2235ENGL1419 Discourse Analysis – Ms Hoa Ninh

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
I. Key purposes and issues
‘Conversation Analysis is the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction […] Principally it is to discover
how participants understand and respond to one another in their turns of talk, with a central focus being on how
sequences of interaction (cái nào xảy ra trc, sau hay xảy ra cùng lúc, nếu xảy ra cùng lúc phân tích tại sao, hoặc ở giữa
các lượt lời có pause  phtich tại sao) are generated.’
(Hutchy and Wooffit 1998, p. 14)

“CA involves both an ‘inductive’ search for patterns of interaction, and an explication of the emic logic that provides
for their significance.”

(ten Have 2007, p. 120)

 Discussion: What does the beginning of Chapter 5 (Paltridge) tell us about CA in terms of its:
 Origin: the ethnomethodological tradition of sociology, the examination of telephone calls made to the Los
Angeles Suicide Prevention Centre
 Premises (nền tảng, tiền đề): the view of ordinary conversation as the most basic form of talk, ‘context-
shaped’ and ‘context-renewing’ in the sense (co-textual)
 Data: doctor–patient consultations, legal hearings, news interviews, psychiatric interviews and interactions
in courtrooms and classrooms.
 Method: the transcription of the data is also the analysis
Key questions:
1. What do people do with each utterance (or turn)? (conversation analysis)
2. How is talk structured? How are turns ordered?
3. How does the order of turns shape (and how is it shaped by) social context? Thêm situational hoặc
background nếu có liên quan hoặc context có vai trò, tác động quá lớn trong conversation
Debate: Factoring in context only when it is made relevant by the discourse participants – khi người nói thể hiện sự
liên quan lúc đó mới quan tâm phân tích. Vd: trong đoạn hội thoại người mẹ nói vs người con “vì mẹ là mẹ con” thì
lúc đó mới phtich vai trò của người mẹ chứ ngay từ đầu không phtich vai trò của ng mẹ hay ng con

II. Key concepts and organizations

1. Turn-taking organisation
1.1. Turn: ‘turns are parts of spoken discourse by one speaker, after the speech of another and before others
take over again’  Floor- when s.o hold the floor – khi ai đó giữ lượt lời của mình
1.2. Turn constructional unit (TCU): ‘the part of an utterance that might be a complete turn, after which another
speaker might take over’- ý tương đối đủ
1.3. Transition relevance place (TRP): ‘the moment in the production of a turn-at-talking in which that turn
might be possibly complete and another speaker might take over’
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(ten Have 2007, p. 219)
A: what are you doing?  TCU với 1 unit
B: I’m ….
A: Anything else? (pause) Are you doing anything else?  TCU với 2 units. Đoạn pause gọi là TRP.
B: I’m ….
 Có 4 turns total

2. Sequence organisation
2.1. Openings and closings
 Discussion: What can we learn about openings and closings from Paltridge (2012, pp. 93-95)?

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 Discussion: What openings and closings do you normally use when you make a phone call, or have an online chat?

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2.2. Adjacency pair: Adjacency pairs are utterances produced by two successive speakers in a way that the
second utterance is identified as related to the first one as an expected follow-up to that utterance. 2 người
nói liên tiếp, lượt 2 có mối liên hệ với lượt trc và là cái đc mong đợi, nếu kh phải là expect thì cần phân tích.
(Paltridge 2012, p. 97)
Examples:
Announcer: Sharon Stone’s on the phone. (.) how are yo:::u.
Caller: very good.
Announcer: I bet you get hassled about your surname.
Caller: yes I d o ::
Announcer: and what do you want to tell Patrick.
Caller: umm that I love him very m u ch (0.5) and I (0.5) and I wish him a very happy birthday for today.

