ABSTRACT
This chapter shares some of what people find valuable about the study of grammar as sets of practices adapted to social interaction. To begin with, let us consider how we conceive of grammar and then how that relates to the centrality of social interaction as a habitat to which grammar is adapted. The chapter suggests some of the benefits of approaching grammar from an interactional point of view. It has shown that perhaps the primary benefit is that we come to a clearer understanding of just what grammar is all about. The interactional data support a view of grammar as a set of complex routines that emerge as people devise recurrent ways of resolving communicative problems. The very basic nuts and bolts of grammar, such as clauses, pronouns, verb forms, and 'parts of speech', can be seen to fit into a picture of grammar as an adaptive resource in which the useful routines are selected and strengthened by daily use.
