Description

Conversation Analysis (CA) was founded during the 1960s and 1970s by Harvey Sacks and his colleagues Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. CA developed from ethnomethodological interest in people’s practical reasoning and the methods and procedures people use to produce and make sense of the world and social order (Garfinkel, 1967). By a meticulous examination of recordings of naturally occurring interactions, CA concerns itself with the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction and various conversational practices. The interest is not solely conversation, but focuses more on the social action and the machinery used to produce and make intelligible the methods, practices, and inferences observed in social interaction. Some of these include: the organization of turns-at-talk, accountable actions like asking, telling, agreeing and assessing, and how coherence, indexicality, and word selection are relevant and consequential for the production and understanding of conversation (Schegloff, 2007). The interest is not solely conversation, but focuses more on the social action and the machinery used to produce and make intelligible the methods, practices, and inferences observed in social interaction. Thus, examination of the sequential organization of talk reveals the practical sense-making methods and procedures of social life.

Two fundamental principles that distinguish CA from other discourse analytic methods are accountability and intersubjectivity. That is, the analysis explains members’ practices in doing interaction, rather than offer any external explanation for a particular turn at talk, sequence, or action. The account of an interaction demonstrates what is relevant and understood to the members themselves, and the methods and procedures that are used to produce and display that relevance and understanding. CA developed from ethnomethodological interest in people’s practical reasoning and the methods and procedures people use to produce and make sense of the world and social order (Garfinkel, 1967). In addition to not going outside the participant’s local and contingent understanding and talk to explain social action, CA also entails not going inside participants to formulate an explanation for behavior. The unseen and hypothetical nature of mental processes and structures means that they cannot provide us with the details of everyday life as they are done and have relevance to member’s situated interaction.

Meanwhile, the methodological framework proposed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) provided validity and resources for the naturalistic studies of embodied conduct and interaction. CA is generally based on recordings of naturally occurring interaction. These interactions can later be transcribed in detail, listened to, or watched repeatedly. These affordances for the researcher allow for a close examination of how talk-in-interaction is organized. Benefiting from the democratization of portable digital technologies, present video-based naturalistic analytic methods are providing researchers with an even more powerful microscope to scrutinize the granular details in embodied ways of interaction in which ordinary action relies on the interplay of talk, bodily conduct and the possible use of artifacts, tools and technologies.

References

Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversations. Language, 50(4), 696-735.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Key Research Books and Articles on Conversation Analysis Methodology

Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Studies in Ethnomethodology was originally published in 1967. Garfinkel’s formidable achievement as one of the world’s leading sociologists is embodied largely in the work compiled in this book. Drawing on the phenomenological foundation provided by Alfred Shutz, Garfinkel declares a departure from the Parsonian functional rationality by establishing his own sociological theory of Ethnomethodology. Garfinkel describes the study of the taken-for-granted rules, which provide us with a sense of social relationships and social structures in which we construct a stable social world through everyday utterances and actions. Studies in Ethnomethodology has inspired a wide range of important theoretical and empirical work in the social sciences and linguistics. It is one of the most original and controversial works in modern social science, and it remains at the center of debate about the current trends and tasks of sociology and social theory.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversations. Language, 50(4), 696-735.

This article is a landmark publication in the field of Conversation Analysis and has become an integral part of all subsequent CA research. The author describes a “simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation”, which offered a formal description of how speakers are selected and turns-at-talk are organized. Two fundamental features of conversation are “speakers speak one at a time” and “speaker change recurs”. These are achieved by an orientation to the systematic use of turn-taking devices for the sequential organization of turns-at-talk and speaker transition. CA begins then with a formal account of perhaps the simplest observation one could make about conversations—people take turns to talk. Turns-at-talk are composed of “units”—formally described as Turn-Constructional Units (TCU) that can include sentences, clauses, phrases, lexical constructions, or any combination thereof. On a basic level, at the end of each TCU, there is a possible place in which speaker transition might take place. Conversation Analytic research examines how turn-taking rules are locally deployed for various interactional purposes.