2.3. Preface/ Pre-expansion (Paltridge 2000, p. 90)

Example:
A: Guess what?  Preface
2235ENGL1419 Discourse Analysis – Ms Hoa Ninh
B: What?
A: I got an IBM PC!  Adjacency pair chính
B: That’s great!
(Fox 1987:13)

2.4. Insertion sequence/ Insert expansion (Paltridge 2012, p. 100)

Example:
Ryan: and (0.2) can I have a DJ too (0.1) is that OK (0.2)
Marie: John
John: what Marie: can he have a DJ (.) DJ=
Ryan: =cause you won’t be spending much on foo:d so I thought (0.2)
John: well how much does a DJ cost
Ryan: yeah I’ve got to find out

2.5. Post-expansion (Paltridge 2000, p. 92)

Example:
A: Do you like Virginia?  pair chính
B: Yeah.
A: You do?  Post-expansion
B: Well, not really.
(Fox 1987:13)

3. Repair organisation
‘At its simplest, a repair sequence starts with a repairable, an utterance that can be reconstituted as the trouble
source. It should be clear that any utterance can be turned into a repairable. The initiative can be taken by the
speaker of the repairable, which is called a ‘self-initiated repair’ (người nêu dấu hiệu, bất thường), or others can
take such an initiative, ‘other-initiated repair’ (người giải đáp bất thường). And the repair itself can be done by
the original speaker, ‘self-repair’ (người nói tự repair), or by others, ‘other repair’ (you mean ….) . One can
observe that speakers sometimes cut off the current utterance to restart it, correcting an obvious mistake, or
using a different expression (cf. Jefferson, 1974, for examples and analyses). A speaker can also use the
transition relevance place (TRP), just after an utterance is completed, to initiate self-repair. Another type of
repair sequence emerges when a turn’s recipient reacts to it in a way that demonstrates some kind of
misunderstanding, after which the original speaker, recognizing the trouble from the uptake, initiates repair on
his or her previous turn, in ‘third position’, so to speak (Schegloff, 1992a). These would all be cases of self-
initiated self-repairs.’ (ten Have 2007, p. 133)
 Discussion: How many types of repairs are mentioned above? What are some strategies for self-repair?

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4. The organisation of turn-design

4.1. Account: ‘a statement made by a social actor to explain unanticipated or untoward behavior’ (Scott and
Lyman 1968, p. 46) người nói phải nói ra điều người nghe kh thích, kh muốn nghe và đưa ra lời giải thích.
người nói phải nói ra điều người nghe kh thích, kh muốn nghe và KHÔNG đưa ra lời giải thích, cần đặt ra câu hỏi.

4.2. Preference organisation

4.2.1. The ‘sequence-structure-based’ approach: ‘One usage of "preferred/dispreferred" (được/ kh đc
expect) treats it as a property of sequence types, and specifically of the basic unit of sequences,
adjacency pairs.’ Phân tích giống speech act, vd câu trên là Q dưới là A
(Schegloff 1988, p. 453)
Example:

4.2.2. The ‘practice-based’ approach: ‘Speakers display the kind of action they are doing, and the kind of
stance they take toward what they are doing, by their deployment of sequential properties and turn
constructional devices’ chú ý cách diễn đạt, thao tác khi nói
(Schegloff 1988, p. 453)
Example: ‘An invitation projects an acceptance as a preferred response’
 Preferred: ‘quick, direct, no specific ‘account’ being given’
 Dispreferred: ‘delayed, preceded by a ‘formal’ acceptance – chấp nhận kiểu hình thức, more often
inferable than directly formulated – đc nói cách gián tiếp, and quite often accounted for by giving a
reason for it’- kèm theo lý do
 Nếu xét bên này là preferred bên kia là dispreferred thì sắp xuất hiện conflict
(ten Have 2007, p. 137)
4.3. Feedback
 What might be the purposes of using feedback/ back-channelling devices? Công cụ cho thấy mình có nghe và
phản hồi: good, that’s right, eye contact, mm hm, nod

 Nếu kh có feedback, tình huống nguy hiểm cần chú ý

4.4. Formulation: ‘an utterance which ‘formulates’ what is going on, or is implied, in the conversation, often the
preceding interaction’ – nói lại cách hiểu của mình và đoán ý của người nói.
(ten Have 2007, p. 218)
2235ENGL1419 Discourse Analysis – Ms Hoa Ninh
Customer: Well, I just received my bill, and there is a call on here looks like I made it from Cleveland,
Ohio, and I did not, for thirty seven dollars and fifty cents.
Rep: Okay, that one was placed from San (---) from a pay phone to Cleveland, Ohio, and charged to
your number. You did not accept those charges?
(Iacobucci 1990, pp. 95-96)

