Status and power in verbal interaction

Status and Power in Verbal Interaction is a sociolinguistic study of conversation in a social context. Using an ethnographic methodology and a network analysis of the social roles and relationships in a particular language community, the book explores how speakers negotiate status, relationship, and ultimately contest power through discourse. Of chief concern to the study is how speakers manage to negotiate relationship roles - which here consists of institutional status as well as the more variable social standing - using conversation. Discourse is seen to be not only what people say,