Introduction

Abstract

The words people use in conversation with others are not only building blocks for sentences. Words are issued as part of the unfolding lives of their speakers in almost all of their encounters with others-and most of these encounters are organized through talk-in-interaction. The words we use are subject to the practices employed to organize talk-in-interaction, and they are subject to the practices employed to accomplish action through talking-in-interaction. Words are deployed as part of those organizations, and to be fully understood as parts of speech, they must be described in terms of that deployment-as contributions to situated and occasioned action in organized courses of action.