Summary
The episode works through four problems that students commonly meet in discourse analysis, beginning with a primary care study in which a one-word change to a doctor's question changed how many concerns patients raised. Sarah and Kiffer use that study and an invented self-deprecation to show that preference describes the shape of a turn in relation to the turn before it, and they consider what this means for an interviewer's closing question, reassurance and silence. They then use Goffman's dramaturgy and his account of stigma to ask which claims a performance reading of the loneliness interviews can support, and they analyse footing in an invented line of reported speech. In the harder worked example, Sarah re-transcribes an invented exchange, catches the circularity of using inferred pauses as evidence, and rebuilds the analysis from the verbatim words and the interviewer's turns. The hosts close by debating whether analysts should bring in power and context that participants do not mention, and they agree to label each claim by its warrant.