311 pp. CONTENTS: Contributors; Introduction; Part I. The Nature of Social Explanations; 1. Constructing Accounts: The Role of Explanatory Coherence by Stephen J. Read; 2. The Use of Prototypical Explanations in First- and Third-Person Accounts by Roger Lamb & Mansur Lalljee; 3. The Study of Causal Explanation in Natural Language: Analyzing Reports of the Challenger Disaster in The New York Times by Denis J. Hilton, Rainer H. Mathes, and Thomas R. Trabasso; 4. An Economy of Explanations by John McClure; 5. Lay Explanations by Adrian Furnham; 6. A Conversation Approach to Explanation, with Emphasis on Politeness and Accounting by William Turnbull; 7. Excuses in Everyday Interaction by Bernard Weiner; Part II. Explanations and Social Contexts; 8. Legal Fictions: Telling Stories and Doing Justice; 9. The Account Episode in Close Relationships by Frank D. Fincham; 10. Explanation as Legitimation: Excuse-Making in Organizations by Robert J. Bies and Sim B. Sitkin; 11. Alternative Knowledge Sources in Explanations of Racist Events by Philomena Essed; 12. The Social-Interactive Aspects of Account-Giving by Michael J. Cody and David J. Braaten; 13. Storytelling as Collaborative Reasoning: Co-Narratives in Incest Case Accounts by Karin Aronsson and Claes Nilholm; 14. What Went Wrong: Communicating Accounts of Relationship Conflict by Ann L. Weber, John H. Harvey, and Terri L. Orbuch; 15. Accounting for Failure to Follow Advice: Real Reasons Versus Good Explanations by Margaret L. McLaughlin, Michael J. Cody, Risa Dickson, and Valerie Manusov; Author Index; Subject Index.
