Tuesday, September 4, 2018

August

My topic of interest was definitely dialogic communication this week. I was surprised when
the book gave a limited description for such a broad subject. Before reading about this topic
I didn’t think of it as something that needed to be defined because we had already talked
about active listening critical listening, and so on. But the difference between dialogic listening
and all of the others is the fact that it’s a shared activity where both parties are contributing
with dialogue. How this differs specifically from active listening is the fact that with active
listening you have a scapegoat for reflection. You may agree or disagree with the ideas being
received, but there’s not necessarily a why involved in it, and their doesn’t have to be if active
listening is the goal.


But dialogic listening is (or at least should be) happening all around us. Things like, engaging
with a person for selfish reasons; for example, talking to someone over the counter to get a
discount because you “know” them, but in all reality you don’t even know their last name. Or
if the differences between the two involved are ignored that can create issues for one party.
Say if “everyone” was invited to a party on Friday so you talk about it with a group, not taking
into consideration that some people actually weren’t invited. Their feelings don’t get accounted
for in that situation. And when differences are the main focus, that can push people to completely
refuse to engage in conversation, making political conversations impossible. And not only that,
but it also forces us to only comply with people who have the same views as our own, giving
us a more narrow-minded views on topics.

This concept is important because it helps create relationships with people. If active listening
was the only concept happening, it wouldn’t create for a lot of conversation, because it’s
mainly one-sided. But when two people are able to express ideas freely without the barriers
of differences getting in the way in some form that creates a platform for a healthy relationship.

No comments:

Post a Comment