Abstract
This chapter offers a critical construction of an operational definition of dialogue. It examines the concrete components of an approach to dialogue that, in line with dialogic philosophies of Buber and Gadamer, helps us encounter the other in such a way that can move civic discourse from polarization to mutual understanding. Political debate and deliberation, according to their folk definition (as opposed to how deliberative democrats conceive of the term), tend to utilize rational arguments to persuade the other, cull fact-based evidence from experts in the field, invite participants to weigh benefits and trade-offs of specific options, and aim (either immediately or eventually) at policy consensus. Dialogue, on the other hand, utilizes narratives based in first-person experience, encourages genuine questions of curiosity to promote deeper reflection and expose gray areas, and aims at mutual understanding. This chapter probes the significance of narrative, empathy, and truth for the practice of civic dialogue.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
My use of “deliberation” here is meant to reference its folk usage, as opposed to a scholarly definition. I use “debate and deliberation” to refer to the ways that most citizens—as opposed to political and deliberative theorists—understand the term: namely, people coming together to debate, argue, and deliberate over which policy options are the best. For further qualification about my use of these terms, see Chap. 1, notes 9 and 11.
- 2.
See Ellinor and Girrard (1998) for more details on a slightly different approach to dialogue, one based on the writings of physicist-turned-dialogician David Bohm.
- 3.
See Walsh (2007) for research into the efficacy of civic dialogue and a comparison with deliberation.
- 4.
http://www.whatisessential.org (formerly Public Conversations Project). Essential Partners has advised numerous contemporary organizations whose work borrows heavily from the theory and practice of Reflective Structured Dialogue to bridge divided communities: Ben Franklin Circles, Better Angels, Colossian Forum, Heterodox Academy, Living Room Conversations, Open Mind Platform, Story Corps, and the Zeidler Center for Public Discussion.
- 5.
Two other dialogic approaches I have studied and received training in are: Bohmian dialogue (Bohm; Bohm, Factor, and Garrett) and Intergroup Dialogue (based at the University of Michigan, https://igr.umich.edu/article/national-intergroup-dialogue-institute). I have witnessed first-hand many strengths of these approaches but I do not see them as widely applicable as RSD for the public square. Furthermore, there are more models of dialogue than those listed here and so an adequate critical and comparative analysis of various forms of dialogue will have to be borne out in future research. See http://ncdd.org for a list of the many organizations in the United States doing dialogue and the variety of approaches used.
- 6.
See also Appendices C-1, “What we mean by dialogue,” and C-2, “Distinguishing Debate from Dialogue” (Herzig and Chasin 2006).
- 7.
Initiative on Campus Dialogue, Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut, 30 November 2016. I am indebted to John for helping me think through much of this section.
- 8.
Sometimes advanced preparation involves lengthy interviews with each participant or key players/leaders in an organization. This pre-dialogue interview is utilized in private settings like corporations, organizations, and churches and where the dialogue is by invitation only. When the dialogue is held in an open-invitation community setting and one does not know who will attend, prior interviews would be impossible and advance preparation focuses on question design in collaboration with organizing community members.
- 9.
Here is a one example of Communication Agreements:
In order to have a constructive conversation where people speak thoughtfully and listen respectfully, we will:
-
Speak for ourselves and from our own point of view and experiences, using “I” (not “we” or “they”);
-
Listen to understand and speak to be understood—not to persuade others;
-
Speak one at a time and not interrupt;
-
Share air time and make sure everyone’s had a chance to speak once before speaking a second time;
-
Listen with curiosity and resilience;
-
Feel free to “pass”/“pass for now” if we are not ready or do not wish to respond;
-
Respect confidentiality: what’s said in this space stays in this space.
-
- 10.
This criticism echoes the one made by Derrida, who, in his obituary for Gadamer, admitted his criticism was overreaching (Bernstein 2008).
- 11.
These four components are drawn from both Sarrouf and the EP training manual. Sarrouf articulates the four components of dialogue that contribute to achieving mutual understanding: (1) listen to and be listened to with care, (2) speak and be spoken to in a respectful manner, (3) learn about perspectives of others, (4) reflect on one’s own views (presentation, Initiatives on Campus Dialogue, Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut, 30 November 2016). Appendix C-1 of Essential Partners’ training manual lists these four plus one more, “share airtime so that all speakers can be heard.” Since this seems to be entailed by the first two, I will not include it. Buber also briefly lays out some practical requirements for dialogue to occur: not everyone need speak but all must be willing to participate actively and to not withdraw; no planning in advance how the dialogue will unfold, although it does have a basic order but it cannot be determined in advance; and all participants must be “capable of satisfying the presuppositions of genuine dialogue and are ready to do so” (1965b, 87).
- 12.
