Qualitative Research methods

Question 1

Conversational analysis

Answer 1

A way of understanding the orderliness of talk to explain behaviour

Question 2

Why study conversation?

Answer 2

It helps to understand social behaviour and infant interactions

Question 3

Explain Albert, Schwade and Goldstein (2018) study into 40 9-month-olds and their interactions with their mothers

Answer 3

Mothers responded more to infants when their babbling was more mature or they were looking at objects and babbling.
Mothers responded to the infants with learnable, simple object names and language structure.

Question 4

What are the principles of conversational analysis?

Answer 4

1. orderliness is produced (not random and based on participants working together)
2. orderliness is oriented to the participants (not imposed by the researcher)
3. order is repeated across groups of speakers and conversations

Question 5

What is the method of conversational analysis?

Answer 5

The specimen method: which is to collect lots of specimens to see how order occurs in similar settings.

Question 6

What is the importance of ‘the deviant case’ in conversational analysis?

Answer 6

Whereby the rule is broken and therefore shows that there is a rule that is being followed the rest of the time.

Question 7

What is the aim of conversational analysis?

Answer 7

An attempt to discover the rules that participants use to construct the orderliness of their interactions.

Question 8

What is the importance of transcription in conversational analysis?

Answer 8

Enables us to analyse the data using Jeffersonian transcription

Question 9

What factors are necessary in the transcription of conversations?

Answer 9

1. Gestures
2. Breathing in and out
3. Pauses
4. Intonation (falling and rising in intonation)
5. Breathing in and out
6. Overlaps

Question 10

What are the three areas of interest in conversational analysis?

Answer 10

1. Turn taking
2. Sequence organisation
3. Repair

Question 11

Define Turn-taking it conversational analysis

Answer 11

The idea that people take turns and don’t usually overlap in conversation.
A ‘turn’ is a section of language where one person speaks.

Question 12

What is a Turn Constructional Unit (TCU)?

Answer 12

One person speaks and is recognisably complete

Question 13

How could a TCU be complete?

Answer 13

• grammatical completeness=end of sentence
• intonational completeness=ends at the right pitch
• pragmatic completeness=conversational action is complete
• nonverbal completeness=securing the gaze of recipient

Question 14

Transition Relevance Places (TRP)

Answer 14

Speaker’s talk is possibly complete and speaker change is a possible next action.

Question 15

How might a turn be allocated?

Answer 15

1. Speaker may select the next speaker

2. Speaker may self-select and speak on their own

Question 16

What is a normal pause in a conversation?

Answer 16

‘A beat of silence’ acts as a normal, transition space in a conversation, a pause longer or shorter than this is significant.

Question 17

What is sequence organisation?

Answer 17

Conversations are organised into sequences where a task is being done I.e asking and answering a question.
Sequences are built of adjacency pairs with two turns (first pair part, FPP, and second pair part, SPP)

Question 18

What are the preferences of sequences responses?

Answer 18

SPPs can either be preferred (socially normal) or dispreferred (socially problematic)

Question 19

What is special about dispreferred responses?

Answer 19

• often delayed

- sometimes preceded by silence which may lead to repair.

Question 20

What factors may affect the type of preference given?

Answer 20

• context and age i.e children have less understanding of social norms

Question 21

What are SCTs

Answer 21

Sequence closing third

Question 22

What is repair?

Answer 22

Occurs when something has gone wrong in a conversation and is the process of trying to recover from that