ABSTRACT
A cursory examination of a transcript of routine conversation will reveal a catalogue of instances in which one or more parties engage in the management of some form of difficulty in the exchange. So ubiquitous are such instances of trouble management that it is uncontentious to conceive of everyday communication as flawed, partial and problematic (Coupland, Wiemann and Giles, 1991). Consequently, it is appropriate to view the resources of trouble management as intrinsic to all conversational interaction and not as a set of discrete strategies that come to be invoked on the occurrence of some specific trouble.
