Explaining and Arguing: The Social Organization of Accounts

`Antaki's contribution is the enabling of clear distinctions between different methods often used eclectically by those calling their work discourse analysis, such as conversation analysis and rhetorical approaches' - The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

`Antaki presents a cogent account of the process of explaining in social discourse. He takes a systematic approach to the subject and the chapter dealing with attributions is particularly well done... Antaki draws connections between understanding the complexities of explaining and arguing and areas of interest in social psychology in general and social cognition specifically. Another strength of the work lies in the author's incorporation of issues of culture in the explanatory process. Researchers working in the area of impression formation and recovery from biased impressions will be especially likely to benefit from the insights provided in this work... Antaki's review of the literature is both appropriate and impressive' - Choice

`The most comprehensive work to date on explanations and accounts. Antaki is one of the few thinkers conversant both with the new qualitative paradigms in the social sciences - conversation analysis, discourse analysis, rhetorical approaches - and with the mainstream social psychological approach of attribution theory. Lucid and never ponderous, the book gives a much needed shape and coherence to this cross-disciplinary area' - Richard Buttny, Syracuse University, New York

`Excellent... an engagingly written and well- researched critical overview of the literature on everyday explanations, combined with a clear theoretical position. A beautifully crafted piece of work' - Derek Edwards, Loughborough University