This book is a study of around seven hours of naturally occurring video data, recorded by the author in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. Drawing on the methodology of Conversation Analysis, Gazin analyses instructional sequences of interaction during driving lessons. The temporal constraints of mobility make the driving lessons a rich setting for the investigation of sequence organisation and action constitution. The author identifies different types of actions that compose the unfolding driving and instructing activity, and their turn-constructional features (e.g. different verb...

This volume offers the long-awaited overview of the work of the French philosopher and discourse analyst Michel Pêcheux, who was the leading figure in French discourse analysis until his death in 1983. The volume presents the first English publication of the work of Pêcheux and his coworkers on automatic discourse analysis. It is presented with extensive annotations and introductions, written by former colleagues such as Françoise Gadet, Paul Henry and Denise Maldidier. Outside France, French discourse analysis is almost exclusively known as the form of philosophical discourse presented by...

Brochures play a significant role in governmental public information provision. Every year many brochures are distributed to inform, instruct or persuade people. These brochures may benefit from a systematic design process, including applied research such as pretesting. Among communication professionals, the importance of pretesting is practically undisputed. Readers from the target audience are assumed to provide valuable insights into whether a document really works. Organizations therefore increasingly try to include a pretest in the design process of important documents. Various pretest...

A central issue of cognitive studies of text production is What goes on in people's minds when they produce a text?, How do they plan the text?, How do they decide in what order to express their thoughts? In this volume, writers are followed in their footsteps during the moment-to-moment process of producing routine business letters. Their writing processes are explored in real time with the ultimate goal to contribute to a cognitive theory of text production. Such a theory should tell what kind of mental structures underly text production, how these structures are converted into coherent...

In this volume researchers from American and European universities and institutes present their recent research on 'Functional Communication Quality'. Functional refers to the purposes of the communication process. The relations between these purposes and the best way to describe them, are some of the topics discussed. Communication refers to a complex interactive process. Relevant variables include the speech act of the participants, features of the message, chosen channel, moment, duration, frequency, environment. The participants in this process are individuals and groups as well as...