Social poetics and Dialogical approach

Extracts from Daniel W Clarke' PhD thesis work:
Social Poetics of Place Making

Cunliffe notes that this is where the difference between social poetics and linguistics lies: whereas social poetics focuses on these taken-for-granted relationships, linguistics studies the relationship of various elements of language. For Cunliffe (2002: 129), social poetics is a research “practice” that “attempts to embrace and enact a dialogical approach ”. The five reminders are:

• the use of metaphors, images, and analogies that allow or provoke us into seeing
  connections
• the use of instructive forms o f talk to move others, such as “do this,” “look at that,”
  “listen ,” and “fin sh this by tomorrow ”
• forms of talk that reveal possibilities or new ways of connecting: “imagine,” “suppose we
  look at it like this,” and “think what would happen if . . . ?”
• the use of gestures: pointing, shrugging, and thumping the desk as we speak
• the use of comparisons, different language games, or juxtaposing words or phrases in
  unusual ways, so that we are struck or moved to see new connections