Steven E. Clayman
Professor of Sociology
I am a sociologist of human interaction, both as a phenomenon in itself and as a window into societal institutions and historical change.
My methods are derived from the conversation analytic tradition. I use recordings of naturally occurring social behavior as primary data, and I integrate context-sensitive case analysis with statistical methods in ways that serve the objectives of a given project.
My primary research addresses the nexus of media and politics, through direct encounters between journalists and authority figures in news conferences and media interviews. The design of questions and responses can illuminate journalistic norms, press-state relations, political communication systems, and sociopolitical culture. Initial work is synthesized in my book co-authored with John Heritage, The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures On the Air (Cambridge). More recent work uses larger databases and to examine how questioning authority varies under different historical and sociopolitical conditions.
I am also interested in institutional practices ranging from medicine and law to public safety and policing. Work in such areas can be found in Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities, and Institutions (Wiley-Blackwell), also co-authored with John Heritage.
More broadly still, I examine ordinary conversation as an enduring social form, and a key locus for the management of social action, intersubjectivity, social relationships, collaboration, and influence.
Recent projects include:
* Arrangement-making, benefaction, and reciprocity (with John Heritage)
* Dialysis surgery consultations (with Karen Woo and Zi Wang)
* Perinatal loss in couples therapy (with Bernadetta Janusz and Karolina Dejko-Wańczyk)
* Political positioning and sociopolitical legitimacy
* Question design and the mainstreaming of marriage equality (with Laura Loeb)
* Early press conferences and presidential accountability (with John Heritage)
* Particles in intersubjectivity and affiliation (with Chase Raymond)
* Voir dire questioning and jury selection (with Matthew P. Fox)
* Police radio dispatch calls (with Heidi Kevoe-Feldman)
