One key resource, therefore, for acknowledging the heteroglossic diversity is provided by extra-vocalisation. Extra-vocalisation contrasts with an array of resources by which the heteroglossic diversity is construed as more internal to the text, where the dialog (in Bakhtin's terms) is essentially internal rather than external. Thus,
Extra-vocalisation
Some scholars say Francis Bacon wrote The Tempest.
Intra-vocalisation
Francis Bacon probably wrote The Tempest. (probability)
It's clear Francis Bacon wrote The Tempest. (appearance)
I contend, therefore, that Francis Bacon did write The Tempest. (proclamation)
All these intra-vocalising resources act to multiply the voices of the text, to cast it as dialogic in Bakhtin's sense by explicitly subjectivising the voice of the author, by bringing it forward from the interpersonal background and casting it as contingent, as just one of a number of possible voices.
I will explore this semantic in the context of values of probability.
To probabilise propositional content is to cast it in terms of a particular, individualised inter-subjective position. In some cases of probability this is made highly explicit through the resources of grammatical metaphor in structures such as `I think/suppose/guess... .' Such metaphors operate at two stratal levels - at both the level of the lexicogrammar and the discourse semantics. At the discourse semantic level, the meanings are interpersonal - coding an inter-subjective value of probability, as Halliday's analysis of the tagging behaviour of such structures indicates. (Tags target the Subject of the projected clause, not the projecting clause, indicating that modal responsibility is assigned to the MOOD element of the projected clause, not the projecting Sensor - `I think he's left already, hasn't he'.) At the lexicogrammatical level, in contrast, such structures exploit the ideational metafunction to make their meanings. The meanings at issue are construed in terms of an experiential mental process which projects the propositional content at issue. By this mechanism, the authorial role is explicitly represented in the text as the Sensor who does the projecting. The intertextual role of the authorial voice as source is thereby foregrounded. (For a full account of this semantic see Fuller 1998, from which this account is derived.)
But even when the inter-subjectivity is less foregrounded, the modal still operates to interpolate the internal authorial voice and thereby cast the utterance as explicitly contingent, as one of a possible set of heteroglossic alternatives. The voice that opines, for example, that `the government may be corrupt' simultaneously evokes voices who make different statements with respect to the government. The modal locates the proposition at some point in the semantic space between the polar opposites of absolute `Yes' (the positive) and absolute `No' (the negative). By so locating the utterance, the modal brings into play all the other points along the cline between the polar absolutes.
Thus while attribution and probability differ in the terms by which they complicate and diversify the voicing of the text (attribution introduces an external, probability an internal voice), they nevertheless share this functionality of multiplying the voices in the text and thereby establishing each voice as representing but one of a number of possible heteroglossic positions. Insights from Bakhtin are once again helpful in clarifying this point. He talks as about `our-own-ness' and the `other-ness' of a text's multiple voices.
Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others' words, varying degrees of otherness and varying degrees of `our-own-ness', varying degrees of awareness and detachment. These words of others carry with them their own expression, their own evaluation tone, which we assimilate, rework and reaccentuate. (Bakhtin 1986: 89) Bakhtin 1986: 89)
Thus both probability and attribution multiply voices, with extra-vocalising attribution associated with `other-ness' and intra-vocalising probability associated with `our-own-ness'.
Values of proclamation (I declare, it is my contention etc) are, perhaps, less problematic in this context, in the sense that they quite obviously act to interpolate the authorial voice. By means of such rhetorical gestures, the authorial voice is explicitly foregrounded, declaring its role as the inter-subjective source of the utterance in question. We'll look further at the underlying communicative motivation for such an overt declaration of subject-hood in the following section.
