How to Use dialectical in a Sentence

dialectical

adjective
  • To our dialectical guide, this could go one of two ways.
    Malcolm Harris, New Republic, 15 May 2017
  • The upshot of the film is a little murky, which is the risk of such a diffuse, dialectical approach, and certain details could be clearer.
    Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times, 21 June 2018
  • Marxists would say Trump and the left-wingers relate to one another in dialectical terms.
    Matthew Continetti, National Review, 2 Sep. 2017
  • Sadly, this is not a moment for nuanced dialectical dramas — and certainly not for ones with such a huge cast.
    Charles McNultytheater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 28 Nov. 2022
  • The erotic scenes are dialectical as well as hot; the meetings have a wanton, feverish energy.
    A. O. Scott, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2017
  • The relationship between the two moments is dialectical: The aural noise and visual integrity of the first scene are reversed in the second.
    New York Times, 7 June 2018
  • But Morgan’s never been one to let dialectical coherence get in the way of his sanctimony.
    Jeremy Egner, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2016
  • The dialectical intelligence that shines in his plays is evident in the way his every utterance is subject to second thoughts.
    Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 30 Mar. 2018
  • Some cultures are better than others at dialectical thinking—and my wife is right that Americans tend to be especially weak at it.
    Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 19 Jan. 2023
  • For a French director such as Rohmer, a woman’s knee was the crux of an elegantly dialectical erotic comedy.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 25 Sep. 2021
  • There’s an appreciably dialectical sense of purpose to this framing that goes beyond the usual cat-and-mouse genre formulations.
    Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 3 Nov. 2022
  • The romance that surges through the story is his principal tool of historical analysis, setting facts and feelings into a dialectical dance that doesn’t conclude when the story ends.
    New York Times, 6 May 2020
  • Fans are often aware of the tensions their dialectical status as (anti)capitalists creates between themselves and media producers.
    Nancy Baym, WIRED, 10 July 2018
  • Not without a cost Therapists trained in dialectical behavior therapy can be expensive and hard to find, and are often booked solid.
    Matt Richtel, BostonGlobe.com, 27 Aug. 2022
  • My clear designer see-thru [sic] tote bag: tampons, dialectical behavioral therapy workbook (used), old receipts from a bodega, a dollar that’s ripped in half.
    Sophie Kemp, Vogue, 10 Dec. 2019
  • A philosopher — Jacques Derrida, say, here seen crossing Houston Street a few years before his death — might wax eloquent on the dialectical interpenetration of presence and absence.
    A. O. Scott, New York Times, 8 Sep. 2016
  • The ideological vanguard of the Bernie Sanders movement emerged from the 2016 election overflowing with dialectical certainty.
    Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 29 Sep. 2017
  • These assorted dialectical face-offs give Binet another way to take an angle on theory.
    Sven Birkerts, New Republic, 20 Sep. 2017
  • For example, one of my zines is about dialectical behavioral therapy.
    BostonGlobe.com, 1 Oct. 2021
  • There is something almost dialectical about the contrast between the parents on one hand and Nancy on the other, between Cameron and Buscemi’s open, guileless performances and Riseborough’s flat, affectless line readings.
    Justin Chang, latimes.com, 7 June 2018
  • Where in China's increasing dialectical sense, the U.S. is an implacable enemy out to subvert China's rise.
    CBS News, 26 Oct. 2022
  • This might be cause for some disappointment, since Peele’s keen dialectical perspective on our collective American pathologies has been a bright spot in an era of franchised corporate wish fulfillment.
    New York Times, 20 July 2022
  • Like the aesthetic advances that preceded it, the Zoomification of movies will be the product of what has always been a dialectical relationship between technology and creators.
    Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 2 Apr. 2020
  • Hazanavicius begins his film as Godard’s playful, polemical pastiche of dialectical discussion and mock agit-prop theatrics opens with a thud at the Avignon Film Festival.
    Peter Keough, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Apr. 2018
  • Trained as a lawyer (and the son of a prominent Austrian prosecutor), Preminger established a dialectical method for filming scenes of conflict, holding opponents in tense and unstable balance.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 1 May 2020
  • Del Noce indicts the sweeping changes of secularism, eroticism, and relativism as the inevitable outcomes of Marx’s dialectical victory over religious and liberal foes.
    Richard M. Reinsch Ii, National Review, 17 Feb. 2022
  • Much of history before the modern era has consisted of an almost dialectical synthesis between the steppe periphery and the agricultural lands beyond the limes of civilization.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 6 Oct. 2013
  • Hong films these complex dialectical wrangles with extended takes, in incisive and dramatically charged angles, that, in the long reach of their stark authority, mesh with Byungsoo’s lament to embody a manifesto of sketch-like, hands-on spontaneity.
    Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2022
  • The treatment for suicidal thoughts and behaviors with the most scientific backing is dialectical behavior therapy, says Dr. Cullen.
    Andrea Petersen, WSJ, 3 Feb. 2022
  • An article on Sunday about the benefits of dialectical behavior therapy on suicidal or self-harming teens misidentified the profession of Michele Berk.
    New York Times, 30 Aug. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dialectical.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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