Copenhagen Studies in Language carries studies in both language for general purposes and language for special purposes (LSP). Its scope covers grammar, semantics, pragmatics, spoken language, text linguistics and translation, from a theoretical as well as an applied perspective. It is the editors' policy to bring out thematic volumes. While based at the Copenhagen Business School, the series is open to contributions from linguists in all parts of the world. The present volume contains a collection of papers on spoken language: how to represent it, analyse it, and explain it, without resorting to preconceived notions from text-based linguistics. The papers were presented at the symposium SJUSK 2011 – 1st Conference on Contemporary Speech Habits, held at CBS, Copenhagen, in November 2011.