Chapter 32. DIALOGIC/DIALECTIC Advanced Methods of Dialogue/Dialectic --- Other Processes Additional Types of Papers     Rhetorical Modes Writing Theory for Students --- Introduction These advanced ideas and/or applications can help you understand and use this paper's type of thinking better.  For additional information, check the chapter's Grammar Book Links in the right column.  ---                     Other Processes in Dialogue/Dialectic Developing Counterarguments against the First Two Positions Normally, in developing a third body section that discusses a compromise solution, you would start with a topic sentence that offers the compromise.  Then you would develop the section with several paragraphs describing why this compromise position is good. However, an alternative would be to start the the compromise section with a topic sentence or introductory explanatory paragraph, as normal, and then to offer counterarguments against the first two positions. These counterarguments would explain why each of the two previous positions are insufficient--not enough, too limiting, inadequate, excessive, or otherwise wrong. You could offer these counterarguments against the first two positions in just a few sentences, or you could take more time to develop them, using a paragraph or more for each. You could develop your entire compromise section this way, by disagreeing with the other two positions and thus showing a need for a compromise.  Or instead, you could start the compromise section with these counterarguments, then end the section with positive reasons for the compromise.  Another alternative would be to scatter or thread your counterarguments throughout your compromise section.  If your compromise section is composed of several subsections, you could start each subsection with a counterargument and then explain what a compromise to it would look like.  For example, if I had argued in the two previous body sections that some people believe war is good and others believe war is bad, then my compromise position might be something about how still others believe in war as a necessary evil.  After introducing the third position--war as a necessary evil--then I might offer a counterargument from my previous body sections. I might say, for example, "While war may seem good because it makes soldiers stronger, it also kills many of them, so this function of war should be limited only to absolutely necessary situations"; and then I might describe just how much killing is allowable before a country's population is decimated.  Then I might start another reason for a compromise section by saying, for example, "While war may seem bad because it goes against every religious and idealistic belief, sometimes doing nothing can lead to absolute evil winning"; then I might continue on to describe how the Mongol hordes wrecked Roman civilization, or how Hitler nearly took over Europe, which would have led to a Holocaust ten times the size of the the one that happened.  In other words, I start each of my reasons in favor of a compromise by mentioning a related counterargument from my two other body sections. A third alternative in using counterarguments is to develop a final summarizing several sentences or paragraphs at the end of the compromise body section.  For example, after explaining all of the reasons why a compromise is good, I might write, at the end of each reason or the end of the entire body section, "One reason previously given for war being good is that it makes soldiers strong.  However, from the description above of what too much death can do to a population, it is clear that while some people may be strengthened, a larger number of people become weakened casualties."    The effects of using counterarguments are that you show (a) the logical steps moving from your first two positions to your compromise and (b) the fact that you are considering all three of your positions fully in a balanced way. In short, this kind of reasoning makes your final compromise look much more logical and complete. ---    Developing a "Higher Resolution" In developing your final argument of your dialogic paper, what is the difference between a "compromise" and a "higher resolution"?  On the one hand, a compromise simply takes elements from the opposing viewpoints as equally as possible to create a middle position.  It is new, but only in the sense that it accepts some of the elements of each opposing argument and rejects others.  It is not dramatically different from the arguments for which it is a compromise.   There is, on the other hand, a higher resolution that is possible.  Choosing a workable higher resolution is like bringing a football play onto a baseball diamond, or choosing a movie by deciding what kind of background music you want to hear.  If it works, it brings a third dimension to what formerly was a two-dimensional argument--one between two opposing groups of people who only can see themselves and their opposites. The word higher often is used in this context because this kind of resolution is better, and because--if one looks at the two opposing arguments as being on the left and right--the "higher" resolution comes from a third dimension, one that is "above" them and seems to descend to show a better way than mere compromise.   This "higher" resolution works by bringing into the debate an entirely different point of view that the opposing viewpoints have not considered.  For example, here are four arguments.  The first two sets have compromises; the second two, higher resolutions:  Opposing Viewpoints Compromise or Higher Resolution 1. Animals should be used freely in testing. 2. Animals should never be used in any testing. Compromise: 3. Animals should be used in testing only if they are not harmed or if the testing will save human lives. 1. Religion should not affect one's employment. 2. Religion should be very important in employment. 3. Religion may be just one factor in employment.  Compromise: 4. In public employment, religion should have no bearing on employment; in the private sphere, the employer may decide its importance. 1. War is ethical. 2. War is unethical. Higher or Entirely Different Resolution: 3. Most war would cease if wealth and power were more evenly distributed.   1. The drinking age should be 18. 2. The drinking age should be 21. 3. The drinking age should be 21, but those 18-20 may drink if they are not driving and have broken no laws. Higher or Entirely Different Resolution: 4. Individual counties, cities, and towns should control the drinking age. How do you create your own higher resolution?  Instead of seeing just your initial opposing arguments and the middle ground between them, try looking at the entire subject from differing frameworks.  Imagine, for example, how people from entirely different cultures might see the opposing arguments.  Another method is to ask yourself, "What kind of situation, place, or person would make these opposing arguments partly or entirely irrelevant?"  Yet a third method is to ask how these issues might be resolved in a future time or place where the material conditions--the physical, emotional, social, or psychological backgrounds of life--have changed dramatically.   ---    Special Meaning of "Dialectic" The concept of a higher resolution comes in part from the work of the philosopher Hegel.  He wrote at length about the importance of developing "dialectic" argument.  Hegel's definition of dialectic argument is composed of two opposing ideas and a higher way of looking at them.  Hegel gave a specific name to each part of a dialectic argument: Dialectic Argument thesis:   first argument antithesis:   opposing argument synthesis:   higher resolution Here, for example, is one of the issues from above, formed here as a dialectical argument: What causes war? (#1) thesis:   People go to war for ethical reasons. antithesis:   People go to war because they are unethical. synthesis:   People make their ethics justify war, so perhaps the real cause has to do with what is practical.   Hegel says, in fact, that all of the history of civilization and of thought are a series of dialectic arguments, with each synthesis of an old argument becoming the thesis of a new argument.  For example, the synthesis from above ("#1") can become the thesis of a new argument below ("#2"):  What causes war? (#2) thesis:   War is fought for practical reasons. antithesis:   Many people go to war for impractical reasons. synthesis:   People go to war for both reasons, so something else--for example, wealth--may be the cause. Hegel's dialectic method might take us on further to explore this new synthesis, turning it into yet another thesis and antithesis: What causes war? (#3) thesis:   People go to war to gain wealth. antithesis:   Most soldiers get no wealth from war. synthesis:   Political and business leaders who will gain (or at least maintain) their own wealth start wars. Theoretically, this method can continue on without stop.  However, in practice, there comes a time, according to Hegel, when we can go no further because we are limited by our historical situation.  In practice, according to Hegel, at some point in any argument involving real events and people, society must experiment with a new synthesis before it can go on to the next step--of finding yet another and newer thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. --- Return to top.          Additional Types of Dialogic/Dialectic Papers        For additional types of argument papers, see "Tests and Other Types of Arguments." --- Return to top.              Rhetorical Modes    Also see the Rhetorical Modes page in the "Starting" section. ARGUMENT, CAUSE/EFFECT, and EXEMPLIFICATION See the "Thesis Essay" chapter's "Advanced--Rhetorical Modes" section. --- Return to top.          Writing Theory for Students: Writing a Dialectic/Dialogic Paper This part briefly discusses the theories that instructors use to teach and assign this kind of paper.   Dialogic Writing vs. Thesis Writing Dialogic argument is an ancient and well developed tradition in rhetoric.  Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato in particular discussed it.  Plato's Dialogues show Socrates used a method of teaching and learning that involving a series of questions in order to uncover logical fallacies.  Today this style of questioning, known as the Socratic Method, is used by some to teach: a teacher offers instruction primarily by asking students a series of questions, thus encouraging dialogue among them with little or no argumentative response from the instructor himself.  Such questioning is meant to encourage students to feel comfortable in offering a variety of responses, some of which may oppose each other, and thus discovering multiple viewpoints and the complex thought required to support one view or another or to synthesize them. What is dialogue as taught and used by a liberated educator?  In essence, according to educator and theorist Paulo Freire, it is "the way by which [people] achieve significance as human beings" (88).  It is a learning relationship, a "way of knowing [that] should never be viewed as a mere tactic to involve students in a particular task" (17).  Freire calls it is "an encounter among women and men," "an act of creation," a "liberation of humankind....  Love is...the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself" (89), and it "cannot exist without humility (90).  The "'dialogical man' believes in others even before he meets them face to face" (90-91).  Dialogue is utilized when instructors "pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem which challenges them and requires a response..." (95-6).  According to Freire, "the problem-posing method--dialogical par excellence--is constituted and organized by the students' view of the world, where their own generative themes are found" (109).  And if critical thinking is the core of what we want students to learn, then, according to Freire, dialogue not only provides the core but is that core.  "Only dialogue," he says, a quality "which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking.  Without dialogue there is no communication [and] no true education" (92-3).  Authentic dialogue is an expression of authentic humanism, he says, and leads to authentic education. This scholarly rhetorical tradition of dialectic or dialogue was also an important background of the development of the American Revolution by leaders who believed in education for all citizens and a citizenry sufficiently informed to question government and to form its own.  Giroux suggests that the purpose of improving students' knowledge is to help them "locate themselves in their own histories" so they become "agents in the struggle to expand...human life and freedom" (10-11), much like the communities mentioned above in Felton Earls' Harvard research project.  This is precisely what the leaders of the American Revolution hoped for all citizens of the newly formed United States.   