ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a selection of the key concepts involved in dialogism as a social theory of language and discusses the ramifications of these ideas for education in general and pedagogy in particular. The beginnings of the dialogic theory of language can be found in an early article by the Russian linguist L. P. Yakubinsky. For V. N. Voloshinov, the spoken word is an essential accompaniment to all conscious activity. As he puts it: Individual consciousness is not the architect of the ideological superstructure, but only a tenant lodging in the social edifice of ideological signs. The reality of heteroglossia is readily apparent in the internationalised world of higher education in the Anglophone countries, where English may be the medium of instruction but where dozens of different first languages may be spoken and heard on the campus of many institutions.
