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What is institutional talk?

Drew and Heritage themes [165]:

Institutional talk

· Is goal oriented in institutionally relevant ways

· Often involves “special and particular constraints” on “allowable contributions to the business at hand”

· May be “associated with inferential frameworks and procedures that are peculiar to specific institutional contexts”

Agents questioning clients i.e. doctor/patient, lawyer/client talks (a type of institutional talk)

Turn allocation and turn type allocation are “intimately related”

· Questioner gets as long as she wants (turn allocation), end of turn usually noted with the final statement of a question (turn type allocation)

· Questioned is expected to answer the question (turn type allocation), not lead the conversation, and must yield control when questioner tries to take over (turn allocation)

With a questioning structure we get back to the debate as to whether this structure is dynamically evolved to structure activity or if it is inherent in the institutionality of the interaction. Have states there are cases of both

Institutional questionings	Interrogative series
Job interviews, news interviews, research interviews Questioning structure arises out of turn-type pre-allocation and institutional format	Doctor/patient, police/caller Request/service pairs, “caller” initiates a request and then a series of questions are asked in order to better fulfill that request Questioning structure arises out of activity allocation, not turn-type pre-allocation

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