The topic of this volume was discussed at a Round Table of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA) at the University of Bologna in March 1995. The Round Table was intended to make a scientific contribution in honour of the president's 65th birthday. The topic refers on the one hand to the central problem of 'Dialogue Analysis' which is to discover a new, communicatively functioning unit after having left behind the unit of the sentence which can be considered the unit par excellence of structural linguistics. On the other hand, it includes the manifold units, relations, and strategies, i.e. the specific problems of dialogue analysis.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue is the first comprehensive overview of the emerging and rapidly growing sub-discipline in linguistics, Language and Dialogue. Edited by one of the top scholars in the field, Edda Weigand, and comprising contributions written by a variety of likewise influential figures, the handbook aims to describe the history of modern linguistics as reasoned progress leading from de Saussure and the simplicity of artificial terms to the complexity of human action and behaviour, which is based on the integration of human abilities such as speaking, thinking, perceiving, and having emotions. The book is divided into three sections: the first focuses on the history of modern linguistics and related disciplines; the second part focuses on the core issues and open debates in the field of Language and Dialogue and introduces the arguments pro and contra certain positions; and the third section focuses on the three components that fundamentally affect language use: human nature, institutions, and culture. This handbook is the ideal resource for those interested in the relationship between Language and Dialogue, and will be of use to students and researchers in Linguistics and related fields such as Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Linguistics, and Communication.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Dialogue is the first comprehensive overview of the emerging and rapidly growing sub-discipline in linguistics, Language and Dialogue. Edited by one of the top scholars in the field, Edda Weigand, and comprising contributions written by a variety of likewise influential figures, the handbook aims to describe the history of modern linguistics as reasoned progress leading from de Saussure and the simplicity of artificial terms to the complexity of human action and behaviour, which is based on the integration of human abilities such as speaking, thinking, perceiving, and having emotions. The book is divided into three sections: the first focuses on the history of modern linguistics and related disciplines; the second part focuses on the core issues and open debates in the field of Language and Dialogue and introduces the arguments pro and contra certain positions; and the third section focuses on the three components that fundamentally affect language use: human nature, institutions, and culture. This handbook is the ideal resource for those interested in the relationship between Language and Dialogue, and will be of use to students and researchers in Linguistics and related fields such as Discourse Analysis, Cognitive Linguistics, and Communication.

The aim of this book is to establish a general theory of communication on the basis of a functional dialogic speech act taxonomy and to apply it to a communicative grammar of the German language. The unit of description is the sequence consisting of action and reaction in the action game. The completely revised second edition develops a new concept of communicative competence which goes beyond a closed system of conventions and can be described as competence-in-performance. The book thus follows a new notion of theory based on probability principles.