Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse

By Deborah Tannen

Book Overview

Written in readable, vivid, non-technical prose, this book, first published in 2007, presents the highly respected scholarly research that forms the foundation for Deborah Tannen's best-selling books about the role of language in human relationships. It provides a clear framework for understanding how ordinary conversation works to create meaning and establish relationships. A significant theoretical and methodological contribution to both linguistic and literary analysis, it uses transcripts of tape-recorded conversation to demonstrate that everyday conversation is made of features that are associated with literary discourse: repetition, dialogue, and details that create imagery. This second edition features a new introduction in which the author shows the relationship between this groundbreaking work and the research that has appeared since its original publication in 1989. In particular, she shows its relevance to the contemporary topic 'intertextuality', and provides a useful summary of research on that topic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521868904
• ISBN13: 9780521868907
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

an important topic for serious students of social meaning

Readers who expect gender-difference discussion will be disappointed; this book's topic is very different, though equally important. Tannen shows that repetition of key pieces of a speaker's utterance are useful in a variety of ways: they maintain a topic, allow turn-taking which supports the story-teller, and reinforce a speaker's point. She also demonstrates how repetition and other cooperative strategies help conversational partners negotiate meaning together.