Publications

Publication details [#54127]

Cooren, François. 2010. Action and Agency in Dialogue. Passion, incarnation and ventriloquism. (Dialogue Studies 6). John Benjamins. XVI+206 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English

Annotation

What happens when people communicate or dialogue with each other? This is the question that this book proposes to address by starting from a controversial hypothesis: What if human interactants were not the only ones to be considered, paraphrasing Austin (1962), as “doing things with words”? That is, what if other “things” could also be granted the status of agents in a dialogical situation? The book proposes to explore this unique hypothesis by mobilizing metaphorically the notion of ventriloquism. According to this ventriloqual perspective, interactions are never purely local, but dislocal, that is, they constantly mobilize figures (collectives, principles, values, emotions, etc.) that incarnate themselves in people’s discussions.