EPISODES - CODING AND ANALYZING COHERENCE IN MULTIPARTY CONVERSATION

Episodes in conversation are topically and interactionally defined The y are boundaried sequences at a structurally intermediate level, that is, above the level of utterance/turn but below that of the whole enco unter and its major phases. We argue that episodes and topics are equa lly basic to conversation The initiation of a new episode involves, pe r definition, the introduction of something new. On the other hand, ep isode initiations are systematically dependent on textual and contextu al resources that speakers take as given, when - in the interaction - they guide their interlocutors into doing or talking about something n ew. This paper presents the fundamentals of a model of episode structu re and its relations to contextual resources. It also outlines a metho d, topical episode analysis, for coding and analyzing coherence in ter ms of episode structure in (especially multiparty) conversation.