Dialogue as a truth-conveying discursive strategy

As this chapter shows, dialogue is the one among the discursive strategies we can engage in, that makes it possible to fulfill three requirements simultaneously: the ethical requirement, for we must trust the speaker; the logical one, for the proposition at issue must fit in some way or other with what we already think “things are”; and the relational one, for we must assent to it, that is, perform an act that makes it explicit that we will hereafter take it as a basis for our further conduct. To that extent, it might be assumed that it provides us with, if not the only one, at least with the best and shortest way to move from unacknowledged truth to mutual agreement.