Four person-ideas in a soul-searching internally persuasive discourse

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by hdkawk

The article presents a Bakhtinian dialogic analysis of a transcript from the Experimental Gymnasium of Oslo (EGO) General Assembly meeting held on November 2, 1967, two months after the school opened. Students confront one another through deep disagreements about the school’s vision and governance, yielding four constructed “person-ideas.” The analysis distinguishes specific viewpoints while keeping them grounded in lived intentions, motives, reasons, and desires, supporting further conceptual exploration of students’ ideological positions and worldviews.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Introduction

ISSN: 2325-3290 (online) Four person-ideas in a soul-searching internally persuasive discourse Ana Marjanovic-Shane Independent Scholar, USA Abstract The monologues presented in this article represent a particular Bakhtinian analysis of a transcript of a passionate, dramatic, and conflictual General Assembly meeting held in the first democratic school in Norway, the Experimental Gymnasium of Oslo (EGO), only two months after the school was opened, on November 2nd, 1967. In the meeting, they confronted each other with deep disagreements in their vision of the school and ways to govern it. The Bakhtinian assumption is that a dialogic analysis of any dialogue takes entering into dialogic relationships with the original participants in the analyzed dialogue (Matusov, Marjanovic-Shane, & Gradovski, 2019; Matusov, MarjanovicShane, Kullenberg, & Curtis, 2019). By taking the floor in the Soul-Searching Assembly, the students confronted eachother fully from the bottom of their hearts and minds. Their ideas were embodied intentions, motives, reasons, and desires – what Bakhtin called the person-ideas (Bakhtin, 1999). I constructed four person-ideas based on the transcript of the Soul-searching assembly. In that process of dialogic abstraction, I attempted to distill specific points of view without depersonalizing them into abstract ideas thorn out of the living moment of their lives. The analysis through the construction of the four person-ideas complements a vignette I wrote based on the same transcript (Marjanovic-Shane, 2023b). It is both a distinctive kind of dialogic analysis, and it also helps me prepare the data regarding the students’ ideas for a further conceptual analysis, where I explore the students' ideological positions, beliefs, and worldviews. That conceptual analysis is published in a separate article of this special issue (MarjanovicShane, 2023a). Ana Marjanovic-Shane is an Independent Scholar interested in ethical ontological dialogism and meaningmaking in education, democratic education, students’ academic freedoms, and students’ critical and creative authorship in self-education. Her articles in English and Serbian were published in various journals (e.g. , Mind, Culture, Activity Journal, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, Dialogic Pedagogy Journal) and as book chapters in books on play and education. Two recent publications include: Shugurova, O. , Matusov, E. , & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2022) . The University of Students: A place for joint self-education. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 10 , E1-E42; Marjanovic-Shane, A. , Meacham, S. , Choi, H. J. , Lopez, S. , & Matusov, E. (2019) . Idea-dying in critical ontological pedagogical dialogue. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 20, 68-79, and a book: Matusov, E. , A. Marjanovic-Shane & M. Gradovski, (2019) . Dialogic pedagogy and polyphonic research art: Bakhtin by and for educators, Palgrave Macmillan. Ana lives and works in the USA. Acknowledgments I want to thank my colleague, Eugene Matusov, for the critical readings of the previous drafts of this manuscript. He helped me deepen my “entering into” or “descending to” the four imaginary characters – four person-ideas – I constructed for this experiment in dialogic analysis. The views and comments I Dialogic Pedagogy: An International DOI: 10.5195/dpj.2023.478 | Vol. 1 Online 1 No. 2 Journal | [http://dpj.pitt.edu](http://dpj.pitt.edu)[ ](http://dpj.pitt.edu)(2023) A198 Four person-ideas in a soul-searching internally persuasive discourse Ana Marjanovic-Shane received from my colleagues at the Educationalist Club at the University of Students were indispensable in guiding my writing. I am deeply thankful to my colleague Ljubica Beljanski-Ristić for her drama-in-education wisdom and for enabling the four person-ideas to take their first breath at her festival of drama in education in Belgrade, Serbia. I want to give special thanks to my colleague Jel

FAQs

What source and meeting does the article analyze?

It analyzes a passionate General Assembly meeting transcript from the Experimental Gymnasium of Oslo (EGO) on November 2, 1967, shortly after the school opened.

What is meant by the four “person-ideas” in the analysis?

The author constructs four person-ideas from the transcript, representing distinct students’ intentions, motives, reasons, and desires without reducing them to depersonalized abstract ideas.

How does this analysis relate to other work by the author?

The article complements a vignette written from the same transcript and supports preparation of data for a further conceptual analysis of students’ ideological positions, published separately in the same special issue.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by hdkawk