On the division of labor in the maintenance of intersubjectivity: insights from the study of other-initiated repair in Vietnamese.

Few ideas have figured more centrally in the history of social theory than that of the division of labor. Here we ask whether conversational interaction, like other forms of social activity, exhibits a division of labor and, if so, what functions this serves and how it might be understood in relation to the theories of Marx and Durkheim. We begin by noting that, though conversational participants actively work to achieve and sustain understanding, much of the time this work is invisible and only its products are displayed in the form of sequentially fitted next turns at talk.