Conversation: Cognitive, communicative and social perspectives Ed. by T. Givón (review)

BOOK NOTICES Conversation: Cognitive, communicative and social perspectives. Ed. by T. Givón. (Typological studies in language 34.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins , 1997. Pp. viii, 302. This book contains papers presented at the Symposium on Conversation, University of New Mexico, TuIy 1995. Each paper in some way addresses one of the following dichotomies in current analyses of conversation: information flow vs. social interaction, speech-situation models vs. cognitive models, natural contexts vs. controlled experiments, and narrative discourse vs. conversational discourse. All ofthe papers focus on the need for further investigation of face-to-face communication. In the first paper, 'Dialogue despite difficulties: A study of communication between aphasie and unimpaired speakers', Anne H. Anderson, Alasdair Robertson, and Kerry Kilborn address the question of what happens to the communicative process when speakers have suffered a brain injury resulting in damage to their linguistic resources. From a study of 16 people with left hemisphere cardiovascular injuries , Anderson et al. conclude that conversation between aphasie and unimpaired speakers is deeply collaborative, yet effective, in nature. In 'Polyphonic topic development', Wallace Chafe addresses the question of what determines the direction in which thoughts, which are continually replaced by other thoughts, move in conversation. Chafe demonstrates that traditional transcripts are artificial and argues for the reanalysis of conversations as constant interplays of changing ideas. Also arguing for a rethinking of the ways in which conversational features are described Jennifer Coates offers the metaphor of a jam session for women in conversation in the following paper, "The construction of a collaborative floor in women's friendly talk'. Arguing for a running mental model of a speech situation in the speaker's and hearer's minds during communication in their paper 'Memory and conversation : Toward an experimental paradigm', Connie Dickinson and T. GrvóN show a correlation between cooperation ofan interlocutor and the amount ofepisodic information recalled. In the following paper, "The occasioning and structure of conversational stories ', Susan M. Ervin-Tripp and Aylin KUntay examine alterations in internal structure through embedding contexts. Per Linell and Natascha Korolija claim that episodes, not single utterances, support topics in their paper 'Coherence in multi-party conversation: Episodes and contexts in interaction'. Linnel and Korolija also introduce a coding system fortopical episode analysis. In the following paper, 'Choosing the right quantifier: Usage in the context of communication', Linda M. Moxey and Anthony J. Sanford argue that neither a formal logico-linguistic approach nor a scaling approach explains why and when speakers choose certain quantifiers. Moxey and Sanford use corpus linguistics to study the variation in communicating a quantity. In order to investigate how conversation participants resolve differences ofopinions in an argument, as well as to describe conflict talk in general, Nancy L. Stein and Ronan S. Bernas report on a study of 178 high school students asked to resolve an argument between two friends in their paper, 'Conflict talk: Understanding and resolving arguments'. Their study has implications not only for theories of everyday memory and eyewitness testimony but also for theories ofconversational analysis. Finally, in 'Communicating evaluation in narrative understanding' Tom Trabasso and Asli Özyurek investigate the types of linguistic devices used in expressing the evaluation of a narrative life experience, claiming that shared understanding of an event serves to achieve organization among multiple participants. [Richard W. Hallett, Murray State University.] Sprachgeschichte: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung. Vol. 1. 2nd edn. Ed. by Werner Besch, Anne Betten, Oskar Reichmann, and Stefan Sonderegger . (Handbücher zur Sprachund Kommunikationswissenschaft/ Handbooks oflinguistics and communication science/Manuels de linguistique et des sciences de communication. Vol. 2.) Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. 1013. DM 698. Volume 1 of the new edition of Sprachgeschichte (see Herbert Penzl's astute assessment of the first edition: Language 65. 638-43 [1989]) represents the first ofthe second generation, that is, ofnew editions ofan impressive and ambitious series of 'Handbooks of linguistics and communication science' (or, following the German title, HSK) published by Walter de Gruyter. Constituting the first of three volumes planned, these over 1,000 pages are already nearly half the length of the two volumes of the first edition (1984-85). With 232 articles (in 21 chapters) instead 464 ...