Talk at Work

Catalog description

The goal of this course is to learn how interaction in the workplace is conducted. Students will analyze different types of interactions in a variety of work settings, institutional and organizational contexts in order to learn how these interactions are conducted, what types of communication and workplace problems emerge through these interactions, and how these can best be prevented. In order to understand the sociological perspective on talk in institutional settings, we will first examine how ordinary conversations are organized, since these informal conversational patterns provide the basis for other types of interactions. Students will learn how to analyze interactions from a sociological perspective using the theoretical and methodological approaches of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis.