Books in the Foundations of Human Interaction series

The book presents a new general theory of language as a collectively-constructed communication technology - not unlike the social media on the Net today - that is dedicated to a very particular communicative function: the instruction of imagination.

This book brings together cognitive science and quantitative cultural history to look into the causes of cultural survival. Instead of blind and faithful imitation, it explores the appeal of traditions evolved to fit cognitive biases. This is both an introduction and an alternative to contemporary theories of cultural evolution.

In groundbreaking research Gail Jefferson explores in fine detail the interactional complexities of talking about troubles, not in any professional or therapeutic setting, but in their ordinary conversations with family and friends.

This book analyses requests for action on the basis of natural video-recorded data of everyday interaction in British English and Polish families. Joerg Zinken describes in his analyses the features of interactional context that people across cultures might be sensitive to in designing a request, as well as aspects of cultural diversity.

This collection of studies by Gail Jefferson, one of the co-founders of the field of Conversation Analysis, represents a distinctive and sustained investigation of speakers correcting errors in their own and one another's speech. Combining rigorous technical analysis, methodological innovation, and acute observation, Jefferson explores the subterranean world of interaction.

This books offers a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world.

In Relationship Thinking, N. J. Enfield outlines a framework for analyzing social interaction and its linguistic, cultural, and cognitive underpinnings, by putting human relationships front and center.

Examines interaction in second language acquisition, in different cultures, in different species, in observation without participation, in literacy, in schizophrenia, in relation to human physiological responses, and in relation to correlated perspectives on interaction.

In this book, Nicolas Baumard explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard accounts for the specific structure of human morality.

This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing the related concepts of account, motive, accounting, and accountability, with the goal of re-exposing their multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing pathways for future research.

Distributed Agency presents an interdisciplinary inroad into the latest thinking about the distributed nature of agency: what it's like, what are its conditions of possibility, and what are its consequences. The book's 25 chapters are written by a wide range of scholars, from anthropology, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, geography, law, economics, and sociology. While each chapter takes up different materials using differentmethods, they all chart relations between the key elements of agency: intentionality, causality, flexibility and accountability.

Distributed Agency presents an interdisciplinary inroad into the latest thinking about the distributed nature of agency: what it's like, what are its conditions of possibility, and what are its consequences. The book's 25 chapters are written by a wide range of scholars, from anthropology, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, geography, law, economics, and sociology. While each chapter takes up different materials using differentmethods, they all chart relations between the key elements of agency: intentionality, causality, flexibility and accountability.

Silence takes on meaning based on the contexts of its occurrence. This is especially true in social interactions: consider the difference between silence after "lemme think," and silence after "will you marry me?" This book examines a particular form of silence, the conversational lapse. These regularly appear in conversations when all interactants pass up the opportunity to speak, and are moments when talk seems to falter or give way to matters extraneous to the conversation. What are these silences for the participants who, by virtue of not speaking, allowed them to develop? Elliott M. Hoey here offers the first in-depth analysis of lapses in conversation. Using methods from Conversation Analysis, theauthor explores hundreds of lapses in naturally occurring social occasions with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of how participants produce and locate order in lapses. Particular emphasis is given to how lapses emerge, what people do during the silence, and how they restart conversationafterwards. This research uncovers participants'' methods for organizing lapses in their everyday affairs such that those silences are rendered as understandable periods of non-talk. By articulating participants'' understandings of when and where talk is relevant, necessary, or appropriate, the research brings into focus the borderlines between talk-in-interaction and other realms of social life. This book shows lapses to be a particular and fascinating kind of silence with unique relevancies forthe social situations of which they are a part.