General information about this thematic research network

DialogForum has been set up to enable, promote and disseminate interdisciplinary research activities about dialogue-based perspectives on context-specific language use. Many of us share an interest for dialogue as an interaction strategy, as a principle of communication, as a process of interpersonal understanding, as a philosophical method of enquiry, as a problem-solving tool, as a democratic decision-making procedure, to name but a few. As dialogue participants, language users are engaged in an ongoing process of constructing, co-constructing, de-constructing and re-constructing each other's meaning in different contexts, at different discourse levels, and for different purposes. Dialogic forms of communication enable people to share their experiences and ideas, their concerns and visions, thus contributing to joint reflection and action, to increased involvement in daily events and in socio-political processes at local or global level.

DialogForum brings into focus essential communicative, reasoning and argumentative functions of dialogue in different kinds of social, political and cultural activities, by examining the interlocutors' shifting (interpersonal and/or institutional) roles and relationships with their addressees and with third parties, the interlocutors' cooperative and/or conflicting goals, the tension between individual and collective identities, the ongoing meaning negotiation between interactants, the interplay between the utterance and the performance of speech acts, the interdependence between reasoning and emotional patterns.