A Framework For Comparing Language Experiences (With Particular Emphasis On: The Effect Of Audience On Discourse Models)

Those of us who have been involved in the study of language have often thrown up our hands in dismay at the complexity of the problem (at least I have, almost daily) and tried somewhat desperately to find some facet of the many-faced gem we confront which appears manageable. This desire to focus to train the flashlights we use to illuminate the problem on a well-circumscribed area led, for example, to the early transformational grammarians' separation of syntax from the rest of language. Many researchers have since discarded that particular focus and attempted to integrate syntax, semantics and pragmatics in a single theory. Yet, even they end up focusing on a particular kind of linguistic interaction. Many study oral conversations, some look at computer-person dialogues, some study newspaper articles. These limitations in scope are often not explicit, but are reflected in the examples they choose and discuss. Very few people study more than one communicative situation and even if they do, they do not usually analyze the similarities and differences among them.