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Article published In: Dialogic Matters: Interrelating Dialogue, the Material, and Social Change
Edited by Theresa Castor
[Language and Dialogue 11:1] 2021
► pp. 125–150

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Engaging contested community issues

Community dialogue in one US American community

 | Oregon State University – Cascades, USA
Published online: 22 April 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00087.dol
Abstract
This article presents an analysis of dialogue as an alternative to debate and argument for engaging contested community issues. Treating dialogue as a communication practice, I draw on ethnography of communication, cultural communication theory, and cultural discourse analysis to describe and interpret how participants practiced community dialogue as a communication event comprised of sequences of listening and verbally responding. When topics and identities were elaborated upon and socially negotiated through personal communication in the form of narratives and emotional responses, participants reported effective dialogue. These sequences were dialogic moments partially due to the dialectical tension between Americans’ once predictable civic routine of public expression of individual’s beliefs and the process of dialogue featured in our War and Peace dialogue workshop.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Conceiving dialogue: Normative, descriptive, and beyond
    • 2.2Community dialogue pedagogy
  • 3.Theoretical framework
    • 3.1Terms for talk
    • 3.2Cultural discourse analysis
  • 4.Community dialogue workshop: Cultural scene
  • 5.Descriptive analysis
    • 5.1Dialogue as event, a sequence of acts
    • 5.2Listening
    • 5.3Verbally responding
  • 6.What exists and what is valued
  • 7.Community dialogue: The possibilities for current times
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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