Strategy and structure in conversational influence attempts

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Abstract
Discourse analytic research has treated the communicative and sequential properties of conversational influence attempts (CIAs) independently. This study assembles evidence that the communicative properties of a variety of act‐types in CIA episodes can be placed on a continuum according to the degree to which the act‐type is dissociated from the illocutionary force of a request. Conversationalists’ assignment of any utterance to a place on this continuum is inherently problematic, being a matter of fallible assessment of mutual contextual knowledge. This continuum and its problematic application in conversation provides an integrated account of a variety of previously fragmented sequential patterns of CIAs.

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