Harvey Sacks

Harvey Sacks (* 1935 † 14 November 1975) was an American sociologist, the strong influence on ethnomethodology had.

Scientific Work

Sacks was groundbreaking for sociology and linguistics and conducted the first conversation analytic studies that examined rather simplistic modeling of the phenomenon " actually spoken language " ( naturally occurring interaction) in detail. Despite his early death in a car accident in 1975 and during his lifetime hardly -driven publication work he and his conceptions are responsible and influential in the sociology and social psychology. Few of his works have been translated into German.

His main work available today consists mainly of transcripts of his lectures and sparse, single released from the literary estate articles. An exception is the pioneering Simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation, which he co-authored with his former student Gail Jefferson and his present estate administrator Emmanuel Schegloff.