Charles Antaki

Sue Widdicombe

`Identity' attracts some of social science's liveliest and most passionate debates. Theory abounds on matters as disparate as nationhood, ethnicity, gender politics and culture. However, there is considerably less investigation into how such identity issues appear in the fine grain of everyday life. This book gathers together, in a collection of chapters drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, arguments which show that identities are constructed `live' in the actual exchange of talk. By closely examining tapes and transcripts of real social interactions from a wide range of situations, the volume explores just how it is that a person can be ascribed to a category and what features about that category are consequential for the interaction.

Identities in Talk

Susan Condor

Professor Michael Billig is one of the most significant living figures in social psychology. His work spans thirty-five years, and has at times challenged conventional social scientific thinking on a range of key topics. Billig has influenced a wide range of fields including intergroup conflict, social attitudes and ideology, rhetoric, racism, nationalism, humour, psychoanalysis, and popular culture, but most significantly, his writing has not only influenced social psychologists, but is widely recognised by linguistics, sociologists, historians and cultural theorists. This book brings together expert accounts of Billig’s ideas on a wide range of issues in a single text. Each of the contributors explains the importance of Billig’s work for a specific area detailing its application to a particular social psychological problematic. In doing so, the authors also demonstrate the relevance of Billig’s work to emerging concerns in twenty-first century social science, including conspiracy accounting, moral exclusion, discursive psychology and European identity. Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology will be key reading for academics and researchers working in sociology, cultural studies, social psychology, communication and media studies and linguistics.

Essays in Honour of Michael Billig

Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology

Each of us is highly skilled at designing our turns at talk, and meshing them with those of the people around us. Conversation Analysis (CA) is the study of just how that is done, and how the choreography of conversation brings off the business we conduct with each other. Conversation Analysis is beginning to have a strong record not only of understanding interaction, but also of seeing how it might be changed. This volume collects together some of the most exciting developments in CA as it is applied to intervention programs in medical communication, speech therapy, mediation, welfare interviewing, surveying, telephone helplines, and other insitutional encounters. The contributors explain the difficulties and the benefits of applying CA in the real world, and with working with external agencies like government institutions, charities, and the medical establishment.

Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk

Applied Conversation Analysis

Ivan Leudar

Anssi Peräkylä

Sanna Vehviläinen

Psychotherapy is a 'talking cure'- clients voice their troubles to therapists, who listen, prompt, question, interpret and generally try to engage in a positive and rehabilitating conversation with their clients. Using the sophisticated theoretical and methodological apparatus of Conversation Analysis - a radical approach to how language in interaction works - this book sheds light on the subtle and minutely organised sequences of speech in psychotherapeutic sessions. It examines how therapists deliver questions, cope with resistance, reinterpret experiences and how they can use conversation to achieve success. Conversation is a key component of people's everyday and professional lives and this book provides an unusually detailed insight into the complexity and power of talk in institutional settings. Featuring contributions from a collection of internationally renowned authors, Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy will appeal to researchers and graduate students studying conversation analysis across the disciplines of psychology, sociology and linguistics.

Charles Antaki

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