Talk and Social Theory will be an essential text for students of sociolinguistics and the analysis of discourse in conversation.

• introduces the study of 'talk' linked to social theory;
• develops a new theoretical argument that reviews the relations between local social practices and general societal processes of talk;
• the use of everyday examples - a family dinner table, a school classroom, an academic advising session in an community college - enhances the book’s appeal to a non-specialist as well as a specialist audience;
• reviews the key theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks in social theory and in the sociolinguistic study of talk.

Frederick Erickson is George F. Kneller Professor of Anthropology of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.