On relevance in spoken interaction (original) (raw)
Related papers
1992
It has been claimed that conversations is the basic form of social organization (cf.Schegloff (1986) and it seems correct to say that conversation, or with a more general term dialogue (from the Greek dia logos through words), exhibits characteristics which are basic to social ...
On the Distortion of Sequential Consistency in Spoken Discourse
Linguistica E Filologia, 2009
The present paper regards the operational aspect of verbal interaction as a cognitive process governed by rules and regulations providing its felicitous accomplishment. It supports the view that the consistent nature of goal-aimed interaction should necessarily manifest itself in sequential ties, the so-called Communicative Harmony Determinants (Cohesion, Coherence, Relevance), which exist between the consecutive moves of speaking partners. The analysis carried out in the paper shows that exchanges in which the moves of the speakers are chained by the Communicative Harmony Determinants make a compatible type of discourse in which the utterance links are unimpaired. Compatible discourse is usually felicitous, that is, it is a cooperative type of verbal interaction where the process of exchange of ideas takes place through consistent sequential ties, and the act of verbal interaction results in the successful accomplishment of the communicative goal. Accordingly, as a result of violation of the ties providing a compatible succession of utterances, there appears distortion of sequential consistency bringing about an incompatible type of discourse. To illustrate the cases of sequential inconsistency, the paper focuses on the analysis of communicative units in which the relevance ties are broken. The interactional approach reveals sequential inconsistencies which may be located both in the speaker's and in the interlocutor's speech domains, and appear during the joint development of verbal interaction, irrespective of the type of verbal behaviourco-operative or contradictory. One of the most important findings of the paper is that the communicative infelicity that manifests itself in the distortion of sequential ties is not only a linguistic but also a complex internal phenomenon related to the cognitive and sociopsychological aspects of human behaviour.
The co-construction of coherence at episode boundaries in cooperative dialogues
2012
The findings informed in this paper are part of an ongoing project on coherence and cohesion in casual conversation, in progress at University of La Plata. In this study we analyze the ‘communicative labour’ done by speakers at transition points between episodes to contribute to the global coherence of the text. We focus on the strategies used by actors to co-construct coherence at episode boundaries (Linell, 1998; Korolija, 1998). The corpus comprises 60 audio or video-recorded dyadic and polyadic conversations among university students aged between 18 and 28, from different universities in Argentina. We agree with Linell (1998) and Korolija (1998) that participants in this kind of interaction –and analysts– assume that both parties cooperate in the process of building coherence. We adopt the concept of episode (Linell, 1998; Korolija, 1998), since it is appropriate for the fragmentation and analysis of the colloquial conversations under study, which consist of both ‘chunks’ and ‘c...
Coherence at episode boundaries in cooperative dialogues
2021
The findings informed in this paper are part of an ongoing project about coherence and cohesion in casual conversation, under development at University of La Plata. In this study we analyze the ‘communicative labour’ done by speakers to contribute to the global coherence of the text. We focus on the strategies used by actors to co-construct coherence at episode boundaries (Linell, 1998; Korolija, 1998). The corpus comprises 52 audio or video-recorded dyadic and polyadic conversations among university students aged between 18 and 28, from different universities in Argentina. We agree with Linell (1998) and Korolija (1998) that participants in this kind of interaction –and analysts– assume that both parties cooperate in the process of building coherence. We adopt the concept of episode (Linell, 1998; Korolija, 1998), since it is appropriate for the fragmentation and analysis of the colloquial conversations under study, which consist of both ‘chunks’ and ‘chat’ segments (Eggins & Slade...
Lexical cohesion in multiparty conversations
Language Sciences, 2011
Ever since the publication of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) seminal work on cohesion, many scholars have sought to explain different aspects of this textual relation in discourse. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to add to the study of the interaction between lexical cohesion and coherence (Hellman, 1995; Hoey, 1991b; Sanders and Pander Maat, 2006); and second, to contribute to the exploration of lexical cohesion as a measure in generic and register analysis (Louwerse et al., 2004; Taboada, 2004; Tanskanen, 2006; Thompson, 1994). I present an integrated model of lexical cohesion which challenges existing proposals affording particular attention to what I call 'associative cohesion'. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, the adequacy of this model is tested against a 15,683 wordcorpus of broadcast discussions extracted from the International Corpus of English. The analysis of 11,199 lexical ties reports repetition (59%) as the most frequent lexical cohesion device, followed by associative cohesion (24%) and inclusive relations (8.2%), which are mostly produced in remote-mediated ties (81.8%) over speakers' turns (90.7%). These are shown to be sensitive to genre-specific factors and to collaborate in topic management processes, thereby demonstrating the descriptive potential and applicability of the framework.
1993
This paper presents a general argument for a relevance-based approach to the problem of connectivity in conversation. First, the potential relevance of conversation for pragmatic theory is discussed, as examples in pragmatic theory generally consist of small conversations. A typical problem for conversation analysis and pragmatic analysis is the description of uses of pragmatic connectives. The French connective parce que is described using first a model of coherence (Ducrot's theory of argumentation) and second an inferential approach. With a view to improving these models, conversational uses of parce que are presented, which show some difficulties which coherence-based approaches face in attempting to make the correct predictions about common uses of connectives in conversation.This is explained in terms of, first, an implicit theory of conversation underlying Ducrot's theory of argumentation and second, relevance theory. The less discourse oriented approach (relevance theory) is better-equipped to account for conversation in general, and to solve the sequencing problem and the interpretive problem in conversation in particular. 1 Special thanks are due to Billy Clark and Deirdre Wilson for rewriting my French-English pidgin and for their relevant suggestions ! Many thanks to Neil Smith and Deirdre Wilson who endured a spoken version of this paper at UCL and have invited me to prepare a written version of it.
Jack Sidnell (ed). 2009. Conversation Analysis. Comparative perspectives
Language and Dialogue, 2011
This volume brings together a series of articles written by academics with experience and expertise, all involved in the study of spoken interaction from a conversational analysis perspective. The twelve contributions are grouped together into five parts, the first containing an "Introduction" and "Comparative perspectives in conversational analysis" by Jack Sidnell who puts forth the topic of diversity and commonalities between languages spoken in different sociocultural and linguistic communities. It also includes theoretical reflections about the differentiation between CA and other approaches to the study of interaction, the most interesting one being the comparison between CA and cross-cultural pragmatics methodologies, general aims and possible outcomes, which helps differentiate between the two theoretical frameworks. Sidnell also offers interesting information about the organization of repair in relation to grammar and culture and, in general, about previous work done from CA perspectives, some of it made by contributors to this volume; this gives the reader the opportunity to appreciate the researchers' evolution and to better evaluate their present articles. Finally, the focus is on the mobilization of local resources to solve generic interactional problems. Lexical and syntactic practices are looked at mainly in relation to turn construction in various languages. Part I "Repair and beyond" deals with repair and repetition practices and is developed in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. "Repetition in the initiation of repair" by Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu addresses the topic of the organization of repair across languages through the study of repetition in Mandarin interactions and compares it with English. The analysis of the intonation of questions might have been improved if the curves had been considered as adding independent meaning to utterances in a given language. In English and Spanish, for example, both rises and falls may add to the elicitations of different assumptions about the expected answer (see Brazil 1997 for English intonation and Granato 2005 for Spanish). The consideration of prosodic aspects often ignored as meaningful resources is a strength of this work. In "A cross-linguistic investigation of the site of initiation in same-turn self-repair",