CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Dervin, B. (1999, May). Sense-Making’s theory of dialogue: A brief introduction. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco.
© Brenda Dervin (1999).

ABSTRACT:
This brief paper describes the theory of dialogue drawn from Sense-Making Methodology and draws linkages between metatheoretical principles and practices. The paper was originally developed as an introduction of procedures for the Sense-Making Methodology Workshop held at the International Communication Association, San Francisco, California, May 1999.

ESSAY:
Sense-Making assumes that the concept of dialogue pertains specifically to the presence of difference. Without difference, communication (either about differences or about similarities) becomes unnecessary. Difference as characterized in literatures today pertains primarily to multiplicities categorized demographically (e.g., ethnicity, race, culture, gender, class). Sense-Making, however, assumes that difference and the human mandate to bridge differences pre-dates any such “global” moment. From every corner of the globe we glean “lessons” or “wisdoms” humans have developed to facilitate the sharing of difference. The famous turn-taking ritual of many Native American cultures—the “talking stick”—is but one example.

A survey of the various procedures humans have used to “discipline” dialogue show that for the most part they have disciplined the who, where, and when of talking—who gets to speak, when, for how long, and where. The “what” has usually been conceptualized as the province of the speaker, although more recent work shows how the hidden coursings of power control and constrain the whats of communicating. The “how” has usually been conceptualized in terms of whatever standard that given culture used for judging the goodness of rhetorical form and process. These practices have themselves embodied ideologies and at the same time been a struggle with them.

In the western tradition, logic and coherence are valued on the surface; and below the surface is an unstated value—that the speaker’s statements must reflect the real. And below that given perennial contests regarding the real, the force of power making the judgment. These values play out clearly, for example, in the western model of journalism with its emphasis on coherent unitary narratives which portray the real. Given this implied emphasis on the real, many western communication procedures deal with difference in primarily one way—as agreement, disagreement between whos about whats. This is often accompanied with the usually unstated assumption that in vigorous debate of agreements and disagreements the truth will rise, like cream does in unhomogenized milk. In actuality, of course, research has long documented how the workings of power in structures assure that differences that seriously challenge those in power emerge only with the greatest of struggles.

In the context of such assumptions, it is a short distance to the “Tower of Babel” approach that now dominates western societies and, alas, increasingly the entire globe. Difference has got mouthy and refuses to remain silent. It must be given voice. Hence we arrange faux town meetings, public opinion polls, and other symbolic stand-ins for genuine dialogue. “But, but, but”—comes the reply—“we can not possibly handle the cacophony, the solipsism of all that ornery (and we fear uninformed) difference.”

While there is much criticism of the western approach to difference, most critiques focus on difference as an epistemological issue, not an ontological issue. The epistemological issue takes on primarily two forms. In one form difference as embodied in individual human beings is seen as standing between the “real” and the human capacity to know. In the second form, constraints on the human capacity to know requires that the “real” be bracketed or set aside. Over the years I have been illuminated and enriched by both of these avenues of critique. They have helped me set a different course.

Sense-Making makes a different set of assumptions. These assumptions focus on the role of gaps or, if you will, chaos, in the conduct of human affairs. Sense-Making assumes both an ontology and an epistemology patterned in part and gappy in part. In brief, reality is assumed to manifest both patterns and closures; gaps and holes; and, human “knowing” sometimes achieves useful statements about the “real”, and sometimes is manifested by gaps. These gaps come from differences in time, place, observing strategies, cultural assumptions and narratives, personal assumptions and narratives, linguistic constraints, and so on.

Sense-Making, thus, does not bracket the “real” as in many phenomenological, constructivist, linguistic, and interpretive approaches. It assumes that humans sometimes do collectively use what Sense-Making calls “factizing” verbings with useful outcomes. Nor, however, does Sense-Making conceptualize constraints on and differences in human observing as a barrier to getting to the “real” as in critical realism, and neo-positivism.

The important point is this. Given two sources of gappiness (ontological and epistemological) a difference can not be attributed only to human multiplicity. It must be assumed that the difference possibly arises because humans create different bridges (cognitive, emotional, physical, spiritual) over a gappy reality. Neither the ontological answer nor the epistemological answer can be given primacy.

From here, Sense-Making assumes that the only way out of this seeming paradox is in dialogue (both intra-and inter, individual and collective) and that given these assumptions difference becomes not merely something that must be shared because power issues demand it but something that must be shared because humans attempting to make the best of their worlds require it. In short, we can learn something from the bridges constructed by others. And, if we are ever to reach for the elusive “real” without turning the “real” into an excuse for tyranny, we must humble the factizing enterprise putting it into dialogue.

