The extension of the original model to other situations has prompted a number of innovations and additional insights which are expounded in a series of contributions linked by complimentary themes. There are contributions on the role of intonation and of kinetics in discourse analysis; explorations of the problems of the analytic category ‘sentence’ and of the problems raised by casual conversation; and there is extended discussion of the structural properties underlying exchanges of utterances.
The book moves easily between data and theory, forming a unified whole. It sums up a continuing and lively debate within a common tradition of discourse analysis and may well serve as a programmatic statement for future work in the field.