Abstract
Psycholinguistic experiments have shed much light on the distinct processes of listening and speaking. However, less is known about how these processes are coordinated in the service of language use in conversation, both between individuals who alternate in their roles as speaker and hearer, and within the mind of the individual language user who is processing on many levels at once. This article addresses the coordination of language use between individuals. I will present a program of research that focuses on how paralinguistic cues and processes contribute to communication, including: how conversation is shaped by communication media through the process of grounding; how devices such as hedges, latencies to responses, and intonation may be used in coordination; how disfluencies are distributed in referential communication and how they affect the interpretation of utterances; and how the choice of particular expressions in conversation reflects partner-specific adjustments between speakers and addressees. These paralinguistic aspects of language use bear on how people manage to repair problems in speaking and understanding in order to converge on the same perspective.
