DOI: 10.1075/ld.00230.hol ISSN: 2210-4119
Situating dialogue and ethics
Annette M. HolbaAbstract
Dialogue is important, especially when considering how our words and actions impact others. This essay situates the importance of dialogue and ethics in the pragmatics of human relationships and engagements through
Ronald C. Arnett’s (1994)
warning about existential homelessness,
Saitya Brata Das’s (2025)
aesthetic understanding of the mystery of dialogue, and Michael
Mitias’s (2023)
formal conditions for the possibility of dialogue. The essay then moves to a discussion
that lays out one way to prepare for ethical dialogic interconnections with others advocated by Arnett, Das, and Mitias, through
an active practice of leisure (
Holba 2007
;
2013
). This places dialogue and ethics transversally “betwixt and between” (
Schrag
1994
) self and other as dialogue is the structure of pragmatics (
Weigand
2021
).