Interaction Structure and Strategy

For nineteen years, Starkey Duncan, Donald Fiske, and their collaborators have explored and sought to integrate the linguistic and nonverbal elements of face-to-face interaction which they view as a structured or rule-governed process. They are concerned both with the structure of interactions, described in terms of rules, signals, and other elements (analogous to grammar), and with its strategy, or interactional styles exhibited by participants within the structure. The relation between structure and strategy is similar to the relation between rules and the strategies participants adopt in games. The authors' 'structure' studies carry forward the work reported in their Face to Face Interaction: Research Methods and Tbeory (1977), while their 'strategy' studies break new ground. Their review of the current state of interaction research, its conceptual foundations and methods provides a useful framework for analysis in this new field.