Symbolic Resources in Dialogue, Dialogical Symbolic Resources

Uses of symbolic resources can be seen as dialogical processes: they take place in a cultural world constituted by semiotic exchanges; they can lead people to interact; and as artefacts, they contain echoes of many other voices. The article proposes to consider traditional Talmudic study as a paradigmatic dialogical situation, in which scholars learn to use traditional texts as resources to address problematic issues. The article then examines secular literature or philosophy classes, in which students learn to reason about texts as well. An analogical reading enables reflection on the institutional, interpersonal and psychological conditions that would enable students to turn literature or philosophy into symbolic resources to address issues they face in their everyday life. A methodology for studying such issues is finally sketched.