Essay On Conversation In The Third Policeman

Simpson’s (1989) analysis of fictional dialogue focuses on the phatic communication of characters’ conversations in Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman in which he tries to reason three broad theoretical issues. First, he draws on a sociolinguistic framework designed for the analysis of naturally occurring conversation and applies it to the rather unusual dialogue which takes place between the characters in O’Brien’s novel with a hope that such an analysis will highlight the ways in which the conventions of ‘normal talk can be manipulated by a writer for special effect, and thereby explain the comic impact of this fictional dialogue. The second tentative aim of his research seems to go contradictory to the first when it is intended that the analysis of literary dialogue will have some implications for the study of naturally occurring conversation. Oddly enough, by examining strikingly unusual interactions in a literary text, we may alert ourselves to the discourse patterns in everyday …show more content…
What he suggests that language of dialogue involves, in essence, acts of exchange: conversationalists typically use language in the exchange of goods and services as well as information [terms previously used by Halliday, 1994]. When individuals talk to each other, they are enacting exchanges which can be either mental or physical then the conversational contribution amounts correspondingly to the relation of giving-seeking information or that of giving-taking goods and services. Accordingly he introduces typical kind of conversational act in two core categories: exchanging information and exchanging goods and services. The speech acts are therefore divided into four sub-classes of inform, question which corresponds to the first category and offer and request which is in correspondence to the