In this study, the term CA is intended to refer to the body of research which began with Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson in the 1970s (e.g. Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974; Sacks & Schegloff 1979). In turn, this work built upon the lectures given by Sacks in the late 1960s (which have been transcribed and collected as Sacks, 1992). Heritage (1984a) argues that Sacks’ lectures were all built upon three theoretical assumptions (which, it ought to be added, have been supported with years of subsequent empirical analysis). These three observations were at the time groundbreaking, and to this day remain central to field of CA. In this section, theses three observations will be discussed, in order to introduce the approach of the methodology.
First of all, CA differs from many other social research approaches to language, discourse and communication in its understanding of language. While CA researchers examine spoken discourse, they take it that “talk amounts to actions” (Schegloff 1991: 46) and that “… speaking and listening are activities rather than the passive
transmission of thought processes” (Silverman 1998: 7). As such, the focus of study in CA is social action as manifest through talk. Further, it is vital to note CA’s emphasis on interaction:
the conversation-analytic angle of inquiry does not let go of the fact that speech-exchange systems are involved, in which more than one co-participant is present and relevant to the talk, even when only one does the talking. (Schegloff 1982: 74)
Hence the object of study for CA is talk-in-interaction.16 In other words, it is not language per se that is of interest, but rather the social actions undertaken in and through the use of language. In this sense CA is far more closely aligned to – and talks more directly to – sociology, as opposed to linguistics.
Secondly, Sacks observed that there is “order at all points” in spoken interaction (1984: 22), or a meaningful orderliness to all talk. Put crudely, there are organised sets of practices for (1) giving, receiving and constructing a turn at talk, (2) co-producing sequences of actions in talk and (3) dealing with trouble in talk (Sidnell 2010). Further, this meaningful orderliness is available both to participants in talk and to
analysts of talk. This notion then rejects the idea that natural language is too “messy”
to analyse, as well as the Chomskyan notion of linguistic performance as a degenerate expression of linguistic competence, and the subsequent belief of the “uselessness” of studying actual talk in understanding language (see Chomsky 1957, 1965). Instead, the analysis of naturally-occurring talk is taken to be a necessity.
Finally, Sacks noted that – and unpacked how – talk creates and maintains mutual understanding (‘intersubjectivity’) between interactants. This is important in two key aspects for the understanding of talk-in-interaction: (1) Participants engaged in talk are constantly displaying their understanding of one another’s actions; for example, when one provides an answer, they display that they understood a question to have been asked, and that the question was directed at them. (2) Participants
engaged in talk are able to note when intersubjectivity has been undermined (i.e. when there is no response following a direct question) and are able put on hold the ongoing activity in order to rectify it. This means of (or ‘mechanism’ for) rectifying troubles in intersubjectivity is known as ‘repair’ and will be revisited in Section 3.4.3, as well as throughout the analytic chapters.
Because CA, both as a theory of interaction and as a methodology for the study of interaction, is founded upon interactants’ displayed understandings of one another, it is essential for analysts of a particular interaction to demonstrate what is going on
for the participants in that interaction, at that time. This is known as adopting an
emic approach to social research, a matter that will be discussed in more detail in
16
At least at the first point. