Shovak O. I. Fundamentals of the Theory of Speech Communication

the level of the social situation, or the immediate social environment in which the discourse occurs;

the level of the social institution which constitutes a wider matrix for the discourse;

the level of the society as a whole.

So, in seeing language as discourse and a social practice, one is committing oneself not just to analysing texts, processes of production and interpretation, but to analysing the relationship between texts, processes and their social conditions.

4. 
   Conversation as a discourse type
   

Of the many types of communicative act, most study has been devoted to conversation seen as the most fundamental and pervasive means of conducting human affairs. These very characteristics, however, complicate any investigation. Because people interact linguistically in such a wide range of social situations, on such a variety of topics, and with such an unpredictable set of participants, it has proved very difficult to determine the extent to which conversational behaviour is systematic, and to generalize about it. There is now no doubt that such a system exists. Conversation turns out, upon analysis, to be a highly structured activity, in which people tacitly operate with a set of basic conversations. A comparison has even been drawn with games such as chess: conversations, it seems, can be thought of as having an opening, a middle and an end game. The participants make their moves and often seem to follow certain rules as the dialogue proceeds. But the analogy ends there. A successful conversation is not a game: it is no more than a mutually satisfying linguistic exchange. Conversation as a discourse type may acquire different roles. The term conversation is widely used in a non-technical sense, and people seem capable of distinguishing it from other kinds of talk. They mean that the talk is less formal. Discourse analysts are rather vague about what they mean by conversation too, and some seem to use the term to describe any kind of oral interaction. It is possible to define the term as follows:
1. It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.

2. 
   Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended.
   
3. 
   The number of participants is small.
   
4. 
   Turns are quite short.
   
5. 
   Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience.
   

These definitions are imprecise. For example, considering (3), there is no fixed number of participants at which conversation becomes impossible, but although a conversation can take place between five people, it cannot take place between a hundred. Or again, considering (4), there is no fixed length for turns in conversation, and sometimes one participant holds the floor for some time; yet although we might call a turn of four minutes part of a conversation, we would consider conversation to have ceased if someone talked for an hour and a half. Nevertheless, the definitions are useful despite their imprecision. The boundary between conversation and other discourse types is a fuzzy one, and there are many intermediate cases. A seminar, for example, might come somewhere between the two poles. We can represent the difference between the two as a cline, or continuum, with extreme cases at either end and a range of intermediate possibilities in between: