Dialogic Syntax in Ancient Greek Conversation

Abstract

This chapter views conversation reported in ancient Greek literary pieces as linguistic material to test Jefferson’s investigations into sound- and category-triggers activating affinities in natural conversation. The argument goes beyond the supposition that re-created or even totally made-up conversations ought to resemble, and to be recognized as, natural dialogues. The paper proposes a further step by positing that the ordinary side of literary talk is poetic in itself to the extent that it makes use of ‘dialogic syntax’, a concept developed by John Du Bois, inspired by previous work on parallelism and on polyphony in language, and applied to everyday conversation. What for Sacks and Jefferson constitutes ‘rephrased repetitions’ for Du Bois constitutes resonance, defined as ‘catalytic activation of affinities across utterances’. The analyses of ancient Greek texts focus on as artful dialogic sequences as possible (six passages belonging to six different genres), so that there is maximal exposure to arguments that may counter or at least challenge the core idea of dialogic syntax. It is shown that such a core idea can only be fully confirmed, regardless of the different formats, contexts, and meanings.