LeDoux (2012) challenges the simplicity of the way in which the limbic system has been assumed to be devoid of cognitive powers and given solely to “emotions.” He also wants to distinguish between emotions as “non-conscious brain states that connect significant stimuli with response mechanisms” and feelings as “conscious experiences arising from these non-conscious brain states” (LeDoux 2015, 97). He explains: “Amygdala activation thus does not tell us that fear is felt in a human, and certainly does not alert us to fearful feelings in animals. Confusion results because fearful feelings are often correlated with these amygdala-dependent responses. But correlation does not mean causation; we cannot generalize from stimulus-response mechanisms, which occur widely in animal life, to conscious feelings of fear” (LeDoux 2015, 99).
- 13.
We do not have to buy into the oversimplified descriptions of completely bifurcated left versus right brain in order to appreciate the practical point being made here.
- 14.
Also see 43–44 and 77–86.
- 15.
Personal email, 15 August 2019.
- 16.
Personal conversation, 24 April 2017.
- 17.
Personal email, July 2015.
- 18.
Personal email with Oleson, 23 June 2015.
- 19.
Personal email exchange, 18 May 2018.
- 20.
narrative4.org, accessed 25 January 2017.
- 21.
These comments were transcribed from the short five-minute video “Empathy,” accessed online, narrative4.org, 25 January 2017.
- 22.
Christopher Ellinger, 2 February 2017 email reply on NCDD listserv.
- 23.
Associate Dean, Simmons School of Social Work, Carol Bonner. True Story Theatre website, https://truestorytheater.com/hire-us/organizations/#toggle-id-1, accessed 2 June 2017.
- 24.
Personal conversation, 17 March 2017. In fact, Stains was more dubious about the role of empathy in dialogue. He sees it more as a means that could lead to mutual understanding, rather than as the definition of mutual understanding itself.
- 25.
Pro-social behavior is defined as an action intended to help others and is often hypothesized as leading to and giving rise to moral behavior. But not all moral behavior is evidently tied to pro-social behavior. For example, some of the 10 Commandments as well as moral behavior based on purity, ritual, and prohibitory rules might not count as pro-social. Furthermore, philosophers inquire into whether or not particular pro-social behavior is moral. Thought experiments such as the obese spelunker or inquiring into the moral value of torturing a single individual to help others seek to exploit this distinction. The research I examine here utilizes both terms, and since nothing in my claims depends on the above distinction, I will use them interchangeably.
- 26.
This response, based on a rationality-emotion dualism, is one I have met with quite a bit when presenting portions of this work at philosophy conferences.
- 27.
John Sarrouf also noted this problematic dualism in response to reading an earlier draft of this chapter.
- 28.
See David Livingstone Smith (2011, 263) for examples of how stories can be used to de-humanize the other.
- 29.
Personal conversation, April 2017.
- 30.
While here is not the place to go into more detail, given the possibility of immoral action being the effect of empathy, it would be productive for practitioners to scrutinize whether any of these situations describes the dialogue situation. For instance, other studies see a more positive correlation between empathy and understanding in a way that may prove relevant for dialogue work. In studies of developmental abilities in children, Maibom notes that it has been found that “empathetic responding to others… is related to the ability to take another’s perspective…Ways of responding increase in sophistication with increased self-understanding and the development of other cognitive capacities” (Maibom 27). In other words, more work needs to be done to understand the implications of studies on empathy and pro-social behavior for dialogue.
- 31.
Another advantage of moving away from the language of empathy is the liberal bias associated with that term, which therefore might raise initial red flags for some conservatives about the aim of dialogue and make them hesitant to participate.
- 32.
http://www.whatisessential.org/impact-stories/guns-debate-conversation-boston, accessed 27 September 2016.
- 33.
http://www.whatisessential.org/impact-stories/guns-debate-conversation-boston, accessed 27 September 2016.
- 34.
https://narrative4.com Video accessed 4 October 2016. Also see their video, “What is Empathy,” https://narrative4.com/about/history/, accessed 24 August 2018.
- 35.
Bibliography
Batson, Daniel. 2014. Empathy-Induced Altruism and Morality: No Necessary Connection. In Empathy and Morality, ed. Heidi Maibom. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beck, Glenn. 2016. Empathy for Black Lives Matter. New York Times. September 7. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/opinion/glenn-beck-empathy-for-black-livesmatter.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=Trending&versionFull®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
Bernstein, Richard J. 2008. The Conversation that Never Happened (Gadamer/Derrida). The Review of Metaphysics 61 (3): 577–603.
Bloom, Paul. 2016. Against Empathy. New York: HarperCollins.
Brandsma, Bart. 2017. Polarisation: Understanding the Dynamics of Us Versus Them. Schoonrewoerd, the Netherlands: BB in Media.
