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- Volume 2, Issue, 2012
Language and Dialogue - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2012
Volume 2, Issue 1, 2012
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Working to keep aligned in psychotherapy: Using nods as a dialogic resource to display affiliation
Author(s): Peter Muntigl, Naomi Knight and Ashley Watkinspp.: 9–27 (19)More LessWe examine therapist nods in terms of how they display and maintain affiliation with clients in contexts in which therapists reformulate clients’ prior talk. We found that therapist nods functioned to maintain affiliation with clients irrespective of whether clients aligned (e.g., confirmed) or disaligned (e.g., disconfirmed) with the therapist’s prior reformulation. Further, we found that the sequential placement of a therapist’s nod was influenced by the quality of alignment; that is, in aligning contexts, nods were found to be contiguous to the client’s confirmation. In disaligning contexts, by contrast, therapists delayed the production of nods to a point at which the client either ‘fully’ disconfirmed or displayed an affectual stance regarding a personal event. We argue that these forms of delay index a practice in which therapists may successfully secure realignment with clients.
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The representation of self through the dialogic properties of talk and conduct
Author(s): Robert E. Sanderspp.: 28–40 (13)More LessIt is a basic dialogical principle that the meaning of what is said or done is based on its similarities and especially its differences with other things that might have been said or done as relevantly instead, just then, just there. This makes what was actually said or done meaningful as a “choice” for all practical purposes, whether the actor made it consciously or not. And any choice a person makes (or is deemed to make) is revealing about what he or she had in mind — his or her intentions and wants, values and affects, character and qualities as a social being — that subjectively warranted producing what was said or done instead of one of the alternatives. What one’s talk and conduct reveal about what one had in mind constitutes a representation of one’s self as a social being. This representation is a persona, a “face” in Goffman’s sense. This representation is discursively, dialogically produced, such that actors’ talk and conduct will unavoidably produce a representation of themselves regardless of whether they intend it. Accordingly, persons who would not be expected to have such competence nonetheless produce representations of self, for example young children or impaired adults. Insofar as those representations are in the person’s self-interest, there is a warrant for considering that they have that competence after all. In contrast, persons who can be expected to have such competence may nonetheless produce representations that work against their self-interest by accident or deficiencies of performance. Arguably, it is an additional dimension of the representation of self that an actor produces, having to do with his or her competence, whether the representation seems to be intentional, and beyond that, artful or clever. I examine two cases to elaborate on the key propositions here: (a) that representations of self are produced whether intended or not, (b) that ones that seem to be intended because they are in the actor’s self-interest are evidence of his or her competence, and (c) that ones that seem unintentional because they are not in the actor’s self-interest are evidence of a performance lapse, or more broadly, deficiencies of competence. The first case is of two young children whose talk and conduct interactively produce representations of self that do serve their respective interests, and thus warrant reconsideration of the expressive and interactional competence of children of that age. The second is of a doctor in an urban clinic whose representation of self is not in his self-interest.
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Activity, materiality, and creative struggle in the communicative constitution of organizing: Two cases of communication design practice
Author(s): Mark Aakhus and Leon V. Laureijpp.: 41–59 (19)More LessCommunication design practice involves transforming given situations into preferred courses of action. This ubiquitous feature of organizational and professional life presents an opportunity for advancing theory about the constitutive role of communication in organizing (CCO). Extant CCO argues that collective courses of action happen through a process of social reasoning involving the mediation of speech acts but this account misses some important features of activity, materiality, and creative struggle evident in communication design practice. Examination of two cases of communication design practice reveal that activity — its materiality and the creative struggle over it — is central to the social reasoning involved in constructing preferred courses of action. The alternative identified here has implications for developing a design stance that integrates design theory and research on language and social interaction to advance understanding of communication design practice in the constitution of organizing.
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Mathematical meaning-making in whole-class conversation: Functional-grammatical analysis of a paradigmatic text
Author(s): Betina Zolkower and Elizabeth de Freitaspp.: 60–79 (20)More LessThis paper focuses on a brief whole-group conversation captured in a sixth grade classroom taught by an experienced teacher. Drawing upon systemic functional linguistics, we treat the conversation as a multi-semiotic text of the genre of teacher-guided mathematics problem framing. After describing the generic structure of the text and its context of situation, we analyze the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings students and teacher contributed to its conjoined making. Our analysis shows how the text means as it does and, in so doing, underlines those features that make it a paradigmatic instantiation of its genre. We conclude by highlighting the contribution of systemic functional linguistics to current conversations about thought and language, dialogue and representation, and context and text.
