Here’s a great take on conversations… Conversation is the doing of action, like a dance!
“Etymologically, conversation comes from the Latin verb “conversari” which means to live, to keep company, to become occupied or engaged, to move around, to which middle English and French seems to have added “to speak.” The purpose of being in a conversation is to keep it going.” Krippendorff, 1993.
According to Krippendorff, there are three things that make for a good conversational dance:
1. Continuity and repetitiveness – the purpose of being in conversation is to keep it going.
2. It is cooperative and communal.
3. The performance is individually satisfying to all participants (at no one’s expense) but leaves something recognisable behind.
Reference:
Krippendorff, K. (1993). Major Metaphors of Communication and some Constructivist Reflections on their use. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 2, 3-25.
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I am a ‘People Practitioner’ who has, over the years, been swept up by the tidal wave of change that has seen my profession go from being called Manpower Management to Personnel Management to Human Resource Management, and now back, well sort of… to Systemic People Management. I came up with the last phrase because I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with working within the confines of the ubiquitous neo-liberal approach to categorising and organising people. I believe that people are people, not merely assets, human capital or resources. While we do find fulfilment from PRODUCTivity, we are ultimately human beings, not human doings. I would like to transcend who we have become and becoming in a marketized, monetarised world and leave the corporatist worldview that reminds me so much of the allegory of Plato’s Cave.
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So is conversation different to dialogue, as in Socratic and much of the teaching by the Lord Jesus?
Which of the two did Moses mean in chapter six of Deuteronomy when he said: “These words which I give you this day shall be in your heart. You shall speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you rise up and when you lie down”?
Is dialogue serous because it aims at a better understanding of truth? Also a fuller intellectual grasp of concepts and an understanding i.e. setting in order of them, Heb. bin or binah and Gk. suniemi. After all Paul did no preach unto them as in ~A.V. and other translations in Acts chapter twenty, he “dialogued with them”. See Psalm One where the blessed man meditates in God’s Law, that is he thinks about things, having and inner dialogue with himself and so setting in order and getting the full picture Gk. maybe epignosis) Psalm 73 is also interesting when by meditating and considering matters of the prosperity of the wicked he at last sees things from the point of view of the Sanctuary.