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Dialogue

When one is just trying to  broadcast information or give a lecture, he or she decides what information is meaningful. When they are listening in an empathetic way, they are trying to understand the other persons thoughts and feelings (Stewart, Zediker, & Witteborn, n.d.). Dialogue, on the other hand is a joint effort. It creates a place where two or more people communicate with mutual openness to create context and significance. No one person carries the power in the conversation and  everyone involved can contribute to come to a an understanding. "If you're going to listen dialogically, you have to be more interested in building-meaning-through than in being right" (Stewart, Zediker, & Wittenborn, n.d., p. 201).

Dialogue is a relationship and is therefore very important in interpersonal communication. Anytime two or more people interact there will be more than one perspective in the conversation. If they choose to collaborate by "focusing, encouraging, and sculpting" (Stewart, 2012) together, both people can take away something new. As Stewart (2012) points out,during dialogue, unlike with breathing, inhaling and exhaling are done simultaneously. To extend the metaphor, dialogue would be like syncing your breaths for a bit in order to communicate in a more productive way. It makes me think of another metaphor. To co -labor -ate or labor together makes me think of when a woman is in labor and her partner or birth coach breaths with her. Both partners are simultaneously "inhaling and exhaling" (Stewart, 2012, p. ) with their eye contact and observation of one another's body language. They are each sending and recieving messages at the sametime. As they look each other in the eyes and breath in the same cadence, inhale inhale exhale, inhale inhale exhale. As the partner co-labors with the mother and as they sync their breathing, it is like a dialogue without words. 

References

Stewart, J. R. (2012). Bridges not walls: a book about interpersonal communication (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Stewart, J., Zediker, K.E., Witteborn, S. (n.d.) Empathic and dialogic listening. In J. Stewart (Ed.) Bridges not walls: a book about interpersonal communication (pp. 91-99). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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