This exciting study draws together research from sociolinguistics, ethnography, anthropology and sociology into a fully up-to-date and cohesive analysis of professional discourse. It covers the theoretical issues of how language, written genres and spoken discourse are constructed from an interplay between linguistic and social realities, and provides historical, social and linguistic perspectives. Topics include: the moral construction of discourse in social care professions, the discourse of dispute negotiation, narrative accounts in clinical research, Doctor-patient interaction, legal discourse, and institutional discourse.

Contributors. General editor's preface. Acknowledgement.
1. Introduction.
2. Speech, Writing and Performativity: Evolutionary View of the History of Constitutive Ritual.
3. Performatives Constituting Value: The Case of Patents.
4. Contracts as Social Action.
5. A Scientific Community and its Texts: a Historical Discourse Study.
6. On the Sociohistorical Construction of Scientific Discourse.
7. Parameters of Institutional Discourse.
8. Evaluation as Linguistic Structure and Social Practice.
9. Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Doctor-Patient Interaction.
10. Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity in the Discourse of Alternative Dispute Resolution.
11. The Interactional Construction of Narratives in Medical and Life History Interviews.
12. The Institutional
13. Narrative as Drama. Moral Construction in Social Work Discourse.
14. Contested Vision: The Discursive Constitution of Rodney King.
Index

B.L. Gunnarsson, Per Linell, Bengt Nordberg