Conversation Analysis

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Conversation analysis views social actions as ongoing practical accomplishments worthy of in-depth examination. At the heart of these social actions is order/organization/orderliness that can be discovered, described, and analyzed to produce formal terms that capture the underlying order. George Psathas discusses seven basic assumptions of conversation analysis, reinterpreted here as four assumptions.

First, order is produced by those who engage in social action. Ordered patterns of interaction are determined by the individuals who engage in social action; order is not the result of the researcher's preformed theoretical concepts. Conversation analysis is always an exploratory process and it requires the researcher to approach each interaction (no matter how mundane or brief) open to unique patterns of orderliness.

Second, order is both context sensitive and context free. It is context sensitive in that each interaction is subject to its own order, that is, patterns of order do not necessarily transfer across situations. At the same time, however, order can be repeatable and recurrent across situations. Order is context free in that the particularities of the individuals involved (e.g., personal histories, gender, occupation, type of social action) do not determine the underlying rules and structures of the orderliness. Ethnography is not required to uncover the orderliness of talk-in-interaction. It is important to note that some conversation analysis researchers argue that ethnography is an important complement to their work.

Third, conversation analysis is grounded in description. It is the task of the researcher to discover, describe, and analyze the produced orderliness of talk-in-interaction. Once the rules and structures of social action are determined, formal terms can be employed to capture the ordered patterns of interaction.

Fourth, conversation analysis is not concerned with generalizability. Generalizability and the frequency and scope of social interactions are second to the discovery, description, and analysis of the structures through which order is produced.

Henry Sacks is considered the founder of conversation analysis. Dalvir Samra-Fredericks and Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini note that Sacks's early research with Harold Garfinkel, as well as the research of Emanuel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson, and Anita Pomerantz form the groundwork for the development of the field, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. George Psathas argues that Erving Goffman's work on the study of interaction in everyday situations also played a critical role in creating space for the development of conversation analysis.

It was through Sacks's employment and case study research at the Suicide Research Center in Los Angeles that conversation analysis as a methodological approach was developed. Sacks began to audiotape telephone calls to the Center to examine the interactional interchanges between Center employees and callers. The recorded tapes allowed him to review the talk-in-interactions over and over to uncover the orderliness of the interactions. Recording talk-in-interaction is now integral to the research design of conversation analysis.

...