week 5- conversational analysis

Question 1

Ethnomethodology

Answer 1

‘the study of a people’s folk methods’: a sociological sub-discipline which examines how people:

(a) make sense of their world
(b) display this understanding to others, and
(c) produce the mutually shared social order in which they live.

Question 2

what is the central focus of Conversation Analysis (CA)

Answer 2

‘the organization of the meaningful conduct of people in society, that is, how people in society produce their activities and make sense of the world about them’ (Pomerantz and Fehr, 1997)

Question 3

give two quotes for rational of CA

Answer 3

‘The structural order of talk is to be treated as on a par with the structural organisation of any social institution’ (Silverman, 2001)

• this order of talk ‘makes social action and interaction, mutual sense - making and social reality construction possible. These [interactional] practices are significant because they are basic to human sociality.’ (Heritage,1997)

Question 4

how do you ‘do’ CA?

Answer 4

1. Select a sequence.
2. Characterise the actions (functions) in the sequence.
3. Consider how the speakers’ packaging of actions, including their selections of reference terms, provides for certain understandings of the actions performed and the matters talked about.
4. Consider how the timing and taking of turns provide for certain understandings of the actions and the matters talked about.
5. Consider how the ways the actions were accomplished implicate certain identities, roles, and/or relationships for the interactants

Question 5

Features of Conversation prioritised by CA

Answer 5

• speaker switches
• turn construction units (TCU’s)
• adjacency pairs and extended sequences •topic shift
• repair work •acknowledgement tokens ~ minimal responses
• openings and closings •how paralanguage and non-verbal behaviour are related to talk
• The notions of sequentiality and orderliness are central

Question 6

discuss the organisation of turn taking in conversation

Answer 6

Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974
• Speaker-change recurs, or at least occurs.
• Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time.
• Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common, but brief.
• Transitions (from one turn to a next) with no gap and no overlap are common. Together with transitions characterised by slight gap or slight overlap, they make up the vast majority of transitions.
• Turn order is not fixed, but varies.
• Turn size is not fixed, but varies.
• Length of conversation is not specified in advance.
• What parties say is not specified in advance.
• Relative distribution of turns is not specified in advance.
• Number of parties can vary.
• Talk can be continuous or discontinuous.

Question 7

what are Turn Constructional Units (TCUs)

Answer 7

• Turns at talk in conversation are constructed in the actual course of speaking, using locally recognisable ‘units’ (TCUs) as their ‘building blocks’ (Schegloff)

Question 8

what is an adjacency pair?

Answer 8

‘In questions and answers we have one example…of what Sacks has called a ‘first pair part’ and a ‘second pair part’, that is a couplet, a minimal dialogic unit, a round two utterances long… each spoken by a different person, one utterance temporally following directly after another, in sum, an adjacency pair’ (Goffman, 1981)

Question 9

types of adjacency pairs?

Answer 9

Psathas, 1995

Summons - Answer 
Closings
Greeting - Return of Greeting 	
Invitation - Refusal
Offer - Acceptance
Rebuke – Account
Invitation- Acceptance

Question 10

Communicative competence

Answer 10

rules of speaking

Question 11

what is preference organisation?

Answer 11

In an adjacency pair, there may be more than one valid second pair part. While equally valid, they may be differentiated in terms of ‘preference’

• In CA, ‘preference organisation’ basically entails the distinction between two formats of action: preferred and dispreferred
• Thus rejections of invitations or offers, or disagreements in response to assessments, can be performed in such a way that encodes their dispreferred status

Question 12

what are extended sequences?

Answer 12

Cutting 2002

1 Pre-sequences signal what is to follow
• Pre-invitations “I’ve got two tickets for the rugby match”
• Pre-requests “You know that new top you bought?”
• Pre-announcements “You’ll never guess who I saw in the Woody last night”

2 Insertion sequences/embedded adjacency pairs
1 A: you know that French film that’s on in Chapter?
2 B: yes
3 A: do you want to go and see it tonight?
4 B: what time does it start?
5 A: eight thirty
6 B: yeah I’ll have finished work by then

3 Openings and Closings

Question 13

discuss OPENING UP CLOSINGS

Answer 13

Schegloff and Sacks 1973;•…a single conversation does not simply end but is brought to a close

…closings are to be seen as achievements, as solutions to certain problems of conversational organization

a terminal exchange is composed of conventional parts e.g. in an exchange of goodbyes there is a drastic difference between one party saying goodbye and not leaving a slot for the other to reply and one party saying goodbye and leaving a slot for the other to reply ..such other components as ‘ok’ ‘see you’ ‘thank you’

Question 14

what is the candidate sequence?

Answer 14

Coupland, Robinson and Coupland, 1994
• Obligatory elements; optional elements are bracketed
• Summons / approach 
• Greetings 
• (welcomings) 
• Dispositional talk 
• (apologies) 
• (familiarity sequence) 
• (compliments) 
• (environmental talk) 
• (teases) 
• Holding sequence 
• How are you? – type exchange