This study investigates interpersonal processes underlying dialog by comparing two approaches, "interactive alignment" and "interpersonal synergy", and assesses how they predict collective performance in a joint task. While the interactive alignment approach highlights imitative patterns between interlocutors, the synergy…

Explores the hypothesis that speakers formulate their requests to anticipate the potential obstacles (ability, willingness, possession of the object desired, etc.) which hinder addressees in complying with requests and that the comprehension of these requests depends on how well speakers formulate them. (SED)

Provides a taxonomy of dyadic speech events in everyday relating through a series of four studies. Identifies 29 speech events through a variety of multimethod procedures, including unstructured and structured diary records, judgment sorting tasks, and semantic-differential rating scales. Suggests that everyday relating is dominated by six kinds…

This paper describes a study of a speech community, a group of approximately 10 women, aged 25 to 65, who met at least 3 times a month to knit, drink coffee, and chat. The paper notes that knitting circles have survived through history because they serve a social function that surpasses historical events--they are communities that co-construct the…

This dissertation presents a study of patterns of speech in Western Subanon, as heard in areas of Mindanao, an island in the Philippines. An introductory section discusses relevant general issues in linguistic research and the present study. The relationships of language to linguistics and of language to society, the objectives of the study, the…

This discussion of the speech act of thanking looks at the basic functions of the act and responses to it in American English. It is argued that in general, "thank you" expressions are used to express appreciation of benefits and to enhance rapport between interlocutors, and that this basic use is extended to the functions of conversational…

This study examined the speech act of agreement and disagreement in the ordinary conversation of English-speakers in India. Data were collected in natural speech elicited from educated, bilingual speakers in cross-sex and same-sex conversations in a range of formal and informal settings. Subjects' ages ranged from 19 to about 60. Five agreement…

A study analyzed four dyadic conversations for evidence of the signals operating in the turn-taking process and facilitating the smooth exchange of turns. It found over 20 syntactic, prosodic, and semantic features occurring frequently with turn-taking. The five most significant factors correlating with turn-taking were a prosodically completed…

This study analyzed complimenting behavior in French between French native speakers and American advanced French learners in seven dinner party conversations. Data are found to provide a rich source of lessons in politeness for both sociolinguistic and pedagogic descriptions of French speech acts. (Author/MSE)

Explores the discourse and speech acts used by Black children between the ages of 5 and 10 in one Midwestern community. Examines the rhetorical devices of teasing, name-calling, riddles, and joke-stories and hypothesizes as to the functional significance of each in the cultural environment. (SA)

The pragmatic expressions of Argentine Spanish (e.g., "bueno, viste, no? mira") are defined as deictic signals. They are deictic because they indicate elements of the communicative situation: transitions between text segments, conversational roles, or the social relationship between participants. They also signal contextual suppositions…

In studying the role of context in speech act performance, the tradition has been to use controlled elicitation instruments that allow for manipulation of social dimensions. The assumption is that by controlling social context, all respondents will assess social relations very similarly, although little research has dealt with the validity of this…

This study investigated the discourse strategies used by native speakers of Turkish in carrying out speech acts of correction and disagreement to status-unequal interlocutors. Focus was on: (1) the politeness markers preferred for softening the impact of words in face-threatening speech situations where the interlocutor corrects the mistake of an…

Early speech-act theorists studied isolated speech acts, often in terms of single sentences invented by the investigator, an approach that had obvious limitations. It is now known that speech acts ought to be investigated by looking at utterances in their full interactional context. A hierarchical model of the structure of conversation that is…

Explores verbal exchange structure (2 people's cooccurring speech-act categories that accomplish some subtask within an interpersonal encounter) of two psychotherapeutic approaches used with 39 depressed clients. Analyzed verbal response mode frequencies in 1,630 segments. Exchanges showed distinctive temporal patterns across segments of sessions…