LINGUIST List 10.802

Sat May 22 1999

Books: Sociolinguistics

Editor for this issue: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar <aristarlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Approaching Dialogue
2. Maureen Burke, Conversation and Community

John Benjamins Publishing announces the availablity of this new work in
Sociolinguistics:

Approaching Dialogue.
Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives.
Per LINELL (Linkoping University, Sweden)
IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 3
US & Canada: 1 55619 852 3 / USD 85.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 1833 1 / NLG 170.00 (Hardcover)

Approaching Dialogue has its primary focus on the theoretical
understanding and empirical analysis of talk-in-interaction. It deals with
conversation in general as well as talk within institutions against a
backdrop of Conversation Analysis, context-based discourse analysis,
social pragmatics, socio-cultural theory and interdisciplinary dialogue
analysis.

People's communicative projects, and the structures and functions of
talk-in-interaction, are analyzed from the most local sequences to the
comprehensive communicative activity types and genres. A second aim of the
book is to explore the possibilities and limitations of dialogism as a
general epistemology for cognition and communication. On this point, it
portrays the dialogical approach as a major alternative to the mainstream
theories of cognition as individually-based information processing,
communication as information transfer, and language as a code. Stressing
aspects of interaction, joint construction and cultural embeddedness, and
drawing upon extensive theoretical and empirical research carried out in
different traditions, this book aims at an integrating synthesis. It is
largely interdisciplinary in nature, and has been written in such a way
that it can be used at advanced undergraduate courses in linguistics,
sociopragmatics of language, communication studies, sociology, social
psychology and cognitive science.

"Linell offers a clear and comprehensive account of the differences
between monologism and dialogism as competing epistemologies in the
language sciences. [...] I can think of no other monograph length text
which does this."

"Linell has played an important role in developing the theoretical
framework for studying discourse and communication, and in arguing for the
significance of discourse studies for traditional areas in linguistics and
pragmatics." Paul Drew (University of York)

				John Benjamins Publishing Co. 
Offices:		Philadelphia				Amsterdam:
Websites: 	http://www.benjamins.com		http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail:		servicebenjamins.com		customer.servicesbenjamins.nl
Phone:		+215 836-1200				+31 20 6762325
Fax: 		+215 836-1204				+31 20 6739773

Cherny, Lynn (Excite, Inc.); CONVERSATION AND COMMUNITY: CHAT IN A VIRTUAL
WORLD; ISBN: 1-57586-154-2 (paper), 1-57586-155-0 (cloth); 370 pp. CSLI
Publications 1999: http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/ email:
pubsroslin.stanford.edu

Conversation and Community: Discourse in a Social MUD is an examination of
the speech community in an Internet "virtual community." Based on
ethnographic research on a community of users of a MUD, or "multi-user
dimension," the book describes a closeknit community united in features of
their language use, shared history, and relationships to other online
communities.

The author invokes the notion of register, or the variety of speech
adapted to the communication situation, in her discussion of how users
overcome the limitations of the typed, text medium and exploit its
affordances for comfortable communication. Routines, conventional
vocabulary and abbreviations, syntactic and semantic phenomena, and
special turn-taking and repair strategies distinguish the MUD
community's register. Because the MUD is programmable,commands may be
added which reflect, alter, or reinforce the linguistic practices and
culture of the community; competent speakers must also know the
commands that produce the correct linguistic forms. Power structures
in the community impact speech practices, with the technically
empowered being most influential. In contrast with much utopian
literature about online community, this work offers consideration of
the role of elites and conflicts over membership categories in a
discussion of how definitions of "community" apply or fail to apply to
this virtual ethnographic site. Discussion of methods and ethics for
online research are included.




*************************
CSLI Publications
Ventura Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
Telephone (650) 723-1839
Fax (650) 725-2166
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/

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1999 Contributors