Analysing Casual Conversation

Analysing Casual Conversation, first published in 1997 by Cassell, 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. Suzanne Eggins is Senior Lecturer in the School of English, University of New South Wales, Sydney Diana Slade is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Faculty of Education at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Originally published in 1997 by Cassell, this text is now made available in paperback in this 2005 reprint. Eggins (English, U. of New South Wales, Australia) and Slade (applied linguistics, U. of Technology, Sydney) use data from casual conversations recorded between 1983 and 1995 in naturally occurring situations to develop a set of analytical techniques for describing language patterns in casual conversation and offer a critical explanation of the role casual conversation plays in our development as socialized beings. They find that despite its sometimes aimless appearance and apparently trivial content, casual conversation is actually a highly structured, functionally motivated, semantic activity. Distributed in the U.S. by the David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Suzanne Eggins is Senior Lecturer in the School of English, University of New South Wales, Sydney.Diana Slade is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Faculty of Education at the University of Technology, Sydney.