This book develops a systematic model for the analysis and description of casual conversation in English, based on a large body of authentic data.

"Renia White's debut poetry collection pushes against state-sanctioned authority and societal thought while ruminating on Black joy"--

Thinking about reasoning suffers from a failure of vision. Philosophers, social scientists, and others who discuss and analyze reasoning have a particular activity in view: reasoning to figure things out, solve problems, and reach judgments. But there is a different activity we engage in that we call reasoning. We reason in the course of living together, when we are responsive to those with whom we live and neither commanding nor deferring to them, neither manipulating nor ignoring them. Analysis of this second kind of activity has relied on the tools and frameworks developed to make sense of the first kind of activity. In this book, Anthony Simon Laden invites his readers to approach this activity of reasoning on its own terms. He claims that if we are to truly see and appreciate the role and value of reasoning in living together, we need a new, social picture of the activity of reasoning. According to the social picture of reasoning developed here, reasoning is a species of conversation, and like casual conversation is social and ongoing. It is neither defined nor determined by its end, although it is governed by a set of characteristic norms. It consists of inviting others to accept that our words can speak for them as well. Reasoning: A Social Picture proposes an attractive new approach to thinking about how to live together, reasonably.

This book explores a virtually untapped, yet fascinating research area: television dialogue. It reports on a study comparing the language of the American situation comedy Friends to natural conversation. Transcripts of the television show and the American English conversation portion of the Longman Grammar Corpus provide the data for this corpus-based investigation, which combines Douglas Biber’s multidimensional methodology with a frequency-based analysis of close to 100 linguistic features. As a natural offshoot of the research design, this study offers a comprehensive description of the most common linguistic features characterizing natural conversation. Illustrated with numerous dialogue extracts from Friends and conversation, topics such as vague, emotional, and informal language are discussed. This book will be an important resource not only for researchers and students specializing in discourse analysis, register variation, and corpus linguistics, but also anyone interested in conversational language and television dialogue.

Effective leaders are good communicators. In Critical Conversations as Leadership, Dr. William A. Donohue describes conversation as a card game called Card Talk. The key to successful business communication and interpersonal communication is to select the right Talk Cards in the right situations to accomplish your communication goals. Critical Conversations as Leadership will walk you through the process of selecting the right card or cards, so that you can think strategically about how to get your points across. Card Talk teaches communicators to think strategically and to think ahead of critical conversations and to not ‘think behind’ or reactively. The Leader Card is fundamental to playing and winning conversation games, as is learning when and how it should be played. In addition to the Leader Card, business professionals need a large deck of both personal and professional cards to give them the flexibility they need to play communication games effectively. Casual conversation creates the foundation upon which problem-solving and conflict evolves. Knowing which cards to use in the Casual Conversation Game is an important factor in successful conversation. Playing the Decision-making Game, especially in a group situation, requires many different cards to be played. Critical Conversations as Leadership teaches when to use the Leadership Card, the Colleague card, The Expert Card and many others to promote a team atmosphere and allow individuals to freely exchange information. Negotiating is often adversarial, it does not have to be. Learning how to resolve conflict allows effective leaders to communicate in a collaborative and successful way. Performance appraisals often dreaded by both the employer and the employee. Playing The Performance Appraisal Game effectively will allow leaders to painlessly inspire and energize their team members in order to get the most out of each employee. Effective presentations require multiple cards be played along with the right combination of digital and personal media to reach and acquire an audience’s attention. Learning the five rules for structuring the Presenting Game allow presenters make an effective presentation that will assist with problem-solving and generate a discussion about effective solutions. The most important expectation that followers have of leaders is that they lay out a vision for the organization. Readers will learn how to play the Vision Game, the communication effort needed to sell and sustain their vision. Thanks in part to the internet, today’s customers expect to interact with companies. Customers play a variety of cards and companies need to know how to respond effectively. Playing the Customer Engagement Game requires a wide range of personal and professional cards so that customers feel welcomed and that their input is valued. Effective communication requires learning what an out-side-in company is and what the key cultural elements are that must be addressed to become more customer-centric. Finally, realizing that mistakes happen to even the most seasoned veterans of critical conversations, it is important to be aware of the most common mistakes that can happen during tense interactions. The final chapter of Critical Conversations as Leadership will walk you through these common mistakes and prepare you for successful critical conversations.

This volume takes the positive view that conversation between persons with dementia and their interlocutors is a privileged site for ongoing cognitive engagement. The book aims to identify and describe specific linguistic devices or strategies at the level of turn-by-turn talk that promote and extend conversation, and to explore real-world engagements that reflect these strategies. Final reflections tie these linguistic strategies and practices to wider issues of the "self" and "agency" in persons with dementia. Thematically, the volume fosters an integrated perspective on communication and cognition in terms of which communicative resources are recognized as cognitive resources, and communicative interaction is treated as reflecting cognitive engagement. This reflects perspectives in cognitive anthropology and cognitive science that regard human cognitive activity as distributed and culturally rooted. This volume is intended for academic researchers and advanced students in applied linguistics, linguistic and medical anthropology, nursing, and social gerontology; and practice professionals in speech-language pathology and geropsychology.