Communicative Breakdown in Conversation: Arguments for a Corpus-based Analysis

Abstract

Scholars from various different disciplines have argued that the study of communicative breakdown in everyday verbal exchange provides valuable evidence of how human interactive endeavour is accomplished, since the nature of such accomplishment is not amenable to direct investigation. However, to our knowledge, there has been no systematic programme of research to consider the nature of this evidence nor indeed any attempt, other than on an ad hoc basis, to identify the structural criteria and types of interaction that can occur because of some failure to communicate successfully. By discussing what such a programme might involve with reference to the study of one particular type of breakdown, namely 'misunderstanding', this paper aims to illustrate the potentially rich contribution that a study of this kind can make in developing an appropriately evidenced analysis of communicative events in general.