but she gropes for a way to say why she feels wronged and why Frank's alleged intention to keep the recording confidential does not bring much relief. There is a process of discovery taking place in this segment, although its final shape will not emerge clearly until near the end. In the course of the discussion Laura offers a number of objections in quick succession, but they don't crystallize until she ponders the inequity of her being tricked into speaking candidly on tape while Frank merely performs. Until Laura's final response to Frank, Dave and Jean have been silent, but now they not only express agreement with her position but add supportive reasons as well.

Significantly, Laura is helped to her indictment of Frank by Frank's own persistent questioning. This point warrants emphasis because we are accustomed to thinking of rhetoric solely as an instrument of persuasion. But rhetoric, and particularly dialogic rhetoric, is also an instrument of discovery. Billig (1987) maintains that the conversations we have with ourselves closely resemble the conversations we have with others: we use the same forms of argument in both. He adds that even monologic public discourse has a dialogic twist to it in that it takes place typically in the context of past exchanges and in anticipation of future commentary.