Schegloff, E. A., Koshik, I., Jacoby, S., & Olsher, D. (2002). Conversation analysis and applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 3-31.

This article offers analytical and bibliographical guidance on a few main areas of CA work by examining their potential intersection with different disciplines of social sciences: sociology, anthropology, applied linguistics, and language education. The general organization of the work consists of the presentation of key bibliographical resources per different themes, such as fundamental aspects of the organization of conversation, talk in institutional contexts, CA research in the areas of interest to applied linguistics, and intercultural communication and comparative CA. The authors indicated the implications of CA research for design of language teaching tasks, materials, and assessment. Researchers are warned to be cautious about applying CA literature to other research contexts, such as classrooms and other institutional settings, that intersect many aspects of language with social interaction, because each situation has different practices intended to meet specific goals.

Giles D., Strommel W., Paulus T., Lester J.& Reed D. (2015). Microanalysis of online data: The methodological development of “digital CA” discourse, context and media, Discourse, Context & Media, 45-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2014.12.002

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the work of the Microanalysis of Online Data (MOOD) network by using the tools of conversation analysis. The paper’s discussion of the digital environment and digital Conversational Analysis is most useful for qualitative researchers who are interested in the online conversation portrayed by social media. Even if the authors encountered some skepticism from journal reviewers and other readers, who challenged the analysis as distant from the original CA, many online innovative analyses allow the use of digitized application of CA.  The distinction between online and spoken conversation is that digitized written forms are stored and easy to access and the digitized conversation is easily editable and cannot be immediately seen by the interlocutor.  While the self-repair is easily accessed by the hearer, the digital interaction is easily shaped by the applications. However, distinguishing the members of the discussion can be challenging, as they can change in the conversation.

Stokoe, E. (2012). Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies, 14(3), 277-303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445612441534

This article attempts to establish the hierarchical relationship between Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Snalysis (MCA) and tries to show the relationship between two CA with specific interest in studying membership: people in language education, culture and literacy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and other social science disciplines. The complementarity between CA and MCA is obvious, but “for MCA to survive either as a separate discipline or as an equivalent focus within CA, it must generate new types of systematic studies that reveal fundamental discourse practices” (p.299). There is some confusion to which methods a researcher must decide to take, but for our case, we will need to use both CA and MCA as one to analyze the conversational data. The author found that, empirically, categories combined the common sense knowledge about category members and their actions without forgetting the creation of the corpus-based MCA.

Further Readings

Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. (Vol. I & II), edited by G. Jefferson and E.A. Schegloff, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Sidnell, J. (2010). Conversation analysis: An introduction (Vol. 45). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Recent Dissertations Using Conversation Analysis Methodology

Cheng, T. (2013). Pragmatic assessment in L2 interaction: Applied conversation analysis for pedagogic intervention (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order Number 3572415)

Cheng’s dissertation adopted Conversation Analysis (CA) to explore how English L2 speakers participated in a pragmatic assessment activity as a means of raising their awareness of interactional skills. CA facilitated answering research questions that inquired how the L2 speakers utilized their verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in collaborative learning activities. The study particularly focused on behavioral sequences and patterns of disagreement the participants presented over the course of interactions. Grounded on a rationalist model of politeness from speech act theory, the study used video footage of six L2 speakers’ group discussions as the primary source of data to examine their naturally occurring interactions in a classroom setting. The findings revealed that L2 speakers skillfully integrate their diverse multimodal resources and paralanguage (e.g., gaze direction, noticing) to accomplish their interactional goals and assessment. The significance of this study lay in the application of CA to L2 pragmatic instruction as well as the assessment and advancement of research in applied linguistics at large.

