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)

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)

Discusses personal narratives of subjects with Alzheimer's disease and their spouses. Notes that solo narratives were gathered from patients and spouses separately, and then joint narratives were gathered. Compares patients' ability to provide settings in their solo narrative to their ability to supply information when prompted by spouses. Finds…

Explores whether speakers choose spatial perspectives to minimize effort. Discusses an experiment in which speakers describe locations on a display for addressees who shared their vantage point or had different views. Finds that same-viewpoint speakers spoke differently from speakers with offset views, who did not differ from each other reliably,…

Uses examples of conversation drawn from a mediation session to show how intentions, as discursive formations, are central not only to both narrative structure and interaction sequences but to the politics of subject position in discourse as well. Discusses the management of subject position in terms of critical coherence points. (SR)

Examines how the collaborative scheme is used to balance the demands of accuracy and efficiency during routine and nonroutine pilot-controller communication. Suggests that several communication problems can be traced to nonstandard collaborative practices that tax controller and pilot attention and memory. (SR)

Examines students' summaries of three lectures. Finds that the percentage, but not the number, of propositions correlated positively with the accuracy scores in the summaries. Suggests that analyses of errors, lexical substitutions, discrepancies in grades, and differences in students' scores for the different lectures revealed interesting results…

Contributes to research on child-directed speech by examining the use of two types of utterances (reported speech and prompts) in interactions involving mothers, toddlers, and other adults or siblings in rural Senegal. Shows that mothers attempt to promote exchange in a triadic framework, with the goal of making the child part of a complex set of…

Examines whether preschool children take the gender of the addressee into account when disputing during peer exchanges. Finds that both boys and girls modified their language use in mixed-sex groups, with boys using fewer commands when more girls were present, and girls using more contradictions in mixed-sex than same-sex groups. (SR)

Finds important differences between Quebecois and French mothers: the Quebecois mothers spoke more than French mothers and produced a greater number of assertive and expressive speech acts than the French mothers. Shows that speech used in both of these cultural groups varies according to the mother's child-rearing style, with coercive mothers…

Examines telephone discourse of twenty children between two and five years of age for answerer rules, turn-taking, constructional units, conversational acts, closing sequence, and ability to take messages. Shows developmental differences, although mastery of discourse skills appeared only in response categories, and primarily at four and five…