Edda Weigand is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Münster, Germany. She is Honorary President and Founding Vice-President of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA, Bologna) and has been elected Assistant Secretary-General to the Committee of UNESCO's Fédération Internationale des Langues et Littératures Modernes. She is chief editor of the journal Language and Dialogue and the Dialogue Studies series.

Preface; Part I The State of the Art; 1 Pragmatics: From language as a System of Signs to Language Use -- Jens Allwood; 2 Conversation Analysis -- Lorenza Mondada; 3 Corpus Linguistics -- Marina Bondi; 4 Discourse Analysis -- James Paul Gee; 5 From Pragmatics to Dialogue -- Istvan Kecskes; 6 Psycholinguistic Approaches: Meaning and Understanding -- Susan E. Brennan and Joy E. Hanna; 7 Intersubjectivity in Dialogue -- Per Linell; 8 Dialogue and Literature -- Roger D. Sell; 9 Computational Approaches to Dialogue -- David Traum; 10 From Speech Act Theory to Dialogue: Dialogue Grammar -- Sebastian Feller; 11 The Mixed Game Model: A Holistic Theory -- Edda Weigand; Part II Theoretical Key Issues and Open Debates; 12 Shifting Concepts of Language: Meeting the Challenge of Modelling Interactive Syntax -- Ruth Kempson; 13 The Concept of Language in an Utterance Grammar -- Edda Weigand; 14 The Issue of Theorising: Object-of-study and Methodology -- Arto Mustajoki; 15 Theory and Practice -- Dale Koike; 16 The Sociobiology of Language: What Mirror Neurons Can Tell Us -- Marco Iacoboni; Part III Components of Dialogic Interaction: Human Nature, Institutions and Cultures; 17 Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain -- Marion Grein; 18 Self Interest and Social Concerns -- Jennifer L. Adams; 19 Language as the Originative House of Dialogic Ethics -- Ronald C. Arnett; 20 Dialogue in Institutions -- Sebastian Feller; 21 Dialogue and the Law -- Fritjof Haft; 22 How Culture Affects Language and Dialogue -- Marion Grein; Outlook