ABSTRACT
Dialogue as discourse is characterized by a fundamental structural principle; it is interactive and interactional. It is a mode of speech exchange among participants, speech in relation to another’s speech and not merely the verbal expression of one character or actor’s ‘part’. Dialogue belongs not to the sphere of the ‘I’ but to the sphere of the ‘we’, as Gadamer noted (1986a:65). It requires, in standard cases, the agency and involvement of at least two participants who communicate through the medium of language, as the etymology of the word signifies-‘dia’—through, ‘logos’—word, from ‘dialegomai’—to converse. The encounter of an ‘I’ with a ‘you’ in the speech situation is itself a form of drama, as Lyons (1977) following Buhler (1934) observed, which the category of ‘person’ in language reflects.
