Analysing Everyday Explanation: A Casebook of Methods

Explanations are given and received in all areas of social life: in the home, at school, at work and in the courtroom. They are exchanged between friends and argued over by enemies. The analysis of these ordinary everyday explanations is regarded as a notoriously difficult area of study by social scientists. This book offers, for the first time, a clear and comprehensive guide to the most fruitful and interesting techniques for collecting, analysing and interpreting everyday explanation.

The authors have been chosen to represent the most important work being done in a variety of disciplines: social psychology, linguistics, pragmatics, artificial intelligence, ethogenics, narratology, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. Each chapter follows a uniform format. The author introduces the general theoretical outlines of the technique and describes his or her own theoretical position. The heart of the chapter is then devoted to an extended description of the analysis of a particular piece of data: a conversation, a collection of documentary accounts, or a corpus of explanatory phrases. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of this particular analytical method are assessed.

Usefully organized into four parts, the book deals with the nature of explanation in general; methods for analysing the structure and content of accounts; the social context in which accounts are exchanged; and the use of rhetorical and ideological approaches to everyday explanation.

Analysing Everyday Explanation is a unique casebook of methods which will prove invaluable to all social scientists.