The style of accompanying dialogues

Conversations accompanying collective activities are exceptionally appropriate material for the development of “interactional stylistics” (cf. Orgoňová – Bohunická 2018). They display a number of specific aspects, including a low frequency of full-meaning expressions and, conversely, a high frequency of substitute deictic expressions, used when showing and pointing. Characteristic for these dialogues is the observation of the cooperative principle (Grice 1975), above all through various forms of agreement, strengthened by reduplication and intensification (yeah that’s it that’s it; yeah that’s clear, of course); also through speakers repeating after their interlocutors, but also through emphatic, confirmational repetition of their own expressions or the accompaniment of utterances and turns with strong coreference. Less frequent, but striking, are the expressions of motivated, functional disagreement, gradually eliminated through negotiation. Through the use of all of these means, a specific structure of the conversation is created, often based on the actual coproduction of turns, on non-extensive overlaps and on the use of numerous continuers. Here, verbal communication merges inseparably with gestures, movements and facial expressions, which necessarily leads to the use of methods based on the analysis of video recordings.