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Abstract

This article describes selected "rules" that may be abstracted from discussions in a given natural group, in this case, a nursing home admissions board. These rules may be seen as gmding the verbal contributions made by the participants in sustaming the interaction. Interactants avail themselves of options for behavioral production, and, in the process of domg so (that is, of making behavioral choices), they construct "strategic" messages. Accordingly, small group interaction may be seen as an implicitly structured activity. From the vantage point of discourse analysis, it is suggested that, to comprehend this structure and its meaning, mvestigators must move beyond the study of the internal or constituent units of conversation and toward a consideration of conversational behavior in the larger context of an ethnographic present.

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Talk and Interaction Strategy in a Task-Oriented Group

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