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Videos & Talks

Communication Domains, The Languages

Lars-Åke Almqvist

How many different languages are spoken in a single conversation? Lars-Ake Almqvist introduces the concept of communication domains, arguing that dialogue practitioners must learn to hear not just what is said but which register it is being said in.

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Lars-Ake Almqvist is a Swedish dialogue practitioner and longtime contributor to the Academy's work on the dialogic container. In this talk, Almqvist develops a framework of communication domains, each characterised by its own 'language': the distinct register, logic, and relational assumptions that govern how meaning is made in different conversational contexts. His central proposition is that breakdowns in dialogue often arise less from disagreement over content than from participants unknowingly operating in different domains, speaking past one another at the level of form rather than substance. Recognising which domain is active at any moment, and shifting fluently between them, becomes a core competency for the dialogue practitioner. The talk extends the Academy's broader inquiry into what makes a container genuinely generative rather than merely safe.

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