This volume investigates how work is accomplished via talk in various settings including classrooms; courtrooms; job interviews; news interviews; diagnosis delivery in medical settings; 911 emergency calls; institutionalized advice-giving by nurses to new mothers in their homes; the problematic relationship between troubles-telling and service encounters; and gate-keeping interviews which lead to the exclusion of minorities. Three factors unifying these papers are: the use of conversation analytic theory; a focus on the activities involved in building questions and providing relevant answers; and a detailed analysis of specific sequences of interaction recorded on audio or video tape.