Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-173) and indexes.
"For academic researchers and advanced students in linguistics specialising in applied linguistics and/or pragmatics, and for all 'behavioural science' researchers and students interested in discourse analysis."--Jacket.
"Most studies reported in the literature of the language of groups and intimates until now have been global, imprecise or unsystematic, and have described the language as a product at a given time; no systematic study appears to have been carried out to follow through the interactions of individuals as they form a group, to discover precisely how and why language changes over time as assumed knowledge grows. Here, Joan Cutting focuses on the precise changes that occur with increasing knowledge over time, and uses a longitudinal approach to describe the language as a process."
"This book describes how the language used in social interaction evolves from the time speakers first meet and becomes the in-group code of a given discourse community (in this case the academic community)."