Producing and Managing Restricted Activities

Book excerpt: This book examines the kinds of talk that service providers working in various settings (e.g. doctors, healthcare providers, helpline call takers, tourist officers) seek to avoid in their interactions with clients, when such talk may be expected or due in some way. The studies utilise Conversation Analysis to demonstrate how participants use the interactional practices of avoidance and withholding to construct specific activities as restricted. The various authors also show how, in contributing to the restricted character of certain activities, withholding and avoidance in turn contribute to both the accomplishment of the particular work of the specific organisations and to the construction of the specific institutional identities of the professionals. Overall, the collection offers an authoritative account of restriction and avoidance in workplace interaction.