From emails relating to adoption over the Internet to discussions in the airline cockpit, the spoken or written texts we produce can have significant social consequences. The area of Mediated Discourse Analysis considers texts in their social and cultural contexts to explore the actions individuals take with texts - and the consequences of those actions. Discourse in Action: brings together leading scholars from around the world in the area of Mediated Discourse Analysis reveals ways in which its theory and methodology can be used in research into contemporary social situationsexplores real situations and draws on real data in each chaptershows how analysis of texts in their social contexts broadens our understanding of the real world.Taken together, the chapters provide a comprehensive overview to the field and present a range of current studies that address some of the most important questions facing students and researchers in linguistics, education, communication studies and other fields.

1. Mediated Dscourse Analysis 2. The Rhythmic Integration of Action and Discourse 3. Mediating Discourses of Transnational Adoption on the Internet 4. The Social Construction of Sacred Speech 5. Discursive Activity Along Life Traversals 6. Identity Construction and Power 7. The Role of Situation Definitions and Hybrid Activity Spaces in Learning 8. Semiotics as Resource 9. Agency Distributed through Time, Space and Tools 10. Talk-in-interaction and the Sequential Organization of Completed Actions in the Airline Cockpit 11. From Anticipation to Performance: Time as semiosis 12. Achieving Contextualization through Multimodal Engagement 13. Time, Space and Culture in Electronic Discourse 14. Theoretical Elucidations on Vygotsky and Mediated Discourse Analysis 15. Issues for and New Direction in Mediated Discourse Analysis