Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations of Arguments in Conversations

by Edited by Allen D. Grimshaw

• ISBN13: 9780521335508
• ISBN10: 0521335507
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-04-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Studies of language use in social contexts have multiplied in recent decades, yet relatively little attention has been paid to the important area of conflict talk. The eleven studies in this volume fulfil this need, using analytic and interpretative perspectives to examine the disputes of adults and of children. Most of the studies are based on audio or sound-image records of naturally occurring discourse arising in a variety of contexts. These range from street to school, from courtroom to hospital, and from home to workplace. Allen Grimshaw has provided a short introductory chapter and extensive theoretical conclusion to the studies, which come from a variety of disciplines: the authors comprise anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, a lawyer and a psychologist. The book will appeal to researchers and advanced students in all of these areas, and also to counsellors, legal professionals and negotiators.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Preface

Introduction

Introduction

The Studies: Learning to Argue

Disputes in the peer culture of American and Italian nursery-school children

Serious and playful disputes: variation in conflict talk among female adolescents

Interstitial argument

The sequential organisation of closing verbal family conflict

The Studies: How 'Grown-ups Do It'

Ideological themes in reports of interracial conflict

Oracular reasoning in a psychiatric exam: the resolution of conflict in language

Rules versus relationships in small claims disputes

The judge as third party in American trial-court conflict talk

Difference and dominance: how labour and management talk conflict

The management of a co-operative self during argument: the role of opinions and stories

Silence as conflict management in fiction and drama: Pinter's Betrayal and a short story, Great Wits

Conclusion

Research on conflict talk: antecedents, resources, findings, directions

List of references

Name Index

Subject Index

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