This book is a comprehensive introduction to a dialogical perspective on language, languaging, thinking, communication and culture. It builds upon social psychology, social and dialogical philosophy (phenomenology), interactional linguistics, and humanistic ideas of thinking and communication.

Dialogical terms comprise, for example, dialogue, dialectics, dynamics, extended dialogism, external dialogue, partial holism, situations, contexts and activities, partial and partially shared understandings, participation, appropriation, and meaning-making, interpenetrations of concepts, e.g. persons and culture.

According to dialogical theory, a great deal revolves around the assumption that the making of meaning and social order in human activities and cultures is usually and initially built on interactions and relations between Self and Others. Basic properties of contributions to external dialogues are relations between initiatives and responses. Categories of responsive actions include minimal, short (“elliptical”) and expanded (“full”) responses. An important distinction is that between situated and sociohistorical contexts; we can talk about “double dialogicality” (situated vs. sociohistorical). An explanatory context theory must also distinguish between co-textual, other situation-based, and cultural (non-local) types. Pragma-semantic categories are linguistic means and situated (“participants’”) meanings; a parallel distinction is that between meaning potentials (of words and constructions) and message potentialities. (of situated utterances).

Communication comprises cognitive, emotional and volitional aspects, and involves partial (and partially shared) understandings, and relations of power and respect. Utterances are characterised by responsivity, addressivity, incrementation, and relatively frequent re(tro)constructions of ongoing processes.

The book includes separate sections on evolution and ontogenesis, dialogue and thinking, individual and collective aspects of language and languaging, activity types, multimodality of utterances, conditions production, reception and understanding of utterances, and also some traditional – but partially misguided – ideas in the theorisation of language and communication. This includes a discussion of the “written language bias in linguistics” which is a historical feature of the language sciences despite their shift from “practical” to “theoretical” concerns.

All chapters are designed to highlight dialogical aspects. The last two chapters contain a discussions of general dialogical ideas as well as of phenomenology as an overarching framework. The differences between natural-science and humanistic approaches to the mind and mental capacities of man conclude the book.

Several arguments build upon earlier work by the author, such as Linell (1998, 2005, 2009) and numerous papers such as Linell & Marková (1993) and Linell (2016, 2020a, 2021a). A list of major sources of inspiration is given in Appendix 1.