Conversation Analysis (CA)

Introduction
=> If one states an externally observed aspect of
what the recipient can be supposed to know,
one can be seen as “fishing” for information
about that experience.
• Questions are used to invite repair and in
inviting a repair, they can be used as a pre-
disagreement.
• Requests can be made with the other’s
immediate talk or they can be launched after
extensive introduction.
• Examples: handout
• The interest for “how people do things with words”, how
actions are formed?
Eg: Requesting - Accepting, questioning-answering, etc.
• Responding to an assessment - Indicate that I am the expert
not you (2 types of actions at the same time - * the same utterance can
have different actions - context =>speech act theory: eg: You have such a beautiful
)
family!

• In every turn-at-talk, they are doing something, they are

engaged in conducting some action. Even when participants
are not saying anything, they may be doing something.
(silence)

• “Language doesn’t deliver meaning, it delivers action”

(Levinson)
• Indirect speech acts: Asking or stating about the
preconditions of an action might end up in performing
the action itself.
• Eg: Is anyone using the cup?
• Is that a spare pencil?

• CA translation: Checking a precondition for an action is

the motivation for a future action(pre-sequence)
• Did you hear the news? - check the appositeness of
news-telling.
• Are you going downtown? - precondion for a ride
 CA approach to social interaction
• Assuption: Language use and social interaction are orderly (have a certain
organization/order) at the minute level of detail. Conversation exhibits order at all
points.

eg: If A’s turn is a question, B’s turn is expectably an answer

A precondition for turn-taking is that interactants must not act as independent

agents but in close coordination with one another. The transition from one
speaker to the next with little silence and overlapping.
=> need order

• Goal of analysis: To identify & describe the structure of interactions

(empircal orderliness of social interactions)

• Data for analysis: audios and videos of spontaneous, naturally occuring data
Data
• Ordinary/informal interactions: phone calls, etc,...
• Institutional settings: medical interactions, news
interviews, survey interviews, court hearings, calls for
emergency service

• One distinctive mark of CA is “unmotivated examination”:

the researcher puts aside all assumptions about human
interactions before investigating data and appreciate
phenomena that interaction itself presents. (Approach talk
and interaction in a fashion that is free of presuppositions)
=> CA is an exploration of the unknown regularities of human
interaction
“Unmotivated examinations/lookings”
(no assumptions)
• Conversation analysts do not deny that there are differences among
persons in terms of power, prestige and access to resources, etc.
However, they do no assume that such differences will necessarily
lead to the production of a bit of talk or other conduct in
interaction. From a conversation analyst’s perspective, such
differences should be demonstated rather than assumed.

• A bit of talk involves “a woman” and “a man”. It is also true that a

woman may not be speaking “as a woman” but rather as a
vegetarian, an animal rights activist, etc.
=>
If the anaylyst claims any such identity, he will have to show that the
participants themselves oriented to that categorization and designed
their talk in relation to it.
• (.) a falling intonation
• ?: a significant rise in intonation
• _:stress
•
Mother and child
• The question maps onto the next turn an
expectation of an answer.
 Structures of conversation
• Turn is the minimum unit of participation.
Turns can be grouped together into bigger
units called “sequence”
• A sequence can consist of a single turn, two
turns or more than two turns.
• A sequence is built out of elementary adjency
pairs (greeting-greeting, question-answer,
offer-acceptance, etc.)
 Adjacency pairs
• The first part of an adjacency pair maps onto
the next turn an expectation of the action it
needs to perform.
• Greetings project greeting in returns,
questions project answers, requests projects
compliances or rejections,
• Paired actions: I wave hello - you do the same,
I holdout my hand - You shake it
An example of a sequence
 Sequence expansion
• Sequence expansion can take the form of pre-
expansion, insert-expansion and post-
expansion
• Insertion sequence
Transition Relevance Place (TRP)
 Gap and Overlaps
• Conversation activities are organized in such a
way as to preserve the “one party speaks at a
time” principle by minimizing gaps (no party
speaks) or overlaps (more than one party
speaks at a time)
• Arriving at a party -> greeting in overlaps
• Congratulating after the announcement of
good news
• Laughter
 Preference organization
• Questions can be built to display a preference or
expectation for a particular answer.
• Do you belong to a church?
• You don’t want that lamb chop, do you?
• The preference principle: “If possible, minimize
explicitly stated disconfirmations in favor of
confirmations.”
=> Recipient find ways of avoiding outright
disconfirmations and shape their responses as at
least particial confirmations.