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Pragmatics & Discourse Analysis
Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends by Deborah Tannen — book cover

Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends

by Deborah Tannen
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Overview

This revised edition of Deborah Tannen's first discourse analysis book, Conversational Style—first published in 1984—presents an approach to analyzing conversation that later became the hallmark and foundation of her extensive body of work in discourse analysis, including the monograph Talking Voices, as well as her well-known popular books You Just Don't Understand, That's Not What I Meant!, and Talking from 9 to 5, among others.

Carefully examining the discourse of six speakers over the course of a two-and-a-half hour Thanksgiving dinner conversation, Tannen analyzes the features that make up the speakers' conversational styles, and in particular how aspects of what she calls a 'high-involvement style' have a positive effect when used with others who share the style, but a negative effect with those whose styles differ. This revised edition includes a new preface and an afterword in which Tannen discusses the book's place in the evolution of her work.

Conversational Style is written in an accessible and non-technical style that should appeal to scholars and students of discourse analysis (in fields like linguistics, anthropology, communication, sociology, and psychology) as well as general readers fascinated by Tannen's popular work. This book is an ideal text for use in introductory classes in linguistics and discourse analysis.

Synopsis

This revised edition of Deborah Tannen's first discourse analysis book, Conversational Style—first published in 1984—presents an approach to analyzing conversation that later became the hallmark and foundation of her extensive body of work in discourse analysis, including the monograph Talking Voices, as well as her well-known popular books You Just Don't Understand, That's Not What I Meant!, and Talking from 9 to 5, among others.

Carefully examining the discourse of six speakers over the course of a two-and-a-half hour Thanksgiving dinner conversation, Tannen analyzes the features that make up the speakers' conversational styles, and in particular how aspects of what she calls a 'high-involvement style' have a positive effect when used with others who share the style, but a negative effect with those whose styles differ. This revised edition includes a new preface and an afterword in which Tannen discusses the book's place in the evolution of her work.

Conversational Style is written in an accessible and non-technical style that should appeal to scholars and students of discourse analysis (in fields like linguistics, anthropology, communication, sociology, and psychology) as well as general readers fascinated by Tannen's popular work. This book is an ideal text for use in introductory classes in linguistics and discourse analysis.

About the Author, Deborah Tannen

Ever since she published her breakthrough book, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Deborah Tannen has established herself as a foremost expert on the art of communication throughout the world. With the publication of You re Wearing That?, Tannen takes on one of the most complex relationships in the family structure.

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Book Details

Published
June 1, 2005
Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Pages
272
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780195221817

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