Analysis of Discourse and Interaction: Overview

Abstract When we speak of the study of discourse and interaction, we are mostly concerned with the analysis of synchronous conversation as opposed to written texts, although we might also consider text‐based computer‐mediated communication. This is not to say that writing is not interactive: people write letters to each other and, more recently, engage in asynchronous written interaction through blogs and social networking sites. The focus of the analysis of discourse and interaction, however, has traditionally been on “real‐time ”interaction in which participants are temporally copresent (though they may be spatially distant) and jointly engaged in some kind of social action. Examples include face‐to‐face interactions of various kinds (from religious rituals to casual conversations), telephone conversations, video conferences, chat and instant messaging sessions, and the interaction between avatars in online games or in virtual worlds. Discourse analysts are chiefly concerned with how parties in interaction work together to construct their social identities, their social relationships and their social realities moment by moment through language.