I was surprised to see the reference to Deborah Tannen, and it took me a second to realize that I had pitched her credentials to my dissertation committee back in the day. Her dissertation was a discourse analysis of the guests around her table for Thanksgiving. I was able to order it to my university’s inter library loan service, and I marveled at how “elegant” her research design was. She invited some friends and they agreed to be tape-recorded (literally), and she transcribed the script. I’m pretty sure that was her basic research strategy forever after.