The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care By Mari ...

In his novel Les Misérables, Victor Hugo (1862/1992) asserted that there are many great deeds done in the engagement of small struggles in life. It is the contention of this work that caring is one of those deeds. Through the creation of the communication ethic dialogue as the labor of care, one finds Hugo's comment on illustrious heroes to be even more profound. In this passage, the metaphor—dialogue as the labor of care—unfolds. Through the invitation of dialogue into the communicative life of caring, souls on the battlefields of life find bravery, triumphs, and rewards that allow them to continue to face the invasions of necessity. Les Misérables exemplifies the idea that life is not lived in a singular fashion; in fact, life is best lived in the unity of contraries. In the case of caring, the unity of contraries—joy and suffering, blessing and burden, necessity and triumph—allow the full impact of a meaningful human existence.

Dialogue as the labor of care is a necessary and worthwhile endeavor for a number of reasons. To explore this metaphor, the work of scholars Nel Noddings and Richard Johannesen open the discussion. While Noddings (1984) made the initial link between dialogue and care, Johannesen (2000) called for research and conversation in order to involve this subject more intimately in the discipline of communication. Despite the fact that scholarly conversations on dialogue and caring imply a connection between the two, both Noddings and Johannesen called for greater attentiveness to this relationship. Furthermore, in the communication discipline, the literature does not highlight or explore care as a necessity