Per Linell, Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. (Impact: Studies in language and society, 3.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1998. Pp. xvii, 330. Hb $85.00.

Abstract

Linell argues that dialogism is the crucial path to theorizing and understanding discourse, cognition, and communication – particularly the study of conversation and other kinds of talk-in-interaction. One of the goals of his book is to develop an “empirically valid form of dialogism,” as opposed to an idealistic one, through the empirical investigation of communication. Linell develops a theory of “communicative projects,” a notion which incorporates aspects of individual agency as well as the idea of talk as emergent, collaborative work by co-present individuals. The notion of “communicative projects” is meant as a bridge across the oft-cited polarity between “micro” and “macro” – or as Linell formulates it, between “elementary contributions and local sequences on the one hand, and the global and more abstract notions of activity types and communicative genres.”