Speakers, Listeners and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis

In this book Gillian Brown draws on a wide range of examples of discourse analysis to explore the ways in which speakers and listeners use language collaboratively to talk about what they can see in front of them and about a series of events. She examines the conditions under which communication is successful, and the conditions under which it sometimes fails. The focus of her attention is upon the listener’s role, as the listener tries to make sense of what the speaker says in a highly constrained context; her cognitive/pragmatic approach to discourse analysis both complements and challenges the sociological/anthropological perspectives on the subject which currently predominate. Gillian Brown is co-author of the well-known textbook Discourse Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

• Emphasises the listener’s perspective in conversation • Uses a cognitive/pragmatic approach to discourse which both complements and challenges the sociological/anthropological approach • Successful hardback: paperback will appeal to broader readership, in psychology as well as in linguistics

1. Speakers, listeners, and communication; 2. The map task method; 3. Identifying features in a landscape; 4. Guiding the listener through the landscape; 5. The stolen letter task: understanding reference to individuals in a narrative; 6. Understanding narratives; 7. The listener and discourse comprehension.