The Strategic Use of Question-Answer Pairs in Russian

Abstract: One of the most important social activities in the lives of human beings is conversation. Apart from thoughts and ideas, we can express our feelings and emotions by means of conversation. Moreover, since conversation is recognized as a reciprocal process, we can understand and grasp what the people involved in the interaction are displaying. Being all around us, conversation is a means which makes us social. Its description and analysis have become a concern for many scientists. For the past forty years, conversation has been a subject of study for sociologists, linguists and social psychologists. Since that time, we may speak of the emergence of conversation analysis (hereinafter referred to as CA).