Abstract

The text that follows offers in its first section four early engagements with brief bits of ordinary conversation that launched the form of analysis known as conversation-analytic work. This is followed by five subsections that sketch five of the several domains of analysis central to conversation analysis over the last fifty or so years: turns and turn constructions; sequences of actions-through-talk; trouble in talking actions and repair of that trouble; selection of words that compose the turns that compose the sequences; the overall structural organization of talk-in-interaction whether in recurrent clusters or sustained occasions of conversation. A brief upshot brings the text to conclusion.