Lectures on Conversation, Volumes I, II

Description

Volume I contains the lectures of Fall 1964 through Fall 1967, in which Sacks explores a great variety of topics, from suicide to children's games to Medieval Hell as a nemonic device to pronouns and paradoxes. But two key issues emerge: rules of conversational sequencing - central to the articulation of interaction, and membership categorization devices - central to the social organization of knowledge. This volume culminates in the extensive and formal explication of turn-taking which Sacks delivered in Fall, 1967. Volume II contains the lectures of Spring 1968 through Spring 1972. Again he touches on a wide range of subjects, such as the poetics of ordinary talk, the integrative function of public tragedy, and pauses in spelling out a word. He develops a major new theme: storytelling in converstion, with an attendant focus on topic. His investigation of conversational sequencing continues, and this volume culminates in the elegant dissertation on adjacency pairs which Sacks delivered in Spring, 1972. Content: Chapter 1 Fall 1964?Spring 1965 (pages 1–131): Chapter 2 Fall 1965 (pages 133–231): Chapter 3 Spring 1966 (pages 233–512): Chapter 4 Winter 1967 (pages 513–546): Chapter 5 Spring 1967 (pages 547–616): Chapter 6 Fall 1967 (pages 617–747): Chapter 7 Spring 1968 (pages 749–805): Chapter 8 Fall 1968 (pages 1–83): Chapter 9 Winter 1969 (pages 85–154): Chapter 10 Winter 1970 (pages 155–211): Chapter 11 Spring 1970 (pages 213–288): Chapter 12 Winter 1971 (pages 289–331): Chapter 13 Spring 1971 (pages 333–415): Chapter 14 Fall 1971 (pages 417–518): Chapter 15 Spring 1972 (pages 519–575):