Introduction: How and why should we study dialogue?’

Abstract

This chapter (pp. 17-28) introduces the volume edited by Omer Sener, Frances Sleap, and Paul Weller (2016), Dialogue Theories II, The Dialogue Society, London. [ISBN 978-0-9934258-0-6]. In doing so it puts the book in a wider context of the previous volume on Dialogue Theories published (2013) by the Dialogue Society, as well as of the Journal of Dialogue Studies of which the author is academic editor. It discusses a range of key questions and "working definitions" about the nature of dialogue and critically evaluates a range of differing articulations of the aims and objectives of dialogue itself, and in relation to the study of it.