Making meaning together: a distributed story of speaking and thinking

The relation of language to thought and mind is an ancient topic in linguistic theory. Normally language is related to thought in an individual mind. In this article, I explore the analogy between the dimensions and dynamics of individual perception as formulated by Husserl and the inter-individual perception and conceptualization found in everyday conversations. The notions of horizon, perspective, appresentation, and apperception developed by Husserl for the phenomenology of individual perception are generalized to incorporate the mutual and cooperative calibration of consciousness evidenced in conversational discussions where speakers cooperate to construct an interpretation and evaluation of their experience. This process of local cooperative and mutual co-construction and evaluation of interpretations of experience takes place in what is referred to here as a course of development. An extended excerpt from a conversational discussion is used to demonstrate the interactive dialogic and dialectical work speakers carry out in an effort to make sense of their experience of the world and their relationship to the world and each other. Ways of talking are analysed as means of constructing restricted folk-theoretic world-views that rely on the dialogic-dialectical work of the speakers. Contributions to an on-going discussion are claimed to constitute folk theories actualized in real time in the talk where Husserl’s notions of horizon, perspective, etc. of individual consciousness are given a distributed or shared interpretation in the establishment and maintenance of inter-individual consciousness in relation to the topics and events under development in the conversation.