Linking Clauses and Actions in Social Interaction

This volume is intended as a reader for students and scholars working in the field of grammar and interaction. It deals with ways in which verbal and non-verbal actions are combined and linked in everyday conversation, in institutional contexts, and in written journalism. The papers employ Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics as a framework and examine data from Finnish, English, Estonian, French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Swedish. The introduction examines fundamentals such as the understanding of the terms 'clause', 'action', 'linkage', and 'combining' in different grammatical traditions and in the present collection. It also addresses open questions concerning the recognition, emergence, and distance of linkage and outlines what answers to these questions are provided by the contributions to the volume.