This paper introduces the concept of speech management (SM), which refers to processes whereby a speaker manages his or her linguistic contributions to a communicative interaction, and which involves phenomena which have previously been studied under such rubrics as “planning”, “editing”, “(self-)repair”, etc. It is argued that SM phenomena exhibit considerable systematicity and regularity and must be considered part of the linguistic system. Furthermore, it is argued that SM phenomena must be related not only to such intraindividual factors as planning and memory, but also to interactional factors such as turntaking and feedback, and to informational content. Structural and functional taxonomies are presented together with a formal description of complex types of SM. The structural types are exemplified with data from a corpus of SM phenomena.

The work of a Swedish linguist, Carl Svedelius (1861–1951), though fairly brief and unaccomplished as it was, deserves a closer look from the point of view of today's linguistics. Svedelius himself characterized his own approach with the term “den verklighetsbetonade eller funktionalistiska språ;kanalysen”-i.e. he emphasized the referential or “real” and functional dimensions of language. Thus, the object of study should be “det sammanhängande språ;ket”, language as a whole. The basic unit in the comprehensive study of language is “une communication”, in modern terms, an utterance. Svedelius distinguishes two main categories of utterances: Utterances of process describe different events in life, whereas utterances of relation classify and describe different phenomena in reality.