Strategies of Talk in Legislative Discourse: Linguistic and Discursive Principles of Doing Legislation

In the context of democratic governance, the legislature serves as the avenue for the ventilation of differing opinions and interests in an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation. Legislators perform this task using language to do a variety of political activities: moving motions, opposing or supporting bills,interrogating or generally doing legislation within an institutional framework requiring strict adherence to interactional and discursive formats. In this bold effort, Ayo Ayodele presents a typological framework for the description of the linguistic, interactional and discursive resources required for members' effective participation in the legislature. Drawing on insights from the conversation analytic,speech act and Dijk's contextual theories,he explores the nature of turn-taking and topical development highlighting their lexico-grammatical features. Other structural and functional properties of utterances that enhance propositional development in legislative discourse are also highlighted in the book. The book, Strategies of Talk in Legislative Discourse, is for everyone with interest in human communication, especially discourse analysts and politicians