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Chapter 32. DIALOGIC/DIALECTIC
Advanced Methods of
Dialogue/Dialectic ---
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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.
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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.
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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 |
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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.
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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.
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For additional types of argument papers, see "Tests
and Other Types of Arguments."
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ARGUMENT, CAUSE/EFFECT, and EXEMPLIFICATION
See the
"Thesis Essay" chapter's "Advanced--Rhetorical
Modes" section.
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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.
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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.
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