Dialogue

From classical to modern era, dialogue has been central to the inquiry into human connection, meaning and understanding. Although understood and examined through different models, and without a solid shared definition of the phenomenon, dialogue is most often conceived through the concepts of exchange, ethical discourse, and community. Etymologically, the ancient Greek word dialogue falls into the semantic field of the verb to converse, with the idea of two people talking absent, although somehow implied. Conversing can be divided into two separate flows – the process of the external situation, the communicative act and the internal process of various transformations happening at an individual level (the so called inner dialogues, as described in Conversation. Conversing, Dialogue (in Bulgarian). According to prof. Bogdan Bogdanov (in his book Text, talking and understanding, in Bulgarian) these two flows present in the act of the conversation,  in addition to obtaining useful information, also serve to strengthen a common “self” in the process of exchanging information, ideas and meanings.

Dialogue in Philosophical Terms

Bakhtin’s Dialogue

Bakhtin understood dialogue as a defining quality of humanity, perceiving human life as intrinsically dialogic, shaped by language-related relationships constituting worlds. Dialogue in Bakhtin’s paradigm, lives on the boundaries between individuals, as in his view, “no living word relates to its object in a singular way”. Bakhtin writes:

The relationship to others’ utterances cannot be separated from the relatihonship to the object (for it is argued about, agreed about, views converge within it), nor can it be separated from the relationship to the speaker himself. This is a living tripartite unity. Speech genres and other related essays, 1986, M. Bakhtin.

Buber’s Dialogue

Buber’s dialogue, as summarized by Oliver Escobar, refers to a special kind of human interaction, which is characterised by two primary types of relationships. The first type of relationships is I-It, is instrumental and strategic, the second, I-Thou is a state of mutual recognition, openness and responsiveness. It is in that scenario that dialogic communication is possible as the people involved in the exchange recognize and accept each other’s uniqueness.

Bohm’s dialogue

In his essay “On Dialogue” physicist David Bohm distinguishes between communication in its content exchange part – that which is an exchange of information and the other which is the result of this exchange, something that arises in the exchange of information, in the shared space between the recipient and the sender. In theorizing communication as an act of the common, Bohm presents two types of “making something common”: ① Communicating instructions (general, unambiguous meaning) How to?; ② Dialogue – one person says something, the other does not necessarily understand the same meaning, there is a continuous emergence of new content for both participants. Unlike the first type of “making common” (transfer and exchange of information, largely formalized meaning), in the second type of “making common” the participants do not try to make given ideas or information, which they already know, common for all, on the contrary, it can be said that in dialogue the participants create something common together that is new for both parties. With this distinction, Bohm lays the foundations of dialogue as an open process on the one hand for creating shared meaning (the basis of culture and the cohesion of society) and on the other for observing prejudices and presuppositions (dialogue is uncovering unknowingly held assumptions) that hinder of the actual exchange and enrichment of meanings and knowledge.

Dialogue in Communication Studies and Practices

Theoretically, dialogue spans multiple domains of knowledge covering the broad fields of interpersonal communication, organizational communication, communication with the Other. , yet being rooted in several common concepts such as community, mutual understanding, co-creation of meaning, co-orientation, coherence. On the plane of public communication, dialogue is seen as a process towards coherence, part of the inevitable heteroglossia in organizations, as the act of doing and being together, as an inevitable process in trade relations unfolding as a private business in the arena in the public space. In public relations dialogue is theorized as key in ethical and practical approaches to engaging with publics. The process of dialogue overlaps with and drives tangential processes such as community build- ing, value generation, knowledge creation, mutual understanding, meaning and interpretation experiences. Yet, dialogue is not always carried out by constructing a common field of meanings and finds expression in reaching a consensus. Researcher Magda Pieczka makes a theoretical overview of the main perspectives towards dialogue in her  paper Public relations as dialogic expertise, offering reflection on the role played by the concept of dialogue in public relations theory, pedagogy, and practice. Among the many worthy thoretization there, Linder’s two classic models of dialogue are presented. The two classical models are the Socratic and the Athenian dialogue.

Socratic interrogations [are] in pursuit of self- knowledge and virtue‘, [Athenian dialogue] refers to Athenian deliberations for collective governance. An inquiry into dialogue, its challenges and justification. S. Linder

The Socratic model of dialogue is defined as an alternation of questions and answers in search of self-knowledge and virtue. The works of Gadamer and Bohm present the path to dialogue as discovering new ways of understanding or reaching what is hidden from view. The Athenian model of dialogue refers to Athenian practices related to collective governance. In short, both models represent two directions present in the Western concept of dialogue. Contemporary thinkers who fall into the category of the Athenian model are Habermas and Dewey, who see dialogue as a way of forming commitment on the part of the participants, as well as a common goal and strengthening the symbolic bonds of culture. In practice it is often the case that, processes called dialogue are not really rooted in the idea of togetherness and enrichment of views, but in the utilitarian goal of information exchange, where meaning is fixed, formal, already reached and just being communicated, unambiguously. It is here that it is necessary to distinguish dialogue as communication and exchange from communication, which takes place in order to transfer instructions. To understand dialogue within the realm of collaboration, co-creation and reaching shared understanding, it helps to account for the key dynamics of the process. This key dynamics has been well summarized by O. Escobar to help us understand and differentiate dialogue from debating, negotiating, discussion and other collective processes of aiming at common ground.

Key Dynamics In Dialogue

Source: Oliver Escobar Public Dialogue and Deliberation A communication perspective for public engagement practitioners

My Favourite Resources on Dialogue and Dialogic Communication

Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies, Thousand Oaks, California, 2004. R. Anderson, L. Baxter, K. Cissna On Dialogue. David Bohm. Routledge, 1996. Text, Speaking and Understanding. Bogdan Bogdanov. Janet 45, 2014. Private business– public battleground – the case for 21st century stakeholder companies. J. Egan, D. Wilson, S. C. King, Palgrave, 2002. The Dialogic Imagination, M. Bakhtin. I-Thou. Martin Buber. Principles of Dialogue and the History of Dialogic Theory. Michael Kent. Peking University Press, Beijing, 2017.