The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
... According to Crystal (2003), dialects are the linguistic features that enable writers to depict specific geographic regions, social histories, and local contexts. Throughout the 20th century, fiction became increasingly regionalized, as authors sought to preserve the voices of marginalized local communities who were not represented in the standard language (Bakhtin, 1981). Dialects forge a deep psychological, sociological, and emotional bond between characters and readers, enhancing the authenticity of literary works (Labov, 1972). ...
... It shows how people in her community are tied to land and work, and it's a lament for a way of life that is in danger (Crystal, 2003). These works use dialects as cultural memory stores, protecting regional identities from being erased by main linguistic systems and giving readers a way to look at how self, society, and history are connected (Bakhtin, 1981). These authors show how dialects shape identity not as fixed markers but as living things that negotiate belonging, resistance, and continuity in the face of change by putting characters in the spoken languages of their worlds, whether it's the broken South, the thriving Black diaspora, or the dying English countryside. ...
... They represent the broken diversity of life in the American South (Wright, 2004). This "heteroglossic approach," as Bakhtin (1981) calls it, rejects the uniformity that formal English demands, instead embracing a cacophony of voices that reflect the region's racial, class, and historical tensions. This gives legitimacy to a linguistic identity that is often seen as provincial or inferior, creating a story that reflects the complexity of the South and refuses to fit into a standardized literary norm. ...
This article analyzes the impact of dialects on regional literature’s construction of voices within 20th century fiction. It looks into the use of dialects as the markers of authenticity and symbols for culture and identity in literature. The scope of the study includes major figures known for their use of dialects such as William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Thomas Hardy in order to trace the relation between language and culture. The study assesses readership and literary criticism through the lense of dialectal exposure and focuses on the role of heritage preservation. It also considers the cultural consequences of dialects in literature and how they subvert the dominant linguistic system and provide room for diversity in narratives.
... The theoretical framework for this analysis is informed by Mikhail Bakhtin's (1981) concepts of polyphony and dialogism, which provide valuable insight into the multiplicity of voices and internal conflicts that are present in these narratives. Bakhtin's theories help illuminate the tensions between characters who are caught between the rigid demands of tradition and their personal struggles with modernity and individual agency. ...
This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini on Albanian literature, focusing on two key works: Hija e maleve (The Shadow of the Mountains) by Ernest Koliqi and Prilli i Thyer (Broken April) by Ismail Kadare. The central question explores how the Kanun's moral and legal codes are woven into narrative structures and character development in these literary works. Using a blend of narrative and anthropological approaches, this study examines how the Kanun shapes themes such as conflict resolution, symbolism, and the portrayal of societal norms. The narrative analysis delves into story structure, character arcs, and thematic elements, whereas the anthropological approach considers cultural contexts, rituals, and the Kanun's influence on daily life, particularly its confrontation with modernity. Techniques such as thematic analysis are employed to identify the motifs shaped by Kanun, alongside discourse analysis, to reveal how these themes reflect and reinforce Albanian cultural values. Preliminary findings indicate that Koliqi and Kadare use Kanun as a driving force in their narratives: Koliqi highlights its role in maintaining social order, whereas Kadare criticizes its impact on personal freedom and justice. This duality underscores Kanun's role as both a stabilizing and a restrictive force in Albanian literature. The study concludes by emphasizing the value of integrating narrative and anthropological perspectives to better understand the complexity of Kanun’s influence on Albanian cultural and literary identity. By positioning these findings within a broader scholarly framework, this research not only advances the study of Albanian literature but also contributes to global conversations about the interplay between tradition, identity, and cultural narratives.
... By suggestiveness, he is referring to "figuration, including the use of tropes, the allusive rendition of stories and characters, as well as self-reflexive elements"; while unconventionality "often manifests itself in comics through indirect word-image relationships and transitions" (Ahmed, 2016, p. 7). This description of comics is reminiscent of what Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) referred to as the "centrifugal" text; that is, a text that represents "decentralization and disunification", in opposition to the "centripetal" text, which represents "centralization and unification" (p. 272). ...
