Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics, Series Number 26) - Softcover

Tannen, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521868904 ISBN 13: 9780521868907

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Written in readable, vivid, non-technical prose, this book, first published in 2007, presents the highly respected scholarly research that forms the foundation for Deborah Tannen's best-selling books about the role of language in human relationships. It provides a clear framework for understanding how ordinary conversation works to create meaning and establish relationships. A significant theoretical and methodological contribution to both linguistic and literary analysis, it uses transcripts of tape-recorded conversation to demonstrate that everyday conversation is made of features that are associated with literary discourse: repetition, dialogue, and details that create imagery. This second edition features a new introduction in which the author shows the relationship between this groundbreaking work and the research that has appeared since its original publication in 1989. In particular, she shows its relevance to the contemporary topic 'intertextuality', and provides a useful summary of research on that topic.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Tannen is University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University. She has published twenty books and over 100 articles on such topics as family discourse, spoken and written language, cross-cultural communication, modern Greek discourse, the poetics of everyday conversation, the relationship between conversational and literary discourse, gender and language, workplace interaction, agonism in public discourse, and doctor-patient communication.

From the Back Cover

Talking Voices is a radical contribution to both linguistic and literary analysis. In this important new book Deborah Tannen shows how conversation provides the source for linguistic strategies that are shaped and elaborated in literary discourse and other spoken and written, public and private genres. She explores the scenic and musical basis of both textual meaning and interpersonal involvement in discourse. Repetition establisher rhythm and meaning by patterns of constants and contrasts. Dialogue and imagery create scenes peopled by characters in relation to each other, doing things that are culturally and personally recognizable and meaningful.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521868904
• ISBN 13: 9780521868907
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 244