Contextualising Heteroglossic Discourses

Amazing title for a post, for which I have to thank Potash, that most caustic and clever of commentators. I nicked it off the first chapter of his dissertation.

What it really means, of course, is that we take all the wonderfully varied things that different people say about a particular topic and we put them all into some kind of context. It is a rewarding activity; you synthesize stuff, and if you are good, the stuff speaks to you.

By analysing Potash's work, I've come to realise that I am incapable of using that level of discourse in which five-syllable words are routinely bandied about and used in artful ambush of the innocent intellect. He is just too good at it, and I think I need a few more years to catch up — years that I don't have.

But I don't think I need to use five-syllable words. I've come to realise that just as in the stories of primitive societies, great complexity can be found in simple ideas, couched in simple words.

For example, these lines from the great bard of modern Wales:

And there could I marvel my birthday

Away but the weather turned around. And the true 

Joy of the long dead child sang burning

In the sun.

It was my thirtieth

Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon 

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood. 

O may my heart’s truth

Still be sung

On this high hill in a year’s turning.

Too beautiful for words, almost. The miracle is that he was able to put all that blood and fire into the water of his voice.