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This article is a conversation-analytic examination of situations where one speaker responds to another in a way that publicly exposes that the two speakers hold an incompatible position on a same matter, and in a way that claims that the respondent holds epistemic authority over the matter. These types of responsive actions (i.e., counterinformings) solicit accepting or rejecting responses, and normally include information (e.g., an explanation) that facilitates the other speaker's ability to reconcile the speakers' positional incompatibility. Withholding such information from a counterinforming can be an interactional control tactic. This article focuses on these types of withholding counterinformings and their management by the other speaker. Specifically, this article describes an interactional practice used to solicit reconciliatory information. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01363.x

Two types of preference organization in interaction in response to a question that selects a next speaker in multi-party interaction separated into two categories are investigated. It is debated that a 'second-order' organization is present such that interactants prefer answers over response by the selected next speaker, revealing an observable preference for progressivity in interaction.

Using conversation analysis, this article focuses on other-initiation of repair (e.g., What?, I'm sorry?) of trouble speaking, hearing, and understanding. This article shows that the act of managing relationships is an essential feature of other-initiation of repair, and that different practices of repair-initiation can constitute different relational events that have different behavioral outcomes. Specifically, this article: (1) argues that context-free structures of interaction bias practices of repair such that other-initiated repair is vulnerable to communicating a stance that responsibility for trouble belongs to the speaker of the talk that inspired the repair-initiation; (2) discusses the implications of trouble responsibility for interpersonal disalignment and the organization of subsequent interaction; and (3)focuses on open-class (Drew, 1997) practices of repair initiation and argues that the apology-based format (I'm sorry? or Sorry?) communicates a stance that trouble responsibility belongs to repair-initiators, rather than to their addressees. Keywords: Conversation Analysis; Intersubjectivity; Repair; Relationship; Responsibility; Practice

This article uses conversation analysis to investigate the problem-presentation phase of 302 visits between primary-care physicians and patients with acute problems. It analyzes the social-interactional organization of problem presentation, focusing on how participants recognize and negotiate its completion. It argues that physicians and patients mutually orient to the presentation of current symptoms--that is, concrete symptoms presented as somehow being experienced in the here-and-now--as a locus of transition between the patient-controlled problem-presentation phase of the visit and the physician-controlled information-gathering phase. This is a resource for physicians to distinguish between complete and incomplete presentations, and for patients to manipulate this distinction. Keywords: Conversation analysis; Physician-patient communication; Problem-presentation; United States

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.12.004 Byline: Jeffrey D. Robinson (a), John Heritage (b) Abstract: This article uses conversation analysis to investigate the problem-presentation phase of 302 visits between primary-care physicians and patients with acute problems. It analyzes the social-interactional organization of problem presentation, focusing on how participants recognize and negotiate its completion. It argues that physicians and patients mutually orient to the presentation of current symptoms -- that is, concrete symptoms presented as somehow being experienced in the here-and-now -- as a locus of transition between the patient-controlled problem-presentation phase of the visit and the physician-controlled information-gathering phase. This is a resource for physicians to distinguish between complete and incomplete presentations, and for patients to manipulate this distinction. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Communication, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1071, USA (b) Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551, USA

This investigation assesses interobserver agreement on conversation analytic (CA) transcription. Four professional CA transcribers spent a maximum of 3 hours transcribing 2.5 minutes of a previously unknown, naturally occurring, mundane telephone call. Researchers unitized transcripts into words, sounds, silences, inbreaths, outbreaths, and laugh tokens, and then coded each of 1,827 units on as many as 15 transcription dimensions. Agreement was assessed using Cohen's kappa for nominal level data: Speaker designation, unit sequencing, semantics, orthography, cutoff, and plosiveness reached the level of 'substantial' agreement (90% or greater accuracy). Pitch, overlap, doubt, and smile voice reached the level of 'moderate' agreement (80-89% accuracy), while pace, sound stretch, underline/amplitude, and intonation fell below acceptability except when examined post hoc as presence versus absence of the feature. Silence lengths, examined as ratio-level data, were reliable at the 'acceptable' level (alpha [greater than or equal to] .70) among those using a counting method (as opposed to stopwatch or other mechanical means). We make recommendations for transcription training.

When patients visit primary-care physicians, they frequently have more than one concern. Patients' first concerns are solicited by physicians at the beginnings of encounters. A challenge to health care is how to get patients' additional concerns raised as topics of discussion. If patients' additional concerns are addressed, it tends to occur at the end of encounters. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, this article identifies and describes the interactional organization of two physician-initiated communication practices that are used to negotiate the closure of the business of encounters and a transition into the activity of closing encounters themselves. These practices have different implications for the topicalization of patients' additional concerns. Keywords: Physician patient encounters; Communication; Conversation analysis; Closing interactions

This article examines how physicians and patients interactionally accomplish the transition from the activity of history taking to that of physical examination. Prior research focuses on participants' reliance on overt verbal resources (e.g., physicians' requests for permission to examine patients or explanations that foreshadow examination). Using the methodology of conversation analysis, this article draws on a corpus of 40 primary-care encounters to demonstrate that: (a) In addition to verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior is integral to the accomplishment of transitions; and (b) patients' understandings of physicians' verbal and nonverbal behavior as communicating transitions are achieved through situating those behaviors in other contexts of embodied action, talk, activity, and social structure (i.e., the phase structure of encounters). Findings have implications for: (a) the theoretic relationship between verbal and nonverbal behavior in terms of social meaning, (b) what it means to explain transitions and reduce patients' uncertainty, (c) the organization of physician-patient interaction, and (d) the relationship and interface between macro- and microconceptualizations of context.