Conversational Realities Revisited: Life, Language, Body and World [Paperback]

John Shotter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0971231257 | ISBN-13: 978-0971231252 | Publication Date: February 14, 2008 | Edition: 2

Conversational Realities Reloaded is a new edition of John Shotter's 1993 book Conversational Realities. Like the first edition, it contests the traditional scientific view that naturally occurring psychological and sociological realities of a systematic and structured kind are to be discovered underlying appearances. Instead, it claims that such orderly 'realities' are both socially constructed and sustained in existence only within the context of people's disorderly, everyday conversational activities. However, this second edition is much more oriented toward practical issues than the first. Central to it, is a focus on people's spontaneous, living, bodily responsiveness to the expressive movements of the others around them, and the dialogically-structured nature of the events occurring in the meetings between them. Due to the irreversibility of living processes of growth and development, such events occur always for another first time. Thus, instead of patterns and regularities, instead of seeking to solve problems, our task becomes the more practical one of struggling to create new 'pathways' forward into the uniquely new circumstances we create for ourselves as we all live out our lives together. Among the works of many others who have emphasized the importance of unique, only once occurrent events in human affairs, the works of Bakhtin and Wittgenstein are key resources in this book. Along with a new Preface describing some of my changed views on Social Constructionism, this new edition contains four completely new essays along with a thorough reworking of five of the original chapters (while five of the old chapters have been dropped). They explore the logical, poetic, and rhetorical nature of our conversation intertwined practices in the spheres of psychotherapy, management, and everyday life, as well as in other more extraordinary circumstances. In particular, they are concerned to highlight the socially contested but imaginary nature of many of the 'things' we talk of in social life, as well as the nature of the social processes in which they are 'constructed'.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: The Taos Institute Publications; 2 edition (February 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971231257
• ISBN-13: 978-0971231252
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,562,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Social constructionism updated, November 10, 2008

By 

Stephen Loftus (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Conversational Realities Revisited: Life, Language, Body and World (Paperback)

This is an interesting book that synthesises a range of ideas from scholars such as Wittgenstein, Vygotsky and Bakhtin, among others. Shotter's style can be a little challenging at times, but he has some important things to say and it's worth the effort. Social constructionism is a radically new way to conceptualise the manner in which humans make sense of the world around them and within them although, as Shotter points out, the inner world is not quite so inner as we often think. Much of what we think of as our inner world is negotiated and constructed in the social spaces between us. The only real problem with the book is the large number of grammatical and typographical errors - at least one on almost every page. Mostly, these are simply irritating, but just occasionally it is difficult to know what a sentence means. Apart from this, it is a very thought-provoking book and recommended.

4.0 out of 5 stars From a Deeper Place, October 25, 2011

By 

Madelyn Blair (Jefferson, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conversational Realities Revisited: Life, Language, Body and World (Paperback)

Shotter's book is a wonderful exploration of what it means to try to understand our meaning as we live together with others. I once wrote, "the play of life is not written before we play it. It is written as we play it." (from my book RIDING THE CURRENT: HOW TO DEAL WITH THE DAILY DELUGE OF DATA) When writing, the words sometimes emerge on the page by themselves. What John Shotter does in this book is give the background to why my words are true. As I read Shotter, I could see that the words I had written several years ago had come from a deeper place than even I had imagined. I am most grateful for the academic underpinnings that he has so generously offered in this book.

If you are interested in the idea of a life is one lived in the melee of place, time, people, events - all coalescing into meaning from our relationships of each with each - then you will find this book illuminating. At the very end of the book, he says, "we cannot plan our next step ahead of time, we must find the relevant features influencing our next step in what becomes present to us as we take each step." See what I mean?