“One of the main types of formulations are summaries. Charles and Charles (1999: 77) distinguish between
‘procedural’ (tóm tắt lại những gì đã xảy ra, thiên về structure) summaries (referenced to the agenda and
usually occurring at the end of a certain phase, showing for everyone’s benefit the progress made so far),
‘topical’ (về topic) summaries (related to a specific item on the agenda, and occurring just after a discussion
on that topic) and ‘tactical’ summaries (referenced to the hidden agenda of the party in question, and
allowing the speaker to ‘wrestle for tactical control’, putting his or her ‘own gloss on events’ (ibid. )). While
‘procedural’ and ‘topical’ summaries are common in all meetings, ‘tactical’ (tóm tắt theo hướng có lợi cho
người nói) summaries tend to occur predominantly in negotiation meetings (ibid.) and arguably in the
negotiation phases of other meetings.”
(Handford 2010, p. 85)

4.5. Discourse markers: ________________________________________________________________________

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(Paltridge 2012, p. 102)

 What can we learn about the markers ‘oh’, ‘but’, ‘now’, ‘y’know’ from Paltridge (2012, pp. 102-103)?

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 What can we learn about the marker ‘well’ from Heritage (2015)?

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III. Analytical strategies

• ‘Starting with an arbitrarily or purposively selected part of the transcribed data, work through the transcript
in terms of a restricted set of analytically distinguished but interlocking ‘organizations’. For this purpose I
propose the following four: turn-taking organization; sequence organization; repair organization; and the
organization of turn-design. This ‘work-through’ involves a turn-by-turn consideration of the data in terms of
practices relevant to these essential organizations, such as taking a turn in a specific way, initiating a
2235ENGL1419 Discourse Analysis – Ms Hoa Ninh
sequence, forgoing taking up an issue, etc. In other words, the task is to specify practice/action couplings as
these are available in the data, where the actions are as far as possible formulated in terms of the four
organizations.
• In actual research, this may be done in a variety of practical formats, as remarks written on a printed
transcript, as ‘analytic descriptions’, or as codes and observations added in a separate column to the
transcript, or by using a specialized computer program like Transana (cf. Chapter 6, page 112–13).
• On the basis of this process, try to formulate some general observations, statements, or rules that
tentatively summarize what has been seen. When a particular interest or phenomenon has emerged, focus
on it, but keep it in context in terms of these four organizations.’
(ten Have 2007, p. 125)

Example: Read the case described in Albert et al. (2019) and the analysis below (in-text citations omitted; transcript
on the next page). What features are analysed in this excerpt?

In Extract 1 below, a caller in a dangerous domestic abuse situation begins her call to a 911 dispatcher by
giving her address. However, when asked what is going on, she goes through the motions of ordering a pizza.
After only four speaking turns from the caller, the dispatcher recognizes her request for help and begins to
respond. The CA transcript symbols highlight production features of talk.
[…] To accomplish mutual recognition of the caller’s request for help and proceed with the call, both caller
and dispatcher rely on the details of the precision timing of turn-taking in conversation. For example, in lines
15 and 21, the caller begins responding with pizza-ordering talk early, in overlap with the last items in the
dispatcher’s turn. Note that in both cases the overlap occurs just before the dispatcher’s turn is
grammatically or prosodically complete, but after a point at which the dispatcher has produced at least
enough of the utterance “this is an emer” to render the action implemented by his turn (rejecting her 911
request as a prank), pragmatically projectable. The caller’s deviation from the ostensible purpose of calling
911, but also – and very precisely – from the normative interactional structure of turn-taking, leads to the
dispatcher treating the call as a possible emergency by asking if everything is OK. She shows the dispatcher
she is engaging with him in conversation by responding to his turns, but her precision timing provides him
with a resource for recognizing a puzzle to be solved. The dispatcher then probes for what is said, but also
what is not said by the caller at specific points in the call to diagnose her pizza order as a request for help,
and to determine the nature of the emergency. For example, after the caller omits an answer to the
relatively open-formatted “is everything okay” question at line 24, the dispatcher restricts his question to
“D’y’have an emergency of not”: a more narrowly polar question that the caller can answer with without
revealing the nature of the call to any possible overhearers. Finally, the caller’s audible outbreath and 0.6
second gap at lines 27-28 before she answers “Yes” at line 29 marks the moment they establish a new set of
ad-hoc ‘rules’ for action formation and recognition, designed for this specific situation, where caller’s role, as
dispatcher makes explicit in line 39, is to “just say yes or no”.
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IV. Why case-by-case analysis?

 Discussion: Why should we analyse each case in detail? Provide your own answer, then consider the argument by
ten Have (2007, p. 162).
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