ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between individual interactions and discourse as a wider concept. The relationship between 'little d discourse' and 'big D Discourse' is not just one-way traffic, small to big; there is an equally powerful process going in the opposite direction, with 'big D Discourse' framing and determining how one carry out individual instances of 'little d discourse'. The chapter shows how new technologies are disrupting conventional ideas about spoken and written modes of communication. There is a temptation to think of speech-making as a monologic activity, and to draw a distinction between speeches and conversations as a discrete difference between monologue and dialogue. If the project of conversation analysis (CA) is to discover some generalisable facts about interaction management, then Interactional Sociolinguistics starts almost from the opposite pole, drawing on sociological and anthropological traditions to focus on the behaviour of specific communities and contexts. Variation studies have traditionally focused on spoken language.
