Challenging current work in communication and social psychology that assumes face-to-face interaction can be adequately understood without attending to discourse expression, this volume examines how people's goals, concerns, and intentions can be related to discourse expression. The text discusses discourse-goal linkages in specific face-to-face encounters such as courtroom exchanges, marital counseling, and intellectual discussions, as well as in more general theoretical dilemmas. Because it poses a new set of questions about social actors' motivations and pre-interactional goals, this volume offers a new direction for discourse study -- one that seriously considers the thinking and strategy involved in human communication.

Challenging current work in communication and social psychology that assumes face-to-face interaction can be adequately understood without attending to discourse expression, this volume examines how people's goals, concerns, and intentions can be related to discourse expression. The text discusses discourse-goal linkages in specific face-to-face encounters such as courtroom exchanges, marital counseling, and intellectual discussions, as well as in more general theoretical dilemmas. Because it poses a new set of questions about social actors' motivations and pre-interactional goals, this volume offers a new direction for discourse study -- one that seriously considers the thinking and strategy involved in human communication.

Grounded Practical Theory: Investigating Communication Problems provides readers with an introduction to grounded practical theory (GPT), a framework for doing research about the problems people encounter when they engage in particular communicative practices, techniques for managing those problems, and normative ideas for how to communicate wisely in situations that involve tensions and dilemmas. Readers learn about the philosophy behind GPT and how its application can strengthen and improve existing communication practices. They review a detailed road map and practical examples for conducting GPT research, including how to analyze discourse. They also learn how past researchers have creatively adapted GPT to study and reconstruct a variety of communicative practices. The text compares GPT with other qualitative approaches and offers guidance for how to choose among different methods. The book concludes with considerations of how GPT may be used in the future. Grounded Practical Theory is an ideal book for graduate-level courses in qualitative methods or communication theory and an excellent resource for practicing communication scholars and researchers.

Karen Tracy examines the identity-work of judges and attorneys in state supreme courts as they debated the legality of existing marriage laws. Exchanges in state appellate courts are juxtaposed with the talk that occurred between citizens and elected officials in legislative hearings considering whether to revise state marriage laws. The book's analysis spans ten years, beginning with the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of sodomy laws in 2003 and ending in 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the federal government's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, and it particularly focuses on how social change was accomplished through and reflected in these law-making and law-interpreting discourses. Focal materials are the eight cases about same-sex marriage and civil unions that were argued in state supreme courts between 2005 and 2009, and six of a larger number of hearings that occurred in state judicial committees considering bills regarding who should be able to marry. Tracy concludes with analysis of the 2011 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on DOMA, comparing it to the initial 1996 hearing and to the 2013 Supreme Court oral argument about it. The book shows that social change occurred as the public discourse that treated sexual orientation as a "lifestyle " was replaced with a public discourse of gays and lesbians as a legitimate category of citizen.

This engaging text explores how everyday talk--the ordinary kinds of communicating that people do in schools, workplaces, and among family and friends--expresses who we are and who we want to be. The authors interweave rhetorical and cultural perspectives on the "little stuff" of conversation: what we say and how we say it, the terms used to refer to others, the content and style of stories we tell, and more. Numerous detailed examples show how talk is the vehicle through which people build relationships. Students gain skills for thinking more deeply about their own and others' communicative practices, and for understanding and managing interactional difficulties. New to This Edition *Updated throughout to incorporate the latest discourse analysis research. *Chapter on six specific speech genres (for example, organizational meetings and personal conversation). *Two extended case studies with transcripts and discussion questions. *Coverage of digital communication, texting, and social media. *Additional cross-cultural examples. Pedagogical Features *A preview and summary in every chapter. *Accessible explanations of core concepts. *End-of-book glossary. *Endnotes that identify key authors and suggest further reading.

Is there any place in America where passionate debate plays a more vital role in democratic discourse than local school board meetings? Karen Tracy conducted a thirty-five-month study of the board meetings of the Boulder Valley School District between 1996 and 1999 to analyze just how democracy operates in practice. In Challenges of Ordinary Democracy, she reveals the major role that emotion plays in real-life debate and discerns value in what might easily be seen as negative forms of discourse--voicing platitudes, making contradictory assertions, arguing over a document's wording, speaking angrily, attacking a person's character. By illuminating this one arena of "ordinary democracy," Tracy hopes to engender a new appreciation for how what she calls "reasonable hostility" can be a desirable ideal of communication for debating public policy issues.

In academic colloquia the most privileged and noble mission of universities is exercised: the advancing and testing of ideas, the production of truth and knowledge, an activity that is nothing less than the "the essential sound for a place of thought." But, as ideas advance and are tested, what are people doing? What is the role for emotions and relationships? What worries do faculty and graduate students bring to this occasion? What problems do participants face as they talk with each other? How are problems made visible in talk and given attention through talk? Colloquium speaks to these questions by analyzing tape recorded discussions of several academic groups, and interviews in which academics reflect about their colloquium participation. Colloquium addresses three key questions: (1) What are the communicative problems that face graduate student and faculty participants? (2) What conversational strategies are used in response to these problems? and (3) How ought academics talk with each other? This book develops how the academic colloquium is best conceived as a dilemmatic situation-a communicative occasion involving tensions and contradiction. With a dilemmatic perspective, colloquium problems experienced as diffuse and hard to articulate become recognizable, various conversational "trivia" become sensible, and specific moral/practical proposals emerge as defensible and desirable courses of action. The work covers views that colloquium problems form the perspective of individual participants in their roles as presenters and discussants, and graduate students and faculty members; dilemmas discourse practices of the academic colloquium are examined from a group perspective; and aphilosophical and pragmatic reconstruction of practice.

This book examines political rhetoric at the grassroots level. Starting from a position that ""Democracy depends on details, or else remains a formal abstraction,"" editors Karen Tracy, James P. McDaniel, and Bruce Gronbeck argue that a true understanding of the democratic body politic becomes most intelligible through a close study of its parts. An academic preference for grandiose, abstract political theory, the editors contend, undervalues and masks the patterns of social interaction, strategic discourse, and vernacular rhetorical resources - a public language, in short - to be found at the grassroots level and at the core of ""ordinary democracy."" Each essay focuses on the same local controversy. In 2001, in a predominantly white Colorado community, a third-grade girl submitted an experiment to the school science fair. She asked 30 adults and 30 fifth-graders which of two Barbie dolls was prettier. One doll was black, the other white, and each wore a different colored dress. All of the adults picked the Barbie in the purple dress, while nearly all of the fifth graders picked the white Barbie. When the student's experiment was banned by school administrators from the science fair for violating the district's nondiscrimination policy, an uproar resulted that spread from a local cable channel to a metropolitan newspaper, the Associated Press, and the national media. A series of school board meetings and other public exchanges highlighted the potent intersection of local and national social concerns: education, censorship, science, racism, and tensions between foundation values such as liberty, democracy, and free speech. For the authors of these essays, who focus principally on speech (verbal exchanges as symbolic action), the events surrounding ""Barbiegate"" illustrate how individual acts and communal interpretations of customs, policies, and ideologies are connected and are fundamental to our understanding of civic judgment in a democratic state. In addition to the introduction and essays, appendixes supply transcripts of fourteen key speeches by citizens and school board members involved in the debates, as well as a URL where speeches may be viewed.