Telling how texts talk

Dr McHoul uses recent developments in ethnomethodology and conversational analysis to handle problems of textual communication, extending the scope of ethnomethodology into the terrain of non face-to-face communication. He provides both methodological considerations of ethnomethodology and empirical analyses. Methodologically, he considers the waning influence of phenomenology and the growing influence of ordinary language philosophy on ethnomethodological studies. Empirically, he furnishes a number of concrete studies towards the analysis of situated occasions of reading.

02.22 Ich

The overall concern of the book is to ask what competent readers of texts must know and use in order to accomplish the routine interactions they have with texts in ordinary, everyday settings. By construing these matters as specifically matters of the practical management of interactive settings, a form of analysis similar to that developed initially by such writers as Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff for handling conversational settings can be brought to bear on the seemingly less public matter of reading textual discourse. The grounding of this work in principles taken from Wittgenstein's ordinary language philosophy ensures that the mistake of seeing language and its use as anything other than public is avoided, and it is argued in conclusion that conversational and textual discourse need not be considered separately.