Karen Tracy, PhD, is Professor of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches courses on how everyday talk builds and reflects identities and on discourse analysis and ethnographic methods. She also conducts special-topics seminars that examine communicative trouble in the justice system, in higher education, and in meetings of governance groups. Dr. Tracy is the author of more than 80 journal articles and book chapters, as well as several books. Currently she is at work on a book examining the discourse in legislative hearings and state supreme courts disputing who can marry. She is past editor of the journal Research on Language and Social Interaction.

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Jessica S. Robles, PhD, is a lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she teaches courses related to language and social interaction, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and discourse analysis. She has also taught special-topics courses on moral practices and problems in everyday talk. Dr. Robles's research involves the role of moral issues and differences in interactional trouble. Her recent work includes studies of interactional activities practices, such as gifting occasions and how people's talk associates moral categories with others.