This special issue developed out of the  6th Australasian Symposium on Conversation Analysis and Membership  Categorisation  Analysis  (CAMCA) held in Brisbane, Australia in November  2008. Conversation analysis (CA)  and membership categorization analysis  (MCA) are approaches that fall under the rubric of  ethnomethodology (EM) in that they explore the methods and practices people use to produce and make sense of the social world. CA and MCA  focus specifically on the methods and practices used by people when they communicate with one another—through talk,  gaze,  gesture, and text. While these approaches have their roots in sociology, they are now widely used in a diverse range of disciplines, including linguistics and communication,  psychology,  education, and anthropology. The broad applicability of this line of work is indicative of both the fundamental role of communication in human life and the potential of these approaches to contribute a truly transdisciplinary set of methods for studying communication. 

 In this issue, we present a broad spectrum of Australian research within  CA  and  MCA that is tied together by a shared interest in the details of communication in naturally occurring contexts.  The introduction begins with a discussion of EM and the implications of ethnomethodological approaches for communication research.  We  then  outline  the  assumptions  and  practices  of  MCA  and  CA  before introducing the contributions to this special