Conversation Analysis Definition and Examples

Conversation Analysis Definition and Examples In sociolinguistics, conversation analysis is the study of the talk produced in ordinary human interactions. Sociologist Harvey Sacks (1935-1975) is generally credited with founding the discipline. Also called talk-in-interaction  and  ethnomethodology. At its core, says Jack Sidnell, conversation analysis is a set of methods for working with audio and video recordings of talk and social interaction (Conversation Analysis: An Introduction, 2010). See Examples and Observations below. Also, see: Talking Together: Key Concepts in Conversation AnalysisAdjacency PairAsymmetry (Communication)Broken-Record ResponseConstructed DialogueConversationConversational GroundingConversational Implicature and ExplicatureConversationalizationCooperative OverlapCooperative PrincipleDialogueDirect SpeechDiscourse AnalysisDiscourse DomainDiscourse MarkerEcho UtteranceEditing TermIndexicalityInterlocutorMinor SentenceNonverbal CommunicationPausePhatic Communication and Solidarity TalkPoliteness StrategiesProfessional CommunicationPunctuation EffectRelevance TheoryRepairShort AnswerSpeech ActStyle-ShiftingTurn-Taking Examples and Observations [C]onversation analysis (CA) [is] an approach within the social sciences that aims to describe, analyze and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life. CA is a well-developed tradition with a distinctive set of methods and analytic procedures as well as a large body of established findings. . . .At its core, conversation analysis is a set of methods for working with audio and video recordings of talk and social interaction. These methods were worked out in some of the earliest conversation-analytic studies and have remained remarkably consistent over the last 40 years. Their continued use has resulted in a large body of strongly interlocking and mutually supportive findings . . ..(Jack Sidnell, Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010The Aim of Conversation AnalysisCA is the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction. But what is the aim of studying these interactions? Principally, it is to discover how participants u nderstand and respond to one another in their turns at talk, with a central focus on how sequences of action are generated. To put it another way, the objective of CA is to uncover the often tacit reasoning procedures and sociolinguistic competencies underlying the production and interpretation of talk in organized sequences of interaction.(Ian Hutchby and Robin Wooffitt, Conversation Analysis. Polity, 2008 Adjacency PairsOne very common structure that has been identified [through conversation analysis] is the adjacency pair. This is an ordered pair of adjacent utterances spoken by two different speakers. Once the first utterance is spoken, the second is required. A few of the many adjacency pairs that have been identified are shown.SummonsanswerCan I get some help here?On my way.Offer - refusalSales clerk: May I help you find something?Customer: No thank you, Im just looking.Compliment  - acceptanceYour hair looks very lovely today.Thank you. I just had it cut.​(William OGrady, et al. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Bedford, 2001Response to Criticisms of Conversational AnalysisMany people who take a look at CA from the outside are amazed by a number of superficial features of CAs practice. It seems to them that CA refuses to use available theories of human conduct to ground or organize its arguments, or even to construct a theory of its own. Furthermore, it seems unwilling to explain the phenomena it studies by invoking obvious factors like basic properties of the participants or the institutional context of the interaction. And finally, it seems to be obsessed with the details of its materials. These impressions are not too far off the mark, but the issue is why CA refuses to use or construct theories, why it refuses interaction-external explanations, and why it is obsessed with details. The short answer is that these refusals and this obsession are necessary in order to get a clear picture of CAs core phenomenon, the in situ organization of conduct, and especially talk-in-interaction. So CA is not a-theoretical but it has a different conception of how to theorize about social life.(Paul ten Have, Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide, 2nd ed. SAGE, 2007)