ABSTRACT
Many are the uses to which the concept of dialectics has been put over the years. Among these, the ones that are of interest in examining the discursive acts of everyday life are the interpretations given to it by Georges Gurvitch and Kenneth Burke. The dialectical approach to the study of social forms is not essentially different from the one used by G.H. Mead as well. His work too has been described by Bedrich Bauman as being that of “neither a subjectivist nor an idealist—but along with Hegel and Marx, one of the greatest figures in the history of dialectics whose deep insights into man and society exclude any subjectivist one-sidedness” (1967: 34). Gurvitch’s work advances the dialectical approach to the study of “social reality by insisting that it must be conceived and studied in its totality, in its various dimensions, expressions and manifestations,” in Bosserman’s summary of Gurvitch’s position. Such an approach allows an analyst to study contradiction, antinomies, dichotomies and oppositions, and, in short, “the processes of polarization as part of the same reality rather than as intrusions and invasions,” in Bosserman’s words again (1968: 234).
