ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors select two excerpts from encounters between professionals and clients that differ from each other as widely as possible. Professional helping work is embedded in the conversational encounters taking place between clients and professionals. Language use in the interaction situation is in itself an activity with its own "here and now" logic. In order to explore this "here and now" logic in face-to-face interaction, the authors focus their attention both on the kind of social reality participants jointly produce in a given situation and on the ways they accomplish this. The concept of negotiation is appropriate in two senses: first of all, it describes the arbitrary (re)negotiable nature of meanings constructing social reality and secondly, it highlights the involvement of all participants in the interaction situation in the process of producing meanings. The successful production of meanings in conversation requires responsive and sensitive co-operation between the professional and the client.
