TABLE OF CONTENTS

Volume 7   Number 1     Springs 2013

Cultural Processes Within Dialogical Self Theory: A Socio-Cultural Perspective of Collective Voices and Social Language Amrei C. Joerchel Sigmund Freud University, Austria	pp. 137-155
ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is to highlight socio-cultural premises within dialogical self theory and to further underline these with a dynamic constitutive approach to language and a socio-cultural sphere. Discussing a dialogical self from these perspectives emphasises both the constitutive and the mediational aspects of cultural processes within person’s interactions. The purpose of outlining a dynamic constitutive approach in relation to a socio-cultural sphere, in which dialogical interactions take place, is to contribute to further clarifying and thereby advancing the understanding of the culture-person relationship within dialogical self theory. For this purpose the relations of collective voices, social language and culture within dialogical self theory are analyzed within dialogical self literature with some references to Bakhtin. These conceptions are then related to language as dynamically co-constituting person’s interaction via cultural mediation and to the notion of resonating within a socio-cultural sphere. In this sense culture is discussed as bi-directional structural processes that dynamically co-constitute individual actions as well as the socio-cultural sphere. Important consequences of such an approach—all personal positions and voices necessarily being culturally mediated through their interactions—are discussed with some implications for future research in the later part of this article.   KEYWORDS:  Dialogical self theory, collective voices, social language, dynamic constitution, socio-cultural sphere, cultural mediation