In this practice-led research study, I have investigated how a strong and distinctive literary sense of place can be evoked within prose fiction and comics. I have done so through analytical and creative methods. The analytical portion of the study comprises an analysis of several novels and graphic novels using a purpose-built framework. These analyses reveal that fully appreciating how a text evokes a literary sense of place means understanding how it works spatially. Prose texts have three levels of spatiality. The first is found in the spaces and places within the world of the story. The second is found in the relationship between the text and other texts released before and after it. The third is found in the dynamic interplay between the text, its creator/s, and its potential readers. A comics text encompasses these three spatialities, as well as two more, which can be seen at the levels of panel and page. I have used these findings, along with my own place-making activities, to plan and write an original graphic novel script for an adaptation of Fergus Hume’s literary blockbuster The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. In this script, I have used the affordances of the comics medium to foreground sense of place. Subsequent analysis of this graphic novel script, using my purpose-built framework, reveals that my prose-to-comics adaptation does not merely replicate Hume’s evocation of Melbourne circa 1885. It offers readers a new, yet no less evocative, version of Marvellous Melbourne. My findings are valuable for researchers who seek to understand how a literary sense of place can be evoked through the interplay of spatialities in both prose fiction and comics. They are also of value to writers who seek to adapt a work of prose fiction as a graphic novel, particularly if they – like me – wish to evoke a strong and distinctive literary sense of place.
The chapter is an introduction to the issues of disinformation in the context of discursively oriented theory and anlysis of media genres. The category of genre is one of the basic categories relating to text, its structure, functions and semantics, including media text. In the context of disinformation, this category appears primarily in relation to fake news, which is treated as a genre imitating the features of the news genre. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to introduce the specifics of the genre category as it is understood in media studies (especially in the context of discourse theory, which is extremely important in this research) and to characterize the dominant genre of real news. This introduction is intended to present theoretical solutions from the field of linguistically oriented media studies that can be applied to the analysis of fake news as a genre. Such an analysis will provide an insight into the structural features of one of the most important tools of disinfromation, while also providing a theoretical background for the analyses carried out in the next two chapters.
This study explores the emotional experiences of students using Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT in higher education from a Bakhtinian, dialogic perspective. This perspective helps understand emotions arising within communication between humans, non-humans, and the self), and examines the unique I-It emotional tensions in human-AI interactions. LLMs are considered dialogic partners, not mere tools. Current research lacks studies on whether AIgenerated emotions differ from human-generated emotions. This study aims to understand the lived emotional experiences and their subjective meanings to students. Through an anonymous open-ended survey of 195 students, four key emotional themes were identified: Empowered Curiosity, Ethical Anxiety, Cognitive Relief, and Ambivalent Transformation. Findings indicate that AI systems introduce new emotional responses distinct from those generated in human interactions, characterized as ambiguous assemblages of liberating and morally questionable meanings. This research contributes to new cultural understandings of the psychological impact of AI in education and discusses the development of emotionally aware AI-enhanced instruction to help students gain and develop their emotional authorial agency in and through learning.
Critical peer mentoring grounded in the concepts of radical praxis, writing center practitioner (WCP) identity, and ideological becoming can be a transformative practice. Utilizing collaborative autoethnography, two writing center professionals from distinct contexts-a public US research university and an international branch campus in Qatar-engaged in dialogic mentoring to examine how personal and institutional values shape administrative practices. The study documents the authors' mentoring practices over a two year period. We found that ideological tensions, such as hierarchical dynamics and institutional constraints, can be negotiated and addressed through intentional, reflective bi-directional mentoring. Furthermore, peer mentoring rooted in radical praxis fosters critical self-awareness, challenges institutional hierarchies, and supports administrative decision-making that aligns more closely with personal and professional values. We propose a framework for peer mentoring as a pathway to ideological transformation that can nurture both individual growth and systemic change.
The intricate geopolitical entanglement between the European Union (EU), Ukraine and Russia unfolds not merely as a conflict of interests but as a dynamic, multi-voiced narrative where history, power and ideology converge in an ever-evolving struggle for meaning. This study examines how dialogical narrative analysis, unnatural narrativity and slipstream narrativity illuminate the competing discourses, hidden tensions and paradoxical dynamics shaping the EU–Ukraine–Russia geopolitical conflict. The analysis reveals that the EU’s engagement with Ukraine is marked by polyphonic and often contradictory narratives, where rhetorical commitments to democracy and solidarity are undermined by strategic hesitations and internal divisions. Examining unnarrativity highlights the strategic silences and omissions in diplomatic discourse, exposing the tensions between public declarations and concealed geopolitical calculations. Additionally, slipstream narrativity frames the conflict as a destabilizing blend of reality and constructed myth, where competing narratives continuously blur the boundaries between fact and fiction in international relations. Adopting a qualitative, interdisciplinary approach, the study integrates dialogical narrative analysis, unnatural narrativity and slipstream narrativity to deconstruct the multilayered discourse surrounding the EU–Ukraine–Russia relationship. By applying these narrative frameworks to key geopolitical events, official statements and shifting alliances, the study reveals the tensions, paradoxes and competing narratives that shape contemporary international relations.
