Variety and style in spoken English — II: conversation

Abstract

Ordinary conversation is perhaps the most important variety of social language use, and the most basic, in the sense that in infancy we are motivated to learn the language or languages we hear around us just so that we can interact with other people. And, of course, we continue to use language in daily conversational interaction with others throughout our lives. Many of us, it is true, might spend some of our time using the written medium to complete forms or produce notes, letters, reports, essays, articles or books, but for all of us, most of our time is spent talking to others. (See David Langford, Analysing Talk ch. 1, for a fuller discussion of spoken and writen language use.)