Fagan, D. S. (2013). Managing learner contributions in the adult ESL classroom: A conversation analytic and ethnographic examination of teacher practices and cognition (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order Number 3588165)

Fagan’s dissertation explored one language teacher’s real-time classroom management styles. Conversation Analysis (CA) integrated with the ethnographic method was used to examine the types of discursive practices the teacher displayed when eliciting adult ESL learners’ responses and contributions to whole-class discussions. Underlying factors that affected the teacher’s systematic patterns of such practices were also investigated. To capture decisive moments in which the teacher interacted with learners in emergent contexts, including her prompt decision-making and its impact, video-recorded classroom interactions, a semi-structured interview, and stimulated recall sessions served as primary data sources. By adopting language socialization and situated learning theory as conceptual frameworks, the study displayed distinctive constellations of learners’ discursive practices in response to the teacher’s purposeful learning initiatives. This study is significant in that it focused on the teacher’s on-site practices occurring in dynamic classroom settings instead of retrospectively investigating the effect of teacher’s beliefs and perceptions.

Rine, E. F. (2009). Development in dialogic teaching skills: A micro-analytic case study of a pre-service International Teaching Assistant (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order Number 304983329)

Rine’s dissertation used Conversation Analysis (CA) to explore how one pre-service International Teaching Assistant (ITA) trained for interactive skills to develop dialogic teaching in the U.S. university context. The study was guided by research questions that asked how the pre-service ITA (Xu) constructed and engaged in the development of pedagogical skills for teaching dialogically. CA particularly led this study to delve into major factors influencing the ITA’s progress through real-time observations of interaction. To investigate the pre-service ITA’s progressive development of interaction-based lecture skills, two primary components of the interactional competence framework (i.e., action sequencing and participant frameworks) were adopted to analyze (para)linguistic features naturally occurring in classroom interactions between the teacher and students. The video-recorded interactive practices served as the primary data source, which enabled Rine to capture each developmental moment of the pre-service ITA in training toward becoming a skillful teacher. The study left significant implications of CA as an effective methodological approach to trace one’s developmental phase in research and of ITA teacher preparation and training in teacher education.

Warren, A. N. (2016). Respecifying teacher beliefs in English as a second language teacher education: A discursive psychology approach to analysis (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order Number 10132999)

Warren’s dissertation investigated how pre- and in-service teachers for English L2 speakers (re)constructed their beliefs and supported belief claims in an institutionally specific discursive context. By adopting Conversation Analysis (CA) informed by Ethnomethodology and Discursive Psychology, the study examined certain discursive moves and strategies of the pre- and in-service teachers, emerging in two different interactive sites where teachers’ talk took place (i.e., an online class and research interview settings). The study revealed that the teachers’ cognitive concepts and beliefs were constructed by a series of interactions with the outside world; hence, understanding its very process could eventually serve as an instrumental tool not only to attain local knowledge of an institution in which they were situated, but also to (re)construct their belief systems. The study provided quality implications of CA as a means of understanding teachers’ beliefs through the lens of their personal narrative and unfolding complex attributes of teachers’ belief claims.

Internet Resources

Australasian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. (2009, August 27). Jack Bilmes: IPRA Diaries 2009. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/qMMFaujW2qI

Jack Bilmes, a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, shares his ideas on Conversation Analysis as an analytical model of Ethnomethodology. He addresses the need of examining conversation analysis within the context of social scientific theory. Conversation analysis enables researchers to understand the way society members (re)shape their ordinary life and underlying belief along with socially conformed norms through naturally occurring conversation. As such, conversation analysis foregrounds the essence of social interaction rather than the linguistic features of conversation.

Australasian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. (2009, August 26). Michael Emmison: IPRA Diaries 2009. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/pvPSVvmYaaA

An interview with Michael Emmison, an associate professor at the University of Queensland, shares basic ideas and research principles of Ethnomethodology. Emmison states that current Ethnomethodology differs from the conventional belief in sociology, which seeks to find certain patterns from collected yet artificial data, such as survey. Ethnomethodology instead acknowledges a complicated nature of social lives, hence it attempts to investigate and reveal how it is accomplished by each member of society with multifaceted aspects. In this respect, naturally occurring data, which specifically emerges from their ordinary lives, can serve as an effective lens to observe people interacting in actual social context.

