Dialogue, Tensions, and Differences

Dialogue has been variously theorized as a descriptive versus prescriptive practice (Stewart & Zediker, 2000), a generative or degenerative conversational activity (Gergen et al., 2004), and a form of collective think­ing (Bohm, 1980, 1985, 1990; Isaacs, 1999) or relational practice (Barge & Little, 2002, 2008).

First, dialogical approaches emphasize the centrality of discourse. They focus on the way in which utterances create and sustain par­ticular patterns of meaning making and social

arrangements as well as the way in which larger societal and cultural meanings influ­ence each other and local conversations. The former is typically referred to as the “little-d” discourse, which focuses on language in use, while the latter is often talked about as the “big-D” Discourse, which highlights the larger enduring worldviews and systems of meaning that circulate within a society or culture and influences the way in which people make sense of and act in their social worlds (Alvesson & Karreman, 2000).

Second, dialogical approaches adopt a holistic view of communication and focus on the interrelationships among communication, context, persons in conversation, meaning, and action. A holistic perspective looks at the communicative ecology that constitutes human activity. For example, a Bohmian approach to dialogue explicitly resists the tendency to chop up a system and look at issues and situations in a fragmentary way and instead views it as a way of thinking, feeling, and acting that facilitates individuals seeing connections among their own beliefs, attitudes, interpretations, and actions and how they connect to other persons (Bohm, 1990; Isaacs, 1999).

Third, dialogical approaches view human systems as constituted by tensions that are managed by communication practices. Tensions or dualities refer to oppositional forces that are typically exhibited in a strug­gle of perspectives, values, or actions (Seo, Putnam, & Bartunek, 2003). Tensions are characterized by polar opposites that often compete with each other but are not necessar­ily viewed as being mutually exclusive. Stewart et al. (2004) note how various dialogic theo­rists emphasize different kinds of tensions. For example, Buber’s (1958) dialogic work highlights tensions regarding human relation­ships, while Bakhtin’s (1993) dialogic work foregrounds tensions about the manifestation of multiple voices and multiple points of view and the dynamic between centripetal forces, which move systems toward unity, centraliza­tion, and monologue, and centrifugal forces, which generate disunity, decentralization, and dialogue within systems. Alternatively, Freire’s (2007) dialogic work draws attention to the tensions between unequal power relations such as the tension people may experience when they are simultaneously the oppressor and the oppressed.

We suggest a fourth shared tendency among theoretical approaches to dialogue, an empha­sis on the importance of managing difference in meaning making. Difference is viewed as a resource for enriching one’s interpretations and meaning making regarding people, situations, and events. Deetz and Simpson (2004) observe that when people engage the “otherness of the other” (p.

Every interaction, thus, holds the possibility of closure or new meaning—either a repro­duction of the dominant socially produced subjectivity or responsiveness to the excess of external events over these conceptions. Developing an appreciation of otherness as a part of a dialogical interaction is central to developing a responsibility appropriate to the contemporary age. (Deetz & Simpson, 2004, p. 143)

Dialogue can facilitate the flow of mean­ing and the creation of new understandings and interpretations provided people are able to discursively manage the differences others bring to the conversation as they coordinate their meaning and relationships.

Gergen et al. (2004) suggest that the dis­cursive coordination of difference is accom­plished through the processes of affirmation, negation, and supplementation within con­versation. Affirmation confirms the value and reality of a preceding utterance, whereas nega­tion curtails its value. For example, if some­one responded to the utterance of a person by saying, “That’s stupid,” the contribution the person has made in the preceding utter­ance is negated and the reality that it offers invalidated. As a result, there is no means for productively extending or sustaining the meaning making potential of the utterance. On the other hand, if an individual responded by saying, “Yes, and what I would add to that is...” then that individual is supplementing the meaning making potential of the preced­ing utterance by introducing a difference that sustains and extends the contribution of the other person (“what I would add to that is...”). When affirmation is in a productive ten­sion with supplementation then a generative dialogue exists, whereas degenerative dialogue occurs when no affirmation exists and only negation is present, which hinders the coordi­nation of meaning making and action.