Cover not available

In:Pragmatics and its Interfaces
Edited by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 294] 2018
► pp. 59–84

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The interface between pragmatics and conversation analysis

 | University of York
Published online: 7 September 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.294.04dre
Abstract
In his authoritative account of Pragmatics, Levinson (1983) included conversation analysis (CA) as firmly part of pragmatics. Others have perhaps been more cautious about whether CA is really relevant to the pragmatics programme. Despite the differences and divergences between CA and pragmatics, they share a number of key interests, especially in three of the foundational areas of pragmatics – namely implicature (e.g., from Grice 1975), speech acts (social action) (e.g., from Austin 1962 and Searle 1969) and presupposition and well-formedness (e.g., from Lakoff 1971). I will show examples that demonstrate the distinctiveness of CA’s approach to these core pragmatic aspects of language use – in the spirit of demonstrating how CA’s approach complements and does not detract from approaches in pragmatics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Implicature
  • 3.Speech acts
  • 4.Presuppositions and well-formedness
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (36)
References
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford, OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1954. “Indexical Expressions.” Mind 63:359–379.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1971. “Out of the Pragmatic Wastebasket.” Linguistic Inquiry 2: 401–407.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1963. “Formal properties of grammars.” In Handbook of Mathematical Psychology. Volume II, ed. by R. D. Luce, R. R. Bush, and E. Galanter, 323–418. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. 2014. “What does grammar tell us about action?” Pragmatics 24(3): 623–647.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Curl, Traci S. 2006. “Offers of Assistance: Constraints on Syntactic Design.” Journal of Pragmatics 38:1257–1280.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Curl, Traci S., and, Paul Drew. 2008. “Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41, 2008: 1–25.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drew, Paul. 1992. “Contested Evidence in a Courtroom Cross Examination: The Case of a Trial for Rape.” In Talk at Work: Social Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 470–520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Turn design.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Tanya Stivers, and Jack Sidnell, 131–149. Oxford, Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drew, Paul, Traci Walker, and Richard Ogden. 2012. “Self-repair and action construction.” In Conversational Repair and Human Understanding, ed. by Makoto Hayashi, Geoff Raymond, and Jack Sidnell, 71–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drew, Paul, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen. 2014. “Requesting – From Speech Act to Recruitment.” In Requesting in Social Interaction., ed. by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 1–34. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita. 2018. “Discourse Pragmatics: Communicative Action Meets Discourse Analysis”. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces, ed. by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick, 33–57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Floyd, Simeon, Giovanni Rossi, and Nick J. Enfield (eds). (under review). Getting Others to do Things: A Pragmatic Typology of Recruitments. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts., ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John and Sue Sefi 1992. “Dilemmas of Advice: Aspects of the Delivery and Reception of Advice in Interactions Between Health Visitors and First-Time Mothers.” In Talk at Work; Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, John Heritage, 359–417. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ilie, Cornelia. (2018) “Pragmatics vs Rhetoric: Political Discourse at the Pragmatics-Rhetoric Interface.” In Pragmatics and its Interfaces, ed. by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick, 85–119. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1974. “Error Correction as an Interactional Resource.” Language in Society 3(2): 181–199.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin, and Paul Drew. 2014. “The Putative Preference for Offers Over Requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 87–114. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49: 1–19.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1971. “Presupposition and Relative Well-Formedness.” In Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology, ed. by Danny D. Steinberg, and Leon A. Jakobovits, 329–340. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza. 2006. “Multiactivite, multimodalite et sequentialite: l’initiation de cours d’action paralleles en context scolaire.” In Interactions Verbales, Didactiques et Apprecentissage, ed. by M-C. Guernier, V. Durand-Gurrier, and J-P. Sautot, 45–72. Becancon: Presses Universitaires de Franche Comte.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Requesting Immediate Action in the Surgical Operating Room: Time, Embodied Resources and Praxeological Embededness.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 269–302. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza and Veronique Traverso. 2015. “Beyond Orality: Interaction and Multimodality.” Varieties of Spoken French: a Source Book, ed. by Sylvain Detey, Jacques Durand, Bernard Laks, and Chantel Lyche. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, Jeffrey D.. 2006. “Managing Trouble Responsibility and Relationships during Conversational Repair.” Communication Monographs 73: 137–161.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni. 2012. “Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives and Mi X? Interrogatives in Italian.” Discourse Processes 49(5): 426–458.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “When Do People Not Use Language to Make Requests?” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 303–334. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni, and Jörg Zinken. 2016. “Grammar and Social Agency: The Pragmatics of Impersonal Deontic Statements.” Language 92(4): 296–325.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1972. “On the Analysability of Stories by Children.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, ed, John J. Gumperz, and Dell Hymes, 325–345. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, vol. 1, ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford, Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. “Introduction.” In Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation, vol. 1, ed. by Gail Jefferson, ix–lxii. Oxford, Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1996. “Confirming Allusions: Toward an Empirical Account of Action.” American Journal of Sociology 102: 161–216.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walker, Traci, Paul Drew, and John Local. 2011. “Responding Indirectly.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2434–2451.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (12)

Cited by 12 other publications

Alshammari, Bandar & Michael Haugh
2025. Mobilizing assistance through troubles-complaints in L2 settings. Applied Linguistics DOI logo
Strukowska, Marta E.
2024. Exploring Speech Act Patterns In Anthropological Pragmatics. LINGUISTICA SILESIANA ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo
Chaudhary, Shrirang Ramdas
2023. The Nature of Virtual Leader-Member Communication and Attributes of Virtual Leader-Member Relationship: Research Note for Methodological Triangulation. In Digital Economy Post COVID-19 Era [Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, ], ► pp. 969 ff. DOI logo
Yu, Betty & Laura Sterponi
2023. Toward Neurodiversity: How Conversation Analysis Can Contribute to a New Approach to Social Communication Assessment. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 54:1 ► pp. 27 ff. DOI logo
Clift, Rebecca & Michael Haugh
2021. Conversation Analysis and Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 616 ff. DOI logo
House, Juliane & Dániel Z. Kádár
2021. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita
2018. Discourse pragmatics. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Haugh, Michael & Jonathan Culpeper
2018. Integrative pragmatics and (im)politeness theory. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
House, Juliane
2018. Translation studies and pragmatics. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 143 ff. DOI logo
Ilie, Cornelia
2018. Pragmatics vs rhetoric. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo
Yus, Francisco
2018. The interface between pragmatics and internet-mediated communication. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 267 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Approaches and Methods in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 567 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue