ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of some preliminary attempts to address the issue, to assess in general terms the likely usefulness of the functional discursive approach, and argues that the importance of further studies to examine the predictive utility of functional discursive modelling in a variety of different contexts. The usefulness of any model of the type proposed hangs crucially on its ability to predict behaviour. The functional discursive model argues that “drugspeak” may be conceptualised as a series of types of conversations, the veridical status of which is unknown and unknowable. The practical usefulness of the system however derives from the extent to which empirical relationships can be found between types of discourse and other things of interest for the study of drug problems. On the basis of the transcripts of the conversations, raters placed each drug mentioned on a simple three-point frequency scale according to their understanding of what was being said.
