ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces readers to Jefferson’s exploration on conversational poetics. We examine how her work developed from Sacks’ observations on this topic as presented in his Lectures on Conversation and how it has been received in both CA and literary studies, as well as providing a brief summary of each chapter. This introduction concludes with the editors’ insights on the volume as a collective, suggesting the importance of Jefferson’s work as foundational for promising directions for future research in CA and literary stylistics. That is, Jefferson’s poetics is critical to understanding word-selection in language in general, both in naturally occurring talk-in-interaction and in literature, which has sometimes been understood as that which is as far removed from ‘naturally occurring’ talk as possible.
