This volume addresses these issues of discourse analysis and embodies two crucial features that have characterized much recent work in this area. It is broadly interdisciplinary, including research in anthropology, psychology, and literature as well as linguistics, which is at the core. And it is deeply humanistic, looking at language always in context and as a human endeavor.
The authors of these collected papers demonstrate that complexities found in discourse in context reflect not only its spoken or written mode but its interactive goals and structures: genre, register, and speech event all play significant roles. A number of the chapters consider the relationship of literary to conversational language and find them closer, and distinctions between them foggier, than had previously been thought. Finally, we have a view of individuals and societies caught in changing traditions of orality and literacy intertwined with each other and with chirography, print, and technology.