Frederick Erickson describes Talk and social theory as an attempt to bridge the gap between the study of situated, face-to-face interaction and a variety of different discourse-oriented social theories after the linguistic turn. Opening the book with a series of social theory-inflected accounts of his own previous fieldwork, Erickson moves on in the second half to explore in detail the work of a number of theorists: On the sociolinguistic side, he is particularly concerned with Goffman, but he is also deeply influenced by Gregory Bateson; on the social theory side, he ranges across a great number of theorists (Foucault, Bourdieu, Gramsci, Norman Fairclough), discussing the work of Anthony Giddens most extensively.
The first half of the book includes a number of case studies of interaction, analyzed from the viewpoint of established sociolinguistic methodologies (some contributed by Erickson himself). Chap. 1 sets out basic concepts relevant to the entire book, most notably the notion of kairos as “the time of tactical appropriateness” within interaction. Chap. 2 examines a single interaction recorded in September 1974, within which Erickson shows the pervasive coordination of speech and gestural rhythms by mapping a transcript of the interaction onto a musical score reduced to a single dimension of punctuated syllables and gestures. Chap. 3 examines the cutthroat power politics of interactional dupes and “sharks” in a kindergarten classroom. Chap. 4 describes the carefully modulated pastoral care practiced by a community college teacher looking to motivate and encourage a friendly student. Finally, chap. 5 examines subtly racialized language in an interaction between a white doctor, a black medical intern, and a black patient.
The second half of the book examines a variety of issues in social theory, attempting to bring these issues into a dialogue with a sociolinguistic perspective notably attuned to the “ecology” of interaction. Chap. 6 describes an attempt to bring together “local ecologies” of talk with “global ecologies” of the same. Chap. 7 attempts to expand interactional analysis in the direction of Giddens's theory of “structuration” and related notions of the opportunistic bricolage of interactional structures. Chap. 8 brings together a number of different strands from the book, arguing for further study of the impact of the “local conduct of talk” on large-scale historical occurrences and “novel course[s] of action.”
While Erickson's examination of social theory is certainly of value to students of situated interaction hoping to bring a more deeply theoretical interpretation of social context to their work, there remain some questions about his specific appropriation of social theory. Perhaps most startlingly, the notion of a global ecology of interaction presumed throughout most of the second half of the book would seem to contradict the sense of open-ended and undetermined cultural space associated with the most sophisticated appreciations of discourse within social theory, theoretical approaches which Erickson himself explores in detail. The task Erickson sets for himself involves harmonization between two disparate academic fields. In his effort to do so, he leaves open a number of important questions very much worthy of further consideration.
