Linking Clauses and Actions in Social Interaction

The articles in this volume provide a state-of-the-art reflection on current thinking on the subject of linking clauses and actions in interaction. Topics treated include the linkages between verbal actions and physical actions, the linking of questions and answers in multilingual conversations and in classroom interaction, as well as the building and extension of questions in everyday conversation. Still other papers concern the linking of clauses to transform requests and offers into joint ventures, delayed completions in conversation, and quoting practices in written journalism. Most of the papers employ Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics as a basic theoretical framework.

This volume concerns the ways in which verbal and non-verbal actions are combined and linked in a range of contexts in everyday conversation, in institutional contexts, and in written journalism. The volume includes an introduction which, besides presenting the content of the articles, discusses terminological fundamentals such as the understanding of the terms “clause”, “action” and “linkage” and “combining” in different grammatical traditions and the ways they are conceived of here, as well as open questions collectively formulated by the contributors in planning for the volume concerning the recognition, emergence and distance of linkage, and the ways these questions are addressed in the contributions to the volume.