Focuses on an analysis of discourse in natural settings including speeches and formal presentations as well as informal meetings and ordinary talk. (MH)

A review of the research of E.G. Mishler, H. Mehan, and others suggests that a unified theory of the mechanics of how continuous discourse is accounted for in classroom behavior is necessary for further study. Discourse analysis meets the criteria for selection of a theoretical framework because it deals with all the language within the classroom…

Recently, communications scholars and theorists have begun formulating rules to describe the workings of language in various situations of everyday use. Theoretically, current rules approaches are in violation of the basic philosophy underlying communication theory--Whitehead's notion of process. The inconsistency is a function of the degree of…

This paper argues that traditional techniques of content analysis which have been applied to classroom verbal interaction studies fail to account for certain types of implicit information, and presents a technique, called "reconstruction," that provides for the inclusion of such information in a content analysis. It is argued that if…