CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
Sociological Analysis of talk-in-interaction
Presentation at Ph.d. Summer School, Aalborg University:
Qualitative research methods and data analysis, August 25th 2011
Søren Peter Olesen, associate professor, Department of Sociology and Social Work
Overview
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An example: Harassment in action
Introduction
The theoretical tradition from which CA as research methodology derives.
The analytical specifics of CA
The type of research questions, CA can answer
What makes CA unique compared to other discourse and narrative
analytic methodologies?
Concluding remarks
Harassment in action
MP:
Girl:
MP:
Girl:
MP:
MP:
MP:
Girl:
MP:
Girl:
… When shall we go for a ride then.
(.)
What did you say.
When shall we go for a ride.
(.)
Hey listen I don’t k_now_hhh
(.)
h What?
(0.6)
Are you coming with me then.
(0.5)
Do you dare to come.
<I don’t know. Hhh
But come along,
(0.6)
Why is that
Harassment in action
… underpinning her (Tainio 2003) analysis is an attempt to
show how actions which can be heard as a form of
harassment (and, indeed, which did come to be heard
that way by the jury, journalists and the public at large)
are predicated on, mobilised in and resisted through
mundane practices of interactional organisation. And in
this Tainio makes a significant contribution, because she
shows that it is possible to develop a conversation
analytic account of the infrastructure of sexual
harassment.
(Wooffitt 2005)
Introduction
CA is about ‘what comes after what’ in talk-in-interaction (Antaki 1994:69)
According to CA participants orient to interaction (Heritage 1997:162):
• Addressing themselves to the immediately preceding talk; talk is contextshaped
• Projecting some next action; talk is context-shaping
• Showing an understanding of what is going on; talk represents sequential
intersubjectivity  categorisation and narrative
CA is dedicated empirical/’objectivistic’ and qualitative
Two tracks in CA (ten Have 1999:8: at least two kinds of conversation
analytical research going on today):
• The institutions of social interaction
• The social institutions in talk-in-interaction. ‘Applied’ CA
The ’birth’ of CA
Data: Taperecordings of telephone calls to a help-line at a psychiatric
hospital (Sacks 1992a+b)
(1)A: Hello
B: Hello
(2) A: This is Mr Smith may I help you
B: Yes, this is Mr Brown
(3)A: This is Mr Smith may I help you
B: I can’t hear you
A: This is Mr Smith
B: Smith
The ’birth’ of CA
Data: Talk in therapeutic settings. Turn-taking – example of a ’list’ and of
collectively produced talk:
Therap:
Bob:
Th:
Bob:
Joe:
Th:
Henry:
Bob:
Th:
Joe:
Henry:
Mel:
Bob this is uh Mel
Hi
Joe
Hi
Hi
Henry
Hi
Hi
Bob Reed
We were in an automobile discussion
discussing the psychological motives for
drag racing on the streets
(Lectures on Conversation 1:136)
The ’birth’ of CA
Data: Talk in social work setting. Turn-taking; categorisation and
category bound activities; narrative; ’objects’ and ’machinery
producing that kind of objects’
A: Yeah, then what happened?
B: Okay, in the meantime she <the wife of B> says: “Don’t ask the
child nothing.” Well, she stepped between me and the child, and
I got to walk out the door. When she stepped between me and
the child, I went to move her out of the way. And then about
that time her sister had called the police. I don’t know how she
… what she …
A: Didn’t you smack her one?
B: No.
A: You’re not telling me the story, Mr. B.
B: Well, you see when you say smack you mean hit.
A: You shoved her. Is that it?
B: Yeah, I shoved her
(Lectures on Conversation 1:113)
Theoretical tradition
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A functional conception of language (Wittgenstein 1953): Language as
performative and functional; language as constructive and constitutive of
social life (Rapley 2007); using language  producing a world of
communicative practice
Inductive, qualitative and ‘objectivistic’ (Sacks 1992)
Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967; 2002)  Focus on member’s rather
than researchers’ knowledge and methods
Interaction ritual / interaction order (Goffman 1967; 1983)  reproducing
vs. softening and loosening structural traits
‘Objects’ and ‘devices’; the machinery producing them; a ‘social
microphysics’; sequentiality and categorisation; ‘inference-making
machine’ (Sacks 1992)
‘What comes after what’, not letting an a priori theoretical framework
‘colonise’ description and analysis  How members ‘assemble the social’
(Schegloff 1999)
Theoretical relevance
Focus on ‘What comes after what’ (Antaki)  How members ‘assemble the
social’ (Latour 2005) and categorisation, positioning and rhetoric – rather
than on causal explanations and sociological theory about actors and their
motives, dispositions and positions
Focus on the situational and the situated (Goffman 1983)  Situation,
disposition, position (Mouzelis 1995)
Social constructionism (Burr 1995)  questioning everything we might take
for granted, however not departing from a specific critical theory and an
emancipatory project
Critical realism (Archer 1995): Generative mechanisms (Pawson & Tilley
1997) producing the social; structure vs. agency; devices vs. interaction
and relations
Analytical specifics - 1
The analytical specifics of CA: Ways of making available and of making up
existing materials (rather than researcher-generated) for analytical
purposes (Flick quoted in Rapley 2007)
Analytical specifics - 2
Institutions of social interaction: Seeking ‘universal’ or general rules about
talk-in-ineraction, e.g.:
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Turn-taking, sequentiality and turn-design
Pairs
Preference
Repair
Openings
Closings
…
Analytical specifics - 3
Social institutions in interaction / Institutional talk: Applying CA on particular
cases of talk-in-interaction; institutional interaction, e.g. education and
pedagogy, health and social care, social welfare and employment
Institutional interaction is normally characterised by (Heritage 1997:163f):
• Specific goal orientations
• Special constraints on what is considered allowable contributions
• Particular inferential frameworks and procedures
Research questions
The type of research questions, CA can answer:
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Why that now? – in the sense that members look at things
How rather than why?
