Sequencing in Conversational Openings
The 1968 attempt to write down the rules for how conversations start. The documentation exists; nobody was handed it.
Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in Conversational Openings. American Anthropologist, 70(6), 1075–1095.
- Type
- Journal article
- Find it
- doi.org/10.1525/aa.1968.70.6.02a00030
- Checked
- Against the abstract, 15 September 2026
Why it is on the list
Schegloff set out to “ascertain rules” for how conversations open, and named properties of those rules, among them conditional relevance. The course uses the paper for one fact before any of its content: the opening handshake was specified, in a peer-reviewed journal, in 1968. Week 1 treats that as the course’s founding scandal. Only the abstract was checked, so the course names the term and leaves its definition to the paper.