Kafka og konversationsanalyse

En dialog om dialog

Abstract

This paper promotes a dialogue between literary and linguistic studies. I argue that both schools benefit from such a dialogue, and I build my case upon the analysis of an extract from Franz Kafka’s novel Amerika. The analysis illustrates that conversation analysis’ insights regarding conversational organisation in verbal interaction are helpful in order to achieve a deeper understanding of dialogue in fiction. This is possible because literary fiction, to a very large degree, borrows, and artistically uses, the many speech genres of everyday life that conversation analysis has specialised in studying. I argue that conversation analysis may add an interactional perspective to the literary analysis, but I also argue that literary analysis may supplement conversation analysis a holistic perspective with applied possibilities.