The conversation mop: Scenes in the stream of discourse

Abstract

The interface of thought and talk was examined in a two‐stage research project that focused on the nature of cognitive structures guiding discourse and the nature of discourse structures produced by the cognitive structures. Schank's (1982) theory of dynamic memory employs scenes as the building blocks for cognitive structures that represent action sequences. These scenes are structured by memory organization packets (MOPs). Scenes in a conversational MOP were hypothesized to be topic centered and weakly ordered by the MOP, with stronger ordering occurring between subsets of scenes. This hypothesis was verified for both the cognitive structure underlying discourse production and the actual discourse structure. Furthermore, a universal conversational scene was identified that suggests how individuals can talk on topics they know little about. Finally, the linguistic invariance in identifying the scene and the actions in a scene suggest that a limited set of scripts exists to accomplish each scene.