Chapter 3 presents a comprehensive way of analysing and describing interaction, serving as a model for the descriptions offered in the rest of the book. In the descriptive system explicated in this chapter, we approach interaction through units of various size, including expressions, illocutionary acts and Types of Talk representing discourse. The system presented in this chapter was not derived in a top-down manner, but ratheremerged as an outcome of extensive empirical research.

In Chapter 9 we examine discourse, the highest analytic unit. First, we argue that there is a major difference between the ways in which ‘discourse’ is investigated in cross-cultural pragmatics and some other fields such as Critical Discourse Analysis. To highlight differences between cross-cultural pragmatic research on discourse and Critical Discourse Analysis, we distinguish the term ‘cda’ from CDA, as an acronym from ‘contrastive discourse analysis’. We point out that discourse in cross-cultural pragmatics can be rigorously investigated through the logic of empirical research proposed by the philosopher Karl Popper. Following this, we examine various pragmatic units of analysis which are, at the same time, components of discourse itself, by arguing that discourse can only be approached rigorously across linguacultures if it is broken down into components, that is, if we systematise the units constituting data representing discourse. We also show how discourse as a departure point for analysis can be approached in cross-cultural pragmatics.