Much of our daily lives are spent talking to one another, in both ordinary conversation and more specialized settings such as meetings, interviews, classrooms, and courtrooms. It is largely through conversation that the major institutions of our society - economy, religion, politics, family and law - are implemented. This book Emanuel Schegloff, the first in a series and first published in 2007, introduces the findings and theories of conversation analysis. Together, the volumes in the series constitute a complete and authoritative 'primer' in the subject. The topic of this first volume is 'sequence organization' - the ways in which turns-at-talk are ordered and combined to make actions take place in conversation, such as requests, offers, complaints, and announcements. Containing many examples from real-life conversations, it will be invaluable to anyone interested in human interaction and the workings of conversation.

Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis

Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents

Organizational features of ordinary conversation and other talk-in-interaction provide for the routine display of participants' understanding of one anothers' conduct and of the field of action, thereby building in a routine grounding for intersubjectivity. This same organization provides interactants the resources for recognizing breakdowns of intersubjectivity and for repairing them. This article sets the concern with intersubjectivity in theoretical context, sketches the organization by which it is grounded and defended in ordinary interaction, describes the practices by which trouble in understanding is dealt with, and illustrates what happens when this organization fails to function. Some consequences for contemporary theory and inquiry are suggested.

Repair After Next Turn: The Last Structurally Provided Defense of Intersubjectivity in Conversation

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But persistent gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled.

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The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled

Within the general framework of agreement on a state of affairs, the matter of the terms of agreement can remain: determining whose view is the more significant or more authoritative with respect to the matter at hand. In this paper we focus on this issue as it is played out in assessment sequences. We examine four practices through which a second speaker can index the independence of an agreeing assessment from that of a first speaker, and in this way can qualify the agreement. We argue that these practices reduce the responsiveness of the second assessment to the first; in this way they resist any claim to epistemic authority that may be indexed by the first speaker in “going first” in assessing some state of affairs.

The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Talk-in-Interaction

W e're delighted to have "Doing Gender" and its sequelae as the subjects of this symposium. The serious readings of our work by Professors Connell, Jones, Kitzinger, Messerschmidt, Risman, Smith, and Vidal-Ortiz do us honor, and we welcome the chance to address them. We use our response to reflect on, clarify, admit, and expand on what we said originally and what we have said since. As important as the path taken, however, is the theoretical path ahead, and we will comment on that as well.

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Accounting for Doing Gender

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The ethnographic study on which this paper draws was funded by Grant 70-039, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, United States Department of Justice. The findings and interpretations presented in this paper do not necessarily reflect the policies or offical position of the funding agency. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, August 1972. DON H. ZIMMERMAN is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent publications include &dquo;Sex-Roles, Interruptions and Silences in Conversation&dquo; (with Candace West) which appeared in the 1975 volume, Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, edited by B. Thorne and N. Henle; and &dquo;A Reply to Professor Coser&dquo; in The

The Diary: Diary-Interview Method

Identity, context and interaction.

In this paper we argue that the organization of citizen calls to emergency services reveals how the sequential machinery of conversation is adapted by speaker-hearers to organize, coordinate and exhibit to one another their knowledge and purposes on particular occasions. It is in the way such knowledge is brought to bear, and purposes at hand made evident, that recurrent sequences of interactionally and institutionally relevant activity are built out of local and particular materials. Thus, the sequential organization of conversation is a fundamental resource for social activities directed to matters outside of, but addressable through talk, and for achieving regular, recurrent patterns of action in the face of varying details and circumstances.

Sequential and Institutional Contexts in Calls for Help

This is a study of how acquainted and unacquainted dvads initiated topical talk in an experimental setting in which they were told to "get to knou"'' one another or to "warm up' before they were to debate an assigned topic. Referencing the setting uwas a device for initiating talk used by both acquainted and unacquainted dyads. When not doing "setting talk," unacquainted dyads introduced topical talk wvith announcements that relied upon interpersonal common knowledge. Unacquainted participants utilized "pre-topical sequences," by which they discovered and displayed categorical memberships and activities. Pre-topical sequences are examined in detailfor how, they allow the in situ negotiation of who will talk and what will be talked about. Pre-topical sequences can also be considered as ritual devices by wthich autobiographical talk is properly initiated. Setting talk, topical announcements, and pre-topical sequences are involved in the ongoing construction of intimacy and distance in relationship.

Don H. Zimmerman

Papers

Accounting for Doing Gender

The Diary: Diary-Interview Method

Identity, context and interaction.

Sequential and Institutional Contexts in Calls for Help

Topical talk, ritual and the social organization of relationships