Interactional linguistics

Interactional linguistics is an interdisciplinary approach to grammar and interaction in the fields

of linguistics, the sociology of language, and anthropology. Paul Hopper originally
proposed emergent grammar as a functional approach to the study of syntax in 1987.[1] Later work
expanded to include approaches to phonology and other aspects of grammar.[2]

Emergent grammar postulates that rules of grammar emerge as language is used. This is contrary to
the a priori grammar postulate, the idea that grammar rules exist in the mind before the production of
utterances.[3] Contrary to the principles of generative grammar and the concept of Universal
Grammar, interactional linguistics asserts that grammar emerges from interactions among language
users.[4] Whereas Universal Grammar claims that features of grammar are innate,[5]emergent
grammar and other interactional theories claim that the human language faculty has no innate
grammar and that features of grammar are learned through experience.

Interactional linguistics has developed in linguistic discourse analysis and conversation analysis, and
is used to investigate the relationship between grammatical structure and real-time interaction and
language use.[6]

Scholars in interactional linguistics draw from functional linguistics, conversation analysis,

and linguistic anthropology in order to describe "the way in which language figures in everyday
interaction and cognition."[7] Studies in interactional linguistics view linguistic forms, including
syntactic and prosodic structures, as greatly affected by interactions among participants in
speech, signing, or other language use. The field contrasts with dominant approaches to linguistics
during the twentieth century, which tended to focus either on the form of language per se, or on
theories of individual language user's linguistic competence.[8]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactional_linguistics