Is Real Real Good

978-0-6151-4513-6

The Broken Land

"At once disturbing and beautiful . . . superbly realized." — The Times (London) Grandfather was a tree, Father grew trux, in fifteen colours. Mother could sing the double-helix song, sing it right into the hearts of living things and change them... The Land is a living, breathing, sentient world, where careful skills and talent can manipulate its very substance into a myriad different shapes and forms. This is the world in which Mathembe Fileli grows up, until the conflicts tearing her country apart shatter her village, her home and her family and scatter them to the four winds. Can Mathembe reunite her family in a world full of angels, talking trees, squalor and glory? "Ian McDonald takes on all the atrocity and strife of the 20th Century, radically displaces it, and dares to envision a means of change. It's a brilliant achievement." — Locus "McDonald is a superior writer." — Booklist

An Introduction to Interaction

This textbook provides an in-depth introduction to the theoretical perspectives and methods of doing conversation analysis, an approach to the study of talk in interaction which grew out of the work of Garfinkel, Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson. This book is unique in that it provides comprehensive instruction in both interaction in ordinary conversations in everyday life as well as talk in institutional settings and a wide range of workplace and business interactions, while teaching both major research findings and how to conduct conversation analytic research. The book is designed to be useful for students of linguistics, sociology, and communication studies, and is written in clear and accessible prose. The Companion Website provides additional resources for instructors, such as questions and data excerpts for tests and in class exercises, audio and video clips for transcription practice, and guides for instructors on a range of topics covered in the course.