ABSTRACT
Whatever the actual status of marriage and the family as institutions there can be little doubt that talk about these topics remains a popular activity. The talk, of course, varies considerably in terms of level of abstraction and degree of formality ranging from the speech at a party political conference or the scholarly paper to everyday talk about particular weddings, baptisms or funerals and the complex and shifting nexus of relationships and obligations that come to the fore on such occasions. The differences between these two sets of practices might be characterised as approximating to the differences between a speech and a conversation. In both cases words are uttered but in the case of the conversation these words are exchanged and conducted with all the interplays between verbal and non-verbal cues, modifications and qualifications and hesitations that characterise interpersonal encounters generally. Exchange is not absent in the former case, of course, although it may be conducted more formally, through question and answer mediated through a chair or through verbal and written exchanges through the mass media, exchanges that do not require the direct co-presence of the other.
