Synopses & Reviews
Provides a clear framework for understanding how ordinary conversation creates meaning and establishes relationships.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Talking Voices presents the 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 creates meaning and establishes relationships.
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.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Overview of chapters; Discourse analysis; 2. Involvement in discourse; Involvement; Sound and sense in discourse; Involvement strategies; Scenes and music in creating involvement; 3. Repetition in conversation: toward a poetics of talk; Theoretical implications of repetition; Repetition in discourse; Functions of repetition in conversation; Repetition and variation in conversation; Examples of functions of repetition; The range of repetition in a segment of conversation; Individual and cultural differences; Other genres; The automaticity of repetition; The drive to imitate; Conclusion; 4. âOh talking voice that is so sweetâ: constructing dialogue in conversation; Reported speech and dialogue; Dialogue in storytelling; Reported criticism in conversation; Reported speech is constructed dialogue; Constructed dialogue in a conversational narrative; Modern Greek stories; Brazilian narrative; Dialogue in writersâconversation; Conclusion; 5. Imagining worlds: imagery and detail in conversation and other genres; The role of details and images in creating involvement; Details in conversation; Images and details in narrative; Nonnarrative or quasinarrative conversational discourse; Rapport through telling details; The intimacy of details; Spoken literary discourse; Written discourse; High-involvement writing; When details donât work or work for ill; Conclusion; 6. Involvement strategies in consort: literary non-fiction and political oratory; Thinking with feeling; Literary non-fiction; Speaking and writing with involvement; Involvement in political oratory; Conclusion; 7. Afterword: toward a humanistic linguistics; Appendix I. Sources of examples; Appendix II. Transcription conventions; Notes; List of references; Author index; Subject index.