ABSTRACT
In the past decade, conversation analysts have embraced the study of talk in institutional settings. This focus is celebrated in the title of a recent volume, Talk at Work (Drew & Heritage, 1992b), that suggests common ground between conversation analysis and organizational communication. These institu- tional studies include descriptions of discourse in the media (see Clayman, 1992; Greatbatch, 1992; see also Nofsinger, Chapter 15, this volume). These studies pose prospects relevant to any scholars who describe message details using evi- dence made available by electronic recordings. Connections between conversa- tion analysis and traditional areas of communication study may promote theory, but this moment also entails examining our ongoing dis-ease about how to concep- tualize settings and other features of communicative context.
