Dsicourse and Pragmatics
Conversation Analysis
Doing ‘Being Ordinary’
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Harold Garfinkle
‘Ethnomethodology’
How do people make interaction orderly?
How do people make sense of interaction?
Studying people’s actions on their own terms
rather than with reference to a theory
Conversation Analysis
• Developed in the 1960’s by Sacks, Schegloff and
Jefferson
• Study of telephone conversations
• Fine tuned (‘microanalytic’) analysis of the sequential
structure of conversations
• Conversation unfolds ‘one thing after another’
• No a priori assumptions
• Looking for patterns in actual conversations
• Understanding how people ‘make sense’ of
conversations
• Search for ‘patterns’ and ‘regularities’ in talk
Topics in CA
• How utterances are related to each other
(‘adjacency pairs’)
• Preference organization
• Turn-taking
• Topic initiation
• Feedback
• Openings and closings
• Repair
Context
• Contrast with E of S and pragmatics
• Only valid ‘context’ is the immediate context of the
conversation
• Context is dynamic
• We create context by what we say and respond to
the context other people create by what they say
• Factors external to the talk is only relevant if
participants make it relevant
• ‘Pure’ conversational data
• Based only on what participants actually do
• Close data transcription
Transcription
• Transcription is…
• A process of selection
• Driven by analyst's theoretical stance
• Gail Jefferson Transcription conventions
Sample
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Henry:
Irene:
Zelda:
Deby:
Irene:
Zelda:
Irene:
Deby:
Zelda:
Irene:
Henry:
Irene:
Henry
Irene
Henry:
(a) Y'want a piece of candy?
(b) No.//
(c)
She's on a // diet
(d)
// Who's not on a diet
(e) =I'm on a diet.
(f) and my mother // buys
(g)
// You're not!
(h)=my // mother buys these mints.=
(i)
// Oh yes I// amhhh!
(j)
Oh yeh
(k) The Russel Stouffer mints.
(l) I said, 'I don't want any Mom."
(m) "Well, I don't want to eat the whole thing."
(n) She gives me a tiny piece.
(o) I eat it.
(p) Then she give me an//other,=
(q)
// Was, =
(r) =so I threw it out the window=
=there a lot of people?=
(s) =I didn't // tell her.=
(t)
// Was there=
The structure of conversations
• Openings
• Initiating exchanges that establish social relations
• Middle
• Topic negotiation and development
• Turn taking mechanics
• Feedback
• Closings
• Pre-closing exchanges
• Closings
• Meaning of an utterance depends on stage of
conversation
• ‘How are you?’
• ‘Hello’
Openings and Closings
• Conversational ‘rituals’
• Vary from culture to culture
• Closing telephone conversations in
Australia and New Zealand
Openings
• Ritualistic openings
• Utterances have different meanings when
they occur at the beginning
• ‘Hey!’
• ‘How are you?’
• ‘Have you eaten yet?’
• Summons--Answer
• Greeting--Greeting
• Often done simultaneously
Openings in Telephone
Conversations
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A: Hello.
(…)
B: Hello.
A: oh, hello Anne, what’s up.
B: Nothing much. I just had something I
wanted to ask you.
• Summons/Answer
• Greeting/Greeting
Closings
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FTA
Pre-closings
Body language
Excuses
Ritualistic expressions (e.g. ‘good’, ‘ok’)
• Signal invitation to or willingness to pass on one’s
turn
• Invitation for or offering of ‘unmentioned
mentionables’
Why it’s so hard to get off the
phone (Cameron)
• From Cameron
Adjacency Pairs
• A pair of utterances in which the first part
predicts the second part
• ‘Conditional Relevance’
• Second half is functionally dependent on the
first.
• First is also dependent on the second:
Second half provides evidence of how the
first half was understood
• ‘What makes something a request?’
• Speech Act Theory vs. CA
• ‘Preferred Responses’
Dispreferred Responses
• May create implicature
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A: I’m sorry
B: …
A: I love you.
B: Thanks.
• Second half of pair is heard as ‘officially
absent’
Dispreferred Responses
May require extra ‘conversational work’ such as
‘delay’, ‘preface’, and/or ‘account’. The ‘work’ involved is
What identifies an utterance as ‘preferred’ or ‘dispreferred’’
Matching
Adjacency Pairs
• Cultural differences
• ‘How was your weekend’
• Australians and French (Beal 1992)
Insertion Sequences
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A: May I please speak to Rodney?
B: May I ask who’s calling?
A: Alan.
B: Just a minute. I’ll get him.
A: Gimme a beer.
B: How old are you?
A: 21
B: Okay. Coming up.
• CONDITIONAL RELEVANCE
Turn Taking
• We ‘take turns’ in conversation
• Turns are negotiated as we go along (conversation is ‘locally
managed’)
• ‘Turn Constructional Units’
• ‘Turn Transition Relevance Place’
• Choices
• S nominates next speaker
• If not, then…
• Next speaker nominates self
• If not, then…
• Current speaker may (but does not have to) continue
• ‘Accountable’ and ‘non-accountable’ silence
• ‘Overlaps’ vs. ‘Interruptions’
‘Supportive Interventions’
Turn Taking
• Signaling the end of our turn
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Adjacency pair structure
Nominating another speaker
Pausing
Falling intonation/pitch
Body language (e.g. gaze, body torque)
Turn Taking
• Signaling that we want to keep talking
• Pausing in the middle of a phrase/clause
• Looking away
• Talking louder or maintaining
pitch/loudness
Turn Taking
• Special situations have special rules for turn
taking
• Classrooms
• Meetings
• Can also be affected by…
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Topic
Cooperativeness
Power
Distance
Topic Management
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Appropriate and Taboo Topics
Rules on who initiates topics
How topics are initiated
Changing topics
Backchannel (Feedback)
• Verbal feedback
• Non-verbal feedback
• Role in maintaining channel (‘focused
interaction’)
• Role in turn taking, topic management
• Cultural differences
Repair
• Self-repair
• Other-repair
CA and Culture
• An Argentinean in Sweden (Cameron)
• Cultures where simultaneous talk is the
norm
• Cultures where extended silence is the
norm
Talk in institutional settings
• What special considerations apply that
make talk in institutional settings
different from casual conversation?
• Goal oriented
• Special constraints on allowable
contributions
• Context specific inferential frameworks
‘One rule for one and one for
another’