Analysis Of Conversational Discourse

In this dissertation, a new concept, Conversational Discourse(short form: CD), is created based on the combination of Conversational study and Discourse Analysis. Following topics are discussed: the general structure of CD; inner links of CD from the perspective of topic progression; a detailed argument of the dialogism of monolog discourse and the structure of latent dialogue. Furthermore, another new concept, Inter-turn Interface, is also created to bridge the gap between turns, which was ignored in traditional conversation analysis. In addition, an elementary classification and clear description are provided on Inter-turn Interface to help the better analysis.Traditional discourse analysis focused mainly on monolog discourses, while cared little about conversational discourse for the lack of dialogisms concept. What's more, such studies pointed to the activity structure of daily conversations, and ignored a perfect combination with discourse analysis.Based on the speech act theory of Austin, the dissertation studies CD from the aspects of turn-pairing and turn-taking. Then, conversation was viewed as a discourse, that's CD. A detailed discussion from turn-pairing and topic-progressing about CD is followed. A conclusion that a CD is a chain of turn-pairs, which forms a meaning unit around certain topic, which is further considered as the result of topic progression. As the discussion goes on, an obvious imperfectness of such an ideal and simple observation is found, that is, the ignorable gap both in time and space between two adjacent turns barrier a smooth progress of a conversation, which is called "turn gap" in this dissertation. Inter-turn Interface certainly includes the turn gap marks in a conversation and bridges the traditional imperfectness. What is important in this dissertation is that, inspired by the dialogism of Barhtin, dialogism is practised in a higher level in monolog and the structure of latent dialogue.