Intersubjectivity: Towards a Dialogical Analysis

Intersubjectivity refers to the variety of possible relations between perspectives. It is indispensable for understanding human social behaviour. While theoretical work on intersubjectivity is relatively sophisticated, methodological approaches to studying intersubjectivity lag behind. Most methodologies assume that individuals are the unit of analysis. In order to research intersubjectivity, however, methodologies are needed that take relationships as the unit of analysis. The first aim of this article is to review existing methodologies for studying intersubjectivity. Four methodological approaches are reviewed: comparative self-report, observing behaviour, analysing talk and ethnographic engagement. The second aim of the article is to introduce and contribute to the development of a dialogical method of analysis. The dialogical approach enables the study of intersubjectivity at different levels, as both implicit and explicit, and both within and between individuals and groups. The article concludes with suggestions for using the proposed method for researching intersubjectivity both within individuals and between individuals and groups.

[1]  D. Spalding.  The Principles of Psychology , 1873, Nature.

[2]  G. Mead,et al.  A Behavioristic Account of the Significant Symbol , 1922 .

[3]  G. Mead.  Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Works of George Herbert Mead, Vol. 1) , 1934 .

[4]  G. Ichheiser.  Structure and Dynamics of Interpersonal Relations , 1943 .

[5]  Maurice Merleau-Ponty.  Phenomenology of Perception , 1964 .

[6]  S. Stryker.  Relationships of Married Offspring and Parent: A Test of Mead's Theory , 1956, American Journal of Sociology.

[7]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[8]  R. Laing,et al.  Interpersonal perception : a theory and a method of research , 1966 .

[9]  T. Scheff.  TOWARD A SOCIOLOGICAL MODEL OF CONSENSUS , 1967 .

[10]  H. Garfinkel.  Studies in Ethnomethodology , 1968 .

[11]  R. Dubin,et al.  Baby feeding and body sway: an experiment in George Herbert Mead's "taking the role of the other". , 1968, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[12]  H. Blumer,et al.  Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method , 1988 .

[13]  J. Piaget,et al.  The Psychology of the Child , 1969 .

[14]  A. Schutz.  Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality , 1972 .

[15]  R. M. Blakar,et al.  An experimental method for inquiring into communication , 1973 .

[16]  P. Ricoeur.  The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation , 1973 .

[17]  B. Alperson.  A Boolean Analysis of Interpersonal Perception , 1975 .

[18]  S. Moscovici,et al.  Social Influence And Social Change , 1976 .

[19]  R. Rommetveit.  On the Architecture of Intersubjectivity , 1976 .

[20]  Jacob L. Mey,et al.  LANGUAGE AS A MEANS OF SOCIAL POWER THEORETICAL-EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS OF LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE USE AS EMBEDDED IN A SOCIAL MATRIX , 1979 .

[21]  J. S. Shrauger,et al.  Symbolic interactionist view of self-concept: Through the looking glass darkly. , 1979 .

[22]  D. Funder.  On seeing ourselves as others see us: Self–other agreement and discrepancy in personality ratings. , 1980 .

[23]  W. Doise.  Levels of explanation in the European Journal of Social Psychology , 1980 .

[24]  J. Habermas.  Theory of Communicative Action , 1981 .

[25]  E. Schegloff.  Discourse as an interactional achievement : Some uses of "Uh huh" and other things that come between sentences , 1982 .

[26]  James Clifford,et al.  On Ethnographic Authority , 1983 .

[27]  H. Wimmer,et al.  Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception , 1983, Cognition.

[28]  Agaitha Allen,et al.  Agreement, Understanding, Realization, and Feeling Understood as Predictors of Communicative Satisfaction in Marital Dyads. , 1984 .

[29]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Referring as a collaborative process , 1986, Cognition.

[30]  J. Bavelas,et al.  Experimental methods for studying “elementary motor mimicry” , 1986 .

[31]  Steven J. Gilbert.  A laingian view of the ‘advantage’ of advertisers over consumers , 1986 .

[32]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Interpersonal Perception: A Social Relations Analysis , 1988 .

[33]  H. Chaiklin.  Communication and Medical Practice: Social Relations in the Clinic , 1988 .

[34]  E. Schegloff.  Repair After Next Turn: The Last Structurally Provided Defense of Intersubjectivity in Conversation , 1992, American Journal of Sociology.

[35]  K. Weick,et al.  Collective mind in organizations: Heedful interrelating on flight decks. , 1993 .

[36]  Kathleen Wilson,et al.  Activity settings as the unit of analysis: A theoretical basis for community intervention and development , 1993 .

[37]  Ramkrishnan V. Tenkasi,et al.  P ERSPECTIVE M AKING AND P ERSPECTIVE T AKING IN C OMMUNITIES OF K NOWING , 2000 .

[38]  E. Hatfield,et al.  Emotional Contagion , 1995 .

[39]  A. Honneth.  The struggle for recognition , 1995 .

[40]  E. Hutchins.  Cognition in the wild , 1995 .

[41]  Nick Crossley,et al.  Intersubjectivity: The Fabric of Social Becoming , 1996 .

[42]  E. Matusov.  Intersubjectivity Without Agreement , 1996 .

[43]  R. Farr.  The Roots of Modern Social Psychology: 1872-1954 , 1996 .

[44]  Robert E. Spekman,et al.  Consensus and collaboration: norm‐regulated behaviour in industrial marketing relationships , 1997 .

[45]  David A. Karp.  :Symbolic Interaction and Ethnographic Research: Intersubjectivity and the Study of Human Lived Experience , 1997 .

[46]  Per Linell,et al.  Approaching Dialogue: Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogical Perspectives , 1998 .

[47]  Margaret Wetherell,et al.  Positioning and Interpretative Repertoires: Conversation Analysis and Post-Structuralism in Dialogue , 1998 .

