Dialogic, dialectic, and rhetoric: Exploring human dialogue across the discipline

Abstract

In the communication discipline, human dialogue is studied by both social scientists and humanists. Social scientists situate dialogue in dialectic; humanists situate dialogue in rhetoric. Generally, their work proceeds without acknowledgment of the other, perpetuating what we identify as central concerns for the discipline: (a) The isolation of dialectic and rhetoric as distinct subjects of analysis; (b) the theoretical antagonism of dialectic and rhetoric; (c) the political antagonism of the humanistic and social scientific sides of the discipline; and (d) the stabilization of both the theory of human dialogue and the methods used to study it. This essay problematizes the study of human dialogue in the communication discipline and suggests that future directions in dialogic theory and research show ways of engaging dialectic and rhetoric in an authentic rather than antagonistic dialogue.