Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies

"Anderson, Baxter, and Cissna provide readers with a valuable primer on the concept of dialogue as it relates to specific issues of communication. . . . The list of contributors reads like a Who′s Who in the field of dialogue and communication. . . . Highly recommended."
-CHOICE

Dialogue: Theorizing Difference in Communication Studies is the first anthology of work on dialogic approaches to communication that offers a state-of-the-art collection of original essays in this emerging research area. Editors Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter, and Kenneth N. Cissna have gathered the most respected scholars in the field to describe their research projects, discuss critical elements of dialogue, and anticipate the evolution of the study of dialogue. With a foreword by Julia T. Wood, contributors include James R. Taylor, Stanley Deetz and Jennifer Simpson, Sheila McNamee and John Shotter, and Mark McPhail.

The contributors consider a wide range of settings--interpersonal, organizational, societal, and political--and look at the methodology as well as the research underpinning dialogic approaches to the study of communication.  The core texts of dialogue studies, including Buber, Gadamer, Habermas, and Bakhtin, set the foundation in Part I, Exploring the Territories of Dialogue. In Part II, Personal Voices in Dialogue, the contributors survey one-on-one, small group, and organization dialogue. Part III, Public Voices in Dialogue, examines the spaces for discourse in more expansive public, intercultural, and mediated settings. The editors pull together disparate implications, connections, and new directions in a dialogue-inspired conclusion.

Readers of Dialogue will be able to frame different influential conceptions of dialogue, establish the concepts′ history in communication studies, and trace both common and unique threads that connect different theorists. This volume is recommended for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in Communication Theory, Interpersonal Communication, and Organizational Communication.

Rob Anderson, professor of communication and professor of international studies at Saint Louis University, teaches and learns about dialogue in campus settings, interpersonal relationships, and media institutions. His articles on these topics have appeared since 1972 in journals from a variety of disciplines. A vigorous advocate of the dialogue of coauthorship, Rob’s ten books include texts in communication theory and interviewing, as well as scholarly studies of public dialogue in contemporary journalism and intellectual history―The Conversation of Journalism (Praeger, 1994), The Reach of Dialogue (Hampton Press, 1994), The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers Dialogue (SUNY, 1997), and Moments of Meeting (SUNY, 2002). He believes the following to be therapeutic: Quiet dinners with Dona, sitting on the porch, watching soccer, Miles Davis on the stereo, and classes that talk back.

Leslie A. Baxter is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa, where she has taught for 15 years. She has published over 130 books, book chapters, and articles on interpersonal and family communication. She is the recipient of many awards, including, from the National Communication Association, the Distinguished Scholar Award, the Bernard Brommel Family Communication Award, the Charles Woolbert Research Award, the Franklin Knower Article Award, and the Gerald Miller Book Award; the Berscheid-Hatfield Award from the International Association for Relationship Research (formerly INPR); and the inaugural WSCA Scholar Award from the Western States Communication Association.

Kenneth N. Cissna is professor of communication at the University of South Florida. He is the author (with Rob Anderson) of Moments of Meeting: Buber, Rogers, and the Potential for Public Dialogue (SUNY, 2002) and The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers Dialogue: A New Transcript with Commentary (SUNY, 1997) as well as a monograph on "The Rhetoric of Public Dialogue" in Communication Research Trends (also with Meghan Clune, 2003). His edited book Applied Communication in the 21^st Century (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995) won the Outstanding Book award from the Applied Communication Division of the National Communication Association. He edited the Journal of Applied Communication Research and the Southern Communication Journal, and is past president of the Florida Communication Association. Currently, he serves as Vice President Elect of the Southern States Communication Association.