How is this done in this case, in this situation, this time
CA and other discourse analytical methodologies
Various selected approaches to the analysis of institutional
interaction:
• Institutional ethnography
• Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
• Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
• Critical Discourse Analysis
(Sarangi & Roberts 1999)
CA and other discourse analytical methodologies
CA (and partly DA) focuses on language use, everyday
interaction whether mundane or institutional, authentic
data  triviality?
Recordings (sound or video) of verbal communication.
CA’s empirical strengths!?
(Wooffit 2005:88)
CA and other discourse analytical methodologies
CDA vs. CA: The question of interconnections between linguistics
patterns and the broader social contexts (social, political and
economis structures (e.g. Layder 1993; Linell 1998).
DP / DA vs. FDA / CDA: ’Thin’ linguistic analysis vs. ’thick’ (!?)
sociological analysis – language embedded in social institutions and
technologies.
CA and narrative analysis
The development in narrative analysis
Grand narratives
About a nation or ethnic group, about the role of a social class, a political
organisation or a specific way of organising society etc.
Big (biographical) narratives
About the life history of an individual
Small narratives
Ad hoc positioning in everyday settings, moves taken in concrete present
situations vis-à-vis others, often unnoticed as narratives
From grand/big to smal narratives and from structure to interaction
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CA and narrative analysis
“‘Big Stories’, i.e., life stories or autobiographies, or at least stories
of life determining (or threatening) episodes have come to take
the center stage in narrative studies in the human sciences. ‘Big
Stories’ are typically stories that are elicited in interview
situations, either for the purpose to create research data or to
do therapy – stories in which speakers are asked to
retrospect on particular life-determining episodes or on
their lives as a whole, and tie together events into episodes and
episodes into a life story, so that something like ‘a life’ can come
“to existence”. Situations, I will argue, in which ‘Big Stories’ are
constructed, are particular kinds of occasions in which speakers
have been provided with a particular opportunity for
reflection; occasions in which they have been lured or seduced
into a particular type of accounting practice (also often called
‘disclosure’); occasions to which the participants have agreed, but
occasions that are also quite different from situations in which
“small stories” emerge.“
(Bamberg 2006, s. 2-3)
CA and narrative analysis
“…the term “small stories” is meant to refer to stories told in
interaction; stories that do not necessarily thematize the
speaker, definitely not a whole life, but possibly not even events
that the speaker has lived through – and now, retrospectively,
reflects upon and recounts (often termed “personal stories” or
“narratives of personal experience”). Rather, “small stories” are
more the kinds of stories we tell in everyday settings (not just
research or therapeutic interviews). And these stories are most
often about very mundane things and everyday occurrences,
often even not particularly interesting or tellable; stories that seem
to pop up, not necessarily even recognized as stories, and
quickly forgotten; nothing permanent or of particular importance
– so it seems.”
(Bamberg 2006, s. 1-2)
Uniqueness
In sum: What makes CA unique compared to other discourse analytic
methodologies?
Talk-in-interaction
Turn-taking and sequentiality
Categorisation and narrative in interaction
Existing materials
Specific analytic procedures
Transcriptions of data
Authentic data from concrete situations
Sound or video-recordings
The words as spoken
Sounds that are uttered
Inaudible or un-understandable sounds and sections
Pauses / silences
Overlapping talk and sounds
Tempo, intonation, strength
Format of transcription
Addition of visible information
Translation
Selection, ’cases of what?’
(Ten Have 1999; Nielsen & Nielsen 2005)
Concluding remarks 1
Concluding remarks:
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Critique and discussion
The Sacks-heritage (Silverman 1998)
The short-sightedness of CA!? (Wetherell 1998; Schegloff 1998; Billig 1999;
Schegloff 1999; Scheuer 2005; Kjærbeck 2008)
Immediate vs. mediate contexts (Schegloff 1997; Linell 1998; Erickson
2004)
CA and other discourse analytical methodologies (Wooffitt 2005; Rapley
2007)
CA and narrative analysis
Concluding remarks 2
Concluding remarks:
CA and e.g. social work research; a profound relevance associated with social work and
counselling as authentic communicative practice / language use / language games; a
conflation of activity types and discourse types (Sarangi 2000)
Reservations:
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What is actually turns and how do you observe turns; is there a ’nano-physics’and
a ’meso-physics’ of interaction?
At a mezo- and macro-level: the occurrence and character of turns not lying
immediately close to each other as well as the occurrence and character of
monological traits
The characterisation of everyday life as primordial and immortal and as realised in
comunicative practice including assumptions dialogue, equality, reciprocity and
balance is problematic; interaction is allways embedded and social institutions
maybe allways present
Discussion
• Is it important to study language use, or are the
most important things happening, so to speak,
behind the back of the participants in social
work practice?