Sound Patterns in Interaction

This collection of original papers by eminent phoneticians, linguists and sociologists offers the most recent findings on phonetic design in interactional discourse available in an edited collection. The chapters examine the organization of phonetic detail in relation to social actions in talk-in-interaction based on data drawn from diverse languages: Japanese, English, Finnish, and German, as well as from diverse speakers: children, fluent adults and adults with language loss. Because similar methodology is deployed for the investigation of similar conversational tasks in different languages, the collection paves the way towards a cross-linguistic phonology for conversation. The studies reported in the volume make it clear that language-specific constraints are at work in determining exactly which phonetic and prosodic resources are deployed for a given purpose and how they articulate with grammar in different cultures and speech communities.

Elizabeth Shipley, UCSB, in Discourse & Society Vol. 19:1.:
Sound Patterns in Interaction constitutes a significant step toward expanding the scope of Conversation Analysis to include languages other than English. Aspects of sequencing which are language- or variety-specific are highlighted throughout the volume, pointing the way toward a cross-linguistic 'phonology of conversation'. Concomitantly, readers are encouraged to view linguistics and Conversation Analysis as aspects of a single disciplinary field whose aim it is to illuminate the natural symbiosis between speech sound and the social interactions in which they are used.