The dilemmas of third-party complaints in conversation between friends

This paper deals with third-party complaints in ordinary conversation. It is based on recordings of visits amongst friends, which are analyzed in an interactional perspective. The overall aim is to describe the way in which the co-conversationalists introduce, accept or refuse, develop, and close the activity of complaining in the course of their exchanges. Beyond this general purpose, two main issues underlie the analysis: (1) to identify the structural features of this type of activity; (2) to discuss through data analysis some of the analytical problems raised by the description of long sequences.