Laughing together; Expressions of sorrow and joy

I've just been reading one of the lectures from my new book - Harvey Sacks: Lectures on Conversation. The bit I particularly enjoyed in the lecture is a section on going about analysis. Sacks is speaking to his students (1972 at Irvine)about ways to approach their assignments.

"There are two or three ways I would recommend proceeding. The first is to attempt to see, for something you notice, where such things go in terms of, for example, the overall structure of the organization of conversation ..."

Then,
"Proceed by locating it in some way as a sort of thing, e.g., a 'question'. a 'story beginning', etc. Having located it in some way, you might be able to examine the circumstances to come up with a version of those circumstances that tells you this is the sort of place this thing goes. Don't stop there, however. Go on to attempt to see if you can't establish it in some provable way. So, instead of just counting the range of places something goes, you might locate a version of the place and then see if you can come up with an account of why it goes there; some explanation or proof." (Sacks, 1995, p. 570)

chicago

Only 18 days until we fly our for aera in Chicago. Today, I'm working on the draft of my paper. It has been a long time since I wrote the proposal, so it is slow going.