Distance and Conversation

Whenever faces are engaged in a face‐to‐face conversation distance is evoked between them as a “common dialogic space” that both connects and separates. This space must be dealt with in conversation. The habitual tendency is to cover it up by formulating a topic that is external to the immediate relation. Keeping the topic going “holds” the separate parties together in an ongoing engagement. When the topic for some reason fails to hold, the gap between the participants is exposed and they fall embarrassedly into silence. There are, however, ways to give presence to distance and still contain it within the bounds of the conversation. What this calls for is a recognition of the other as Other and of the speaking voice as an emergent self rather than an utterance subordinate to the external topic. A discussion of the phenomenon of distance from the perspectives of speaker and hearer is followed by an examination of its effects on the seriousness of the conversation. 1989 Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction