ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 29 (1997) 205-220 Book reviews Edda Weigand, ed., Concepts of dialogue considered from the perspective of dif- ferent disciplines. Beitrige zur Dialogforschung Band 6. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1994. Franz ttundsnurscher and Edda Weigand, eds., Future perspectives of dialogue analysis. Beitrige zur Dialogforschung Band 8. Ttibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995. Carla Bazzanella, ed., Repetition in dialogue. Beitrage zur Dialogforschung Band 11. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Ve, rlag, 1996. Reviewed by Tamar Katriel, Department of Communication and Department of Edu- cation, University of Haifa. Correspondence to: Tamar Katriel, Dept. of Communi- cation, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. These three collections of essays represent ongoing research efforts by scholars from a variety of disciplines who are associated with the international Association for Dialogue Analysis. This body of research is wide-ranging in terms of the diver- sity of theoretical frameworks and concepts involved (e.g., linguistic pragmatics, dialogue grammar, conversation analysis, computational linguistics, ethnography of communication, and more) and in terms of the discourse contexts and phenom- ena attended to (e.g., everyday conversation, literary dialogues, mailbox chats on the internet, joking interchanges, first language acquisition, second language learn- ing, and more). At the same time, a number of the studies in these volumes explore the possibility of defining Dialogue Analysis as a theoretically viable and unified field. The first two volumes are general in orientation and both have a stocktaking fla- vor about them. Looking at some 20 years of intensive research in the fields of dis- course analysis, conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics (to name but the main ones), many of the contlibutors to these two collections address fundamen- tal questions concerning the very definition of the object under investigation, the methodology to be used in studying it, and the scientific status of Dialogue Analysis as a field of study. The various approaches developed in relation to these issues inform a variety of suggestions concerning future developments in this scholarly area. It is, in fact, the very proliferation of perspectives on the study of dialogue that makes Dialogue Analysis such an interesting as well as problematic field. In what follows, I will address some of the main assumptions, analytical approaches, and lines of argument developed by contributors to the first two collections. Then, I will discuss the third volume, which is thematically organized around one particular issue 0378-2166/98/$19.00 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved 206 Book reviews / Journal c)f Pragmatis 29 (1998) 205-220 - repetition in dialogue - and exemplifies the wealth of insight that can be gained from a multi-perspective approach to a particular domain of research interest. Even a glance at the titles of the articles in these collections indicates that there is a pressing need to define the object of study for the field of Dialogue Analysis. Thus, Edda Weigands article “Discourse, conversation, dialogue“ in the 1994 vol- ume offers a systematic account of previous research efforts that have come under each of these terms. Her 1995 article “Looking for the point of the dialogic turn“ further elaborates her argument. I will use her contribution as an anchor for pointing out the main issues discussed in the first two volumes, suggesting connections with the other studies as they become relevant. Weigand notes that “the term discourse covers different objects which have often rather little in common and vary, due to scientific development, from a verbal object as text to a social domain of language use including spoken and written texts“ (1994: 56). Therefore, in her view, “what results is not a theory but a complex interdisciplinary mixture based on naive eclec- ticism“ (1994: 57). What these areas of research share is a starting point in a beyond-the-sentence perspective and a consequent concern for issues of macro-level integration, which are addressed in terms of the notions of coherence and rele- vance in various approaches to the study of discourse (these concepts are further examined in several other contributions, notably in Andreas H. Juckers paper in the 1995 volume, which is entitled Discourse analysis and relevance). She further argues that the shift required here is a shift from a view of discourse as text to its view as the verbal component in social action, so that “well-formedness of discourse as a communicative unit cannot be explained on syntactic or semantic levels, it needs a pragmatic reference point which is given by communicative purpose“ (1994: 53). Communicative purpose as a functional principle in the study of language use takes us closer to a dialogic approach to language