We explain what dialogue is, its characteristics and classification. Also, direct dialogue, indirect dialogue and monologue.
In the dialogue, the interlocutors take turns in the roles of sender and receiver.What is dialogue?
Commonly, by dialogue we understand the reciprocal exchange of information between a sender and a receiver through an oral or written medium. That is, it is a conversation between two interlocutors who take turns in their respective roles of sender and receiver, in an orderly manner.
The word dialogue comes from Latin dialogus and this in turn from the Greek dialogues (day-: “through”, and logos: “Word”), which literally means “through the word”. This already gives us an idea of how important the dialogues have been in the history of the humanity, as a tool for mutual understanding, generally as a replacement for the violence.
Similarly, dialogues are part of the literary resources who owns a work to show us two or more characters, or to let us know part of the information they exchange, as if we were their witnesses. Therefore, it is common to find them in most artistic representations. narratives.
On the other hand, in the Antiquity, they constituted the method suitable for teaching Y learning between teacher and student, put into practice by the school of the Socratics, that is, the students of the philosopher Socrates.
Dialog types
The conversations between characters are external literary dialogues.The classification of dialogues is complex, as it depends on the context in which they occur.
In principle, we can distinguish between oral and written dialogues. The former occur through the use of the voice and are ephemeral, that is, they belong to the instant in which they occur. For their part, the seconds occur through writing and last longer, as they can be read over and over again.
A second distinction would separate literary dialogues (those that appear in artistic works) and non-literary dialogues (the rest), which includes the following classification:
- Literary dialogues. Those that we will find in stories, stories, novels, plays and even films, and that can be:
- Internal dialogues. They occur in a character's head, in his imagination or in his memory, or they can even take place between the character and his inner self.
- External dialogues. Those who have a character with other characters, and who constitute part of the plot of the work.
- Non-literary dialogues. Those that do not have a clear artistic intention, or that are not part of a poetic work, but of real life situations, or transcripts of the same. In that sense, they can be:
- Formal dialogues. Of a planned type, in the absence of affection or close relationships between the interlocutors, it usually responds to formulas and protocols from I respect.
- Informal dialogues. They occur in an unplanned way or among highly trusted people, frequently using slang and colloquial expressions, rudeness, that is, without necessarily keeping manners.
Direct dialogue and indirect dialogue
Within the possibilities of written dialogue, whether or not of a character literaryWe find an important distinction, which has to do with direct speech and indirect speech. We refer, similarly, to:
- Direct dialogue. It is the one in which we can verify what each interlocutor says. They usually use lines of dialogue to separate and mark each intervention of the interlocutors, as in the following case:
─ Have you already eaten, son?
─ No, mom. I'm not hungry.
- Indirect dialogue. The figure of a narrator tells us what each interlocutor says. In other words, all the communicative content is referred to us by a third party, as follows:
"The mother asked the son if he had eaten, and he replied that he had not, but that he was not hungry either."
The monologue
Unlike dialogue, a monologue involves only one participant. That is, it is a “conversation” in which only one interlocutor speaks, either because the other is silent, or because he or she is not present. This is a very frequent resource in dramaturgy, but it can also be found in narrative (novels, short stories).