Dialogue as collaborative action

Social theory has traditionally centered on individuated units, the person, the community, the organization, and so on. Relations among units are thus marginalized, and when theorized, typically presume causal relations between the units. Partly for these reasons, dialogue remains under-theorized. The present attempt begins by considering the ideological saturation of many existing conceptualizations of dialogue. Moving beyond these, a case is made for dialogue as collaborative action. On this account, meaning is not a possession of the individual, but of a collaborative process. An individual’s meaning comes into being through the other, and vice versa. Thus, linguistic acts of the participants are co-constituting. Cause and effect become irrelevant. Implications of this view are discussed, including the culturally and historical context of dialogic efficacy.