The cooperative nature of conversation. Evidence from conversational exchanges

Abstract

The cooperative dimension of human linguistic communication has been gaining increasing recognition as a central problem in the evolution of language. Our paper documents the phenomenon of cooperative norms in conversation, with evidence gained through the application of the tools of Conversational Analysis (CA) to a corpus of spoken conversational exchanges. The backdrop to our discussion is the concept of planbox escalation, a ‘default’ exclusively goal-oriented strategy, which we relate to the notion of Pan economicus from comparative psychology. We focus on the way conversational exchanges, especially what we call economic exchanges, diverge from the predictions of this model, thus pointing to the existence of cooperative norms.