Topic 5

Conversation analysis, metapragmatics

Conversation analysis. Empirical studies of conversation in diverse social groups and situations as opposed to discourse analysis (based on the speech acts theory and general theory of communicative interaction). Critical discourse analysis, with its interrelations to social psychology, sociology and political science is mentioned rather briefly, with some examples of the discourse of Czech communist press in the recent past. The explanations discuss forms and methods of conversational analysis, differences between monologue and dialogue, as well as the main types of dialogues (dialogue structure, turn-taking etc.). One of the sub-chapters is devoted to phatic communication in Czech. Also, an interview (as a type of a dialogue) and some specific features of communication in mass-media are presented, with extension to political rhetorics.

Metapragmatics deals with reflection of pragmatic phenomena in communication. It concerns both commenting (and naming) acts of communication and reflecting particular communicative strategies (in this viewpoint, every token of reported speech is metapragmatic). Reflection of communicative acts and the (meta-linguistic) names denoting and reporting communication create in every language a specific semantic domain which, as a result, has its secondary influence on the ways how speakers perceive their own language and its usage (incl. self-monitoring).