How People Maintain Communication

The idea of intersubjectivity has been developed to explain how people maintain communication in various social practices. Matusov has discerned several kinds of intersubjectivity that can be classified as (a) overlapping of subjectivities, (b) sharing of (divergences of) meaning, (c) coordination of participant’s contribution in joint activity and (d) human agency. By definition, all kinds of intersubjectivity describe diverse forms of states of subjectivity shared among several individuals. These instances of intersubjectivity were recognized as being of the highest importance for learning and for the development of productive guided participation (Rogoff, 1990). The particular setting of this research has uncovered what we consider as not being classifiable to any of these categories: the interview uncovered very different beliefs on learning, on the role of discussions for fostering learning, on the role of moderators, and on whether Digalo helps discussants and the moderator. We anticipated that these beliefs would come to the surface in the discussion. We expected that disagreement would arise and would be fueled by the common recognition of divergences. The confrontation of the discussants with their previous discussion in the cued retrospective reconstituted, step by step, with the help of the replay function of the Digalo tool, showed a different picture. Ahmad, Judith, and Fatima had divergent interpretations of their synchronous discussions, but this divergence was not shared: what was meant to facilitate construction of knowledge from the part of Ahmad was interpreted as brutal interference by Fatima;What was meant to be an exchange of ideas (by Fatima and probably by Rim) was seen as a shallow discussion that does not lead to learning by Judith and Ahmad; or Fatima’s silence which was interpreted by Judith as a sign of weakness, but was forcefully justified by Fatima as a determined resistance to participate. There is even not any clear cut between the presence and the absence of discussants: Ahmad’s absence in the first episode for technical reasons was interpreted as a welcome ‘presence’, a tacit agreement to give students the opportunity to talk about the issue at stake without interfering. Clearly, actions are not co-ordinated.

What is shared is extremely general: Following the same university course, shared background of knowledge of articles they were asked to read. Except for these generalities, specific beliefs about the discussion (e.g., disagreements) are not shared and the order of actions is quite whimsical. How, with all those unshared divergences and the absence of coordination of actions, communication could be maintained?