Advice in Conversation

This Element is a contribution to a new generation of corpus pragmatics research by taking as its starting point the multifaceted nature of speech acts in conversation and by adopting a mixed-methods approach. Through a unique combination of theoretical qualitative quantitative and statistical approaches it provides a detailed investigation of advice-giving and advice uptake in relation to (i) the range of constructions used to give advice in different discourse contexts and at different points in time and (ii) their interaction with dialogic and social factors of advice uptake as key components of frames of advice exchanges in natural conversation. Using data from the London-Lund Corpora of spoken British English the Element shows firstly that there are systematic differences in advising between discourse contexts over the past half a century and secondly that who gave the advice and how they did it are the strongest predictors of the advisee''s response. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.