Conversation Analysis

Conversation analysis originated as a subfield of ethnomethodology in the 1960s, but since then has developed into a larger discipline at the intersection of sociology and linguistics. While ethnomethodology looks at the interpretive methods used in social life, conversation analysis focuses on communication, although a more precise term is talk-in-interaction. The rigorously scientific methodology developed by Harvey Sacks (1935–1975) involved tape-recording, making careful transcriptions of naturally occurring conversation, identifying regularities, identifying the socially shared methods used by conversationalists, and developing cumulative knowledge through comparative studies. Although the original focus was everyday conversation, researchers have also investigated talk in legal settings.

An important foundation for conversation-analytic research was the 1974 “simple systematics” paper by Sacks, Gail Jefferson, and Emanuel Schegloff, which described the methods used in taking turns at talk, a taken-for-granted yet essential basis for social order. They suggested that interaction in institutional settings involves a modification of these basic rules; for example, lawyers exercise more control over topics and ask more questions in a lawyer-client interview. J. Maxwell Atkinson and Paul Drew examined the turn-taking system in court hearings. Other analysts have examined how structures of interaction one finds in everyday conversation, such as adjacency pairs (an example would be the normative expectation that an answer should follow a question) are employed in legal settings. Doug Maynard, for example, described a three-part negotiation sequence in plea bargaining.

Sacks also became interested in the cultural knowledge embedded in language. Puzzling over the first two sentences in a children's story—“The baby cried. The mommy picked it up”—he arrived at a formal theory of how language operates through shared knowledge about types of people or objects (“membership categories”). Drew has applied these analytic resources in examining cross-examination in rape trials. He showed how witnesses design answers that prevent attorneys from developing damaging lines of questioning.

Greg Matoesian has employed a similar approach in examining rape trials, although with more emphasis on the ability of a skilled attorney to make damaging inferences. This study demonstrated how conversation analysis could address questions that interest sociolinguistic researchers about the relationship between language and power. What makes conversation analysis distinctive, however, is a commitment not to import political or philosophical concerns into data analysis. Schegloff has argued that one cannot talk about power, or the relevance of contextual features such as gender, unless this demonstrably matters to conversationalists in their talk.