Spence, Robert
Saarland University, Germany

Monologic and dialogic approaches to Theme-Rheme: Modes of confrontation in an institutional setting

The institutional setting at risk is a nominally multi-theory tertiary-level agglomeration of scholars engaged in the pedagogic transmission of the discourse of Text-Induced Cross-Cultural Text-Production, which is, being interpreted, Translation. Within this setting, a monologic and a dialogic approach to Theme-Rheme vie, with unequal degrees of commitment, for hegemony.

The aim of this paper is to characterize the two approaches -- both intrinsically, in terms of their theoretical standpoint on the role played by dialog in the phylo- and ontogenesis or the role played by monolog in the logogenesis of Theme-Rheme, and extrinsically, in terms of their use of dialogic versus monologic communication strategies within the institutional setting.