This volume is an eminently useful and comprehensive presentation of all the major research themes, questions, and studies in the field of language as social interaction. Readers will greatly benefit from the tripartite organization of this book, which includes an introductory section in which key terms and concepts are presented and discussed, an extension section in which selected core readings are introduced, annotated, and commented on, and an exploration section in which additional examples and illustrative materials facilitate independent study and research. This organization is crossreferenced in such a way that this book can be used to present the foundations of the field (e.g., language and social interaction, talk in context, interactional resources), to show students how to actually perform interactional analyses of discursive practices, and to discuss implications for the construction of individual identity, discourse communities, and cultural communities through talk. The additional data, reading references, questions, and activities for future exploration offer a treasure trove of materials for undergraduate and graduate courses in pragmatics, discourse analysis, communication studies, and applied linguistics.

The best parts of this book are the introductory units and data analyses (e.g., a clarinet lesson, a medical speech event). The readings in the extension sections are all taken from canonical writings in the field, and, as such, they give a good sense of the scholarly lay of the land. However, because they have been sometimes drastically excerpted and tightly linked to prereading, reading, and postreading tasks and activities, the readings have often lost some of their nuanced richness of meaning and much of their historical depth. It is incumbent on the teacher to fill in the gaps within the general orientation suggested in this book. Some authors lend themselves better than others to be elaborated on—namely, those who come from structuralist strands in the social sciences (e.g., functional linguistics, conversation analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics), such as Halliday, Schegloff, Goffman. Others, who have to be understood from within a poststructuralist, philosophical, or historical perspective, such as Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and Bourdieu, are more difficult to expand upon. These authors’ contribution to the field is of crucial importance but difficult to grasp through postreading exercises—for example, “Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who wrote influential works of literary and rhetorical theory and criticism. Find out as much as you can about Bakhtin’s theories” (p. 188). The risk of reductionism is inherent in any such textbook, but it is especially present in books like this one—that rightly want to go beyond the social interactionism of the 1970s and 1980s into a more constructivist, poststructuralist view of discourse and social reality but have to do so within the constraints of the structuralist textbook genre.

Given the rise of computer technology and the changing role of language in online interactions, it is to be hoped that the second edition of this book will expand the short notices that deal with virtual communication. As the computer transforms the way research is done and the objects of study are constructed, a book like this one can provide a good basis from which to explore the complex ways in which communication technologies are transforming the relation of language and both online and face-to-face interaction.