To better connect dialogic thinking and the American Revolution, imagine for a moment that you are alive in the decade before the Revolution.  Picture yourself talking of the American colonies as the antiauthoritarians and how you all need to overthrow the ruling political, cultural, and social structure that assumes that royalty (the King of Great Britain and his minions are the only people who can have real—i.e., intelligent--thoughts.  For people like American revolutionary Thomas Paine and others to suggest laws contrary to those of the British was considered treason, not just because the British though the ideas but, even more important, because to the British the very act of disagreeing with them was itself treasonous.  In those days, the only kind of "dialogue" that was allowable in politics, culture, or society was that between two equals, such as two commoners or two princes, and only in matters that did not conflict with what was ordained by the royalty that was above them. In this way of viewing dialogic thinking is a summary of one of the most important intellectual elements of the American Revolution.  Physical freedom and the equality of human beings in law brought with it a parallel need for dialogue about those laws; the principle of freedom of speech not only guaranteed that such dialogue could exist but also encouraged it.  The revolution of any country that changes from being ruled by royalty or solely by the rich to a system in which power is dispersed relatively equally among the many--in short--a democratic revolution--leads to dialogic thinking, talking, and writing.  In this sense, dialogic argument lies at the heart of American legal and cultural principles.  Interestingly, a major new research project at Harvard University supports the dialogical method of thinking (Hurley).  The study, led by Felton Earls and reported in Science in 1997 and subsequently in the American journal of Sociology, compared videos of 11,408 blocks in Chicago with police records in these same 196 neighborhoods and surveys of 8,782 residents.  The study concluded that the lowering of crime in a neighborhood, no matter its relative poverty or wealth, depends primarily on "collective efficacy": the active engagement of civic groups in such pursuits as community meetings, individual and group complaints about specific problems, reports to police of criminal or other questionable activities, greater parental control of children, etc.  In other words, to have a good neighborhood, people must, as a self-actualizing community, continue to discuss, debate, and explore contraries--to make themselves intellectually involved in a dialogical process.  Earl's research is supported by large grants from the National Institute of Justice and the MacArthur Foundation.  The research also suggests that the older paradigm--that quality of life is improved in a neighborhood primarily by paying people to keep the streets clean, by renovation, and by police arrests of vagrants and troublemakers--offers only a temporary solution at best.  The traditional system--a top-down rule of law from those in power who try to force a community to be what it should--differs dramatically in actual usage from a newer system in which community dialogue and resulting community action form successful action from the ground up.  But really, this "new" system of community action really goes back to deeper American roots, when villages were small enough that everyone--or at least one member from each family--could gather together to make important decisions, and everyone felt represented.  That was American democracy in action in the old days.  Where does college education fit into the history of dialogic thinking?  In most well developed Western, democratic societies, college education has a reputation for being a place where one is encouraged to learn how to argue intelligently.  Most students accept this principle because, at the least, they perceive it as an element of democracy and of maintaining and improving their own situations in society and at work.  Dialogists also emphasize--as should anyone who holds dear the principles of democracy--that while thesis argument may still be used fairly (in debate) or unfairly (by someone forcing others to believe in the argument), dialogic argument implies equality.  Dialogists suggests that while teaching thesis argument may too easily imply learning the beliefs only of those already in power, teaching dialogic argument--or allowing for competing and opposing thesis papers (which is the same thing, in effect, as a dialogic argument) implies the sharing of power.  Teaching argument as dialogue (or a debate among multiple theses) is one method of developing authenticity, both simple and profound.  It also is a very practical method we can easily apply in our classrooms and professional lives with immediate, direct benefits.  In this way we can begin to explore theories about dialogue.  In addition, such learning is both justifiable to and popular among large majorities of students, group-run businesses or branches, and civic communities: it is consonant with--and deeply embedded in--our own country's core of democracy and the spirit of the American Revolution. --- Works Cited and Additional References Bullock, Richard and John Trimbur, with Charles I. Schuster. The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary.  Portsmouth , NH : Boynton/Cook, 1991.  Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum, 2002. ----- and D. Macedo.  Literacy: Reading the Word and the World.  S. Hadley , MA : Bergin & Garvey, 1987.  Giroux, H.  "Literacy and the Pedagogy of Political Empowerment.  In Freire and Macedo 1-28. Hacker, Diane. "Following the Tao." Teaching English in the Two-Year College : March 2000. 297-300. Hurley, Dan. "Researchers cite personal action as urban-crime antidote." New York Times News Service.  Minneapolis Star Tribune, 11 Jan. 2004 , E2. Macedo, Donaldo, "Introduction." In Freire. Plato. The Dialogues of Plato. Trans.and Ed. B. Jowett.  New York : Random House, 1937.   Villanueva, Jr. Victor. "Considerations for American Freireistas." Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr.  Urbana : NCTE, 1997. 621-638.  Reprinted from Bullock and Trimbur. Williams, James D.. "The Foundations of Rhetoric." Preparing to Teach Writing: Research, Theory, and Practice. Mahwah , NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. 1-41. --- Return to top.