Dialogical self
Inspired by the original ideas of William James and Mikhail Bakhtin, Hubert Hermans, Harry Kempen and Rens van Loon wrote the first psychological publication on the "dialogical self" in which they conceptualized the self in terms of a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous "I"-positions in the (extended) landscape of the mind. In this conception, the "I" has the possibility to move from one spatial position to another in accordance with changes in situation and time. The "I" fluctuates among different and even opposed positions, and has the capacity to imaginatively endow each position with a voice so that dialogical relations between positions can be established. The voices function like interacting characters in a story, involved in processes of question and answer, agreement and disagreement. Each of them have a story to tell about their own experiences from their own stance. As different voices, these characters exchange information about their respective Me's and mines, resulting in a complex, narratively structured self.
Communication Theory as a Field
To fully outline a new tradition of communication theory, Russill would have had to fully incorporate that tradition within the dialogical-dialectical matrix. Russill failed to fully consider the full range of criticism which would occur between the Pragmatist tradition and the other traditions of communication. Craig uses the dialogical-dialectical matrix to outline how pragmatism could be incorporated into the metamodel.