Help?!

[Christian Nelson]

Cilla Häggkvist wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> I would like some help finding relevant bibliography for a phenomenon I found in the conversations I am studying for my PhD thesis on intercultural communication. What I have found is something  that is constructed like this:
>
> Person A (from Spain): What places have you visited here in Spain?
>
> Person B (from Sweden): El Escorial
>
> Person C (from Sweden): and we went to Toledo
>
> Person B: and mm Zaragoza
>
> Or:
>
> Person A (from Sweden): Do you know any Swedish football-players?
>
> Person B (from Spain) well Martin Dahlin
>
> Person C (from Sweden): and what's his name Brolin
>
> Person B: yeah and Andersson
>
> Some of these "lists" (Jan Anward suggested I should call them Intersubjectivity Establishing Open-ended Lists), are more elaborated and finally become "real" topics while others remain in list format. They are often initiated by a question. I am studying this from the point of view of politeness as well as from a common-ground perspective and my question to you is if there is anything written about this? I would really appreciate whatever help I can get!
>
> Cilla Häggkvist
>
> cilla at isp.su.se

I'd recommend looking at :

Maynard, D.W., D.H. Zimmerman (1984) 'Topical talk, ritual and the social organization of relationships', Social Psychology Quarterly 47: 301-16.

Jefferson, G. (1990) 'List-construction as a task and a resource'. In: G. Psathas, eds. Interaction Competence. Washington,
D.C.: University Press of America: 63-92

Maynard and Zimmerman talk about how talk does or doesn't get pursued in conversations, which is part of what you're looking at. Button and Casey also wrote a fair amount on this--see the conversation analysis bibliographies at http://www.pscw.uva.nl/emca/resource.htm for citations of these. Finally, Jefferson's piece should have relevance. BTW, you might get even more suggestions on the languse or ethno lists (both can be found via the cios.org web
site--both "hotlines" are hosted by CIOS).

Best,
Christian Nelson