Mono-America

Conversation means having a dialogue right? "di" referencing two people, "logue" referencing speech.

thesaurus.com's first synonym for conversation IS dialogue. There's even a visual thesaurus (pretty cool) that maps how close words are in meaning to each other. "Language" is a central node, and "communication" and "conversation" are closely connected, only one node off. "Monologue" is farther away on the map, referencing one person's speech. It is the antonym of "dialogue."

How, then, would we categorize TWO monologues??

I mean, conversation is a dialogue, not two monologues. The overlap of monologue and dialogue is...speech (picture the venn diagram). Speech is very broad. Speech isn't the same thing as communication.
Two monologues, then, is an oxymoron.

Having two monologues doesn't get you any closer to a dialogue than two wrongs get you closer to a right. It's faulty thinking.

So why does this happen so much? People struggling to have a dialogue and not seeing that what is really occurring is two overlapping monologues? Maybe it's partly a function of our culture. America - mono-America. One person, each to his own, one and only. (I'm starting to see a sociolinguistic study in my head of frequency of words like "one" compared to "all")
We are each so separate from the whole, independent and "mono"-driven, considering ourselves, as a singular person, more important than ourselves IN CONJUNCTION with others.
I'm not saying this mentality means that Americans don't see how groups are important. It's that we see groups as a compilation of separate individuals, with each individual contributing their particular strength (their own "monologue"), rather than considering how each individual is shaped and strengthened within the group itself.
We don't grow separately. We are not islands. We interact; this is how people learn.
Monologues are lonely. Two monologues are twice as lonely. And a whole team of monologues is really not a great place to be.


(sorry for the pessimism this morning, I will try to post something more uplifting later )