Australasian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. (2009, October 25). Fabienne Chevalier: IPRA Diaries 2009. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/iLqglRwk_RQ

Fabienne Chevalier from the University of Nottingham shares her ideas on Conversation Analysis and its methodological value, which enables researchers to examine how interaction is organized and how it orders the normative practice system and social structure at large. Chevalier differentiates between well-formed written data and spontaneous spoken data, the latter of which helps researchers capture more meaningful moments. Conversation Analysis, in this respect, focuses on paralinguistic features or cues (e.g., silence, pause, etc.) to capture how people make sense of the world and eventually construct it.

Australasian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. (2009, August 27). Ann Weatherall: IPRA Diaries 2009. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/pQEsZZuCYDA

Ann Weatherall, professor at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, discusses Conversation Analysis and its usefulness in psychology. She states that Conversation Analysis enables researchers to observe people’s actual interaction through various types of conversation, ranging from institutional talk to everyday mundane talk, without researchers’ intervention. She notes that conversation analysis leads to fundamental shifts in terms of methodological approach in psychology, where the cognitive study has been dominant. By capturing micro, yet essential features (e.g., intonation patterns, pauses) of the conversation, unlike the traditional approaches (e.g. questionnaires or computer measurement), Conversation Analysis better examines what individuals actually think and how they observe the world.

Australasian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. (2009, November 23). In Theories: Ethnomethodology on JACradio, November 2009. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/PwGcSIg2IJY

Alex Chan, a JACradio host, discusses ideas on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis with guest speakers Mark Cooper, Edward Reynolds, and Chair Drew Parker to discuss it under the theme of changing world at large and gender sexuality. Edward Reynolds, from the University of Queensland, explains the methodological value of Conversation Analysis, which helps to examine how people produce social actions and social order in their life, with an example of Garfinkel’s study on suicide. He points out that people’s naturally-occurring talk should be considered a form of constructive behavior to understand the way they see the world. More than that, by observing people’s genuine behavior situated in a particular context, researchers can examine the action and order in interaction embedded in social phenomenon as a whole with every detail, which have been commonly overlooked by previous conventional approaches.

CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) [Database]. 

CHILDES is the child language component of the TalkBank database, sharing conversational interactions specific to child language.

EMCA Wiki [Database].

EMCA Wiki is an extensive, frequently updated website specializing in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. It is a valuable online resource for those interested in these areas, as they can find extensive bibliographies of EMCA publications, such as published articles, books, dissertations/theses, and proceedings. Interestingly, all these resources can be browsed, searched, and filtered by year, author, tag/keyword, and publication type. Additionally, this online resource provides updated information about forthcoming conferences, job announcements, and training opportunities. This resource can be considered effective for both preparing readers educationally and assisting them in finding the working market to match their qualifications.

EMCA-Legacy [Database].

EMCA-Legacy is a database of historically significant materials that highlight the growth of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. The website has works of the leaders of the field of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, such as Gail Jefferson’s samples of previous transcriptions of conversations with audio recordings. Recorded seminars about Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis are also available, presented by Harold Garfinkel, an American ethnomethodologist, who established and developed ethnomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociology. Also, this website provides access to the last work of the ethnomethodologist Stephen Hester. His Descriptions of Deviance (2016) presents his approach of the analysis of talk in an educational setting in which “descriptions of deviance” have a critical role.

