People engage in discourse every day - from writing letters and
presenting papers to simple discussions. Yet discourse is a complex and
fascinating phenomenon that is not well understood. This volume stems
from a multidisciplinary workshop in which eminent scholars in
linguistics, sociology and computational linguistics presented various
aspects of discourse. The topics treated range from multi-party
conversational interactions to deconstructing text from various
perspectives, considering topic-focus development and discourse
structure, and an empirical study of discourse segmentation. The
chapters not only describe each author's favorite burning issue in
discourse but also provide a fascinating view of the research
methodology and style of argumentation in each field.