I-VI -- I. Introduction -- Oral Communication: Theoretical Differentiation and Integration of an Empirical Field -- II. Approaches to Orality from the Perspectives of Different Disciplines -- Somatic Communication: How Useful is 'Orality' for the Characterization of Speech Events and Cultures? -- Discourse Production in Oral Communication. A Study Based on French -- Pre-Terminal Levels of Process in Oral and Written Language Production -- III. The Empirical Domains -- Oral Cultures -- Oral Literature Embodied and Disembodied -- Verbal Duelling in Caucasian Georgia. Ethnolinguistic Studies of Three Oral Poetic Attack Genres -- Orality in Spoken German Standard and Substandard -- Levels of Analysis -- Nonverbal Aspects of Oral Communication -- Deixis and Orality: Explaining Games in Face-to-Face Interaction -- Sentence Construction Within Interaction -- Discourse and Oral Contextualizations: Vocal Cues -- Orality in Ontogenesis -- The Ontogenetic Aspect of Orality: Towards the Interactive Constitution of Linguistic Development -- "Tell Me a Book" or "Play Me a Story": The Oral Roots of Literacy Socialization -- Drama and Narration -- Reconstructive Genres of Everyday Communication -- Written Drama - Oral Performance -- Public and Institutional Orality -- Orality and Public Discourse. On the Rhetoric of Media and Political Communication -- Secondary Orality in the Electronic Media -- Medical Speech Events as Resources for Inferring Differences in Expert- Novice Diagnostic Reasoning -- IV. Methods -- Conversation Analysis: Methodological Aspects -- Ethnographic Methods in the Analysis of Oral Communication. Some Suggestions for Linguists -- Empirical and Semiotic Foundations for Prosodic Analysis -- Analysis of Nonverbal Communication -- List of Contributors -- Subject Index -- 494