Anthony Wootton – författare

Erving Goffman was one of the most pre-eminent authors of the post-war period in social science. His ideas have had an extraordinary influence and have become well known to a wide audience. This is the first systematic appraisal of the legacy of his work.The book brings together a group of eminent scholars from sociology, linguistics and social psychology, all of whom are internationally known for their own work. Contributors include Adam Kendon, Randall Collins, Robin Williams, Emanuel A. Schegloff, Christian Heath, Stephen C. Levinson, P.M. Strong and Anthony Giddens.The contributors analyse and seek to build on Goffman's work in a sympathetic yet critical way. Some chapters describe the main parameters of the "interaction order", as Goffman portrays it, serving as a useful introduction to his approach. Others show how future investigations of the interaction order may be developed.This book will become a standard source for undergraduates and postgraduates in linguistics, social psychology and sociology, and for anyone interested in the development of modern social theory in general.

First Published in 1975, Dilemmas of Discourse brings together strands of arguments from disciplines like sociology, anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to explore the debate around the issue of deciding the meaning of what people may say. Can the meaning of words be described satisfactorily as a bundle of semantic features? Can speech acts such as promising and insulting be described as only occurring when a particular form of speech is used in a particular kind of context? Do sociolinguistic rules have a bearing on the problem of extracting the meaning of what people say? What sorts of implications does ethnomethodology have for areas of traditional sociological interest in language such as vocabularies of motives or the relation of language used to social class? These are some of the questions which the author sets out to answer with clarity and carefulness uncharacteristic of much writing on this subject.In general, Dr Wootton defends the ethnomethodological position, and when relating these arguments to developments in mainstream sociology responds to certain criticisms made of recent ethnomethodological writing. But he is also at pains to point out the necessity of subjecting ethnomethodological interpretations to explicit forms of evaluation and suggests some ways in which this might be done. This is a must read for students of sociology.

First Published in 1975, Dilemmas of Discourse brings together strands of arguments from disciplines like sociology, anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to explore the debate around the issue of deciding the meaning of what people may say. Can the meaning of words be described satisfactorily as a bundle of semantic features? Can speech acts such as promising and insulting be described as only occurring when a particular form of speech is used in a particular kind of context? Do sociolinguistic rules have a bearing on the problem of extracting the meaning of what people say? What sorts of implications does ethnomethodology have for areas of traditional sociological interest in language such as vocabularies of motives or the relation of language used to social class? These are some of the questions which the author sets out to answer with clarity and carefulness uncharacteristic of much writing on this subject.In general, Dr Wootton defends the ethnomethodological position, and when relating these arguments to developments in mainstream sociology responds to certain criticisms made of recent ethnomethodological writing. But he is also at pains to point out the necessity of subjecting ethnomethodological interpretations to explicit forms of evaluation and suggests some ways in which this might be done. This is a must read for students of sociology.