Talk and Social Theory will be an essential text for students of sociolinguistics and the analysis of discourse in conversation.

• introduces the study of 'talk' linked to social theory;
• develops a new theoretical argument that reviews the relations between local social practices and general societal processes of talk;
• the use of everyday examples - a family dinner table, a school classroom, an academic advising session in an community college - enhances the book’s appeal to a non-specialist as well as a specialist audience;
• reviews the key theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks in social theory and in the sociolinguistic study of talk.