This volume offers a rich panoply of approaches to the vast and deep set of questions and issues in the study of interaction, with priority given to accounts of the interactional ‘machinery’ and CA in particular. The authors not only provide comprehensive surveys of previous studies, but also present possibilities, challenges and suggestions for future work. In this way, the handbook offers the readers with both updated information for a specific field of study and inspiration for further investigation. In addition, it can be used as ‘a method or resource for shedding light on a host of other phenomena in the social life of human beings and in the fabric of the various societal arrangements they live in’ (p. 12).

- Chit Cheung Matthew Sung, Lancaster University, in Discourse and Communication, Volume 4(4), 2010,

The strength of this volume is its paradox: it provides detailed description of the breadth of approaches within one small area. The work achieves its ambition of adding cohesion to the discipline. The similarity in structure of the majority of the chapters, which begin with a description of (a) how the approach addresses talk-in-interaction and (b) how it differs from the other approaches, is extraordinarily useful for disambiguating the often closely related fields. [...] Overall, this volume is exemplary in its treatment of theory. It would be an excellent reference work for graduate students preparing to write a thesis in the area of talk-in-interaction, because it would be an invaluable resource in helping establish which theoretical perspective best fits the student's premise. In this regard, it would also be helpful for those advising graduate students and mentoring them through the often murky waters of pragmatic theory.

- Lisa DeWaard, Clemson University, in Journal of Pragmatics Vol. 44 (2012),

The strength of this volume lies in the inclusion of varied discourse examples that illustrate theoretical influences, stages ans execution of analysis.

- Christine M. Jacknick, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, in Discourse Studies 12(6), 2010,