dialogism

Critical pedagogy (CP), as a poststructuralist educational movement, challenges the asymmetrical, power-over nature of classroom discourse and seeks to accommodate multivocality in the classroom and in the society. This study probed the discourse architecture of EFL classrooms in Iran. Specifically, it aimed to explore to what extent Iranian EFL classrooms have stepped away from the teacher-dominant initiation-response-follow-up (IRF) discourse structure and welcomed CP-oriented dialogism and multivocality. To this end, a number of EFL classrooms in Isfahan and Shahrekord (Iran) were observed, and the running classroom discourse was audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The results showed that discourse-construction opportunities were distributed unevenly in favor of teachers regarded as the sole authority in the classroom. Student-regulated symmetrical talks were seldom evidenced in the classrooms. The findings further demonstrated that the power-over IRF discourse architecture, despite its communicative inadequacies, still seems to be dominant in EFL classrooms in Iran. Finally, it is suggested that L2 practitioners should move towards transforming the status quo, include more elements of CP into L2 classrooms, and invest in dialogism and multivocality as essential mechanisms to de-silence the students.

Polyphony is a term applied by Bakhtin to describe the features of Dostoevsky's Poetics. According to Bakhtin, polyphony is based on dialogism and to respect to the others 'opinion. In this case, polyphony is an achievement that releases human thought of dogmatism. Molavi, prior to Bakhtin, emphasized on otherness and avoidance of dogmatism and selfdom. Polyphony is a twentieth century idiom and he did not theorize it, the principles of polyphony as a universal message for human society can be seen in Molavi's thought and works. This article examines Molavi̓ s polyphonic view and tries to show it in Molavi's works especially in Mathnavis. The conclusion shows that there are the elements and roots of polyphonic thinking in Molavi̕ s work; Molavi presents polyphony through the elements such as: coexistence of binary oppositions, relativism, to respect to the other`s ideas.

This article aims to analyze Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1993) in light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The present study explores the significance of dialogism in the given novel which tells the story of a marginalized young boy living in neo-colonized Ireland in the 1960s. Bakhtin believes that the development of signification between the “self” and the “other” is called dialogue through which human beings define their existence as individuals in polyphonic societies. The protagonist of The Butcher Boy is a non-conformist, unwilling to follow social rules. He creates his very own way of dialogism with his surroundings and ends up in a mental hospital and finally a prison, showing the author’s approval of Bakhtin’s viewpoint towards the importance of dialogue in shaping human beings’ consciousness and existence in the world. Moreover, this article attempts to clarify the resistance of the main character before his society’s hierarchical structure that makes him a perfect example of a marginalized hero disobeying rules and regulations imposed by the authorities to gain an independent resolution.

This study queries into the ethical functions of diasporic fiction through carrying out a textual as well as a contextual study of The Famished Road. As an account of the politically marginal and the socially displaced, the diasporic novel is imbued with a singularity of form and content. Formally speaking, diasporic fiction is non-canonical, since it belongs to the space between nations and cultures. Furthermore, it partakes of a dialogic form which novelizes minor discourses and genres. In terms of content, the diasporic fiction opens up and narrates a liminal space and consists of the search for a utopian alternative to the dystopian status quo. The concurrence of these four qualities turns the diasporic novel into an account of experience at its extremes. However, the diasporic fiction is ethically radical not because it shows how different human experience is at the moment of exception, but because it points toward what Badiou calls an ethics of truths in singular situations. The diasporic experience results in a radical ethical system of truths that, far from succumbing to an overarching ethics of difference and a logic of us versus them, highlights the human truth at the heart of the experience of diaspora.