Patterns of encounter management: Further arguments for discourse variables

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Abstract
Studies of linguistic variation in communities ought to be able to capture variable patterns of discourse. But there are problems in quantitatively studying variable realisations of functional units, because it is impossible to list variants exhaustively. A more abstract approach to discourse variation can examine the distribution of variants which are themselves functional units, tied to higher-order functions. This form of analysis is exemplified in a travel agency setting, where education groups are differentiated by the levels of explicitness with which they manage their encounters: in the identifying of purposes and roles and in the marking of closing transactions and other transaction boundaries. (Discourse variation, discourse analysis, communicative explicitness, travel agency talk)