ABSTRACT
In an earlier section it was argued that certain underlying rules and regularities operative in day-to-day exchanges are at work as ‘authenticating conventions’ which are also enabling conventions in the interpretation of dramatic dialogue. The specificities of interaction in any segment of a play among the dramatis personae can be seen to be the product of the manipulation and exploitation of such ‘rules’ and conventions by dramatists for dramatic purposes. Segments of action are shaped through the employment of such resources within the alternating course of dialogue. If this is the case, some understanding of these resources should prove useful in analysing dramatic dialogue and it is to the work done recently on the mechanics of conversation itself that we now turn.
