J. KEITH CHICK

The paper re-printed here as chapter 16 is part of a larger research program
in which I am investigating what the emerging field of interactional
sociolinguistics has to contribute to the better understanding of the
relationship between language and context. I am concerned, in the first
place, with the relationship between language and context in the sense of
small scale (micro-cosmic) conversational settings: with how participants'
interpretations of intent and evaluation of attitude and ability, at any stage
of the conversation, depend on the speech setting, the meanings of other
parts of the conversation and on the backgrounds of the participants. I am
concerned, also, with the relationship between language and context in the
sense of large-scale (macro-cosmic) social structure: with how what takes
place at the micro-level of social life affects such features of the macro-level
of social life as prejudice, discrimination, and the distribution of power.

As I explain more fully elsewhere ( Chick, 1984, 1987), the work of
interactional sociolinguists, and particularly their investigations of-intercul-
tural miscommunication, has important theoretical implications for linguis-
tics. Tannen ( 1984), for example, argued that intercultural communication
contributes to linguistic theory by providing a discourse analog to the
starred (ungrammatical) sentence in linguistic argumentation. In such
argumentation, ungrammatical rather than the grammatical sequences
generated by linguists' syntactic rules are taken as grounds for modifying
these rules. Similarly, the examination of asynchronous discourse -- assem-
bled by participants whose eitpectations about how to show what is meant
do not match -- reveals semantic processes that go unnoticed in successful
communication.

The focus of the research of which this paper represents a part, however,
is more applied than theoretical in purpose. Accordingly, in this epilogue,
I focus on what for me have been the two areas of major applied interest.
One of these areas is addressed in chapter 16, and I point to those aspects

-253-