Analysing Conversation: Rules and Units in the Structure of Talk

Abstract

In the last fifteen years the analysis of conversation has become one of the most active fields in the study of language and communication but so far there has been no comprehensive critical account of its overall strengths and weaknesses. The authors of this volume, however, offer a critical survey of the concepts and methods of conversation analysis. They examine various approaches to the study of conversation, demonstrating that they share implicit assumptions carried over from the tradition of modern descriptive linguistics. They consider whether current models of conversation illuminate the phenomena of talk and suggest some new directions for our thinking about these phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)