When we share or receive good or bad news, from ordinary events such as the birth of a child to public catastrophes such as 9/11, our old lives come to an end, and suddenly we see the world with new eyes. In Bad News, Good News, Douglas W. Maynard explores how we tell and hear such news, and what's similar and different about the ways we experience good and bad news itself. everyday conversations as well as in hospitals and other settings, Maynard shows how people give and receive good or bad news, how they come to realize the news and their new world, and how they construct social...

Negotiation is a ubiquitous part of social life. Some even say that social order itself is a negotiated phenomenon. Yet the study of negotiation as an actual discourse activity, occurring between people who have substantial interests and tasks in the real social world, is in its infancy. This is the more surprising because plea bargaining, as a specific form of negotiation, has recently been the center of an enormous amount of research attention. Much of the concern has been directed to basic ques tions of justice, such as how fair the process is, whether it is unduly coercive, and whether it...

An interdisciplinary look at interaction in the standardized survey interview

This volume presents a theoretical and empirical inquiry into the interaction between interviewers and respondents in standardized research interviews. The editors include a range of articles that showcase the perspectives of conversation analysts, ethnomethodologists, and survey methodologists, to gain a more complete picture of interaction in the standardized survey interview than was previously available.

This book is the first to focus solely on the interactional substrate or...

Providing a comprehensive discussion of communication between doctors and patients in primary care consultations, this volume brings together a team of leading contributors from the fields of linguistics, sociology and medicine to describe each phase of the primary care consultation. The authors use conversation analysis techniques to analyze the sequential unfolding of a visit and describe the dilemmas and conflicts faced by physicians and patients as they work through the visit. The result is a view of the medical encounter that reveals the perspective of both physicians and patients...

Providing a comprehensive discussion of communication between doctors and patients in primary care consultations, this volume brings together a team of leading contributors from the fields of linguistics, sociology and medicine to describe each phase of the primary care consultation. The authors use conversation analysis techniques to analyze the sequential unfolding of a visit and describe the dilemmas and conflicts faced by physicians and patients as they work through the visit. The result is a view of the medical encounter that reveals the perspective of both physicians and patients...