Elizabeth Holt & Paul Drew
Figurative pivots: The use of figurative expressions in pivotal topic transitions
Elizabeth Holt is a Senior Lecturer in English Studies at Huddersfield University, UK. She is a conversation analyst, mainly focusing on recurrent features of ordinary interaction. She has conducted extensive research into the use of figurative expressions and reported speech in mainly informal conversation. She has also conducted research into the structure of death announcements. Most recently she has edited a volume on the use of reported speech in interaction (with Rebecca Clift) to be published by CUP in 2005/6.
Paul Drew is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. His research in conversation analysis focuses on communicative practices which underlie ordinary conversational interaction, as well more specialized interactions in the workplace and institutional (especially legal and medical) settings. He is the co-author (with Max Atkinson) of Order in Court: Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings (1979) and co-editor (with John Heritage) of Talk at Work (1992). He has published in such journals as the American Sociological Review, Language in Society, Research on Language and Social Interaction and the Journal of Pragmatics. He is currently working on projects concerning affiliation and disaffiliation; and communication between patients and medical professionals.
This article on the use of figurative expressions as topical pivots arises out of on going research into the sequences of actions to which these devices recurrently belong. Earlier work revealed that they commonly occur within topic termination, prior to the introduction of a new and unrelated matter. However, within this collection a significant number were associated with more gradual "stepwise" transisitions to a next matter. The practices underlying these pivotal figurative transistions are explored here.
