ABSTRACT
In conversation, the participants collaboratively contribute towards both the topic subject contents and the direction and organization of the topical framework, both informed by the goals for conversational interaction and refl ecting the physical, social, cultural, and linguistic contexts of interaction. Conversations are dynamic and each contribution from a speaker has to be seen as part of the ongoing business of negotiating what is being talked about. Discourse topics are a direct product of the speakers’ cooperative eff ort. In social interactions such as conversations, the speakers’ immediate concerns are very oft en to have a pleasant and mutually satisfying talk with each other, to keep the conversation going and developing, and fi nally to close it smoothly. Nevertheless, in contexts of interaction where topics are culturally sensitive and pragmatically face-threatening, such as those concerned with racial and ethnic stereotypes, prejudice, or even discrimination, the participants as social actors can oft en fi nd themselves engaging in the invocation, formulation, and expression of gendered and ethnicized identities and subject positions that are mediated through language, discourse, and social interactions.
