Dialogic Syntax: The Latest Exploration of Conversation Analysis from Cognitive Functionalism

Dialogic syntax is a theory for conversation analysis proposed by Du Bois (2014), aiming at investigating the linguistic, cognitive and interactional processes.Dialogic syntax appears as the latest theoretical development in this area and is an exploration made within the cognitive-functional perspective.This paper gives a comprehensive review and introduction of this theory, including its basic claims and core concepts, such as parallelism, resonance, diagraph, reproduction, selection, contrast, analogy, etc.It also introduces the four motivations of why Du Bois proposes dialogic syntax and his responses to doubts and questionings.Dialogic syntax has great potentials and wide applications despite its intrinsic limitations.