Start with observation. You may want to investigate conversation
analysis; what I'm going to describe is a watered-down version
of it. Go to a place where people talk publicly, freely, and
audibly. A train station is an excellent place; you have an
excuse to sit and observe. Try to find a pair of people; the
techniques are harder with more than a dyad, so start with two.
You can also do this at a gathering of your friends, but you'll
be more inclined to join in, and it'll be harder to stay
objective. (Side note: don't be creepy about this. It can easily
look like stalking rather than research. If 'caught', be polite
and explain what you're doing, and all that stuff.) Note
precisely what people say to each other: every word, not the
topics. Look at the non-content parts of the dialog: parts of
speech, pronoun use. Look at when and how they talk--who
'chooses' who gets to talk next? How? is it verbal, non-verbal,
based on convention? How long are sentences? How long do people
speak before being interrupted? Do