Description: Many scholars of language have accepted a view of grammar as a clearly delineated and internally coherent structure that is best understood as a self-contained system. The contributors to this volume propose a very different way of approaching and understanding grammar: taking as their starting point the position that the very integrity of grammar is bound up with its place in the larger schemes of the organization of human conduct, particularly social interaction, their essays explore a rich variety of linkages between interaction and grammar.
Review Quotes: "Interaction and Grammar is an innovative, informative, interesting, and, in my view, important book....The book is innovative in that the collaboration it reports is among pioneers in articulating work in formal syntax, conversation analysis, and paralinguistics....in investigation of interactional accomplishment. It is informative in illustrating something of the range of autonomously syntactic...prosodic and paralinguistic, pragmatic, and other devices available in different languages/cultures for management of turns....I will read forthcoming studies influenced by this important volume to watch the broader view gain wider acceptance." Allen D. Grimshaw, American Journal of Sociology