An unfortunate student who had been attempting to attract Harvey Sacks's attention:

HS: Are you asking a question, or are you bidding or what?

Q: Well I was just wondering if we are ever going to get round to the topics of conversation. HS: That's an amazing question ... What do you have in mind?

Q: I just feel we should get some content. I feel very frustrated about it ... I expected at least that you're going to analyse conversations, or have somethings little more interesting ...

HS: ... as weird as it may be, there's an area called the Analysis of Conversation. It's done in various parts of the world and I invented it. So that if I tell you that what we're doing is studying conversation then there is nowhere to turn ... There is no way that conversation is being studied systematically except my way. And that is what defines, in social science now, what talking about conversation would mean ... Where I end is where knowledge on these things ends.

LRB 8 May 1997 | PDF Download