Very often, disagreements are signs of a high level of intersubjectivity as what fuels them is a shared divergence of meanings. At a first glance, our general description of the episode seems to show such a divergence of meanings. However, we will show that understandings are local, subjective, and the participants do not react in relation to the meanings attributed by their interlocutors. They coordinate their actions, but this coordination is done according to interpretations that are totally divergent.
In his auto-confrontation with this episode, Ahmad complains that the lack of reference to others’ ideas originates from the fast pace of the discussion: Too much, too fast, things they threw up. I had the feeling that it’s raining. Ahmad tried to lead discussants to scrutinize the ideas of each other and to refer to previous contributions expand them, or, in his own terms, to open them. In his opinion, the presence of different discussants facilitates the consideration of multiple perspectives and naturally leads to the necessity to explain. Consequently, Ahmad tries to slow down the pace of contributions. His comment of his contribution at Turn 30 (Please stop throwing out things without seriously referring to what is written) is: So, I explained that you should be more focused, more ordered […], that you should stop, that you should think. Because there was such a deluge of contributions. This comment conveys a quite high emotional state against the behavior of the discussants.
We already saw that Ahmad entered in the middle of the discussion (e.g., in Turn 27: What do you think about the saying according to which the student is at the center and the teacher only disturbs in his learning?). Viewing Turn 27 he explained: I came to tell thosewho agreed: listen… there are other viewpoints…From the beginning, I didn’t knowonwhat they agree and onwhat they disagree. I try to position a conflicting viewpoint, an antithesis…to arouse the issue.