In Sense-Making, putting into dialogue is a meta-theorized strategy for every step in the communication process, whether that be the research process (which Sense-Making conceptualizes as communicative in its essence) or the practice process. There is a mandate in Sense-Making to address “connection” (sometimes called “communion”) and “contest”. This means bringing multiple stances to bear on phenomena and continually mandating these perspectives into comparison—how are they like each other and how they contest each other; and what material-interpretive conditions might help us understand these differences. To make this dialogic mandate effective, Sense-Making also assumes that one must identify and bring into dialogue persons whose stances are as diverse as possible with diversity being judged based on Sense-Making’s central metatheoretic concepts: time, space, movement, gap, power, constraint, force, flexibility, inflexibility.

In this process there is no expectation that what Sense-Making calls the circle of the real” can be closed. It can be approached, we can reach for it, but we can not ever seal it. Further, Sense-Making assumes that establishing a goal of sealing the ‘real” is antithetical to the very assumptions with which it starts. How does all this live in dialogic practice? Applications of Sense-Making to group practice (e.g., focus groups, classrooms, seminars, mediation groups) have been implemented since roughly 1980. Since Sense-Making is a methodology whose foundation is a host of metatheoretic assumptions, it offers no recipe for group practice. It does, however, offer guidelines. They follow below in brief capsule. Given the assumption of a reality patterned only in part, as humans we need information not only from our own sense-makings but those of others—about how they have seen the ‘real”, what gaps they have seen in it, how they have bridged these gaps, and with what outcomes. We also need to know simultaneously about the connections between the elusive material—interpretive divide—what is it that led to ideas and conclusions, how did these connect to particular lives and contexts?

Further, we implement the ultimate contextual assumption—that all differences are manifestations of sense-making processes in particular contexts and make “sense” in the particular time-space of that context. Sense-Making implements this assumption in a dialogic practice that assumes that attending to gaps and gap-bridging points to (although does not freeze) the essence of difference. In short, focusing on the gap is assumed to be the most efficient and effective way to get to the heart of the matter—i.e., the difference at hand that makes a difference in gap-bridging.

It is in this way that Sense-Making honors each person as a theorist of their world. Sense-Making does not assume that every person’s sense-making is useful to every other person; or even that the sense-making is optimally useful to the sense-maker (i.e., people are aware that they get stuck in unuseful repetitiveness cognitive, emotional, and physical). Rather, Sense-Making assumes that by mandating each person as a theorist of his/her world (interpretive and/or material) and by proceduring that process with Sense-Making assumptions we approach a more useful dialogic interface, a place where we maximize the possibilities of understanding an other, of learning from an other, and of finding those places where factizing may be a useful collective and/or personal life-facing strategy.

Sense-Making further assumes that movement through time-space is a mandate of the human condition. This does not imply purposiveness, or linearity. Rather it points to the necessity of gap-bridging across moments in time-space. Given this, dialogue must anchor thoughts, feelings, observations, conclusions in a framework that inherently addresses history, struggle, growth and change as well as structure, constraint, habit, and repetitiveness.

Movement, struggle, constraint all imply energy, force, and power. Sense-Making assumes, thus, that forces and power must be explicitly addressed. This is the one arena in which Sense-Making explicitly “names” the world. In some contexts (for example the ICA’99 workshop) it is safe to assume that issues of power will be thoughtfully addressed by a number of participants. In others, however, ideological constraints may be such that explicit invitation for the discussion must be made, and protections instituted to insure such talk (e.g., the use of anonymous input).

While Sense-Making acknowledges that talk is constrained by discourse forms and these are constrained by time, place, culture; Sense-Making also assumes that it is characteristic of humans to struggle with and beyond these constraints. Sense-Making also assumes that the use of talk for “conscientizing” or the “talking cure” is a universal human practice and that it is in talk (albeit in many different guides and sometimes only to oneself) that one struggles to move the inarticulate to the articulate, the embodied to the cognitive, the suppressed to the conscious, the oppressed to the open. Because of these assumptions, Sense-Making builds into its dialogic forms space for stumblings and muddlings in talk; for gaps in articulation before, during, and after.

Sense-Making also assumes that its rule of seeking maximum diversity of input is another safeguard against the sealing of the “real” and the suppressing of attention to the forces of power. Sense-Making seeks maximum diversity both across people, but also procedurally within a given person by diversifying the strategies by which each participant listens and talks, and by inviting explicitly talk about change across time and space.

REFERENCES:
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine.

Bourdieu, P. (1989). The logic of practice. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Carter, R. F. (1991). Comparative analysis, theory, and cross-cultural communication. Communication Theory, 1, (May), 151-158.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.

Gadamer, H. (1975). Truth and method. New York: Seabury Press.

McGuire, W. (1986). A perspectivist looks at contextualism and the future of behavioral science. In R. L. Rosnow & M. Georgoudi (Eds.), Contextualism and understanding in behavioral science: Implications for research and theory. (pp. 271-301). New York: Praeger.

OTHER MATERIALS BY THIS AUTHOR ON THIS WEB SITE:
See:  http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistdervin.html