The article “Dialogue’s Basic Tension” by Karen Zediker and John Sterwart introduce the idea of “tensionality” as a key feature of dialogue. They suggest that “moments of dialogue emerge most often when the people involved maintain one primary tention—the one between letting the other happen to me while holding my own ground.” “Letting the other happen to me” and “holding my own ground” are the opposite ends of the continuum of the basic tension of dialogue. (Stewart, Zediker) “Letting the other happen to me” is described as being subject to an experience, experiencing the otherness of the other, and when you allow someone to happen to you, expereincing their differences and letting them connect and influence you. (Stewart, Zediker) Holding my ground means speaks your own mind, or being expressive.
When I read through my teammates initial impressions of working together, it seemed like everyone was focused on the team, and were more oriented toward the “letting the other happen to me” end of the tension continuum. Saboy82 said “After reading my teammates weblogs I noticed that some our interests are quite similar when it comes to learning new things. For example Gym411 is really into living an active, healthy lifestyle. Spicynoodlesoup has a new found interest in learning how to maintain his vehicle, and finally Ninjacook had an interest in wildlife. All of these interests are the same interests I have, and consider this to be a good omen when it comes to working in teams.” (Saboy82, http://saboy82.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/fruitful-conversations-makes-the-team/) Gym411 thought “Overall, the team members approach to working together seem to be a productive way to do so. I am glad that we all have an open mind before approaching the group project, this will help us in the long run.” (Gym411, http://gym411.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/keeping-an-open-conversation-is-the-way-to-go/) The clearest example of the push-pull tension between “letting the other happen to me” and “holding my own” was shown by team member NinjaCook, which makes think that our initial impressions were more monologic than dialogic. “Also, in their suggestions for how the teams should be grouped they say that “some of us are laid back and like to wait till the last minute to get work done, and others like to work with a schedule and do things way before they are due” and that the teams should be grouped by similar work ethics. Gym411 seems to subscribe to the “laid-back” approach but unfortunately this is very inconvenient for me. I hope our group can work out the kinks and collaborate efficiently!” (NinjaCook, http://ninjacook.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/team-ideas/)
