Remarks on the description and interpretation of dialogue

An elementary difficulty with the analysis of all processes of human interaction is their transformation into data susceptible of analysis. This difficulty may explain why in the human sciences data of a different kind were, and generally still are, preferred. As against the fleeting processes of interaction and communication, their quasi-objective products appeared stable, permitting unhurried and verifiable description and analysis. The data based on the relatively stable products of social interaction and communication represented only the tip of the huge iceberg of social reality. Most of it remained submerged in the praxis of everyday life. It seemed that it would remain inaccessible to direct observation, close inspection and precise analysis. The ethnographers' field notes were assumed to recapture inadequately the ephemeral processes "in the field. With the customary simplification of the recursive nature of the entire scientific enterprise, one may say that scientific analysis "begins" with the production of data, i.e., by description of that which has been observed. After the ordering of data on increasing levels of generality, it "ends" by explanation, i.e. by connecting data in a narrative which links antecedent conditions and consequences in terms of causes and functions. The fundamental presupposition is that there is something to be observed, described and explained that is there prior to observation, description and explanation.