1. What is Dialogue?
Jung Min Choi, Ph.D.
San Diego State University
The Dignified Learning Project
Serra Mesa-Kearny Mesa Library January 14,
2017
2. What is Dialogue?
Social Ontology of I and Thou
Epistemological Curiosity – What is this?
Typical understanding of dialogue is conversation
Conversation + engagement
Engagement + background
Background + understaning
Understanding + Transparency in exchanging
information
Do we have dialogue? Not necessarily
3. Continued…
Student Centered (SC) or Community Centered (CC)
Compassion and Attentiveness may help, but not
central in creating dialogue
SC/CC + Courting Intimacy
Courting Intimacy + Close examination
Dialogue is not an encounter – not a partnership of
two distinct entities, usually expert and lay persons or
expert and community or teachers and students
Must go beyond ideas and terminology like
stakeholders, partners, etc (terms that reflect
business transactions).
4. Continued…
Making students/community members/patients feel
important or even having intense intimacy cannot be
confused with recognizing the legitimacy of what they
say
Needs to go beyond decorum of being nice and
accepting
What is dialogue then? Back to the question of
Epistemological Curiosity
Everything that have been discussed + World Entry
World entry – grasping the “linguistically interpreted
world”
Speaking the same language (English/Spanish)
doesn’t lead to grasping this idea with respect to
community engagement
5. Continued…
Dialogue as “epistemological entrée” or World entry
Rather than simply an encounter, it is a meeting (Martin
Buber). Encounter can be coming together of brut facts or
entities whereas meeting is much more nuanced, the fickle
nature of human condition
1) Learning to interpret local knowledge “lifeworld” of the
community/groups (students, patients, etc.)
2) Reflection – constant reflection on the storylines of a
community (not just the concerns and desires of the
community, but the underlying bases and the assumptions
that guide those concerns and desires). Problematizing the
symptoms of a community
6. Continued…
Frameworks, rather than symptoms should be the
focus of attiontion
Symptoms may not indicate anything; instead, they
must be read and interpreted correctly to have any
meaning
Thus, close examination is not equal to proper
reading, reflecting, re-reading, reflecting…
How does the mind reflect? Without the ability to
interpret and imagine worlds, this is not possible. But
because human beings have this capacity, engaging
in reflection is KEY to dialogue
7. Continued…
Reflection reveals the limits and impact of the
storylines – yours, mine, and everyone else’s
Only then, can we enter into each other’s worlds in a
proper manner without what Freire calls, “cultural
invasion” where my stories dominate, intimidate, and
dismiss your stories, thus leading to the violence of
assimilation
Through reflection, the boundaries of storylines
become revealed. No story is limitless or boundless,
thereby the argument of one world-view being
essentially and universally superior to another loses
credibility
8. Conclusion
What is left is the urgency for dialogue so the
world can reflect the “meeting place” between I
and Thou
This is not easy or entirely efficient, but must be
engaged in order to bring about a world that is
uniquely human, a world based on dignity and
love.
