David Silverman

First published in 1980, this reissue is a study of the sociology of language, which aims to bridge the gap between textbook and monograph by alternating chapters of explication and analysis. A chapter outlining a particular theory and suggesting general criticisms is followed by a chapter offering an original application of that theory. The aim of the authors is to treat text and talk as the site of specific practices which sustain or subvert particular relations between appearance and reality.

Harvey Sacks's early death in 1975 robbed the social sciences of one of its most original thinkers. Although he published relatively little in his lifetime, his lectures and papers were enormously influential in sociology and sociolinguistics and they played a major role in the development of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. The recent publication of Sacks's Lectures on Conversation has provided an excellent opportunity for a wide-ranging reassessment of his contribution. In this new book, David Silverman provides a clear introduction to Sack's work and reassesses its value for sociology, linguistics, anthropology and psychology. Using a variety of examples, he explains Sacks's ideas on method, language and talk-in-interaction. He argues that Sacks's work offers a highly original perspective on language and social life and raises fundamental questions for the social sciences - questions which, after more than twenty years, remain vitally important and largely unanswered. Written in a lively and accessible way, this book will be of particular interest to students of sociology, sociolinguistics, social theory and method, but it will also be of interest to students and researchers in anthropology, psychology and related disciplines.

In this book, David Silverman offers a fully researched and analytically sensitive account of how counselling, as a process, is dynamically constructed through the interaction of counsellor and client. Drawing on research on counselling of clients undergoing an HIV test, the author explores the ways in which conversations between counsellors and clients reflect, embody and subtly alter assumptions about the purpose, method and practice of counselling. This critical appreciation of the modes of engagement between counsellor and client will be of interest to researchers and students of counselling, psychotherapy and associated helping professions. Practitioners - particularly those involved in HIV and other health counselling - will be stimulated to reflect on and respond to Silverman's analysis in their own practice. The book will also be essential reading for researchers and students in the traditions of sociological work on interactionism, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, applying these approaches in a sophisticated manner to the interactionist and conversational strategies adopted in a health promotion environment.

In this book, David Silverman offers a fully researched and analytically sensitive account of how counselling, as a process, is dynamically constructed through the interaction of counsellor and client. Drawing on research on counselling of clients undergoing an HIV test, the author explores the ways in which conversations between counsellors and clients reflect, embody and subtly alter assumptions about the purpose, method and practice of counselling. This critical appreciation of the modes of engagement between counsellor and client will be of interest to researchers and students of counselling, psychotherapy and associated helping professions. Practitioners - particularly those involved in HIV and other health counselling - will be stimulated to reflect on and respond to Silverman's analysis in their own practice. The book will also be essential reading for researchers and students in the traditions of sociological work on interactionism, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, applying these approaches in a sophisticated manner to the interactionist and conversational strategies adopted in a health promotion environment.