Hidden Rules of Conversation

These excerpts are drawn from a comprehensive academic handbook that maps the vast field of discourse analysis, presenting contributions from prominent scholars across multiple sub-disciplines. The material scrutinizes the foundational mechanics of communication, covering areas such as grammatical structure, prosody, and the function of discourse markers in structuring conversation and meaning. A central theme is the inseparable link between language and its social, cultural, and political contexts, emphasizing concepts like intertextuality, language ideologies, and social power dynamics. Chapters illustrate the application of analytical methods, including Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, to a wide range of empirical data, from multimodal narrative and gesture to specific language variations like bilingualism and register. Furthermore, the volume explores how discourse operates within distinct societal domains, analyzing interactions in legal settings, media, family life, and institutional contexts such as the classroom and the workplace. Collectively, the source material offers a broad and detailed examination of how language actively constructs identity, interaction, and meaning across various spheres of human activity.