Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis

Towards an analysis of discourse 21

THE STRUCTURE AND CLASSES OF MOVES

Moves are made up of acts, and moves themselves occupy places in the
structure of exchanges. In this account the structure of moves is described
class by class. As is evident from the tables on pp. 7–8 there are five classes
of move which realize two classes of exchange: Boundary exchanges are
realized by Framing and Focusing and Teaching exchanges by Opening,
Answering, and Follow-up moves.
Each of these moves has a different function. Framing moves are
probably a feature of all spoken discourse, but they occur more frequently