This imaginative and original book challenges the traditional scientific view that naturally occurring psychological and sociological `realities' are to be discovered underlying appearances. Instead, it claims that such orderly realities are both socially constructed and sustained within the context of people's disorderly, everyday conversational activities.

John Shotter's interdisciplinary analysis highlights the socially contested but imaginary nature of many of the `things' we talk about in social life and illuminates the processes of their construction. He offers a broad-ranging exploration of the rhetorical, argumentative nature of conversational communication, using examples from psychotherapy, management and everyday life.