Ian Hutchby, Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 185. Hb £60.00, Pb £18.99.

Ian Hutchby's Media talk is an introduction to the analysis of talk-in-interaction on television and radio. Since the early 1990s, attention to interactive and discursive patterns in these broadcast media has produced a large, rich, and diversified body of work, targeting a wide range of media genres and issues from a variety of approaches. Gradually, this body of work is combining to form a unique field of study. One possible indication of this gradual consolidation of the field and of its diversity and richness is the recent, almost simultaneous publication of two introductory texts on media talk that share the same title but differ in scope, methodological approach, and generic breadth (the other is Tolson 2006). Despite its development, the study of media talk has remained until now on the periphery of media studies, and attention to the details of talk-in-interaction is often missing from the methodological mainstream of the discipline. Ian Hutchby's book aims at addressing this gap by introducing the study of media talk to students of the media. The book can be read as an extended argument for the analysis of talk, demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing macroscopic questions regarding broadcast media as a social institution from a unique perspective grounded in micro-analysis.