Buber, Martin. 1965a. Distance and Relation. Knowledge of Man, edited with an introduction by Maurice Friedman. New York: Harper and Row.
———. 1965b. Elements of the Interhuman. Knowledge of Man, edited with an introduction by Maurice Friedman. New York: Harper and Row.
Chasin, Richard, Margaret Herzig, Sallyann Roth, Laura Chasin, Carol Becker, and J. Robert Stains. 1996. From Diatribe to Dialogue on Divisive Public Issues: Approaches Drawn from Family Therapy. Mediation Quarterly 13 (4): 323–344.
Coleman, Peter T. 2011. The Five Percent Conflict. 2011. The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts. New York: Public Affairs.
Delpit, Lisa D. 1988. The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children. Harvard Educational Review 58 (3): 280–299.
Dimaggio, G., et al. 2008. Know Yourself and You Shall Know the Other…to a Certain Extent: Multiple Paths of Influence of Self-Reflection on Mindreading. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 778–779.
Eck, Diane. 2005. Dialogue and the Echo Boom of Terror. In After Terror, ed. Ahmed Akbar and Brian Forst. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Ellinor, Linda. 2017. National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv email, June 13.
———. 2018. National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation listserv email, August 3.
Ellinor, Linda, and Glenna Girrard. 1998. Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation. New York: Wiley.
Friedman, Maurice. 1992. Dialogue and the Human Image. California: Sage Press.
Gergen, Kenneth J., Sheila McNamee, and Frank Barrett. 2001. Toward a Vocabulary of Transformative Dialogue. International Journal of Public Administration 24: 607–707.
Graham, George, and K. Richard Garrett. 2014. At the Empathetic Center of our Moral Lives. In Empathy and Morality, ed. Heidi Maibom. New York: Oxford University Press.
Herzig, Maggie, and Laura Chasin. 2006. Fostering the Divide: A Nuts and Bolts Guide from the Public Conversations Project. Watertown, MA: Public Conversations Project.
Hoffman, Martin L. 2014. Empathy, Justice, and Social Change. In Empathy and Morality, ed. Heidi Maibom. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hogan, Patrick. 2003. The Mind and its Stories. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kögler, Hans-Herbert. 2014c. Dialogue and Community. Journal of the Philosophy of History 8 (3): 380–406.
LeDoux, Joseph E. 2012. Evolution of Emotion: A View From Fear. Progress in Brain Research 195: 431–442.
———. 2015. Feelings: What Are they and how Does the Brain Make them? Daedalus 144 (1): 96–111.
Maibom, Heidi. 2014. Introduction: (Almost) Everything you Ever Wanted to Know about Empathy. In Empathy and Morality, ed. Heidi Maibom. New York: Oxford.
Lindner, Evelin G. 2014. Emotion and Conflict. In The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, ed. Peter T. Coleman, Morton Deutsch, and Eric C. Marcus, 3rd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Manne, Kate. 2018. Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. New York: Oxford University Press.
Miller, Lisa. 2016. Gun Violence and Radical Empathy. New Yorker Magazine. December 12. Accessed at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/12/gun-violence-radical-empathy.html
Motyl, Matt. 2016. Liberals and Conservatives Are (Geographically) Dividing. In Social Psychology of Political Polarization, ed. Piercarlo Valdesolo and Jesse Graham. New York: Routledge.
Napier, Jaime, and Jamie Luguri. 2016. From Silos to Synergies: The Effects of Construal Level on Political Polarization. In Social Psychology of Political Polarization, ed. Piercarlo Valdesolo and Jesse Graham. New York: Routledge.
Rorty, Richard. 1999. Truth and Progress. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ryfe, David M. 2006. Narrative and Deliberation in Small Group Forums. Journal of Applied Communication Research 34 (1): 72–93.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. 2018. Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. Uncorrected proofs. New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, David Livingstone. 2011. Less than Human: Why we Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Stains, Robert R., Jr. 2012. Reflection for Connection: Deepening Dialogue Through Reflective Processes. Conflict Resolution Quarterly 30 (1): 33–51.
Stueber, Karsten. 2012. Understanding Versus Explanation: How to Think about the Distinction between the Human and Natural Sciences. Inquiry 5 (1): 17–32.
Walsh, Katherine Cramer. 2007. Democratic Potential of Civic Dialogue. In Deliberation, Participation, and Democracy, ed. Shawn W. Rosenberg. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Walzer, Michael. 1991. A Critique of Philosophical Conversation. In Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics, ed. Michael Kelly, 182–196. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Yankelovich, Daniel. 2001. The Magic of Dialogue. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barthold, L.S. (2020). Defining Dialogue. In: Overcoming Polarization in the Public Square. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45586-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45586-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45585-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45586-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)