This book laid out its investigation in three intertwined layers: perceptions, experiences, and becoming of refugees. Part I employed theories of conflict analysis to examine the identities, actors, and underlying causes of the Syrian conflict, as perceived by Syrian refugees who were forced to leave their country involuntarily. Part II focused on the experiences of refugees, which shaped their comprehension of the future of Syria. Part III focused on becoming refugees in dual spatiality and multiple temporalities divided between home (Syria) and host (Türkiye). The conflict mapping in Part I is timely, as Syria is at the beginning of a new era after the Ba’ath regime was dismantled and a new regime emerged in December 2024. Perceptions presented here belong to people who have a possibility of returning or possibility of becoming Syria’s diaspora. How they perceived the identities, actors, and causes shaped their experiences. Therefore, Part II connects these perceptions to multiple temporalities to examine their experiences, which shaped Syrians’ projections for the future, offering insights about possibilities and challenges in the future of Syria and the role different segments could play in the newly emerging governing structure. Part III contextualizes refugees within dual spatiality and multiple temporalities to elaborate on their becoming and show how their “becoming” as refugees is interlinked with the degree of here and there along with past and future in their articulations, which informs their present.
In this editorial, we introduce the RELC Journal's April 2025 Special Issue, which includes articles on the topic of pedagogizing identity in language teacher education. We first situate the special issue within the current research literature in language teacher identity and share a summary of activities used in the previous studies that reported on language teacher educators’ practices of identity-oriented teacher education. We then review all the papers included in the special issue, including 10 empirical studies, one conceptual piece, one interview, and two viewpoints.
In recent decades, anthropology has been characterized by an experiential turn that connects scholarship increasingly with practical application, on the one hand, and critical reflexivity, on the other. This article throws these trends into historical relief by synoptically considering past emphases in anthropology from the 1830s through the present. These prior developments contextualize recent trends vis-à-vis long-term patterns and permutations in the history of anthropology. In significant respects, current trends reprise in newly critical and reflexive ways aspects of anthropology that were prominent when it was first becoming a scholarly discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. Anthropology's present experiential turn is especially important as our field faces an increasingly uncertain future into the mid-twenty-first century, including dire challenges of funding for new anthropological research and teaching positions, and the risks of being deprofessionalized.
As a disciplinary field, international business (IB) is characterized by language diversity. Too often, however, international business (IB) research regards language diversity as a challenge to be overcome rather than an opportunity to generate new scientific knowledge. Consequently, previous research has primarily focused on the pragmatic, logistical, and methodological hurdles of translating multilingual datasets. In contrast, this conceptual paper takes language diversity as an opportunity to produce new knowledge and proposes a dialogical approach to qualitative cross-language research. The dialogical approach has the potential to enrich IB research with novel perspectives from under-represented voices, improve the understanding of IB phenomena and nurture tolerance for diversity and inclusion through cross-language interaction. It is worth noting that the dialogical approach does not promote shared understanding but mutual understanding that is achieved through collaboration. In doing so, it builds on two types of dialogue: (self-)reflexive dialogue, and dialogue between the researcher and others (interviewees, supervisors, and collaborators participating in the research process). The outcome is knowledge that is pluralistic and multivocal, including the voices that belong to non-English-speaking participants and scholars. We argue that the dialogical approach contributes to the future vision of responsible and linguistically inclusive IB scholarship.
Introduction
Professional reasoning is important in making informed and autonomous decisions and practice-based learning provides an opportunity for students to develop this. This study explores the experience of professional reasoning during practice-based learning from the student’s perspective.
Method
A dialogical approach was used, and this is a qualitative approach rooted in the analysis of dialogue and subjectivity. It is based on the philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin suggests speech is composed of different genres indicating how we position ourselves in relation to others. Twelve occupational therapy students were interviewed after their final practice placement.
