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).

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,
2010

 The Aim of Conversation Analysis

"CA 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 understand 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 Pairs
One very common structure that has been identified [through conversation
analysis] is the adjacency pair. This is an ordered pair of
adjacent utterancesspoken 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.

Summons--answer
Can I get some help here?
 On my way.

Offer--refusal
Sales clerk: May I help you find something?
Customer: No thank you, I'm just looking.

Compliment--acceptance
Your hair looks very lovely today.Thank you. I just had it cut.

(William O'Grady, et al. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction.

Bedford, 2001

 Response to Criticisms of Conversational Analysis

"Many people who take a look at CA 'from the outside' are amazed by a
number of superficial features of CA's 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 whyit is obsessed with details. The short answer
is that these refusals and this obsession are necessary in order to get a clear
picture of CA's 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)