Alternative spellings

• (US and computing): dialog

Noun

Singular dialogue

Plural dialogues

dialogue (plural dialogues)

1. A conversation or other form of discourse between two or more individuals.

   Bill and Melinda maintained a dialogue via email over the course of their long-distance relationship.

2. In a dramatic or literary presentation, the verbal parts of the script or text; the verbalizations of the actors or characters.

   The movie had great special effects, but the dialogue was lackluster.

3. A literary form, where the presentation resembles a conversation.

   A literary historian, she specialized in the dialogues of ancient Greek philosophers.

4. (computing) A dialogue box.

   Once the My Computer dialogue opens, select Local Disk (C:), then right click and scroll down.

Antonyms

• monologue
• multilogue

Derived terms

• dialogic
• dialogical
• dialogically
• dialogism

• dialogist
• dialogistic
• dialogistically
• dialogize

Related terms

• dialect

Dialogue (sometimes dialog in North American English) is a literary form, the most notable examples of which in Western literature are the dialogues of Plato.

Its chief historical origins as narrative, philosophical or didactic device are to be found in classical Greek and Indian literature, in particular in the ancient art of rhetoric.

Its everyday basis and counterpart is a conversational exchange between two or more people.

Having lost touch almost entirely in the 19th century with its underpinnings in rhetoric, the notion of dialogue emerged transformed in the work of cultural critics such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Paulo Freire, theologians such as Martin Buber, as an existential palliative to counter atomization and social alienation in mass industrial society.