Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends

This book provides a basic approach to the linguistic analysis of conversation, building toward a theory of the aesthetics of conversation by analyzing spontaneous talk among friends. It sheds light on such issues as pacing, turn-taking, storytelling, and humor, showing the effects on interaction when participants' conversational styles differ. Its readability makes it suitable for use as a text in discourse analysis at all levels.

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.