Body as Prior Text: Talbot

What strikes me most about the Talbot reading is the existence of gossip as a solidarity-creating feature, much in the vein of Tovares’ work on television gossip. Gossip inevitably creates a third party against whom some other set of parties are aligned and delineated—the gossipers become one group by virtue of their alignment in opposition to the one gossiped about. Tovares explores this in terms of how women discuss the women on the TV show Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire, in which the show itself allows the women, or a woman and her husband to align in opposition to the way the show presents itself and the women on the show. In the ads, however, first the “gossip” must be constructed, by use of features such as inclusive we and the response to “unasked” questions in the testimonials. These language features provide a site of “gossip” and thus create alignment in the group of women toward whom the ad is focused.

With regard to my own research, it is apparent as I’ve mentioned previously, that the women involved in these fic-writing communities create solidarity through their uses of language. Talbot’s work here gives me a good jumping-off point for looking at the ways in which the texts of the fic communities create “gossipees” to encourage alignment between the people who are doing the gossiping. The community of fic writers are in their own way a synthetic sisterhood, although perhaps a slightly more “real” sisterhood than the consumers of the lipstick ads in that they are able to communicate directly with each other and even meet up outside the internet. Nevertheless, the creation of community via these types of positioning moves I think will be a useful angle by which to explore the process of WK.

Making the Polyvocal Polyvocal: Tovares 2006 2007

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tovares’ research was that like the Tannen 2010, the focus texts themselves received an additional layer of polyvocality through their representation by the researcher who wrote about them. The evaluative nature of not only the topics being discussed but also the researcher added another layer of intertext to the already polyvocalic blending of the television with the speech and evaluation of the family members. For instance, when Alla adds her own interpretation of the words, “I love you,” as repeated by a husband to his wife, her own prosody and expression mark her own stance toward the data and invite us to interpret not only the intertextual nature of the conversation as we are meant to as students, but also to be drawn into the whimsy of the nature of the conversation itself—that a husband is gently joshing his wife. Although some of the whimsy is created by the excerpt itself (by the use of the words “barefoot and pregnant” to describe what the wife stands in opposition to compared to the movie on television), more is laminated by the addition of the researcher’s voice.

The ways in which intertexutal ties allow the blending of the public and the private are something that I believe will be very useful to me in my own research. Bulletin board/forum posting is inherently both a public and a private act—it simulates private “backstage” conversation, in that frequently it can seem as though a post is only in response to a single other interlocutor, or a small group of interlocutors. Yet the message board or forum is usually open to thousands, if not millions, and thus the speech that exists there is very much “frontstage” speech, even as it masquerades as a private conversation.
This also ties back to Bakhtin and his notions of a third-party who is the recipient of some of the text, or toward whom the focus text is constructed (similar to Bell’s notion of the referee). The texts themselves take on new meaning when they are repeated for a new audience; at times, it seems it is the repetition of a line like “I love you,” and the knowledge that it is a repetition which makes it possible to recognize the playfulness of the statement. In turning a comment directed to a movie character and instead directing it towards his wife, the husband creates a moment where the wife is positioned humorously in contrast to the television wife.
In unpacking the ways that gossip and television allows the bridge between public and private to be made, Tovares provides insight not immediately apparent in Bakhtin’s exploration of dialogicality. In Tovares’ work, dialogicality has a purpose distinct from characterization or merely informing the character, but rather also plays a large role in the ways people make meanings out of the mundane everyday inputs of life. Given that the internet is a public sphere where much privacy is assumed, it seems only natural that I could use the same or a similar approach to discuss some of the ways this same gap is bridged in my own texts.