This project aims to re-examine claims that Aboriginal Australians conduct conversations in different ways to Anglo-Australians. It will investigate and compare ordinary conversations in these groups on a large scale. The project expects to provide new evidence to explicate Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conversational norms, pinpointing differences which may lead to intercultural miscommunication.

The project will focus on three crucial aspects of the way people engage with others as they manage the local organisation of social relations in everyday culture:

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1. Turn-taking and action sequences (how and when do people negotiate when they should take a turn at talk and what they should say next, particularly in multiparty interactions?)

2. Storytelling in conversation (how and when do people take opportunities to talk in a longer way about their experiences, and how do others receive such accounts?); and

3. Knowledge management (how and when do people negotiate their rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, in order to communicate what they know?)

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Expected outcomes include endangered language documentation, and evidence-based findings to disseminate to service providers, to communities and to Aboriginal organisations to improve ways of engaging with each other. In addition, the project will benefit Aboriginal communities with new approaches to language revitalisation. This project is funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Scheme.