Online tutorial on CA transcription and analysis 

This source includes an introductory tutorial on Conversation Analysis by Charles Antaki, a Professor of Language and Social Psychology. In this tutorial, information about CA through video clips grants readers a meaningful understanding of what the process of transcribing is like, and the type of analysis CA may offer. This online source is available for any individual who has the desire to understand the study of talks-in-interactions. Within this online source, you can learn what is meant by CA from a practical tutorial in conducting an analysis. It provides you with samples of transcribed conversations shown in audio and video files. It also includes links to other valuable resources in the field of Conversation Analysis.

Heritage, J. (n.d.). Conversation analysis. Washington, DC: National Institute of Health. Retrieved from http://www.esourceresearch.org/tabid/382/default.aspx

John Heritage focuses on the sphere of social organization that Erving Goffman calls the “interaction order.” This involves looking at social interaction for the purpose of understanding its construction, the social, cultural, and psychological factors that impact its implementation, and its impact on social outcomes, including the distribution of goods and services and the (re-)production of social structure. His online resource offers ideas on Conversation Analysis, slanted towards Conversation Analytic research in medical settings, and includes exercises and examples for readers.

Llewellyn, N. (n.d.). Tutorial: Analysing observational ‘real time’ data. Retrieved from http://llewellyn.nick.googlepages.com/tutorial

This tutorial page introduces basic concepts and terms associated with Conversation Analysis and Ethnomethodology. Another significant feature of this tutorial is that it provides actual demonstration on analyzing “real time” social activities and additional notes on the entire process.

Schegloff, E. (n.d.). Emanuel Schlegloff’s Homepage. Retrieved from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/schegloff/

Emanuel A. Schegloff is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Department of Sociology. This archive provides an extensive data set, from his publications to transcription modules.

TalkBank [Database]. 

TalkBank is a project organized by Brian MacWhinney at Carnegie Mellon University with the support and cooperation of hundreds of contributors and dozens of collaborators. The TalkBank database aims to foster fundamental research in the study of human communication with an emphasis on spoken communication.

ten Have, P. (n.d.). Teaching resources for conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. Retrieved from http://www.paultenhave.nl/Teaching%20resources%20CA-EM.htm

This source was created by Paul ten Have, who is an Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology & Sociology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam. This website provides a vast amount of teaching resources on “Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide”, based on ten Have’s book Doing conversation analysis. Partial sources are downloadable and can be played on any computer.

Conversation Analysis Transcription Software

Conversation Analysis is a method in which the researcher is required to study several audio and video materials and transcribe conversation turns, silences, and suprasegmental features accurately. To achieve this task proficiently, professional transcription software tools that have more features than audio/video players and text editors are commonly used.

Examples of software applications for Conversation Analysis include Express Scribe, InqScribe, and AtlasTi. Trial versions of these applications are available for free that the user can try for a specific duration of time before he/she decides whether or not to purchase.

Express Scribe. This program helps researchers ease the process of transcribing their recorded files, as it provides options that are not available in a word processor. The transcriber can use shortcut keys in the keyboard to go forward, go backward, pause, resume, and slow down the playback in a convenient manner that facilitates the transcription process. With the application, you can listen to the audio recording and work in your transcription in the same window. The program can work with various forms of audio recordings such as WAV, MP4, WMA, etc.

InqScribe. InqScribe is another option for transcription that provides similar features. In addition, InqScribe has the feature of playing video files as the user transcribes the content.

ATLAS.ti. ATLAS.ti software is one of the most popular qualitative data analysis software packages, as it offers the capability to analyze text, audio, images, and videos. It also offers organizing and coding features and opportunities to enjoy the ability to control the playback with keyboard shortcuts (play, pause, rewind five seconds, etc.). The input focus remains in the text editor window so that you avoid extra work as you switch back and forth between the player and editor. ATLAS.ti allows researchers to filter data in several ways and run basic reports for several groups that can allow easy data comparisons, which allows more possibilities of analysis. One of the unique features of Atlas.ti is that it matches with grounded theory, as it was developed in association with the work of grounded theorists Anselm Strauss and Barney Glaser.