Dialogue vs. Debate

I loved this book. P&O.T found some great ways to explain things. I really like their distinction between dialogue and debate. " Dialogue as we consider it, is not suppose to be a debate, in which the partisans of opposed settled convictions defend their perspective views, but rather discussion interlocutors search honestly and with out bias for the best solution to a controversial problem" (p. 37). If we turn to Tannen's Argument Culture most of the cases she mentioned were debates, not discussions or dialogues. People were just there to defeat each other.
The P & O.T also makes a great discussion of types of objectives of argument. I haven't finishes that chapter yet, but so far I believe they highlight very important components of argument: facts and truths, presumptions, values... I believe these are very important to have a great discussion and come to a solution as mentioned in the description above.

Interesting Thread

There is an interesting thread at RSA's Blogora today. An old-school debate Comm guy wrote an article last year on how the dialogue and deliberation community has created a rather pejorative metaphor to describe debate's influence on Democracy.



I know this, of course, because I am a contributor :P