Talk and Interaction in Social Research Methods

Talk and Interaction in Social Research Methodologies is a much-needed methods text. Focusing on research methods in action, the volume offers a new way of viewing the realities of social research. By taking language use seriously, the text reveals the details and depths of a wide range of research projects as they have seldom been presented before.

This is the first book of its kind to offer such a powerful and insightful depiction of the role of talk-in-interaction in relation to social research methods. The book′s plan is creative and unparalleled. There′s nothing else like it.

The Editors―Paul Drew, Geoffrey Raymond and Darin Weinberg―represent the very best from multiple traditions of researching talk-in-interaction―from both sides of the Atlantic. The chapters are written by a sterling collection of researchers―a virtual honor roll of conversation analysts and kindred spirits.

This is a methodology text with a difference. It demonstrates the importance of talk in a variety of social research methodologies. Even documents, the seemingly least interactional form of social data, are shown to have important interactional dimensions. The book focuses systematically on how sociological methods are essentially conducted through forms of spoken interaction, and how these interactions shape the results that emerge in research. The book demonstrates:

• How spoken interactions shape the outcomes of core research methodologies
• The role which talk-in-interaction plays in key substantive areas of sociology notably race, crime, gender and media
• Reveals the interactional underpinnings of research methodologies

This is the first text aimed at an undergraduate and Master′s audience in Sociology and Social Research, which shows the crucial part that spoken interaction plays in the conduct and products of conventional sociological methodologies.

Geoffrey Raymond is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include conversation analysis, the role of talk-in-interaction in the organization of institutions, and qualitative research methods. His research has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Language in Society, among other places. He is co-editor, with Paul Drew and Darin Weinberg of Talk and Interaction in Social Research Methods.

Darin Weinberg is a university reader in the Department of Sociology, Cambridge University and a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. In addition to his interest in social constructionism, his research focuses primarily on the practical purposes to which concepts of addiction, mental disorder, and learning disability are applied in various historical and contemporary contexts. He is particularly interested in how these concepts figure in state-sponsored campaigns of social welfare and social control and in what their uses reveal about how and why people distinguish the social and natural forces held to govern human behaviour. His books include Contemporary Social Constructionism: Key Themes (2014); Of Others Inside: Insanity, Addiction, and Belonging in America (2005); Intoxication and Society (edited with Jonathan Herring, Ciaran Regan, and Phil Withington, 2013); Talk and Interaction in Social Research Methods (edited with Paul Drew and Geoffrey Raymond, 2006); and Qualitative Research Methods (edited, 2002).