iReasearch学术科研网

摘要：Conversation analysis(CA) has come to be regarded as focusing primarily on turn-taking,on the way speakers design,hold and extend their turns at talk;how they select next speakers;how others know when it is their turn to speak;how orderly transition from one turn to the next is managed and how turns collide.The argument in this paper is that this research focus is waning,and that in its place a new direction is emerging(or perhaps reemerging) -the investigation of how social actions are conducted through language.This research direction connects with an area that is quite familiar in linguistic pragmatics,that of speech act analysis(Austin,Searle).But CA's approach is quite distinctive,exploring as it does the systematic basis for the selection of one from among the alternative constructions or formats for doing certain actions.This is illustrated through recent studies of offering and requesting,with some further observations of negatively formatted interrogatives used to make proposals.These studies show that speakers select between the alternative available forms on the basis of the sequential position in which the speaker is conducting that action.