Gillian Brown draws on a wide range of examples of discourse analysis to
explore the ways in which speakers and listeners use language
collaboratively to talk about what they can see in front of them and
about a series of events. The focus of her attention is on the
listener's role, as the listener tries to make sense of what the speaker
says in a highly constrained context; and her cognitive/pragmatic
approach to discourse analysis both complements and challenges current
sociological/anthropological perspectives on the subject.