Perspectives on language and discourse

1.4 The traditional conflation of ‘dialogism’ and ‘dialogue’

Swearing (1990:48) observes that dialogue is “both a kind of discourse and a way of
viewing discourse”. Accordingly, many scholars in philosophy and literary theory consider
that ‘dialogue’ is both a very specific type of discourse, which can provisionally be named
Socratic argumentation, and also a general theoretical framework, proposed for the analysis
of all discourse. The general epistemology, Swearing’s “way of viewing discourse”, is what
is called ‘dialogism’.

Contrary to the traditional philosophical and literary usage, the author shall to adopt a broad
definition of ‘dialogue’ as roughly interaction through symbolic means by mutually co-
present individuals. This definition, which seems to be gaining increased acceptance in
empirical studies of communication, is not identical to what might be called the classical
and normative understanding of ‘dialogue’. That is concerned with a rather special
language game, a kind of argumentative interaction, the model of which goes back to some
Plato’s Dialogues. The classical concept of ‘dialogue’ is basically an open interaction
characterized by cooperation and symmetry and aiming exclusively at truth finding by
penetrating argumentation without any coercion from any part and without this process
being impeded by personal preferences, emotions, power, etc.

This classical notion of ‘dialogue’ is quite viable in contemporary philosophy. For example,
Habernas (1981) clearly presupposes it in his characterization of the ‘ideal speech
situation’, Gadamer’s (1975) discussion of dialogue insists on the importance of symmetry
of interaction.

1.5 Dialogue: Interaction between co-present individuals through symbolic means

In a modern empirical, yet dialogistic approach to discourse, another kind of definition of

'dialogue' seems more appropriate; 'any interaction through language (or other symbolic
mean s) between two or several individuals who are mutually co-present'. The canonical
type would be talk in face-to-face interaction, but one may also include interactions which
are sufficiently similar, notably telephone conversations, e1ectronic real-time interactions,
etc.
The broad definition based on 'symbol-based interaction' removes the conditions of
cooperation and symmetry from the essence of 'dialogue'. Our c1aim is that co-ordination,
which is a weaker form of cooperation, is basic to social activities.

Another basic claim must be that communication presupposes asymmetries of knowledge

and participation of various kinds. Complementarity is in fact characteristic of dialogue and
communication in general; parties communication from different positions and yet achieve
some degree of shared understanding in and through their interaction.

Summing up, we can say that, at an abstract level, dialogue and communication involve, by
definition, some kind of coordination (or cooperation), coherence, reciprocity and mutuality
(e.g. with regard to moral commitments), but empirically these properties are never present
in their entirely. Therefore, if we adopt a descriptive notion of ‘dialogue’, rather than an
idealistic, we are free to explore the empirical differences among discursive activities in
terms of asymmetries, reciprocities, mutualities, moral dimension, etc.