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Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse

Jane H Hill editor Judith T Irvine editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:3rd Jun '93

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Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse cover

In Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse twelve prominent linguists and linguistic anthropologists examine 'responsibility', 'authority', and 'knowledge': central, but problematic, concepts in contemporary anthropology. Their detailed case studies analyze diverse forms of oral discourse - everyday conversation, conversational narrative, song, oratory, divination, and ritual poetry - in societies in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The studies show how speakers attribute responsibility for acts and states of affairs, how particular forms of language and discourse relate to claims and disclaimers of responsibility, and how verbal acts are themselves social acts, subject to such attributions. The volume challenges those cognitive theorists who locate responsibility for the meaning of verbal acts solely in the intentions of individual speakers. Instead, the contributors focus on the production of meaning between speakers and audiences in particular social and cultural contexts, through dialogue and interaction which mediate between linguistic forms and their interpretations. This landmark volume will serve for years to come as a point of reference in the study, not only of responsibility and evidence, but of reported speech, authorship, and other phenomena in the social life of language. Besides linguistic and cultural anthropologists, linguistics, and folklorists, it will interest also readers from pragmatics, legal studies, sociology, religion, and social psychology.

"This book is an exceedingly important contribution to the understanding of the use of rhetorical devices in oral discourse....the volume as a whole gives us a rich, multicultural perspective on the impact of context and interaction in the construction of meaning." The Modern Language Journal
"This very cohesive volume will be of particular interest to second language reserchers studying speech acts....All of the articles in this volume provide insights into a wide variety of authentic speech events and speech acts." Susan Fiksdal, Studies in Second Language Acquisitions

ISBN: 9780521415156

Dimensions: 235mm x 156mm x 23mm

Weight: 601g

324 pages