Conversation Analysis Introduction to Conversation Analysis 2 e

Conversation Analysis Introduction to Conversation Analysis 2 e Anthony J. Liddicoat, March 2011

The importance of conversation • Conversation is a central part of human life. – It is one of the most prevalent uses of human language. – It is the way in which people socialize and develop and sustain their relationships with each other. – It is an organised social activity which involves co-ordination across participants.

Core assumptions of CA • Orderliness of conversation – It is produced orderliness: • it does not exist prior to the conversation but is created through it. – Order is produced, situated and occasioned: • it is produced by the participants themsleves • participants orient to it and their behaviour reflects and indexes it. – Order is repeatable and recurrent: • It is repeated, not only in the talk of an individual speaker, but across groups of speakers.

Core assumptions of CA • Recipient design – Participants in talk design their talk in such a way as to be understood by an interlocutor, in terms of the knowledge that participants assume they share. – This means that conversational contributions are designed with a recipient in mind are designed as appropriate for that recipient. – Recipient design is therefore a form of orderliness.

Core assumptions of CA • Human talk is a form of social action: – Social actions are achieved through talk. – Talk is understood as action by participants in the interaction and they orient talk as action. – Talk is presented and understood as meaningful because participants share the same procedures for designing and interpreting talk.

Core assumptions of CA • Context – Context plays two primary roles in interaction. • Talk is context-shaped in that talk responds to the context in which it is created. – Talk is context renewing because talk shapes the context as each next bit of talk constrains and affects what follows and influences how further talk will be heard and understood. – Context can be considered in two different ways. • Context may be external to the interaction itself: social categories, social relationships and institutional and cultural settings. This form of context is less relevant for CA. • Context is created by participants through their talk.

Core assumptions of CA • Context – Context plays two primary roles in interaction. • Talk is context-shaped in that talk responds to the context in which it is created. – Talk is context renewing because talk shapes the context as each next bit of talk constrains and affects what follows and influences how further talk will be heard and understood. – Context can be considered in two different ways. • Context may be external to the interaction itself: social categories, social relationships and institutional and cultural settings. This form of context is less relevant for CA. • Context is created by participants through their talk.

Collecting data • Naturalistic data • The interactions being studied should be naturally occurring. – A naturally occurring interaction is any interaction that would occur regardless of whether it is being researched or not. • CA requires instances of interaction which were not designed for the purposes of research, but which were conducted by people for their own purposes.

Collecting data • Data for CA can be collected using: – Audio recordings • Audio recordings are inevitably incomplete as they present only the vocal elements of what is happening in the interaction. – Video recordings • Video captures gaze, body movement, the relationship of talk to the physical environment and the manipulation of objects. • It captures for the analyst more of what is available to the participants in understanding and designing the interaction. – Recordings capture information as it occurs and are not reliant of aspects of the interaction being noticed at the time.

Transcribing data • Once data is collected it needs to be transcribed. – Transcriptions are useful for presenting data in a form which can be more easily used for analysis. – Transcriptions are inevitably incomplete and are not the primary data, only a tool to aid analysis. – The process of transcription is a process of analysis of the data itself and involves choices and decisions about what is being represented.

Transcribing data • CA transcriptions are highly detailed because no information available in the interaction can be considered irrelevant to the interaction. • Most conversation analysts use a transcription system developed by Gail Jefferson and developed further over time.

Analysing data • CA treats every instance of interaction as a specimen of what people do in interacting. – Each interaction is a process and the ways in which it was achieved represent ways of creating order in interaction. – Collections of data with similar features allow further insights into how actions are achieved by speakers.

Analysing data • Unmotivated looking – The first step in analysing interaction is to identify what is happening in the interaction. – CA does not usually start with some object in mind when looking at the data but seeks to see what is there. – Unmotivated looking provides an entry point into analysis by providing opportunities to notice what is being done in a particular interaction.

Analysing data • One way of organising an examination of any piece of data is to identify: – the ways in which turn-taking operates – the sequences in the interaction and the ways they are structured and developed – instances of repair work dealing with interactional problems.

Analysing data • Making collections • Analyses are often based on collections of comparable data in which patterns of interaction can be observed. • Collections may be focus on: – a particular conversational action – a particular practice in talk

Analysing data • Collections are developed by working through a corpus of data in a systematic way to identify new instances of a phenomenon. – The selection aims to be as comprehensive as possible. – The resultant collection will show a range of variation in the ways the phenomenon under investigation is accomplished and this variation is an important analytic tool.

Analysing data • A starting point for analysis is to analyse a small set of the data in the collection to construct an initial analysis. • The analysis is developed further by examining more instances in the data. • new data may confirm the initial analysis • new data may require a change in the analysis • new data may show defects in the analysis • new data point to the need for different levels of generalisation in the analysis.

Analysing data • Deviant cases – Problematic examples of a phenomenon (deviant cases) are important in analysis. – Such cases ca be a mechanism for testing analyses. • Departures from established patterns of interaction are not treated as exceptions but as evidence for understanding the nature of the pattern. • Participants may display their understanding of the departure from a norm and the significance this has in interaction. • Departures may show that the orderliness that has been detected has a normative character.