Grammar in Everyday Talk
Building Responsive Actions

Drawing on everyday telephone and video interactions, this book surveys how English speakers use grammar to formulate responses in conversation.

Sandra A. Thompson (Author), Barbara A. Fox (Author), Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (Author)

9781107031029, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 June 2015

356 pages, 40 b/w illus. 45 tables
23.7 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

'All in all, this study provides a new 'paradigm' that is quite different from the one taken up in most previous studies about grammar, in which a paradigm is static, abstract, and exists outside of any context of use. … This book is highly recommended for scholars working in the field of syntax, discourse analysis, social linguistics and pragmatics.' Zhou Xiao-jun, Journal of Language and Politics

Drawing on everyday telephone and video interactions, this book surveys how English speakers use grammar to formulate responses in ordinary conversation. The authors show that speakers build their responses in a variety of ways: the responses can be longer or shorter, repetitive or not, and can be uttered with different intonational 'melodies'. Focusing on four sequence types: responses to questions ('What time are we leaving?' - 'Seven'), responses to informings ('The May Company are sure having a big sale' - 'Are they?'), responses to assessments ('Track walking is so boring. Even with headphones' - 'It is'), and responses to requests ('Please don't tell Adeline' - 'Oh no I won't say anything'), they argue that an interactional approach holds the key to explaining why some types of utterances in English conversation seem to have something 'missing' and others seem overly wordy.

1. Introduction
2. Responses in information-seeking sequences with 'question-word interrogatives'
3. Responses in informing sequences
4. Sequences with assessment responses
5. Responses in request-for-action sequences
6. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Social work [JKSN], Anthropology [JHM], Social interaction [JFFP], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK], Communication studies [GTC], Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Sociolinguistics [CFB], Linguistics [CF], Language [C]