Findings
Professional reasoning during practice-based learning was experienced as complex, multifactorial and contextually influenced. It was a means of enacting, affirming, and negotiating a professional identity, and of being socialised into the reasoning of the profession. Person and occupation-centred values, narrative and empathy influenced students’ reasoning but could conflict with educator and institutional demands. The findings also illustrate the emotionality of learning to reason.
Conclusion
Both the cognitive and affective aspects of learning to reason need consideration when supporting students. Educators and universities need to address the emotionality associated with reasoning and support students to develop person and occupation-centred practice within the pragmatic constraints of practice.
According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2021, 28.8% of births in England and Wales were to non-UK-born mothers, reflecting a steady rise from 25.5% a decade earlier, and 16.5% in 2001. This paper uses Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and narrative methodology to analyse two narratives from a broader study involving 15 British-born immigrant-background young adults (ages 18–29) living in the UK. It illuminates the complex interplay of self and other in the intersubjective shaping of cultural identity during young adulthood—a pivotal yet understudied period rich with potential for autonomy and self-definition. Utilising a multimethod narrative approach, including journaling, interviews, and co-analysis, the study highlights the co-constructed nature of the participants’ narratives, integrating insights from both the researcher and the participants. This method fosters participant agency, aligning with Bakhtin’s concept of self-authoring, while encouraging renarration and reflection on the constraints and freedoms inherent in their interactional and subjective self-identifications. By extending dialogic theory to ethical and agentic actions and zooming in on young adults’ dialogic relations with human others, time, and privilege, this paper demonstrates how identity emerges as a shared yet unique process—one that neither passively succumbs to dominant cultural narratives nor is shaped independently of the sociopolitical context. The findings offer fresh insights into the nature of identification as storied against—and in dialogue with—the discursive backdrop of the multicultural UK and draw attention to the need for more nuanced research and policies supporting the growing cohort of UK-born and UK-based young adults with migratory backgrounds.
In the context of China’s ongoing modernization, language has become a key element of distinction marking certain citizens as wealthy, cosmopolitan, and authoritative. While local dialects have been marginalized at the expense of standard Mandarin, global languages such as English have been incorporated into the education system and this framework of language values. This chapter explores the racial dimensions of language usage, adopting Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope—an articulation of language with space and time—to argue that within China’s discursive landscape, English has become inseparable from whiteness. By examining everyday conversations, texts, and narratives, I show how some forms of talk are associated with a sense of restrictive pastness, while others appear to emerge out of, and beckon from, an open and boundless future. Speakers position themselves within a racialized scheme that associates global languages with whiteness, social power and unfettered mobility. Chronotopes therefore offer a key method for connecting race, language and embodied life in contemporary China.
The aim of this article is to explore how socially and culturally shaped resources for meaning-making are used in a translanguaging science classroom and how these interact to promote multilingual students’ participation and understanding of science. The data consist of video- and audio-recorded science lessons in a Swedish compulsory school (Grades 4–6). The analysis, rooted in translanguaging and sociocultural perspectives on learning, views learning as dialogic processes within social contexts and is framed within social semiotic theory, both regarding systemic functional linguistics and social semiotic perspectives on multimodality. Multimodal interaction analysis is used to clarify the use of semiotic resources by students, the science teacher and the mother-tongue teacher, as well as their various functions in meaning-making processes. Findings show how the participants’ linguistic repertoires contribute to semiotic resources in the dialogic conversations and how each expression provides a unique aspect of the subject content, which together shape a comprehensive whole. By combining and integrating different modalities, such as gestures, drawings, and objects with verbal resources, continuity is fostered in the science activities. However, the study also underlines the importance of verbal language resources for students’ opportunities to develop a broader and deeper knowledge in science subjects.
As the starting point of historical maritime silk road, Quanzhou retains
spaces of the past and embodies modern development in its signage.
This study draws on ‘chronotope’ (Bakhtin 1981), ‘scale’ (Blommaert
2007), and ‘affect’ (Wee 2016) to explore inseparable time-space
relations (i.e. chronotopes) evident in the semiotic landscape of
Zhongshan Road, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. The data
consist of photographs, observation notes and formal/informal
interviews from an ethnographic scholarly tradition. The paper analyzes
the multilingual, multicultural and multi-religious representations in the
data and explores the affective effects of the diverse chronotopes, i.e.
chronotopic affect. The semiotic landscape of this road manifests
multiple time-space frames caused by mobile sociolinguistic resources
in the context of globalisation. This mobility leads to the functional shift
of linguistic and other semiotic resources, realised by scale-jumping
processes from local and traditional scales to global and modern scales,
from communication to commodification, from political and historical
to commercial and materialistic scales, from instrumental to cultural
scales, from religious to mundane scales, etc. The accumulated
movements of various scales characterise complex chronotopes
interwoven by history in the same site or even in a single sign, and
create distinct affect such as love and nostalgia.
