This book provides a basic approach to the linguistic analysis of conversation, building toward a theory of the aesthetics of conversation by analyzing spontaneous talk among friends. It sheds light on such issues as pacing, turn-taking, storytelling, and humor, showing the effects on interaction when participants' conversational styles differ. Its readability makes it suitable for use as a text in discourse analysis at all levels.

This book focuses attention on a relatively neglected component of communication-silence-in order to present current research from a number of disciplines and also to stimulate further research on the subject. Silence is often viewed as an out-of-awareness phenomenon against which talk is perceived. By reversing polarities and treating silence as a figure to be examined against talk, we are given a heightened awareness of the universal aspects of human behavior while emphasizing its complex nature as a cultural phenomenon.

This book provides a basic approach to the linguistic analysis of conversation, building toward a theory of the aesthetics of conversation by analyzing spontaneous talk among friends. It sheds light on such issues as pacing, turn-taking, storytelling, and humor, showing the effects on interaction when participants' conversational styles differ. Its readability makes it suitable for use as a text in discourse analysis at all levels.

This book focuses attention on a relatively neglected component of communication-silence-in order to present current research from a number of disciplines and also to stimulate further research on the subject. Silence is often viewed as an out-of-awareness phenomenon against which talk is perceived. By reversing polarities and treating silence as a figure to be examined against talk, we are given a heightened awareness of the universal aspects of human behavior while emphasizing its complex nature as a cultural phenomenon.

"Tannen combines a novelist's ear for the way people speak with a rare power of original analysis....Fascinating."
--Oliver Sacks, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and The Mind's Eye

In That's Not What I Meant , Deborah Tannen, renowned communication expert and author of the New York Times bestsellers You're Wearing THAT? and You Just Don't Understand, explores how conversational styles can make or break interpersonal relationships at home, at work, or at play. Fans of her books and the healthily curious...

Our everyday lives are increasingly being lived through electronic media, which are changing our interactions and our communications in ways that we are only beginning to understand. In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, editors Deborah Tannen and Anna Marie Trester team up with top scholars in the field to shed light on the ways language is being used in, and shaped by, these new media contexts.

Topics explored include: how Web 2.0 can be conceptualized and theorized; the role of English on the worldwide web; how use of social media such as Facebook and texting shape...