Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Interpretation / 137

5.3 The sustaining of Interaction

5.3.1 Hone Conversations

The sustaining of discourse is a function of:

- the purpose of the interaction and the roles of the participants, as
they are perceived Ъу the participants themselves, which influence the
communicative intentions;

- the process of the interaction, that is the way initiations are made,
turns allocated and breakdowns repaired;

- the structure of the Interaction , that is the combination of utteran-
ces and turns into larger units (like adjacency pairs, exchanges, or
other hierarchical taxonomies) ;

- the general principles governing interactions (like the Gricean maxims
for cooperative conversation).

All these elements are interlocked and culturally based, as participants
make use of their background knowledge with varying degrees of
awareness.

First, the relationship between dominance (who sustains the discourse)
and function of utterances will be examined. In general terms, there is
no great difference between adults and children in their use of language
in home interactions (see Table 5.5). However, there is a marked
difference between adults and children in the use of the two basic
functions of language in social interaction: adults tend to seek
(information, action, acknowledgment), while children tend to give
(information, comment, acknowledgment) (see Table 5.6)

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