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Much of everyday work is done through talk between practitioner and client. Conversation Analysis is the close inspection of people´s use of language in interaction. The work reported in this collection shows how CA can be used to identify, and improve, communicative practices at work.

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Series Preface Acknowledgements List of Contributors Notation Applied Conversation Analysis: From Explication to Intervention; C.Antaki ´Some´ vs ´Any´ Medical Worries: Encouraging Patients to Reveal Their Unmet Concerns; J.Heritage & J.D.Robinson Changing Interactional Behaviour: Using Conversation Analysis in Intervention Programmes for Aphasic Conversation; R.Wilkinson Improving Response Rates in Telephone Interviews; D.W.Maynard , J.Freese & N.C.Schaeffer Improving Ethnic Monitoring on a Telephone Helpline; S.Wilkinson Working with Childbirth Helplines: The Contributions and Limitations of Conversation Analysis; C.Kitzinger Simulated Interaction and Communication Skills Training: The ´Conversation Analytic Role-Play Method´; E.Stokoe Should Mandatory Jobseeker Interviews Be Personalised? The Politics of Using Conversation Analysis to Make Effective Practice Recommendations; M.Toerien, A.Irvine, P.Drew & R.Sainsbury Giving Feedback to Care Staff About Offering Choices to People with Intellectual Disabilities; W.M.Finlay, C.Walton & C.Antaki Reflecting on Your Own Talk: The Discursive Action Method at Work; J.Lamerichs & H.Te Molder Conversation Analysis Applied to User Centered Design: A Study of Who ´The User´ Is; M.Egbert A Psychoanalyst´s Reflection on Conversation Analysis´s Contribution to His Own Therapeutic Talk; A.Perakyla References Index

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´This groundbreaking volume stands as an important milestone in the development of Conversation Analysis. It brings together works devoted to the use of Conversation Analysis to address practical problems in which human interaction plays a central role. The contributions, by leading scholars in the field, demonstrate the wide-ranging utility of this approach for problems in areas ranging from medicine, psychotherapy, and telephone help lines to survey research, mediation, and technology design. The introduction situates these studies within the broader field of conversation analysis, and provides a useful roadmap to the main variants of applied CA and the key issues that inform work seeking to intervene and remediate interaction-based problems in social life.´ - Steven E. Clayman, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

´For the first time, important CA studies are brought together to make the case that basic insights about interaction can be utilized to change, improve, and refine skills for accomplishing activities fundamental to diverse social institutions. The result is an important move toward establishing how relevant research can be translated into innovative and effective strategies. This volume is a trigger for reflecting on a horizon of possibilities that arise when realizing that CA is, after all, a natural science that has and will continue to benefit the world in as yet unanticipated and vital ways.´ - Wayne A. Beach, School of Communication, San Diego State University, USA

´A highly insightful and illuminating collection of studies that powerfully demonstrate how the fine-grained analysis of talk and interaction, [this volume] provides a distinctive contribution to our understanding of social organisation and social institutions, and in turn reveals important implications for policy and practice.´ - Christian Heath, King´s College London, UK

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