ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I describe in detail the descriptive apparatus closely based on the model in Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), with alterations which enable, initially, an efficient coding of the plays studied and discussed in chapters 2 and 3; but also, hopefully, this adaptation made for the tidied-up talk in the playscripts will prove useful for analysts of naturally occurring talk as well. The work here is specifically intended as a contribution to the linguistic analysis of all spoken discourse. I begin with an informal, though thorough, discussion of the changes that seemed necessary if the general principles of Sinclair and Coulthard’s model were to be applied fruitfully and rigorously to non-formal conversational data. I continue with a formal presentation of the general descriptive apparatus for analysing all conversation, and I conclude with some examples of coded data (taken from The Dumb Waiter) in an attempt to clarify this approach.
