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Part of
Empirical Studies of the Construction of Discourse
Edited by Óscar Loureda, Inés Recio Fernández, Laura Nadal and Adriana Cruz
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 305] 2019
► pp. 93–130

Chapter 4
A preliminary typology of interactional figures based on a tool for visualizing conversational structure

| Val.Es.Co. Group (Valencia, Español Coloquial)
| University of Valencia

The aim of this paper is to study interactional structure based on the connections between interventions (or turns) in a dialogue. Dialogic discourse is understood as an organization that connects each intervention to other interventions on both sides of it. We use a visualization tool to connect interventions based on the types of reactive and initiative relations between them. The result is a visual representation of the whole conversation, which can be used for the systematic analysis of structural phenomena and the detection of phenomena which might have been previously unnoticed.

Keywords: linguistic visualization tools, interactional structure, figures, Val.Es.Co. segmentation model
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The Val.Es.Co segmentation model
    • 1.2Visualization tools for linguistic data: Val.Es.Co. Visualization Tool
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.A preliminary typology of interactional figures
    • 3.1Peak: Independent exchange
    • 3.2Zipper: Consecutive reactive-initiative interventions
    • 3.3Rake: Discontinuous intervention
    • 3.4Sticks: Parallel discontinuous interventions
    • 3.5Fence: Frame exchange
      • 3.5.1Closed fence
      • 3.5.2Open fence
      • 3.5.3Free fence
    • 3.6Line: Independent intervention
    • 3.7Comb: Series of independent interventions
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
    • 4.1Some thoughts on the notion of figure
    • 4.2Our figures versus previously studied phenomena at the level of interactional structure
    • 4.3Partial and global descriptions of structural interactional phenomena
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 August 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.305.04esp
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