Product Description

This imaginative and original book challenges the traditional scientific view that naturally occurring psychological and sociological `realities' are to be discovered underlying appearances. Instead, it claims that such orderly realities are both socially constructed and sustained within the context of people's disorderly, everyday conversational activities.

John Shotter's interdisciplinary analysis highlights the socially contested but imaginary nature of many of the `things' we talk about in social life and illuminates the processes of their construction. He offers a broad-ranging exploration of the rhetorical, argumentative nature of conversational communication, using examples from psychotherapy, management and everyday life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #682492 in Books
• Published on: 1993-12-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
`I like this book, will recommend it to colleagues and students, and expect it to become a staple citation in articles and books I publish... Sometimes books an academic reads enable a person to make connections among previously disconnected pieces of experience, recurring preferences and passions, and particular life decisions. Reading Conversational Realities accomplished this for me... it is theoretically rich, philosophically thoughtful and experientially evocative' - Human Studies

`This book is fascinating... It is important for several reasons. First, it provides an overview of an approach to the social sciences known as social constructionism... Second, Shotter maintains that the fundamental human reality is persons in conversations... Third, Shotter is concerned with practical implications, not just theoretical conceptions' - Studies in Second Language Acquisition