The limits of social conversation: A sociological approach to Gordon Pask’s conversation theory

Approaches Pask’s conversation theory from a sociological perspective. Pask’s vision of conversation as a self‐organising process can help our understanding of the emergence of social order out of social interaction. Through conversation, human beings would be able to construct a shared reality which would be the common setting of their social life. But modern societies are only partially based on conversational interaction. Many of their structural traits are not a result of conversational agreements, but of the unintended consequences of conscious (inter)actions. In these societies, the main source of social order at the macro level is not intentional action, but the dissipation of intentional action. This phenomenon generates the dissipative structures that represent the objective frame of social life. The main purpose of this paper is to review the theoretical work of Gordon Pask from a sociological point of view, in order to appraise its potential as an instrument adequate for social analysis.