Ilkka Arminen is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tampere in Finland.

• Contents: Conversation analysis and its applications; Institutional interaction; Analytic procedures; Encountering a client; Classrooms and the transmission of knowledge and expertise; Strategic interaction; Negotiation; Information systems and organizational interaction; Toward applied conversation analysis; References; Appendices; Author index; Subject index.

’Conversation Analysis is making an enormously important contribution to the study of interaction and communication in such institutional settings as medical consultations, news interviews, counselling and courtroom examination. In doing so it is beginning to re-specify the sociolinguistic programme, and has re-engaged with more traditional sociological ethnographic inquiry. Arminen provides a lively and engaging introduction to this expanding and in some respects, controversial field of inquiry. He offers the student reader a clear picture of the scope of this field, including significant areas which have only recently emerged, such as interactional aspects of information systems.’ Paul Drew, University of York, UK