The following book is concerned with some small but not insignificant details of the interaction between human beings. It focuses on the organization of human behaviour in a particular setting, the medical consultation, and explores the coordination between body movement and speech, the visual and vocal aspects of the interaction between the doctor and patient. It is based upon many hours of video recordings of ordinary, everyday general-practice or primary-health-care consultations and involves the detailed analysis of actual examples accompanied by numerous illustrations.

The opportunity to conduct the research which forms the basis of this book derived from my appointment in 1974, on graduating, to the post of Research Fellow in the Department of General Practice, University of Manchester. The head of department at that time, Professor Patrick Byrne, gave his full support and encouragement to the research, and in 1977 we received from the Social Science Research Council research grant HR/5148 to conduct a project concerned with visual and vocal aspects of the general-practice consultation. Following the retirement of Patrick Byrne, Professor David Metcalfe received the chair, and he too providedenthusiasm and support for the research. Without Patrick Byrne, David Metcalfe, and colleagues in the Department of General Practice, especially Alec Brown, Eileen Ineson, Bernard Marks, and Mike Thomas, this research would not have been possible. More recently, I also owe a debt to my colleagues and students at the Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, for providing such a pleasant and stimulating environment for conducting research and teaching related courses.