Develops a perspective for studying institutional procedures for assigning incoming patients to available wards and for transferring patients between and among wards. Presents ethnographic data collected in one extended-care facility. Discusses staff-patient and patient-patient interactions surrounding ward assignments and transfers. (Author/ABB)

Discusses assumptions and criticisms of rule-governed approaches to interpersonal communication research and theory. Outlines a definition of rules that does not require sole reliance on interpersonal actors' statements about their behavior or assumptions of communicator self-awareness. Suggests consideration of rules-based concomitants of…

A five-month ethnographic study of conversations in a Philadelphia nursing home revealed some of the rules governing situationally appropriate conversational behavior. The social communicational perspective of the study differed from both psychological and discourse analysis approaches. Analysis of the data indicated that sustained…