ABSTRACT
Talk is one of the main ways in which meanings are produced and circulated at the micro level; indeed, this level of culture is essentially oral, not literate, not text-based. Talking about television is an important way of negotiating the interface between it and everyday life, of selectively making it part of popular culture. Television’s popularity is related to the ease with which it can be incorporated into oral culture. Meanings produced at the moment of watching are often reworked and recirculated socially in conversation, and are themselves influenced by previous conversations, for talk is social relations in practice. Indeed, some viewers defer the production of any meaning from a television program until they can discuss it with their peers. Oral culture does not just reproduce and recirculate the meanings of mass culture: it is a material part of the conditions under which that mass culture is received and thus of its meanings.
