In this chapter sacks introduces us to the material taken from the emergency psychiatric hospital. Sacks started off by looking at the structure of conversation and then shows us interesting ethnomethodological ways of breaking down the smallest interactions to its base components. An example of this given by sacks is the aversion techniques used when the respondent did not want their name to be known. .
Sacks shows us these phenomenons by using rules. One of these is that of the originator of the conversation. Who ever speaks first in a conversation will determine the terms of address used, and that these terms can come in "units". A unit is usually in a pair, for example -.
A) "Hello" .
B) "Hello".
Normal conversation has many of these rules and the question of finding out somebody's name during conversation is a good example of this. When in talking to someone that you have never met you can ask there name without directly putting the question to them. An example of this would be-.
A) "Hi, I"m Andy".
B) "I"m David".
To avoid giving ones name though is a great deal trickier. Sacks tells us that in order for this to happen the respondent must throw the conversation out of the usual pair format by claiming not to be able to hear the other party.
What sacks calls "accounts" can be requested by the respondent as another way of breaking up the conversation. If you ask for someone's name and they ask why, then they are asking you to account for the reason behind wanting there name.
Sacks tells us that providing a slot for the respondents name does not tend to generate accounts, but asking for it directly can lead to the request for one. Instead callers can use slot for there name to say something like "I can't hear you" to start a chain of conversation that will lead to the slot being withdrawn as it is no longer at the stage of the conversation where it is relevant. Sacks calls this the repeat device and tells us that it a very elaborate way of not giving ones identity.