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Asking and Telling in Conversation

by Anita Pomerantz

How everyday questions and statements organize social interaction

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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

How everyday questions and statements organize social interaction

This collection gathers nine influential articles by Anita Pomerantz on the interactional work of asking and telling. Across the volume, conversation is treated not as a simple exchange of information but as action shaped by participants’ identities, the activity underway, what has already been said, and the responses speakers anticipate. Newly written framing pieces place each article in relation to current Conversation Analysis, while opening and closing chapters trace links across Pomerantz’s career-long work. The book also returns to preference organization, a concept central to her early research, offering reflections alongside the collected scholarship. It presents both foundational studies and later context for examining how talk is organized moment by moment.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Students studying Conversation Analysis or sociolinguistics
  • Researchers interested in interaction, communication, and social action in talk
  • Readers seeking a collected scholarly work with author commentary

Themes

Conversation AnalysisAsking and tellingSocial interactionParticipant identitiesPreference organization

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Anita Pomerantz is one of the pioneers of Conversation Analysis (CA), a field that has grown from a small and marginalized subfield into a significant, international, multidisciplinary field of inquiry. CA now enjoys widespread acceptance and appreciation, thanks in large part to Pomerantz's contributions.

Asking and Telling in Conversation collects Pomerantz's most influential articles across the span of her career, focusing on the complexities of asking and telling something to another person. The actions of asking and telling may seem straightforward, but speakers deal with a number of complexities when they ask and tell. Pomerantz's work focuses on the ways in which the performances of asking and telling are shaped by, and shape, the identities of the participants, the activities in which they are engaged, what was said and done prior to the actions in question, and the anticipated reactions to their talk and action. Each of the volume's nine chapters is framed by original pieces by Pomerantz which discuss the significance and contribution of the article to current studies in CA. In addition to the new introductions and closing commentary for each work, this book includes full introductory and concluding chapters that draw out the connections across the author's work. Pomerantz also shares her reflections on preference organization, which she first analyzed in her foundational research nearly fifty years ago.

Bringing together seminal works of CA with contemporary analysis in the field, this book sheds new light on important questions-and answers-in communication studies. A collection of work from a foremost scholar, Asking and Telling in Conversation is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of Conversation Analysis.
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