ABSTRACT
Conversation analysts aim to make sense of sense-making—to explicate the methods through which everyday interactants produce discourse. This involves the close examination of tape-recorded, transcribed everyday conversations. Some of the topics studied by conversation analysts include how interactants take and give up turns (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974), orient to sequences (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973), repair their own and others’ talk (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 1977), issue invitations (Drew, 1984), seek information (Pomerantz, 1988), and tell about their troubles (Jefferson, 1980).
