Dialogue As an "Enlarged Communicative Mentality": Review, Assessment, And Ongoing Difference (Essay‪)‬

1. Introduction We commence this essay with a definition of dialogue intentionally more akin to an impressionistic painting than to the clarity of a photograph. The article that follows will announce the complexity of dialogue through the various schools or theoretical approaches that constitute the horizon of the term called "dialogue." However, four commonplaces, or places of agreement, unite the various approaches to dialogue. First and foremost, dialogue suggests that an emergent meaning in discourse does not belong to either communicative partner; it is a product of the relationship. The term often used to announce this construct is "the between." The second major configuration that frames dialogue is the presupposition that the I of the human being is derivative of the alterity to be engaged. The third construct highlights the importance of ground, or position, from which the discourse begins. This particular construct presupposes that the ground that nourishes the fundamental center of dialogue about dialogue is a priori to the actual conversation. This particular construct remains central to this essay. Its driving force comes from a Continental philosophical understanding of dialogue, one that does not agree with the discourse-specific dialogue driven by a more psychological or a Rogerian framework. Fourth, dialogue presupposes perhaps the obvious, though at times the forgotten; it cannot be demanded and it is not the only appropriate form of discourse.