Ancient Greek and Indian literature shows use of dialogue as a literary form. Numerous religious texts such as the Bible, Buddhist sutras, and Confucian texts and contemporary literature have also used this form of a dialogue. In philosophy, Plato’s has used this form in his writings extensively.

Evolution in various Genre
As literary and philosophical device

Antiquity and the middle ages
Dialogue as a literary and philosophical device in the Middle East and Asia dates back to Sumerian disputations preserved in copies from the early second millennium BC and to Rig Vedic dialogue hymns and to the Mahabharata.

Literary historians commonly suppose that in the West, Plato (c. 437 BC – c. 347 BC) introduced the systematic use of dialogue as an independent literary form. The Platonic dialogue, however, had its foundations in the mime, which the Sicilian poets Sophron and Epicharmus had cultivated half a century earlier. Plato further simplified the form and reduced it to pure argumentative conversation, while leaving intact the amusing element of character-drawing. Dialogue was lifted to its highest splendor and became a major literary form in antiquity, and there are several examples both in Latin and Greek.

Soon after Plato, Aristotle is said to have written several philosophical dialogues in Plato’s style and later most of the Hellenistic schools had their own dialogue. The dialogue was frequently used by early Christian writers, such as Justin, Origen and Augustine. The genre survived up through the early scholastic period, but later, in the wake of the powerful influence of writings, the scholastic tradition adopted the more formal and concise genre of the summa, which largely superseded the dialogue as philosophical format.

The modern period to the present
Two French writers of eminence contributed to the genre’s revival in philosophic circles. In English non-dramatic literature the dialogue did not see extensive use until Berkeley used it in 1713. In Germany, Wieland adopted this form for several important satirical works published between 1780 and 1799. In Spanish literature, the Dialogues of Valdés (1528) and those on Painting (1633) by Vincenzo Carducci are celebrated.

Plato
He wrote a series of dialogues, mostly between Socrates and some other person. In all these dialogues there is an explicit or an implicit disagreement, and the purpose of these dialogues is to resolve the disagreement. The typical way is for Socrates to probe his partner for further beliefs until a contradiction is reached with the disputed belief or hypothesis by implication. In this way the interlocutor is made to see the impossibility of his hypothesis, and then tries some other hypothesis, which is again subject to the same scrutiny. Most of these dialogues break off without a final resolution—as in real life.

Martin Buber; I-thou and I-it
Martin Buber (Feb 8, 1878 – June13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher who places dialogue in a central position in his philosophy. He sees dialogue as an effective means of on-going communication rather than as a purposive attempt to reach some conclusion or to express some viewpoint(s).

Mikail Bakhtin: Theory of dialogue
Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of "dialogue" emphasized the power of discourse to increase understanding of multiple perspectives and create myriad possibilities. Bakhtin held that relationships and connections exist among all living beings, and that dialogue creates a new understanding of a situation that demands change. In his influential works, Bakhtin provided a linguistic methodology to define the dialogue, its nature and meaning.

Celebrated Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire developed advanced dialogue as a type of classroom pedagogy. Today, dialogue is used in classrooms, community centers, corporations, federal agencies, and other settings to enable people, usually in small groups, to share their perspectives and experiences about difficult issues. It is used to help people resolve long-standing conflicts and to build deeper understanding of contentious issues. Dialogue is not about judging, weighing, or making decisions, but about understanding and learning. Dialogue dispels stereotypes, builds trust, and enables people to be open to perspectives that are very different from their own.

The concept was coined by Flecha (2000), refers to a dialogue in which contributions are considered according to the validity of their reasoning. In this, the form of discussion that takes place when different contributions are considered in terms of the validity of the arguments, rather than assessing them according to the power positions of those who advocate them.

Aleco Christakis (Structured Dialogic Design) and John N. Warfield (Science of Generic Design) were two of the leading developers of this school of dialogue, which was practiced for over 20 years as Interactive Management. Structured dialogue represents a class of dialogue practices developed as a means of orienting the dialogic discourse toward problem understanding and consensual action. A disciplined form of dialogue, where participants agree to follow a framework or facilitation, enables groups to address complex problems shared in common. Today, structured dialogue is being employed by facilitated teams for peacemaking, global indigenous community development, government and social policy formulation, strategic management, health care, and other complex domains.

In the past two decades, a rapidly-growing movement for dialogue has been developing. The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, for example, serves as a hub for dialogue (and deliberation) facilitators, conveners, and trainers and houses thousands of resources on these communication methodologies.  q

Reference
This article is compiled from the following websites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog
http://www.newworldencyclopedia. org/ entry/Dialogue