Conversation Analysis
- Paul Drew - University of York, UK
- John Heritage - University of California, Los Angeles, USA
It is now widely agreed that in latter part of the 20th century sociology has taken a 'linguistic turn'. One of the approaches to emerge out of the linguistic turn is conversation analysis, which is now recognized as one of the most distinctive and genuinely original approaches to the study of language, communication and social interaction to have emerged during the last forty years. Research in conversation analysis over the past 30 years has shown how these and other technical aspects of talk-in-interaction are structured, socially organized resources - or methods - whereby participants perform and coordinate activities through talking together. Conversational interaction is the primordial site of human sociality. Thus these methods are the technical bedrock on which people build their social lives, and construct their social relations with one another.
This comprehensive collection, brought together by two of the leading figures in conversation analysis, will be indispensable to researchers in not only linguistics but sociology, social psychology, communications, and health sciences whose work involved the language and linguistic features of social action.
"The present ambitious effort warehouses pivotal materials that take the reader through the principal areas of CA [Conversation Analysis] research and publication. The first volume addresses turn-taking and conversation repair, which are the formative basis of CA. Drawing from across the globe, this set also demonstrates the international scope of CA by mixing in among standard texts materials showing its global growth and future directions. Although these materials have been previously published, the value of collecting them into one source cannot be overstated, particularly since work employing CA is spread across the disciplines. Essential."
