Human conversation is a ubiquitous phenomenon. How such conversations are structured, the ways in which the participating conversation partners achieve this, and the communicative linguistic means they use are the subjects of this introduction. It is primarily written for students of (Germanic) linguistics but is also aimed at other interested parties from the social sciences, education, and therapeutic fields. The book thoroughly addresses the practical empirical problems of collecting conversation data and, notably, extensively discusses the legal as well as moral-ethical aspects of such field research. In the main part, the two fundamentally practiced theoretical-methodological approaches to the analysis of conversations are presented in detail, illustrated with numerous examples.