Following the discovery of gold, Johannesburg became a major destination for immigrants from across the world. Immigrants from Greece, Cyprus and the established Greek community in Egypt were among those who flocked to Johannesburg in the early 20th century, establishing the city as the epicentre of the Greek diaspora in South Africa. The archive of the Rand Daily Mail, a Johannesburg-based newspaper that ran from 1902 until 1985, provides interesting instances of discourse by and about Greek South Africans spanning their early days to their status as one of the largest European diasporas in the country. In a first effort to locate Greek culture in Johannesburg and investigate how Greekness is discursively constructed, this study presents a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Rand Daily Mail articles mentioning Greeks or Greece that appeared from 1960 until the newspaper’s end in 1985 – a period during which the Greek community in Johannesburg was at its peak in terms of numbers. Articles in the Rand Daily Mail consistently construct Greece, and Greek cultural identity, as inextricable from food, which indicates that food is the fulcrum of Greek culture, or ‘Greekness’, in Johannesburg.
This article outlines the different threads in the dialogic perceptions on learning, principally published in Management Learning journal, and identifies common assumptions underpinning them. It proceeds to contextualize them methodologically and conceptually to problematize dialogic lenses on learning – rather than to critique them. It claims that shunning the instances of non-dialogic learning or overlooking the research contexts in which dialogic inquiry is not expedient risks favouring certain societal and organizational discourses at the expense of others, as well as missing out on lessons which otherwise could have been learned. It concludes with an outline of a non-dialogic perspective on management learning built on existing contributions, with a view to galvanize the conversation ongoing in this journal on positionality of any pre-configured research lenses on learning. Finally, it considers the potential risks and consequences of failing to adjust one’s research accessory in accordance with one’s object of study.
Collins, Evans, and Reyes-Galindo develop the concept of interactional expertise into the idea of virtual diversity. They thereby provide a strong case against the epistemic barriers established by identity politics. This commentary questions, however, whether virtual diversity can incorporate the critique of institutional power that Wynne has argued is at the center of tensions between lay publics and scientific establishments. The commentary argues for a critical theory of science, as suggested by Doppelt on the basis of his normative interpretation of Kuhnian incommensurability.
K. V. Sreeja’s Labour Room (2003) offers a poignant exploration of the complexities surrounding childbirth and motherhood, addressing themes of gender, class, and societal expectations. The play critiques romanticized myths of motherhood while spotlighting the physical, emotional, and social challenges women endure. Through representative characters, it highlights diverse experiences shaped by socio-economic and cultural factors, emphasizing the material realities of women’s bodies. The play also critiques the patriarchal gaze, exploring trauma, resilience, and solidarity among women. By portraying childbirth as a deeply individual yet universally impactful experience, Labour Room challenges dominant narratives, fostering awareness and advocating for a supportive, egalitarian society.
: While studies in translanguaging pedagogy – intermixing languages fluidly for meaning-making to learn and teach – have focused on understanding its efficacy and viability in promoting learning success in multilingual contexts worldwide, learning through online platforms is becoming increasingly popular. However, little information exists on creating translanguaging spaces for multilingual students in digitally mediated literacy learning in English-monolingual-oriented African university settings. The current study investigates how online resources can be harnessed for first-year translanguaging literacy pedagogy interventions using linguistically fluid, online methods to develop academic reading-for-writing in a university in South Africa, where multilingualism is a norm, but English dominates. The study investigated the productive use and efficacy of translanguaging practices online by adopting a mixed-methods approach with a test design to explore digital-based translingual literacy pedagogy. The quasi-experimental research draws on sociocultural, connectivism and translanguaging fluidity frameworks. Results show that translanguaging in digitalised literacy education, which involves the added flexibility of connectivism in online learning, is effective and improves academic literacy performance. Findings affirm that online translanguaging can enhance the understanding, summarising and paraphrasing of complex theoretical concepts from academic English texts and is a valuable asset that can help students in online multilingual classrooms develop academic literacy.
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