Analysing Casual Conversation

by Suzanne Eggins, Diana Slade

Analysing Casual Conversation develops a systematic model for the analysis and description of casual conversation in English. Working through authentic examples of casual conversations involving participants differing in age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic class, the authors argue that despite its sometimes aimless appearance and apparently unstructured content, casual conversation is a highly structured activity and plays a critical role in the social construction of reality. Drawing on insights from sociology, linguistics and critical semiotics, the book equips readers with the analytic skills to describe the layers of structure and critical interpretive frameworks to explain the 'social work' that goes on through chat.

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what great linguistic analysis looks like. Eggins & Slade took a seemingly impossible object of analysis and through careful application of key principles reveal significant insights into the apparently random phenomenon of conversation. Synthesising insights from conversation analysis into a systemic functional framework they introduce us through sympathetic prose to a model that will inform the linguistic analysis of conversation for years to come.

[Isham Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hardcore Hallidayan linguistics, but it is valuable for writers and readers of fiction in one important sense - how conversational dialogue actually works, as opposed to how novelists think it works (of course, it's impossible to represent wholly naturalistic dialogue in fiction anyway).