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Description:
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This revised edition of Deborah Tannen's first discourse analysis book,
Conversational Style--first published in 1984--presents an approach to
analyzing conversation that later became the hallmark and foundation of her
extensive body of work in discourse analysis, including the monograph
Talking Voices, as well as her well-known popular books You Just Don't
Understand, That's Not What I Meant!, and Talking from 9 to 5, among others.
Carefully examining the discourse of six speakers over the course of a
two-and-a-half hour Thanksgiving dinner conversation, Tannen analyzes the
features that make up the speakers' conversational styles, and in
particular how aspects of what she calls a 'high-involvement style' have a
positive effect when used with others who share the style, but a negative
effect with those whose styles differ. This revised edition includes a new
preface and an afterword in which Tannen discusses the book's place in the
evolution of her work.
Conversational Style is written in an accessible and non-technical style
that should appeal to scholars and students of discourse analysis (in
fields like linguistics, anthropology, communication, sociology, and
psychology) as well as general readers fascinated by Tannen's popular work.
This book is an ideal text for use in introductory classes in linguistics
and discourse analysis.
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