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Dissertation Information for Celilia E. Ford

NAME:
- Celilia E. Ford

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Linguistics

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1988)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Grammar in ordinary interaction: The pragmatics of adverbial clauses in conversational English

Abstract: "Interactional language use--conversation--outweighs all other types of language use, yet within linguistics, conversation has not received adequate attention. While linguists have begun to more seriously examine the role of discourse structures in the patterning of interclausal relations, even cross-genre comparisons of language use have not looked closely enough at clause connections in naturally occurring interaction. The present study directly addresses the issue of interclausal relations in ordinary conversational English, looking at the use of adverbial clauses in a corpus of telephone and face-to-face conversations.

A major claim that underlies this study is that interactional language use involves more than the transmission of information; in interaction, language use involves the management of turn-taking as well as the management of social roles. In order to approach the use of adverbial clauses in interaction, the present study makes use of the sociological tool of conversation analysis.

While patterns of usage in the conversational corpus display some overlap with previous findings based on monologue data, close analysis of conversational contexts reveals significant interactional dimensions in adverbial clause usage. An understanding of the joint management of interaction is found to be crucial to the description of adverbial clause usage in these conversations.

The present findings contribute to our general knowledge of American English usage. The findings are of particular relevance to studies comparing written and spoken English, calling into question assumptions regarding the constancy of function for grammatical forms across genres. Cross-genre comparisons must be done with an awareness that some interactional functions found in the uses of adverbial clauses in conversation will not arise in written language use. The present study provides an example of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding grammar in use, augmenting linguistics with sociological principles of conversational interaction."

MPACT Scores for Celilia E. Ford

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:33:08

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