ABSTRACT
This book is an edited collection of empirical studies and theoretical essays about human communication in everyday life. The primary focus is on small or subtle forms of communication that are easily overlooked and too often dismissed as unimportant. Authors examine various features of human interaction (e.g., laughter, vocal repetition, hand gestures) occurring naturally within a variety of settings (e.g., at a dinner table, a doctor’s office, an automotive repair shop), whereby interlocutors accomplish aspects of their interpersonal or institutional lives (e.g., resolve a disagreement, report bad medical news, negotiate a raise), all of which may relate to larger social issues (e.g., police brutality, human spirituality, death and optimism). The present collection is bound together by a recognition that social life is largely a communicative accomplishment, that people constitute the social realities experienced everyday through small and subtle ways of communicating, carefully orchestrated but commonly taken for granted.
