Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground

Carly Butler is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at Loughborough University, UK. .

’Readers have long awaited a book that gives children’s interactions serious consideration. Picking up where Sacks, Speier and Mackay left off, Butler’s analysis revitalizes the ethnomethodological inquiry into children’s practical reasoning and action. Narrowing the gap left wide open by overtheorized sociological accounts of childhood, this book may well become the landmark of a new generation of child studies.’ Jakob Cromdal, Linköping University, Sweden 'A masterful and fascinating study using talk-in-interaction to examine the everyday social practices of young children in the playground. Important and innovative, this book invites us, in the most persuasive way, to understand young children as competent members of their social worlds, who draw strategically on the interactional, place and material resources at hand, and who are skilled and expert in manipulating these strategically to get the business at hand accomplished.' Susan Danby, Queensland University of Technology, Australia 'I found Butler's analysis both convincing and effective in highlighting the role played by membership categories in sequential organisation of children's activities, especially since she rigorously attends to the situated and always emerging nature of the categories themselves.' Language in Society

• Contents: Children's talk, interaction and play; Analyzing talk and social interaction; The fieldwork: process and practice; Sacks on play and games; Fairy club as a membership categorization device; Sharing news: doing formal talk; Co- and cross-membership in an assessment sequence; Concluding comments; Appendix; References; Index.