On relevance in spoken interaction (original) (raw)

The problem of what it is that holds a text together has recently received considerable attention. Cf. Halliday and Hassan 1976, Enkvist 1978 and Hatakeyama, Petöfi and Sözer 1983. Under the headings of terms like cohesion, coherence and connexity such phenomena as anaphorical reference, tense sequences and topical maintenance have been investigated. In most of the studies the problem of what it is that connects the successive utterances of a multi-speaker interaction have not been dealt with. In fact, the ...