Stylistics, conversation analysis and the cooperative principle

This chapter describes Conversation analysis (CA) and the cooperative principle (CP), and illustrates how they can be applied for the analysis of spoken interaction in literary texts beyond the mechanics of turn-taking. CA and CP are two approaches associated with understanding structure and order in naturally occurring speech, and in particular, how speakers communicate cooperatively. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson analysed naturally occurring conversation as a distinct form of spoken interaction and developed a model of conversation called Conversation Analysis. Some of the earliest work on CP in stylistics tended to focus on characters and their relationships with and intentions towards other characters. He explains that this can be gained by considering several factors: how a reader&s;s prior knowledge contributes to characterisation; how a reader infers characteristics from the text; and what textual cues exist in characterisation.