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

The central concern of this book is the analysis of verbal interaction or discourse. This first six chapters report and evaluate major theoretical advances in the description of discourse. The final chapters demonstrate how the findings of discourse analysis can be used to investigate second-language teaching and first-language acquisition and to analyse literary texts.

This book addresses translingual identities through an innovative multimodal analysis of the language learning histories of a class of advanced learners of English in Japan who grew up between two or more languages. The author explores both the translingual experiences of those in the classroom and how they use language and gesture when describing their experiences to each other. This approach uses three perspectives: it looks at the worlds and identities the interviewees construct for themselves; at their interpersonal communication; and at the way they frame their experience. Finally, it offers some lessons based on the observations of the class which reveal the values they share and the key to their success as language learners. It will appeal to applied linguistic and educational researchers, particularly those with an interest in narrative approaches to exploring educational contexts, as well as language educators and policy makers interested in gaining a learner perspective on language learning.

Over the last three decades there has been an ever-increasing interest in the analysis of spoken interaction. Work on casual conversation, which for a time was found to present virtually insuperable problems to the analyst, has now come to occupy as prominent a place as institutional interactions. Many approaches to casual conversation have been partial, and the author's own seminal publication with Suzanne Eggins, Analysing Casual Conversation (1997) was a milestone in demonstrating the value of locating the analysis in a broad framework that was inspired by Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics. In this new book Slade amplifies and extends that earlier work, presenting original case material and expanding on her claim that the 'chunks' of genre-based analysis need to be supplemented by the concept of 'chat.' She presents a framework and the tools for describing the dynamics of both the macro and the micro structure of conversation as it creates and recreates social relations. All those whose interests lie in understanding how language works in casual conversation, whether in linguistics sociolinguistics, educational linguistics or cultural studies, will find this an essential read.

In the last fifteen years the analysis of conversation has become one of the most active and fastest developing fields in the study of language and communication but so far there has been no comprehensive critical account of its overall strengths and weaknesses. The authors of this volume have broken the pattern with their critical survey of the concepts and methods of conversation analysis. They examine various approaches to the study of conversation, demonstrating that they share implicit assumptions carried over from the tradition of modern descriptive linguistics. They consider - in relation to literature from philosophy, psychology, sociology and linguistics - whether current models of conversation illumine the phenomena of talk and suggest some new directions for our thinking about these phenomena.

The present collection of articles, presented at the 8th IADA Conference in Göteborg, focuses on understanding and misunderstanding as dialogic phenomena. The notion of a dialogic grammar and dialogic principles as a framework for understanding human communication and cognition is explored in several contributions. Misunderstanding in dialogue is dealt with in institutional and non-institutional settings, in fiction and film dialogue, from several different theoretical perspectives.