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The arroseur arrosé or the misfortunes of pathos in a media dialogue
Author(s): Danièle Torckpp.: 80–104 (25)More LessThe case study which is presented here refers to the Polanski affair (2009) and the resulting debate in France and is an illustration of the loss of legitimacy that some intellectuals, the so-called media intellectuals, suffer in their relationship to dialogues on the Internet . It also illustrates what has been called by Charaudeau (1997)the pathemization of public discourse and its spectacularization in the media. I will analyze the argumentation in a dialogue (or its refusal) between two philosophers on the French public radio, France Inter. I will describe the discursive ethos of the main speaker, Alain Finkielkraut, but also the fallacies, the dominance of pathos and the accusation of amalgam (fallacious analogy) that characterize his discourse. This accusation, which is very frequent in French public discourse, will be examined in the framework of Angenot’s approach of the logics of resentment (1997). I will then confront this analysis to the discourse and argumentation used by some Internet users on the Polanski affair and more generally on dialogues in the media.
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Defining dialogue in ancient Rome: Cicero’s De oratore, drama and the notion of everyday conversation
Author(s): Jean-Pierre De Giorgiopp.: 105–121 (17)More LessThis article investigates the process whereby Greek dialogue was reinvested in the Roman world, based on a study of Cicero’s De oratore. This work is considered in the light of classical theories of the literary genre developed in the 1st century BCE, under the influence of Hellinistic research, and in the light of the modern notion of interaction. Situated on the frontier between drama and the social practice of conversation, philosophical dialogue established itself as a legitimate constitutive discourse in the field of Roman literature.
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Proceduralism and implicatures in dialogue: Reflections on improving rational cooperation under bounded reasoning conditions
Author(s): Luciana Garbayopp.: 122–139 (18)More LessThis article aims at discussing some of the problems for the construction of a shared moral point of view in dialogical context, through a revision of both Habermas’ proceduralistic discourse ethics and Grice’s pragmatist conversational implicatures project. I claim that a) by discounting the undue idealization of both projects, supported by their Kantian underpinnings, and b) by refreshing them with a consequentialist approach to rationality in a fallibilistic bounded reasoning approach, one could achieve a more realistic understanding of the dialogical problems between moral strangers. By following such a revision, I suggest to be then possible to operate c) a reversal of the principle of rational cooperation in Grice, in convergence with Sperber & Wilson’s relevance theory, while also considering the role of other additional mechanisms in interaction, such as empathy (in Alvin Goldman’s sense). These modifications result in a fallibilistic understanding of the process of the dialogical construction of a shared moral point of view among moral strangers, with the aid of a non-idealized use of procedures and implicatures.
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Beyond dialogue: Levinas and otherwise than the I–Thou
Author(s): Ronald C. Arnettpp.: 140–155 (16)More LessThis essay examines the interplay between dialogue and alterity, outlining Emmanuel Levinas’s unique contribution to the study and practice of human dialogue, whose differences with Martin Buber texture an enlarged sense of identity associated with the notion of dialogue. To flesh out this contribution, this essay follows a threefold sequence of exploration: (1) a review of select essays that explore differences between Buber and Levinas; (2) a review of scholarly exchanges between Buber and Levinas on issues related to dialogue; and (3) an examination of the specific writings of Levinas on dialogue. Finally, this essay situates Levinas’s perspective within the schools of dialogue, outlining his unique position of “beyond dialogue” and further texturing our understanding of diverse schools within communication.
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Towards a pragmatic semantics: Dialogue and representation in Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher
Author(s): Guillaume Lejeunepp.: 156–173 (18)More LessThe purpose of this article is to justify how the philosophy of German Romanticism could still inform what is at stake in our conception of truth, representation and dialogue. Dialogue in Schlegel and Schleiermacher relies less on a supposed representation of truth, than on a conflict of representations in which truth is approximated. Dialogue concerns not only the communication of truth. It is the space in which truth is constructed. The semantics of German Romanticism does not refer to a defining relation between subject and object — as it is the case in the traditional concept of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus. It depends on the dialogue between subjects. We are also led to a pragmatical conception of truth.
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The verbalization of repressed intentions: A socially instituted practice
Author(s): Jean-Baptiste Lamarchepp.: 174–189 (16)More LessThe widely shared tendency to locate psychoanalysis beyond the scope of the social-historical world is ultimately based on the idea that intention is an inner, mental event that precedes its fulfillment in action or its communication in speech. Now, intention, far from being such a private event, is always expressed, in deeds or in words. Above all, the verbalization of intentions is an instituted practice that mediates interactions by gauging actions against social norms. Freud, by showing his interlocutors how to verbalize new kinds of intentions (repressed ones), implicitly showed them how to gauge actions against the common meanings of an emerging modern, contractual society.
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