The approach has been developed based on the theoretical work of George Herbert Mead and Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin.
Dialogical analysis is an interpretative methodology which closely analyzes spoken or written utterances or actions for their embedded communicative significance.
Dialogical analysis uses dialogue as a metaphor for understanding phenomena beyond communication itself, such as the self (see dialogical self), internal dialogues, self-talk, misunderstandings, trust and distrust,[2] the production of knowledge,[3] and relations between groups in society.
Recently there have been attempts to formalize the move from dialogism, which is often quite theoretical, to a systematic methodology for data analysis.
These approaches focus upon 'sensitizing questions' that facilitate a dialogical analysis[4] and step-by-step procedures for analyzing multivoicedness.