Some methodological issues for the analysis of everyday conversations among the /Gui

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Periodical article

Title:	Some methodological issues for the analysis of everyday conversations among the /Gui
Author:	Sugawara, Kazuyoshi
Year:	1996
Periodical:	African Study Monographs: Supplementary Issue
Issue:	22
Pages:	145-164
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Botswana
Subjects:	San social networks oratory
External link:	https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/68372/1/ASM_S_22_145.pdf
Abstract:	Since 1987 the author has recorded and transcribed various everyday conversations among the /Gui San (Bushmen) at the Xade settlement in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana. In this article, he examines a number of methodological issues which arise when analysing conversation in an ethnographic context. Criticizing the theoretical model proposed by H.P. Grice (1975), he points out that a principle-centred understanding of everyday conversation is insufficient in that it neglects the dynamics of face-to-face interaction in social context. An examination of joking-avoidance relationships among the /Gui, in which the author correlates the quality of social relationship between participants in a conversation with the temporal organization of the conversation and the pattern of turn-taking between speakers, distinguishing between the formalization of conversational interaction and immediate-reflexive responsiveness, further indicates the inadequacy of the principle-centred view. App., bibliogr., notes, sum.