Book review : Angela Cora Garcia, An Introduction to Interaction: Understanding Talk in Formal and Informal Settings

Conversation analysis (CA), the study of talk-in-interaction, is an interdisciplinary field drawing on sociology, psychology, linguistics and communication studies. CA is a theoretically and methodologically distinctive approach to gaining an understanding of social life. The development of CA and other related research approaches has enabled researchers in the field to examine how people communicate through talk. Garcia's book is an invaluable step-by-step guide to addressing the aforementioned issues through the concepts and methods of CA within a wide range of informal everyday and formal institutional interaction settings. The book focuses on understanding the procedures utilized-to-organize talk in interaction and aims to teach students how talk is organized and what types of issues in interaction seem to occur. It consists of 27 chapters, which are organized into seven parts. Each chapter ends with practical exercises that are designed to be of help to the reader who wishes to learn by doing CA and a summary of the chapter along with a useful overview of recommended readings.