Jack Sidnell is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the structures and practices of talk and interaction in a range of settings. In addition to extensive research in the Caribbean, Sidnell has examined talk in court and among young children. He is the author Talk and Practical Epistemology: The Social Life of Knowledge in a Caribbean Community (2005) and the editor of Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives (2009).
The book is overall an excellent introductory text for the undergraduate level ... On the whole, the book provides a good foundation for a student entering the field, with the main concepts and questions of CA discussed in an informal and engaging way. (Discourse Studies, 2011) The interdisciplinary research method and field of conversation analysis (CA) is remarkably well-suited to helping teachers achieve this objective, because CA provides tools that enable first the perception, and then the scientific description and analysis of regular patterns of human social conduct - patterns that organize, and make meaningful, the world of everyday life. (Language in Society, 2011)