Criticism and conversational texts: rhetorical bases of role, audience, and style in the Buber-Rogers dialogue

Abstract

This essay describes conversation as an ensemble accomplishment that can be illuminated by critics working with specific texts within a rhetorical framework. We first establish dialogue as the key concept for any criticism of conversation, specifying the rhetorical dimensions of interpersonal dialogue. Second, we show how template thinking is particularly dangerous for conversational critics and suggest a research (anti)method, based on a coauthorship, that provides a thoroughgoing dialogical access to texts. Finally, we exemplify dialogic criticism of a conversational text by analyzing the famous 1957 dialogue of philosopher Martin Buber and psychologist Carl Rogers.Scholars have long been interested in analyzing rhetorical texts. Critics have tmcovered authors' strategies, audience reactions, and persuasive effects when analyzing important orations and documents. In contrast, many studies of interaction have focused on less formal settings, analyzing the dynamic components of everyday talk. The former tradition has often been labeled rhetorical or literary criticism, while the study of informal speech events has developed as conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnography. Each has made its own contributions to the human studies. We will argue here that a creative blend of these traditions is possible, and we illustrate this approach by studying a central text in philosophical anthropology, the 1957 dialogue between philosopher Martin Buber and psychologist Carl Rogers.Critical rhetorical studies ideally rely on what could be called emergent methodology in that the scholar, whatever his or her philosophical prefer-

Dialogical rhetoric: An application of martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue

“…For discussions of these two concepts, see, Anderson (1982), Anderson & Cissna (1996), Arnett & Nakagawa (1983), Kohn (1990), Noddings (1984, Rogers (1975) and Stewart (1983).…”

Meanings of Health: Interrogating Structure and Culture

“…Being dialogic is pledging oneself to constant transformation of reality (Freire, 1970). Dialogue thus gets characterized by relationships, contexts, cultures, common texts, and recognition of otherness (Anderson & Cissna, 1996, 1997Cissna & Anderson, 1996Deetz, 1992, Eisenberg & Goodall, 1997. Fundamental to the articulation of the culture-centered approach is the notion that members of communities participate in interpreting social structures that encompass them, in making sense of these structures, and in interacting with them on a daily basis.…”

Dialogic, dialectic, and rhetoric: Exploring human dialogue across the discipline

“…These theorists are housed within communication (Anderson & Cissna, 1996;Johannesen, 1971;Poulakos, 1974) as well as in psychology (Billig, 1997(Billig, , 1998, philosophy (Walton & Krabbe, 1995), and English (Bialostosky, 1995;Glenn, 1997). This interdisciplinary interest in the rhetoricity of dialogue reveals, in at least one way, the multivocal nature of dialogue.…”

“…Using theory appropriated from philosopher Martin Buber (1947Buber ( , 1965, theorists of dialogue have considered it as authentic communicative action, where communication takes place in an environment of genuine concern for the "Between" that is always being formed (always becoming, never being) through the sharing of "Self and "Other" (Anderson & Cissna, 1996;Anderson, Cissna, & Arnett, 1994;Johannesen, 1971;Poulakos, 1974;Stewart, 1978). In Buberian terms, the Between becomes the space that intermingles the boundaries of Self and Other, which are themselves not clearly demarcated.…”