Professor Michael Billig is one of the most significant living figures in social psychology. His work spans thirty-five years, and has at times challenged conventional social scientific thinking on a range of key topics. Billig has influenced a wide range of fields including intergroup conflict, social attitudes and ideology, rhetoric, racism, nationalism, humour, psychoanalysis, and popular culture, but most significantly, his writing has not only influenced social psychologists, but is widely recognised by linguistics, sociologists, historians and cultural theorists. This book brings together expert accounts of Billig's ideas on a wide range of issues in a single text. Each of the contributors explains the importance of Billig's work for a specific area detailing its application to a particular social psychological problematic. In doing so, the authors also demonstrate the relevance of Billig's work to emerging concerns in twenty-first century social science, including conspiracy accounting, moral exclusion, discursive psychology and European identity. Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology will be key reading for academics and researchers working in sociology, cultural studies, social psychology, communication and media studies and linguistics.

Professor Michael Billig is one of the most significant living figures in social psychology. His work spans thirty-five years, and has at times challenged conventional social scientific thinking on a range of key topics. Billig has influenced a wide range of fields including intergroup conflict, social attitudes and ideology, rhetoric, racism, nationalism, humour, psychoanalysis, and popular culture, but most significantly, his writing has not only influenced social psychologists, but is widely recognised by linguistics, sociologists, historians and cultural theorists. This book brings together expert accounts of Billig's ideas on a wide range of issues in a single text. Each of the contributors explains the importance of Billig's work for a specific area detailing its application to a particular social psychological problematic. In doing so, the authors also demonstrate the relevance of Billig's work to emerging concerns in twenty-first century social science, including conspiracy accounting, moral exclusion, discursive psychology and European identity. Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology will be key reading for academics and researchers working in sociology, cultural studies, social psychology, communication and media studies and linguistics.

Explanations identify causes, back up claims and justify actions. Social scientists study them because they reveal how people understand and construct their worlds. This stimulating book offers a critical review of the major approaches to the study of everyday explaining and arguing.

Using concrete examples to illuminate the range of contemporary approaches, Antaki's concern is to test theory against practice. He draws a picture of explanation as a richly social achievement of speaker and audience, involving a balance between delicate manoeuvre and the exercise of discursive power.

Psychotherapy is a 'talking cure'- clients voice their troubles to therapists, who listen, prompt, question, interpret and generally try to engage in a positive and rehabilitating conversation with their clients. Using the sophisticated theoretical and methodological apparatus of Conversation Analysis - a radical approach to how language in interaction works - this book sheds light on the subtle and minutely-organised sequences of speech in psychotherapeutic sessions. It examines how therapists deliver questions, cope with resistance, reinterpret experiences and how they can use conversation to achieve success. Conversation is a key component of people's everyday and professional lives and this book provides an unusually detailed insight into the complexity and power of talk in institutional settings. Featuring contributions from a collection of internationally-renowned authors, Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy will appeal to researchers and graduate students studying conversation analysis across the disciplines of psychology, sociology and linguistics.

Psychotherapy is a 'talking cure'- clients voice their troubles to therapists, who listen, prompt, question, interpret and generally try to engage in a positive and rehabilitating conversation with their clients. Using the sophisticated theoretical and methodological apparatus of Conversation Analysis - a radical approach to how language in interaction works - this book sheds light on the subtle and minutely organised sequences of speech in psychotherapeutic sessions. It examines how therapists deliver questions, cope with resistance, reinterpret experiences and how they can use conversation to achieve success. Conversation is a key component of people's everyday and professional lives and this book provides an unusually detailed insight into the complexity and power of talk in institutional settings. Featuring contributions from a collection of internationally renowned authors, Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy will appeal to researchers and graduate students studying conversation analysis across the disciplines of psychology, sociology and linguistics.

Explanations identify causes, back up claims and justify actions. Social scientists study them because they reveal how people understand and construct their worlds. This stimulating book offers a critical review of the major approaches to the study of everyday explaining and arguing.

Using concrete examples to illuminate the range of contemporary approaches, Antaki's concern is to test theory against practice. He draws a picture of explanation as a richly social achievement of speaker and audience, involving a balance between delicate manoeuvre and the exercise of discursive power.

Identity attracts some of social scienceÆs liveliest and most passionate debates. Theory abounds on matters as disparate as nationhood, ethnicity, gender politics, and culture. But there is much less investigation into the actual empirical details of how identity appears in the details of everyday life. This book gathers together, in a collection of chapters that draw on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, arguments that show that identities are constructed æliveÆ in the actual exchange of talk. By closely examining tapes and transcripts of real social interactions from a wide range of situations, using ethnomethodological and conversation analytic methods, the book examines just how it is that a person can be ascribed to a category and what features about that category are consequential for the interaction. This thoughtful volume is ideal for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers in social psychology, sociology, communication, and anthropology.