Many scholars of language have accepted a view of grammar as a clearly delineated and internally coherent structure which is best understood as a self-contained system. The contributors to this volume propose a very different way of approaching and understanding grammar, taking it as part of a broader range of systems which underlie the organization of social life and emphasizing its role in the use of language in everyday interaction and cognition.

Taking as their starting-point the position that the very integrity of grammar is bound up with its place in the larger schemes of the organization of human conduct, particularly with social interaction, their essays explore a rich variety of linkages between interaction and grammar.