For Mikhail Bakhtin, "dialogism is the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia" (426). It is the domination of text by context, where meanings live in interactions, in dialogue. Bakhtin's editors point out that "dialogue can be external (between two different people) or internal (between an earlier and a later self)," and "a word, discourse, language, or culture undergoes 'dialogization' when it becomes relativized, de-priviledged, aware of competing definitions for the same thing. Undialogized language is authoritative or absolute" (427).