Conversation Analysis: Spoken Discourse (Week 11)

• Conversation analysis studies everyday spoken discourse
• It aims to understand how people manage interactions through detailed analysis
• It also examines how social relations develop through spoken discourse

Background to Conversation Analysis

• Originated in the early 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles
• Rooted in ethnomethodology and the work of Garfinkel and Goffman
• Sacks and colleagues developed it to study social order through everyday talk
• Sacks focused on the orderly nature of talk and commonalities across interactions
• Initially examined telephone calls to the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Centre
• Later expanded to include doctor-patient consultations, legal hearings, news interviews, etc.
• Conversation analysis focuses on how social worlds are jointly constructed by speakers
• It views ordinary conversation as the most basic form of talk
• Other forms of talk-in-interaction are derived from ordinary conversation
• Focuses on the data itself, not speakers' reflections or interviews
• It avoids assumptions and seeks regularly occurring phenomena in the data
• Aims for fine-tuned analysis of sequence, structure, and coherence
• Conversation is seen as 'context-shaped' and 'context-renewing'
• Conversation analysts demonstrate how participants produce and respond to evolving social contexts

Transcribing and Coding Conversation Analysis Data

• Transcription is part of the analysis process
• Texts are recorded (audio or video) and analyzed during transcription
• Recurring features are identified as starting points for further analysis
• The analyst listens and transcribes to understand how speakers manage interactions
• Specific transcription conventions are used
• An extract from a neighborhood dispute session illustrates common conventions

Sequence and Structure in Conversation

• Conversation analysis examines the sequence and structure of spoken discourse
• This includes openings, closings, turn-taking, adjacency pairs, preference organization, feedback, and repair

Opening Conversations

• Telephone conversations have a 'canonical opening' in American private conversations:
• Summons/answer sequence
• Identification/recognition sequence
• Greeting sequence
• 'How are you' sequence
• Reason for call sequence
• O'Loughlin (1989) found a similar pattern in Australia, but the caller identified themselves in the first turn
• Yang (1997) found summons/answer and identification/recognition sequences in Mandarin Chinese calls
• Greeting and 'how are you' sequences were less common or absent

Closing Conversations

• Schegloff and Sacks (1973) studied conversational closings which typically involve preclosing and closing moves
• Button (1987) describes a four-turn archetype closing with 'OK' and 'all right', followed by 'bye bye' and 'goodbye
• An insertion sequence can occur between the preclosing and closing units
• Closings can be preceded by various pre-sequences, like arrangement making or good wishes
• Closings can be foreshortened or extended depending on the speaker's orientation

Turn Taking

• Basic rule is one person speaks at a time, then nominates another speaker or another speaker takes the turn
• Signals for ending a turn: completion of a syntactic unit, falling intonation, pausing
• Also can use 'mmm' or 'anyway, eye contact, body position, movement, and voice pitch
• Holding onto a turn: Avoiding pauses, increasing volume, speaking over others

Adjacency Pairs

• Fundamental units of conversational organization consisting of two successive turns by different speakers
• The second utterance is related to the first as an expected follow-up
• Adjacency pairs are used in a typical and expected way, like in radio call-in program example

Adjacency Pairs Across Cultures

• Expected follow-ups can differ across languages and cultures
• Be'al's (1992) study showed how French and English speakers had different expectations for the greeting 'Did you have a good weekend?'
• Expected follow-ups in the use of adjacency pairs vary across language and cultures

Adjacency Pairs and the Stage of the Conversation

• Context and stage are crucial for assigning an utterance a particular pair part
• 'Hello' can be a summons, a response, or a greeting
• 'Thanks' can respond to a compliment, congratulation, or service offer

Preference Organization

• When a speaker produces a first pair part, they should allow the other speaker to produce a second pair part
• There is some freedom in responding to some first pair parts
• Compliment can be followed by accept or reject
• Some second pair parts are preferred, others are dispreferred

Feedback

• Feedback involves ways speakers show they are attending to what is being said
• Speakers provide feedback through 'response tokens' (mmm, yeah), paraphrasing, body position, and eye contact
• Items such as 'mmm' and 'yeah' do not always perform an acknowledging function

Repair

• Speakers use 'repair' to correct things said and check understanding
• Repair occurs through self-repair and other-repair

Discourse Markers

• Discourse markers are items that act as signposts of discourse coherence
• These include interjections, adverbs, and lexical phrases that serve as anaphoric and cataphoric references
• Discourse markers can indicate emotional states and initiate self-repairs
• The use of discourse markers can also carry social stigmas

Gender and Conversation Analysis

• Conversation analysis has contributed to discussions of language and gender
• It examines the social construction of gender from a conversation analysis perspective
• Stokoe (2003) analyzed gender and neighbor disputes

Conversation Analysis and Second Language Conversation

• Markee (2000) shows how conversation analysis can be used to analyze second language acquisition
• Storch (2001a, 2001b) carried out a fine-grained analysis of second language learner talk in pair work activities

Criticisms of Conversation Analysis

• Criticisms include being 'monolithic' and self-sufficient
• Rejection of data outside the conversation is seen as a weakness
• A debate in Discourse & Society illustrates points about relying on the analyst's view
• Bucholtz (2003) argues that conversation analysis needs to draw on the contextual groundings of ethnography
• Wooffitt (2005) outlines criticisms about lack of attention to power, inequality, and wider issues
• Feminist researchers argue that conversation analysis is not incompatible with examining power
• Kitzinger (2008) argues that it is legitimate to draw on information outside the data