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Article In: Language and Dialogue: Online-First Articles

IADA stocktaking

The risk of losing dialogue

 | University of Münster
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Abstract
The question of what can be conceived of as the core of dialogue has been discussed for several decades. The current situation in dialogue research calls for stocktaking insofar as it seems to return to ‘talk’ where IADA began in 1990. Can dialogue be conceived of as a patchwork of nearly anything at all? Is IADA facing the risk of losing dialogue? This question is discussed with regard to a change in science arguing for the unity of sciences as proposed in the theory of New Science. We are called to identify and verify the individual ‘flowers’ of dialogue in a ‘garden of a 1000 flowers’, starting from the complex whole and deriving methodology from it.
Article outline
  • 1.Dialogue as a patchwork
  • 2.Dialogue at risk
    • 2.1The material turn
    • 2.2The social turn
    • 2.3The turn to storytelling
    • 2.4An example
  • 3.The crucial question: What is dialogue?
    • 3.1The object
    • 3.2From the object to the means
    • 3.3The means
    • 3.4Return to our ‘problematic’ example
  • 4.Structure of complexity
  • 5.Future studies
  • A personal note as afterword
  • Author queries
  • References
References (34)
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