Page 80 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

DIASPORA

intentions of their users, even although a particular dialect can become
identified with a particular communicative role.

See also: Code, Diglossia, Pidgin
Further reading: Hughes and Trudgill (1979); Montgomery (1986)

DIALOGIC

A property of all signification, that of being structured as dialogue. The
term was coined by Volosinov in order to stress the continuous,
interactive, generative process of language, as opposed to the
Saussurian emphasis on its abstract, structural form. Volosinov
(1973) argues that all language is expressive of social relations, and
hence that every individual utterance is structured as dialogue. That is,
the way an utterance is organised by a speaker/writer is oriented
towards an anticipated response in the hearer/reader.
Furthermore, once the utterance is received by its addressee, it
results in meaning and understanding only through a dialogic
interaction with what Volosinov calls ‘inner speech’ – a kind of
internal dialogue that not only renders signs into sense, but
simultaneously takes the process further by generating a response that
is capable of being uttered as the next ‘moment’ of the dialogue.
Volosinov argues that this feature of signification is not tied to
speech alone, but characterises all utterances. Even monologues or
soliloquies (speech without an addressee) are internally structured as
dialogue. The same goes for utterances whose addressees are neither
present nor known to the addresser – for example, books and media
output. This book is dialogic in that each word, sentence, entry, and
the book as a whole, is oriented towards a supposed addressee, and
thus takes account of anticipated responses in the way it is selected,
organised and sequenced.

See also: Author/ship, Multi-accentuality

DIASPORA

The original Diaspora was worldwide Jewry. The term has lost its
capital letter and been generalised in cultural theory to refer to any
migrant or cosmopolitan ‘community’ and experience (see Clifford,
1997). Diasporic communities are groups of people that are distanced

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