Description
Book SynopsisFew conversational topics can be as significant as our troubles in life, whether everyday and commonplace, or more exceptional and disturbing. In groundbreaking research conducted with John Lee at the University of Manchester UK, Gail Jefferson turned the microscope on how people talk about their troubles, not in any professional or therapeutic setting, but in their ordinary conversations with family and friends. Through recordings of interactions in which people talk about problems they''re having with their children, concerns about their health, financial problems, marital and relationship difficulties (their own or other people''s), examination failures, dramatic events such as burglaries or a house fire and other such troubles, Jefferson explores the interactional dynamics and complexities of introducing such topics, of how speakers sustain and elaborate their descriptions and accounts of their troubles, how participants align and affiliate with one another, and finally manage to m
Trade ReviewThe collection provides a rare opportunity for the reader to reflect on a set of CA papers built around a single theme and arising from a single research project. In this way, it provides a useful addition to the literature. And the collection provides a manual for those who may like to adopt Jeffersons approach in the exploration and description of other large-scale conversational sequences. * Simon Williams, Discourse Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Talking About Troubles; an Introduction. Paul Drew, John Heritage, Gene Lerner & Anita Pomerantz ; Chapter 1 On the Sequential Organization of Troubles-Talk in Ordinary Conversation. ; Chapter 2 On 'Trouble-Premonitory' Response to Inquiry. ; Chapter 3 The Rejection of Advice: Managing the Problematic Convergence of a 'Troubles-Telling' and a 'Service Encounter'. ; Chapter 4 On The Interactional Unpackaging of a 'gloss'. ; Chapter 5 On the Organization of Laughter in Talk About Troubles. ; Chapter 6 On Stepwise Transition From Talk About a Trouble to Inappropriately Next-Positioned Matters.
