A primer, we are told by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Onions, 1980:1,670), is “a small introductory book on any subject.” Some ten years ago, amidst a mixture of encouragement and pestering by colleagues, I set about writing a primer in conversation analysis. I had been teaching a two-term course called “Conversational Structures” to classes of both undergraduate and graduate students for over twenty years by then, and more abbreviated courses to one or the other of these cohorts for several years before that. I had a fairly secure sense of what needed doing and how to get it done. Surely that could be transferred from the lecture.
