Samtalsspråkets grammatik, finns den? Frågan kan tyckas överraskande, men för de flesta människor är grammatik förknippat med skriftspråk och med skolans språkundervisning. Den traditionella grammatikforskningen har mesta-dels byggt på skriftspråket. Den här boken vill visa att också det fritt flödande, oreflekterade talet i dialoger och flerpartssamtal följer grammatiska regler, även om dessa delvis är av annan art och framsprungna ur andra praktiker än skriftspråkets.

Syftet med boken är att beskriva strategiskt valda, återkommande grammatiska strukturer som kan bilda underlag för fortsatta talspråksgrammatiska studier. Alla studierna bygger på audio- och videoinspelningar av autentiska, spontana samtal, såväl institutionella som vardagliga, personliga.

Detta är den första bok som på svenska presenterar det nya forskningsområdet interaktionell lingvistik för en större läsekrets. Förutom som ett inlägg i den vetenskapliga debatten, är den tänkt att användas på olika nivåer i den akademiska undervisningen i sociolingvistik, samtalsforskning och grammatik.

Den kan också med fördel nyttiggöras inom andra ämnen, t.ex. sociologi, och ge viktiga insikter till studerande inom utbildningar till olika service- och människovårdande yrken.

The thesis investigates reference to non-present, singular persons in Swedish talk-ininteraction. The overall aim of the study is to analyse instances of person reference as parts of their linguistic, sequential and social contexts, and to describe these instances with regard to interactional, formal/structural, and functional aspects. An important point of departure for the study is that instances of person reference must be analysed as choices from different alternatives. This means that instances of person reference should neither be thought of as mere manifestations of the speaker’s own state of knowledge of the referent and her/his assessment of the addressee’s knowledge state, nor as reflections of structural aspects of the discourse. Theoretically and methodologically, the study belongs to the fields of interactional linguistics and conversation analysis (CA). The data for the study are drawn from naturally occurring everyday and institutional interaction and includes two-party and multi-party interaction, and telephone as well as face-to-face interaction.

The analyses of introductory references to persons highlight issues such as the speaker’s claimed knowledge of/familiarity with the referent as well as the claims being made on behalf of the addressee, the role and importance of the referent in the activity of the talk, and the implications of person reference on the affiliation/disaffiliation of the participants with the referent, as well as with each other. The analyses of references to persons that have already been introduced in the interaction centres on partly different issues. The categorization of these references is based on two factors; the first being the sequential position of the reference and the second being whether the reference contributes to sequential continuity or discontinuity. The analyses emphasize that referential choice is an important resource for the construction of continuity and discontinuity, and that participants make use of these resources in unmarked as well as marked ways. This means that participants choose between different referential expressions, and these choices have different consequences depending on, inter alia, the sequential position of the reference. The study shows that reference to persons is doubly contextual: participants’ referential choices are made in consideration of the foregoing as well as the upcoming activity of the talk. Consequently, in order to adequately describe instances of person reference, the sequential context must be taken into account.