Dialogicality in languages, minds and brains: is there a convergence between dialogism and neuro-biology?

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to take a number of key notions in dialogical theory, and look for their possible counterparts in recent neuroscience. This comprises points like other-orientation, relationism and context-interdependence, embodiment of language, responsive understanding, potentialities, unfinalisability, implicitness and degrees of awareness, and redundancy of processing. The conclusion is that there is indeed an incipient convergence between neuro-biology and cognitive dynamics, on the one hand, and dialogism on the other. A general dialogical framework has something to offer to cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, not in the least because dialogue and dialogical interaction appear to be more fundamental than language (at least as language has been conceived most often). Brains are complex organisms coordinating the apperception of and interventions into the world, rather than producing and processing agency-free representations of the world.