Doing Conversation

Analysis

Alena
Iriskulova
ELT 608

OUTLINE
1. SUMMARY:
1. THE BEGINNING OF CA
2. THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF CA
3. CA AND OTHER FIELDS
4. THE DEFINITION OF PRAGMATICS
5. DEIXIS, IMPLICATURE,
PRESUPPOSITION et al.
2. A CASE STUDY

CA: THE BEGINNING

Harvey Sacks

Emanuel
Scheglof

Gail Jeferson

DISTINCTIVE
FEATURES

CA is an unmotivated inquiry

Language use & social interaction are orderly

Goals and analyses are structural

Data are spontaneously recorded in naturally

occurring social interaction

Data for analysis are transcribed sufficiently in

detail

CA seeks to describe and explain the structures of social interaction

through a reliance on case-by-case analysis leading to generalizations
across cases

Health
and
Communicati
on

Psycholog
y

Mass
Media

Linguisti
cs
SOCIOLO
GY

CA
Anthropology

Political
Science
Educatio
n

Philosophy

INFLUENCE ON
SACKSS THEORY
Goffman

Garfinkel

theoretical
understandings
of the
interaction order

sequential
organization of
conversational
interaction

Sacks
s
vision
of CA

Greek Oral
Culture
freely seeing
what the data
present
modes of talk

PRAGMATICS: THE
BEGINNING
Morris

Carnap

the study of the

range of
psychological
and sociological
phenomena
involved in sign
systems

the study of
certain abstract
concepts that
make reference
to agent

Montague
the study of
indexicals or
deictic terms

AngloAmerican
linguists and
philosophy
the study of
language usage
HANDOUT 2

The most promising are the definitions that equate pragmatics with
'meaning minus semantics', or with a theory of language
understanding that takes context into account, in order to
complement the contribution that semantics makes to meaning. They
are not, however, without their difficulties

DEICTIC EXPRESSIONS
Indexica
ls

(i)

Egocent
ric
particul
ars

Tokenreflexivi
ty

Pragma
tic
indices

Referen
ce
points

Speaker
referenc
es

Coordinate
s

S1: This one?

(ii) S2: It's very good.

(iii) S1: Alright! And this one?

(i) W: Mathew Cuthbert, who is

that?

(iv) S2: Very good.

(ii) M: Its a girl

(v) S1: OK! And this one?

(iii) W: I can see that. Wheres the

boy?

(vi) S3: How much is this cow bell?

(vii) S2: Fifteen francs...
(viii)

S1: Excuse me, excuse me! I

came here first

(iv) M: There werent any. Just her.

I figure we just couldnt leave
her there no matter what the
mistake was.

SOME MORE DEICTIC

EXPRESSIONS
1. Could you put these together? We are six people.
2. How much is this book?
3. Just nevermind, thats not gonna work.
4. No, see, this window is open, you should first close it, and then
open the file.
5. Nothing, just wandering here and there.
6. Now imagine, I ask this seller about the price, and hes winking at
a. Gestural
me!
7. Oh, thats so cruel!
8. OMG, this dress is perfect! Where did you get it from?
9. This film is just hilarious!

b. Symbolic
c. Non-deictic
a. Nonanaphoric
b. anaphoric

[previously talking on my moving to another house]

FR: yeeeey! Its just perfect! See, you managed it yourself in a perfect way. I
told you! but u didnt listen to me
ME: thanks, honey how about you? Whats new?
FR: I'm fine, the department in Germany told me to apply for DAAD
scholarship within a week. As usual letters of recommendation were not
ready in a week so I was so stressed to prepare them before the deadline
ME: So could you manage that with the professors on time?
FR: I could get one of them, but the second one promised me to submit it until
last night, I dont know whether he did it or not
ME: I see, hope he did
FR: so I'm doing these paper works for my application, hoping one day I get
my scholarship and start my PhD
ME: Im sure you will, I can see that day coming

IMPLICATURES

IMPLICATURES

Maybe Jeremy supposes that his mother is expecting the answer Yes her
question is rhetorical; she assumes that Jeremy does know something about the
situation so that he provides the contrary answer, signalling the contrast with
apparently. But thats just a stab.
(retrieved from http://arnoldzwicky.org/2011/09/08/actually/)

GRICES MAXIMES

Flouting Quantity. Dilbert has the devious Wally flouting Grices maxim of
Quantity:
Saying not two implicates conversationally implicates not two or more, but
Wally disregards this in favor of treating not twoas not exactly two. But the pointyheaded boss has enough experience with Wally to suspect his deviousness.

What maximes are

flouted?

Implicatures?
Metaphors?
Deductive
argument?

[previously talking on my moving to another house]

FR: yeeeey! Its just perfect! See, you managed it yourself in a perfect way. I told
you! but u didnt listen to me
ME: thanks, honey how about you? Whats new?
FR: I'm fine, the department in Germany told me to apply for DAAD scholarship
within a week. As usual letters of recommendation were not ready in a week so I
was so stressed to prepare them before the deadline
ME: So could you manage that with the professors on time?
FR: I could get one of them, but the second one promised me to submit it until last
night, I dont know whether he did it or not
ME: I see, hope he did
FR: so I'm doing these paper works for my application, hoping one day I get my
scholarship and start my PhD
ME: Im sure you will, I can see that day coming

A: There is a fly on your.

B: Not on your but on you
A: What? A fly on my?
B: Not on my but on me?
A: Huh? Again on your? What a fast
fly!