This volume is the first publishing result of a ten-year journey focused on the study of spoken language conducted within the framework of the Institute of Neohellenic Studies.

It includes 18 papers on the use of Greek in oral communication and covers a wide range of linguistic phenomena that – beyond the specific linguistic elements through which they are realized – can be classified into the following broader categories: structure and organization of conversation, negotiation and disagreement, repetition-reformulation, construction of identities/collectivities.

A common element of the papers included in the volume is the documentation of their findings with authentic data from spoken language that comes from different communication contexts. For the most part, the authors draw their material from informal, everyday conversations among friends and relatives. However, there are also studies, the empirical basis of which is established with data from more institutional communication contexts, such as television broadcasts, interviews, focus groups, etc.

Despite the fact that the 18 texts do not share a common theoretical starting point, the orientation of most of them towards a qualitative methodology is clear. These two characteristics, combined with the large number of works on – and in – Greek, constitute the originality of this publication.

The editor of the volume is a professor emeritus at A.U.Th.