Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T10:23:20.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen & Margret Selting (eds.), Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xii, 471. Hb $74.95.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1999

Paul Drew
Affiliation:
Sociology, University of York, York YO1 5DD, England, wpd1@yorkf.ac.uk

Abstract

Turns at talk in conversation, and in any other form of spoken interaction, are designed to enable speakers to be understood in the way they wish to be understood by their co-participants. Talk is meaningful insofar as speakers design their turns so as to be recognizable as making an offer, closing a topic, agreeing or affiliating, being ironic, finishing their turn, continuing, being surprised or astonished at news, “just” asking a question, reproaching, indicating that there is something problematic about what the prior speaker has just said, and so on. (I take these activities from those that are variously studied in the chapters in this collection.) So “turn design” is at the heart of how we mean what we say, what we communicate, in interaction.

Type
REVIEWS
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)