ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the mechanisms of conversational management, rather than on issues associated with power and role differentials. It begins with turntaking and moves on to consider adjacency pairs, preferred and dispreferred second parts of pairs and various structures which do not fit into a pairs schema. And then look at the structure of conversational openings and closings, various types of presequences, and repair procedures. There is a massive literature on repair in conversation to which we can refer only selectively, picking out issues of particular relevance to aphasic discourse. This literature also suggests a number of questions which might usefully be asked about the communicative abilities and strategies of aphasic conversationalists. The minimal linguistic form means that they can be used by aphasie speakers so as to allow interlocutors to carry the main interactional burden as they strive to maintain a conversation.