The study of speech in interpersonal relationships: 14. Techniques for determining change-in-topic in group conversation

This investigation has been devoted, like its predecessors in the series, to the development of techniques for analyzing speech behavior in interpersonal relationships. It has been concerned with techniques for analyzing group conversation, as were the studies by Spielberg and Stafford. Those studies investigated structural relationships among parts, where the parts were conceived as the various participants. This study has undertaken to establish parts conceived in another dimension, i.e. topics of conversation. It has seemed fruitful now to study change of topics as another way of exploring the relationship of the parts to the whole situation. It has been the purpose of this investigation, therefore, to develop techniques for determining change-in-topic, so that a conversation could be divided into segments for cross-sectional type of analysis.