Dialogical Networks : Using the Past in Contemporary Research

This book brings together two decades of work by the authors on dialogical networks, showing how the concept of the dialogical network developed through series of connected case studies and clarifying the concept through historical analysis. Identifying the key characteristics of dialogical networks and showing that knowledge of them, though formulated in the abstract, is affected by historical contingencies, it demonstrates that work on dialogical networks required the work of a practical historian, connecting contemporary work to foregoing studies. As such, this volume represents an original study of how doing history is a part of research and sheds light on the ways in which people use the past in their social activities.

Ivan Leudar is Emeritus Professor of Historical Psychology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity and co-editor of Against Theory of Mind and Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy.

Jiří Nekvapil is Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics in the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. His research has been influenced by poststructuralist linguistics and ethnomethodology.