{"title":"Rethinking polarization: Discursive opening and the possibility for sustaining dialogue","authors":"L. Reinig, R. Heath, Jennifer L. Borda","doi":"10.1080/03637751.2022.2164320","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Increased polarization and divisive political speech threaten meaningful civic discussion. This study examines a campus public dialogue to understand how dialogic commitments sustained discursive openings for talking across polarizing positions. Specifically, our analysis identifies three patterns of interaction that constituted sustained openings: conceptual expansion, deliberation of meaning, and dialogic moments. Additionally, we contend two communicative practices extended dialogic commitments: discursive vulnerability and critical reflexivity. Finally, we draw on structuration theory to explain how participants disrupted polarizing political tropes to instead enact rules and resources associated with dialogue. Our analysis asserts a rethinking of polarization as communicative – that is, an enactment of dominant political discourses – and elucidates how students with limited instruction instead sought mutual understanding and authentic engagement.","PeriodicalId":48176,"journal":{"name":"Communication Monographs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Communication Monographs","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2022.2164320","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT Increased polarization and divisive political speech threaten meaningful civic discussion. This study examines a campus public dialogue to understand how dialogic commitments sustained discursive openings for talking across polarizing positions. Specifically, our analysis identifies three patterns of interaction that constituted sustained openings: conceptual expansion, deliberation of meaning, and dialogic moments. Additionally, we contend two communicative practices extended dialogic commitments: discursive vulnerability and critical reflexivity. Finally, we draw on structuration theory to explain how participants disrupted polarizing political tropes to instead enact rules and resources associated with dialogue. Our analysis asserts a rethinking of polarization as communicative – that is, an enactment of dominant political discourses – and elucidates how students with limited instruction instead sought mutual understanding and authentic engagement.
期刊介绍:
Communication Monographs, published in March, June, September & December, reports original, theoretically grounded research dealing with human symbolic exchange across the broad spectrum of interpersonal, group, organizational, cultural and mediated contexts in which such activities occur. The scholarship reflects diverse modes of inquiry and methodologies that bear on the ways in which communication is shaped and functions in human interaction. The journal endeavours to publish the highest quality communication social science manuscripts that are grounded theoretically. The manuscripts aim to expand, qualify or integrate existing theory or additionally advance new theory. The journal is not restricted to particular theoretical or methodological perspectives.