Warren Martin. Features of Naturalness in Conversation

John Benjamins, — x, 271 p. — (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series). — ISBN: 90-272-5395-1.The study describes a detailed and original piece of research work, investigating a very important genre of human communication, and that is conversation. It provides a definition of the genre of conversation by describing nine features of conversation, namely multiple sources, discourse coherence, language as doing, co-operation, unfolding, open-endedness, artifacts, inexplicitness and shared responsibility. These nine features of naturalness in conversation serve to distinguish conversation from specialized discourse types. The study illustrates the nine defining features of conversation with authentic conversational data collected surreptitiously in England. While this study is of native speakers of English, the nine defining features of naturalness of English conversation are applicable to conversations conducted in other languages.Why study conversation?
Specialised discourse types
Approaches to the study of spoken discourse
Defning conversation
Naturalness
Nine features of naturalness in conversation
DataNaturally occurring conversation
Data size
Surreptitious data
The data collected for this study
Conclusions
Multiple sourcesTurn-taking
Maintenance of face and status
Conclusions
Determination of discourse coherenceElements of discourse coherence
Conclusions
Language as doingSpeech acts
Transactional and interactional language
Ranking discourse types
Phatic communion
Language as doing
Conclusions
Co-operationGrice’s co-operative principle
Criticisms and limitations of Grice’s co-operative principle
The spirit of co-operation in conversation
Conclusions
UnfoldingAdjacency pairs
Exchange structure
Prospection
Pitch concord
Conclusions
Open-endednessOpen-endedness versus unpredictability
Topic and topic framework
Topic drif
Challenge moves
Topic shif
Conclusions
ArtefactsArtefacts
Opening and closings
Beginnings and endings
Conclusions
InexplicitnessContext
Inexplicitness
Forms of inexplicitness
Inexplicitness and lexical density
Impacting levels of inexplicitness
Strict linguistic inference
Interpreting inexplicitness in conversation
Conclusions
Shared responsibilityShared responsibility
Topic control
Speaker overlap and turn-taking
Initiating moves
Responsibility for determination
Responsibility and co-operation
Implications for data collection
Conclusions
chapter
ConclusionsThe nine features of naturalness in conversation
A model of naturalness of conversation