Cover not available
Article published In:
Dialogue and Ways of Relating
Edited by Huey-Rong Chen
[Language and Dialogue 10:1] 2020
► pp. 9–28

Reconciling dialogue and propagation

A ventriloquial inquiry

| Université de Montréal (Canada)
Dialoguing is about co-orienting to various elements of a situation, that propagate themselves in what people say and do. In other words, each time people talk about an element of a situation, whether it is the weather, the economy, or the declaration of a presidential candidate, it is, by definition, a way for it to transport itself through time and space, which is the essence of propagation. Language must therefore be rethought as something that not only allows us, but also other things to do things with words. More generally, communication, whether verbal or non-verbal, must be understood as a process by which everything or everyone can always become a medium, sign or intermediary through which other elements propagate, diffuse or disseminate themselves.
Keywords: dialogue, propagation, ventriloquism, agency
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Downstream ventriloquism
  • 3.Upstream ventriloquism
  • 4.Dialogue and propagation: A ventriloquial analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00057.coo
References (52)
References
Adams, Jennifer L. 2017. “Self-interest and social concerns.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 294–306. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Allwood, Jens. 2017. “Pragmatics: From language as a system of signs to language use.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 9–25. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Aristotle. 2004. Rhetoric (W. R. Roberts, Trans.). Mineola, NY: Dover.Google Scholar
Bakthin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2003. “Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(3): 801–830. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bartesaghi, Mariaelena. 2014. “Ventriloquism as a matter for discourse analysis.” Language Under Discussion, 2(1), Retrieved from [URL]
Bartesaghi, Mariaelena, Oren Livio, and Frédérik Matte. 2020. “The authority of the “broader context”: What’s not in the interaction?” In Bencherki, N., Matte, F., and Cooren, F. (Eds). Authority and Power in Social Interaction: Methods and Analysis, 18–36. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Basil. 1990. The Structure of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control, Vol. VI1. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carey, James W. 2008. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New york: Routledge.Google Scholar
Castor, Theresa. 2016. “The materiality of discourse: Relational positioning in a fresh water controversy.” Communication Research and Practice 2(3): 334–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cole, Samantha. 2017. “AI-assisted fake porn is here and we’re all fucked.” Motherboard. Retrieved from [URL]
Connor, Steven. 2000. Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooren, François and Sergey Sandler. 2014. “Polyphony, ventriloquism, and constitution: In dialogue with Bakhtin.” Communication Theory, 241, 225-244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooren, François. 2010. Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, Incarnation, and Ventriloquism. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Communication theory at the center: Ventriloquism and the communicative constitution of reality.” Journal of Communication 621: 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. “Pragmatism as ventriloquism: Creating a dialogue among seven traditions in the study of communication.” Language Under Discussion 2(1). Retrieved from [URL]. DOI logo
. 2016. “Ethics for dummies: Ventriloquism and responsibility.” Atlantic Journal of Communication 24(1): 17–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Day, Amber. 2018. “Throwing our voices: Ventriloquism as new media activism”. Media, Culture & Society, 40(4), 617-628. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1967/1978. Writing and Difference. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1988. Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Goldblatt, David. 2006. Art and Ventriloquism: Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Grein, Marion. 2017. “Emotion, reason and the human brain.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 277–293. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hansen, Mark B. N. 2006. “Media theory.” Theory, Culture & Society 231: 297–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 2016. Ponderings II-VI: Black notebooks 1931–1938. New Haven, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Iedema, Rick. 2003. “Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice.” Visual Communication 2(1): 29–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rodney H. 2005. “Sites of engagement as sites of attention: Time, space and culture in electronic discourse.” In Discourse in Action: Introducing mediated discourse analysis, ed. by Sigrid Norris and Rodney H. Jones, 141–154. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kecskes, Istvan. 2017. “From pragmatics to dialogue.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue, ed. by Edda Weigand, 78–92. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kessler, Sarah. 2016. “Puppet love: Documenting ventriloquism in Nina Conti’s Her Master’s Voice.” Camera Obscura, 92(31), 60-91.Google Scholar
Kittler, Friedrich A. 1986/1999. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford, CA: Stanford California Press.Google Scholar
Krämer, Sybille. 2015. Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach to Media Philosophy. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1986. “Visualisation and cognition: Drawing things together.” In Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, ed. by Elizabeth Long and Henrika Kuklick, 1–40. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press.Google Scholar
. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. “On Interobjectivity.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 3(4): 228–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per. 2009. Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1868. “Some consequences of four incapacities.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2(3): 140–157.Google Scholar
Peters, John D. 1999. Speaking into the Air: A history of the Idea of Communication. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Samuelson, Beth Lewis. 2009. “Ventriloquation in discussion of student writing: Examples from a high school english class.” Research in the Teaching of English, 44(1), 52-88.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959. Course in General Linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye ed.). New York: Philosophical Library.Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron. 1997. “Handbills, tissues, and condoms: A site of engagement for the construction of identity in public discourse.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 1(1): 39–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2005. “The rhythmic integration of action and discourse: work, the body and the earth.” In Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis, ed. by Sigrid Norris and Rodney H. Jones, 20–31. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shotter, John. 1993. Conversational Realities: Constructing Life through Language. London, UK: Sage.Google Scholar
. 2014. “Agential realism, social constructionism, and our living relations to our surroundings: Sensing similarities rather than seeing patterns.” Theory and Psychology 24(3): 305–325. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taylor, James R. and Elizabeth J. Van Every. 2011. The Situated Organization: Case Studies In the Pragmatics of Communication. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weigand, Edda. 2010. Dialogue: The Mixed Game. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Bencherki, Nicolas & Coline Sénac
2023. Instrumental dialogue and the ethics of expressing solicitude for each other’s existence. Language and Dialogue 13:1 ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Cooren, François
2023. Speech Acts and Ventriloquation: The Contribution of Marina Sbisà to a General Theory of Action and Performativity. In Sbisà on Speech as Action [Philosophers in Depth, ], ► pp. 143 ff. DOI logo
Cooren, François, Boris H. J. M. Brummans & Lise Higham
2023. “You’re putting words in my mouth!”: Interaction as mutual ventriloquation. Communication Research and Practice 9:1 ► pp. 44 ff. DOI logo
Drenten, Jenna & Evie Psarras
2023. Digital ventriloquism and celebrity access: Cameo and the emergence of paid puppeteering on digital platforms. New Media & Society 25:12 ► pp. 3350 ff. DOI logo
Nekvapil, Jiří, Petr Kaderka & Simon Smith
2023. Editorial: The changing shape of media dialogical networks. Discourse, Context & Media 54 ► pp. 100716 ff. DOI logo
Yan, Dave, David Bright, Howard Prosser & Adam Poole
2023. Ventriloquism as Method: Writing Differently and Thinking Philosophically. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 23:3 ► pp. 262 ff. DOI logo
Whitfield, Agnes
2022. Unspoken assumptions, deep holes and boundless expectations. Language and Dialogue 12:1 ► pp. 110 ff. DOI logo
Weigand, Edda
2021. Language and dialogue in philosophy and science. Intercultural Pragmatics 18:4 ► pp. 533 ff. DOI logo
Weigand, Edda
2021. Dialogue. Language and Dialogue 11:3 ► pp. 457 ff. DOI logo
Weigand, Edda
2023. Principles of New Science. Language and Dialogue 13:1 ► pp. 26 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.