If we take the dialogue of the previous section and change its social setting we would receive quite a different structure. Let us see how the dialogue about finding out time can be formed in case the interrogator is at home. It is hardly possible that the first two utterances would ever be pronounced. On the other hand, and it is quite probable that the interrogator can give a reason for asking, so the dialogue may run as follows:
A. Jane, (my watch’s stopped. )Don’t you know what’s the time now?
B. I guess, John, it’s half past seven.
A. Thanks.
(B. It’s all right. )
The parts of the dialogue in parenthesis can be omitted.
This dialogue and the dialogue of the previous section have common and different features. The common feature is the aim of both dialogues, the difference is in their forms and social meanings. So we see that these dialogues are opposed to each other both meaningfully and formally, and we may state that we observe here the main property of a grammatical category. From that follows that we can oppose dialogues and discover Grammar of Conversations.
We cannot show possible categories of this level because the majority of dialogues are not as short or simple as the one analysed here. We only enumerate several categories that seem most important for formation of units of this level.
The first and most general category is the category of social setting. The form of the dialogues indicates whether they belong to wide or open social setting and narrow or close social setting. The former type of the dialogues(open dialogues) presupposes possibility of public observation. An example of such type is given in the section above.
The latter( closed type) dialogue presupposes that public observation of it is not opened, participance in such dialogues is permitted only for members of closed groups such as families, friends, colleagues, etc. The dialogue shown in this section is an example of the type.
The next very broad category is regulating the number of participants and differentiates dialogues with a fixed number of partners and those in which anyone can take part. Both dialogues represented here belong to the first, or fixed type. An example of the second, or unlimited type, can be mass media in which, at least officially, anyone can take part.
The next category is the category of social behaviour. This category opposes dialogues with formal expression of politeness to those in which the politeness is not formalised. The dialogue in the previous section is an example of formal politeness, while the dialogue in this section might be either formal, if we take the passages in the parenthesis, or informal, if the passages in the parenthesis are excluded.
We may isolate also several more general meanings that may be found in different dialogues, but appearance of them in a dialogue changing it radically and thus creating a new one, for example dialogues might be differentiated into those in which one of the partners is the leader of the event of communication and those in which none of the partners assumes the leading role. But such dialogues are different in all their aspects and thus are opposed as different units but not as variants of the same unit. That is why such oppositions cannot be treated as grammatical.
Since such the way of analysing dialogues is comparatively new we may expect that further research can bring about more grammatical categories of dialogues and moreover we can with time have possibility to describe a system of such categories of dialogues as we do now for words and sentences.