A conversation analysis approach to intimate letters

Abstract

This paper explores the similarities between ordinary conversation and intimate letters, with focus on the devices used in the epistolary form to imitate the primary genre of conversational interaction. The comparison is based on a speech-based model that draws on Bakhtin’s pragmatic theory of the utterance and of speech genres and on the Conversation Analysis perspective, according to which conversational discourse emerges through the turn system and the sequential relationships within the turn-taking activity. The study concludes that epistolary form is an endeavour by the correspondents to compensate for the absence of shared time and space through such means as negotiation of meaning through internal reading, writing to the moment, mapping the writer’s coordinates, the I-You reversibility, and the achievement of such joint projects as adjacency pairs or longer series of turn exchanges. All these devices are illustrated based on a selection of letters from the renowned courtship correspondence between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett (1845-1846).