Abstract
Dialogicality in Focus is a both a timely and important book. The editors have assembled a volume, which is separated into three distinct sections: theory, methodology, and applications. The contributors are based trans-globally and employ a variety of different and novel methods of investigation into this burgeoning sub-discipline of social psychology. Each of the three sections is followed by a commentary (section one has two commentaries) from more distinguished researchers. The function of this format is to resituate the development of dialogism within a broader framework and to put contributors into dialogue with each other.
In her commentary, Marková notes that dialogical science has a long past and a short history (p. 76). Dialogicality in Focus is iconoclastic because it is at the forefront of an oeuvre of social psychological theorizing concerned with understanding the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of interactions. The contributors to this volume all work, on one level or another, towards this goal.
Arguably the strongest element of this book is the development of dialogical analytic methods. In Chapter 5, for example, five very established researchers were given the task of dialogically analysing the different “I-positions” of the lead character in a narrative entitled The Guerrillero, by Angel. The most interesting outcome of this assignment is the development of different methodologies to dialogically analyse intra-psychological developments with pre-existing data. The outcomes also make explicit the epistemological assumptions of dialogism: self is interdependent with culture, history, and politics and the “others” who construct this social world.
The aim of dialogical analyses, the editors argue, is to understand psychological interactions and processes on an intra-psychological level as well as inter-psychologically. Readers of this volume who are looking for verifiable and reproducible results will be left wanting. The dialogical analyses of The Guerrillero narrative can act as a microcosm for dialogical science: its value lies not in proving or disproving specific hypotheses, but in discovering new social phenomena, their form, structure, and inter-relatedness.
The opening chapters of this book are dedicated to developing dialogical theorizing based on this assertion. Joerchel (Chapter 2), for example, discusses the interaction between self and the cultural sphere(s): both are in a dialogical relationship, and thus co-constitute each other. Haye and Larraín expand upon Bakhtin’s notion of the utterance, claiming it is the basic unit of social life and, as such, it is essential in understanding the dialogical nature of human interactions. Akkerman and Niessen delineate the advantages of employing dialogical theories to understand the plurality and complexity of everyday life. Arguably they detail the most pertinent point to the development of dialogism: methods of psychological investigation are often inadequate to capture this complexity, and often fixate dialogical data.
There are at least two ways to undertake dialogical analyses, and a distinction between the two can be useful. First, it is possible to analyse a pre-existing text (Chapter 5) or a subject’s self-reflection on graphic images (Chapter 6) from a dialogical perspective. The second way is to develop dialogical methods of data collection. Shotter critiques the contributions to the theoretical section by highlighting that the researchers remain detached from the dialogical issues they are trying to develop, when, in fact, they are embedded within them. This detachment is addressed by Hviid and Beckstead who develop a method of dialogical data generation.
Hviid and Beckstead elaborate how interview data is dialogically created between researcher and respondent during an interview. They both enter the interview with different past experiences, expectations, and unbalanced power positions. An analysis of the generation of data would elaborate the research project reported by Gonçalves et al. (Chapter 8). This elaboration has three functions. First, its intention is to advance the important work by Gonçalves et al. Second, it illustrates the scholarly dialoguing which is a central motif throughout the book. Finally, it highlights the importance of developing methods which foreground the dialogical generation of data.
Gonçalves et al. analyse changes in self-narrative during psychotherapy. Their central research concept is innovative moments (IMs), and they describe five types: Action IMs, Reflective IMs, Protest IMs, Re-conceptualization IMs, and Performing Change IMs. The researchers developed a coding system to identify and quantify their occurrences during therapeutic sessions. Although they do not offer precise correlations between them, it is suggested that different correlations and frequency of occurrences of these IMs demarcate successful from unsuccessful therapy. Their analyses reveal problematic self-narratives in therapy can be altered by a combination of Protest, Action, and Reflection IMs, which can lead to Re-conceptualization of the clients’ self-narrative leading to Performing Change IMs, which is necessary for successful therapy. Just like interviewers and interviewees engaging in dialogical data construction, the relationship between therapist and client can also be conceptualized as a data-generating dialogical engagement. Both parties mutually engage with each other from different perspectives, power positions, and with different expectations. Gonçalves et al.’s research programme can be developed by considering the generative nature of this type of engagement.
Innovative Moments vary between clients, therapy sessions, and are reversible. It would be interesting to understand the dialogical relationship between therapist and client in order to determine the role the therapist can have in generating IMs, and developing meaningful combinations of them. Hviid and Beckstead generated unique interview data with two very different child respondents. Data from one child was yielded due to her misunderstanding of the research exercise. The other child helped develop the interviewer’s research agenda once he trusted the researcher. Mapping this on to therapeutic practice suggests that each session will generate different data. However, by focusing on the generation of data dialogically between therapist and client, at various stages, it will potentially reveal how the therapist generates certain (combinations) of IMs, as well as revealing methods to stem the reversibility of re-conceptualization and performance changing IMs. This is only possible by accepting the interview data generated in therapy as dialogical, and unique to each case.
By creating a distinction between the development of dialogical methods of analysis and dialogical methods of data collecting, I hope to offer a framework to advance dialogical science. Developing both types of methods and applying them to new social phenomena will advance dialogism. In the concluding commentary Valsiner applauds the variety of applications of dialogical theorizing, such as in therapeutic practices (Chapters 8 & 9), male and female embodiment (Chapter 10), and multicultural politics (Chapter 11). Future research might apply dialogism on an international level. There is potential to look at the relationships between conflicts, not just on an individual or group level, but internationally too. Dialogism has the ability to inform critical security studies as theorized in IR (Chapter 11), and advancing this line of research will surely locate dialogism at the sharp end of the academic stick. It would also be interesting to investigate pre-existing “new data” generated from social media on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. How can dialogism inform our understanding of social phenomena from data generated online? The research potential and impact of dialogism is vast, as long as we continue to develop our dialogue in creative and meaningful ways.