Language as Dialogue

With her theory of ‘Language as Dialogue’, Edda Weigand has opened up a new and promising perspective in linguistic research and its neighbouring disciplines. Her model of ‘competence-in-performance’ solved the problem of how to bridge the gap between competence and performance and thus substantially shaped the way in which people look at language today.
This book traces Weigand’s linguistic career from its beginning to today and comprises a selection of articles which take the reader on a vivid and fascinating journey through the most important stages of her theorizing. The initial stage when a model of communicative competence was developed is followed by a gradual transition period which finally resulted in the theory of the dialogic action game as a mixed game or the Mixed Game Model. The articles cover a wide range of linguistic topics including, among others, speech act theory, lexical semantics, utterance grammar, emotions, the media, rhetoric and institutional communication. Editorial introductions give further information on the origin and theoretical background of the articles included.

Wolfgang Teubert, Department of English, University of Birmingham, UK:
In a distinguished career of research, teaching and writing, Edda Weigand has covered a wider range of topics than most of us. Versed in a variety of disciplines and always open to new ideas, she has developed her Mixed Game Model, the view that only the mind engaged in dialogue can enrich reflection. It has guided her in ground-breaking studies which aim to integrate the cognitive and the discourse approach and to reconcile the social nature of communication with its biological foundations. This book will certainly inspire its readers to rethink language.