Speakers, Listeners and Communication: Explorations in Discourse Analysis

Gillian Brown draws on a wide range of examples of discourse analysis to explore the ways in which speakers and listeners use language collaboratively to talk about what they can see in front of them and about a series of events. The focus of her attention is on the listener's role, as the listener tries to make sense of what the speaker says in a highly constrained context; and her cognitive/pragmatic approach to discourse analysis both complements and challenges current sociological/anthropological perspectives on the subject.