Summary

In the first collection of its kind, Paul Drew and John Heritage bring together the latest advances in the application of conversation analysis to the study of language and interaction in institutional settings. Leading American and European scholars contribute to Talk at Work original empirical research into the interactions between professionals and 'clients' in a wide variety of settings, including doctor-patient consultations, legal hearings, news interviews, visits by health visitors, psychiatric interviews, and calls to the emergency services. Taken together, their reports are an illuminating exploration of how key aspects of an organisations' work are managed through talk and of the distinctively asymmetric character of institutional discourse. The use of a method at the forefront of research, on recordings of naturally occurring interactions in the settings under scrutiny, uncovers the relationships between social contexts and social actions and offers invaluable insight into the traditional concerns of the sociology and ethnography of organisations, sociolinguistics and pragmatics.