Communicative action and the dialogical imagination

Sandra Jovchelovitch

pp. 127-150

in: Derek Hook, Bradley Franks, Martin W. Bauer (eds), The social psychology of communication, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

For over 50 years Jürgen Habermas has pursued and developed a project which is rooted in the idea of communication. This concern, which as Habermas himself declared, expresses deeper biographical themes, has been addressed directly in The Theory of Communicative Action (TCA from now on), a two-volume book published in 1981 (English translations appeared in 1989–92). At the core of Habermas's contribution is the idea of communication as mutual understanding, a universal human ability embedded in the structures and rules we all learn when we learn how to speak a language. As we learn to speak we learn more than language: we also learn how to communicate for reaching mutual understanding.

Cited authors

Habermas Jürgen