Distills a kernel story from separate narrative performances to facilitate comparison between them and to highlight their similarities and differences. Investigates immediate retelling for a newly-arrived listener, relating the same story for different audiences, and group reconstruction of a story already familiar to those present. Proposes…

Reviews prior research to stress the functionality of fluidity in making ready information to support comprehension. Explores the fading of ready information, demonstrating how quickly the accessibility of information mutually known to two reunited characters fades when the text engages other topics. Describes a series of phenomena that cohere…

Uses data from academic counseling encounters at an American university to investigate how the practice of withholding certain information or opinion at an expected moment reconstructs the university institutional order. Details the sequential organization of the practice of withholding. Argues that, through withholding, academic counselors embody…

Finds that zero quotatives (where direct speech is reported with neither a reporting verb nor an attributed speaker) are found when a speaker is clearly constructing attitude; where the omission of a quotative may serve some dramatic effect; and at sights where conversational partners are displaying strongly convergent behavior. (SR)

Examines how interlocutors' beliefs about each other's goals affect conversational references, comparing pairs who were either informed or noninformed about the goal difference, or misinformed that goals were the same. Finds that misinformed and noninformed pairs overlooked clues that may have signaled the goal discrepancy, made conversational…

Compares the communicative effectiveness of spontaneous monologues and dialogues on nonparticipating addressees overhearing talk. Finds that overhearers were more accurate at following instructions in a referential communication task when listening in on dialogues than when listening in on monologues. Suggests greater number of discourse markers…

Investigates the social payoffs of speaking ironically. Suggests that speakers choose irony over literal language in order to be funny, to soften the edge of an insult, to show themselves to be in control of their emotions, and to avoid damaging their relationship with the addressee. (SR)

Identifies five speech act exchange forms and their communicative functions as forms that the conversational partners used in the course of their interactions. Identifies variables that influence the use of these exchanges within the interaction. (SR)

Finds that when paired with older adults simulating dementia, the young adults' instructions were longer, more informative, and more repetitious; however, the young adults did not alter their prosody or grammatical complexity. Suggests that young adults adjust their speech to the perceived communicative needs of older listeners by varying…

Contributes to research on speech acts, power, and the negotiation of shared meanings. Argues that a primary off-record purpose of ostensible lies and of ostensible speech acts in general is to assert or affirm a status or power difference between speaker and addressee. Shows how ostensible lies are speech acts that flout the rules governing the…

Illustrates the existence of meanings in conversation that are not based on the listener's interpretations by analyzing the conversations from a family therapy session. Transcripts of the conversations are appended. (HTH)

Advances the development of a classification system, based on the salient speech act distinctions made by ordinary people, which can be of practical use in characterizing extended segments of discourse. Presents an attempt to use speech act theory in the quantitative study of interpersonal communication. (HTH)

Analyzes the interaction strategies employed by a conversational participant who is unsure that he or she understands the content or the context of the interaction well enough to contribute appropriately to it but feels impelled to continue participating anyway. (FL)

Examines the differences in perspective and training of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and effects of these on their interactive strategies with patients. Shows how the macro issue of differences in occupational perspective can be incorporated into micro studies of the form and content of talk in social interactions. (SR)

Investigates the conventions that govern telephone communication through answering machines, both domestic and institutional. Finds that talk on answering machines is highly structured and highly routinized. Identifies the internal structures of both callers' contributions and machine contributions. (SR)