Conversation and Discourse Structure and Interpretation

First published in 1981, Conversation and Discourse attempts to draw together papers illustrating the various different approaches to conversational analysis broadly divided into papers of description and experiment on one hand and papers of theory and analysis on the other. The ordinary speaker finds conversation to be by far the easiest variety of language and it is perhaps for this reason that its manifold, shifting and problematic nature has been overlooked for so long. The performance errors and eccentric constructions that characterise conversation make it remarkably difficult to analyse by orthodox syntactic theory- hence numerous methodologies have been formulated in the field of inquiry, ranging from Gricean theories of conversational implicature to ethnomethodological conversational analysis. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of linguistics, language and literature.

Introduction Part I: Description and Experiment 1. Aspects of Conversational Structure in the Research Interview 2. Instrumentality Selection in Naturally-occurring Conversation: A Research Agenda 3. Some Strategies for Sustaining Conversation 4. Developmental Aspects of Communication: Young Children’s Use of Referring Expressions Part II: Theory and Analysis 5. Conversational Units and the Use of ‘Well…’ 6. Thematisation of Luo 7. The Concept of ‘Relevance’ in Conversational Analysis 8. On Grice’s Theory of Conversation Notes on Contributors Index

Paul Werth