[48]  I. Marková,et al.  Interaction between impaired and unimpaired speakers: inter-subjectivity and the interplay of culturally shared and situation specific knowledge. , 1999, The British journal of social psychology.

[49]  Jeffrey K. Olick.  Genre Memories and Memory Genres: A Dialogical Analysis of May 8, 1945 Commemorations in the Federal Republic of Germany , 1999 .

[50]  Derek Edwards,et al.  Social Representations and Discursive Psychology: From Cognition to Action , 1999 .

[51]  P. Burke,et al.  Does the self conform to the views of others , 1999 .

[52]  G. Gaskell,et al.  Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound , 2000 .

[53]  M Assa,et al.  Interpersonal perception: a theory and method for studying pharmacists' and patients' views of pharmaceutical care. , 2000, Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association.

[54]  W. Hollway,et al.  Doing Qualitative Research Differently: Free Association, Narrative and the Interview Method , 2000 .

[55]  Ivana Markov·,et al.  AmÈdÈe or How to Get Rid of It: Social Representations from a Dialogical Perspective , 2000 .

[56]  N. Emery,et al.  Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays , 2001, Nature.

[57]  Caroline Howarth,et al.  Identity in whose eyes?: the role of representations in identity construction , 2002 .

[58]  J. Valsiner.  Forms of Dialogical Relations and Semiotic Autoregulation within the Self , 2002 .

[59]  I. Marková.  Dialogicality and social representations: The dynamics of mind. , 2003 .

[60]  Luís Claudio Figueiredo,et al.  Patterns of Intersubjectivity in the Constitution of Subjectivity: Dimensions of Otherness , 2003 .

[61]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Chimpanzees understand psychological states – the question is which ones and to what extent , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[62]  I. Marková.  Constitution of the Self: Intersubjectivity and Dialogicality , 2003 .

[63]  D. Mosse,et al.  Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice , 2004 .

[64]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  A unifying view of the basis of social cognition , 2004, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[65]  F. Cornish.  Making ‘Context’ Concrete: A Dialogical Approach to the Society–Health Relation , 2004, Journal of health psychology.

[66]  G. Rizzolatti,et al.  The mirror-neuron system. , 2004, Annual review of neuroscience.

[67]  S Hurley,et al.  Perspectives on Imitation , 2004 .

[68]  Alan L. Sillars,et al.  Communication and Understanding in Parent–Adolescent Relationships , 2005 .

[69]  C. Kimberlin,et al.  Using Interpersonal Perception to Characterize Pharmacists' and Patients' Perceptions of the Benefits of Pharmaceutical Care , 2005, Health communication.

[70]  G. Duveen,et al.  Social relations and cognitive development: the influence of conversation type and representations of gender , 2006 .

[71]  Junko Mori,et al.  The Achievement of Intersubjectivity through Embodied Completions: A Study of Interactions Between First and Second Language Speakers , 2006 .

[72]  Caroline Howarth,et al.  A social representation is not a quiet thing: exploring the critical potential of social representations theory. , 2006, The British journal of social psychology.

[73]  Alex Gillespie,et al.  Descartes’ Demon , 2006 .

[74]  A. Gillespie.  Tourist Photography and the Reverse Gaze , 2006 .

[75]  E. Goffman.  Presentation of Self , 2006 .

[76]  J. Latsis.  Convention and Intersubjectivity: New Developments in French Economics , 2006 .

[77]  S. Jovchelovitch.  Knowledge in context : representations, community and culture (author summary) , 2006 .

[78]  H. Hermans,et al.  Self, Identity, and Globalization in Times of Uncertainty: A Dialogical Analysis , 2007 .

[79]  Ken Booth,et al.  The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics , 2007 .

[80]  A. Gillespie.  The intersubjective dynamics of trust, distrust, and manipulation , 2007 .

[81]  A. Gillespie,et al.  A Cultural Psychological Reflection on Collaborative Research , 2007 .

[82]  W. N. Schoenfeld,et al.  Principles of Psychology , 2007 .

[83]  Flora Cornish,et al.  The necessary contradictions of 'community-led' health promotion: a case study of HIV prevention in an Indian red light district. , 2007, Social science & medicine.

[84]  B. Sokol,et al.  Taking and Coordinating Perspectives: From Prereflective Interactivity, through Reflective Intersubjectivity, to Metareflective Sociality , 2008, Human Development.

[85]  Peter Gärdenfors,et al.  The Role of Intersubjectivity in Animal and Human Cooperation , 2008 .

[86]  A. Gillespie.  Social Representations, Alternative Representations and Semantic Barriers , 2008 .

[87]  Alex Gillespie,et al.  Negotiating Multiplicity: Adaptive Asymmetries within Second-Generation Turks’ “Society of Mind” , 2008 .

[88]  A. Gillespie,et al.  Conflicting Community Commitments: A Dialogical Analysis of a British Woman's World War II Diaries. , 2008 .

[89]  R. Leitch.  Becoming Other: From social interaction to self-reflection, , 2008 .

[90]  M. Doherty.  Theory of Mind: How Children Understand Others' Thoughts and Feelings , 2008 .

[91]  Per Linell.  Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically : Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making , 2009 .

[92]  Alex Gillespie,et al.  A Pragmatist Approach to the Problem of Knowledge in Health Psychology , 2009, Journal of health psychology.

[93]  M. Cooper.  Interpersonal Perceptions and Metaperceptions , 2009 .

[94]  G. de Abreu,et al.  Maintaining Continuity in a Cultural Contact Zone: Identification Strategies in the Dialogical Self , 2010 .

[95]  Etsuko Yoshida,et al.  8. Referring as a collaborative process in discourse , 2011 .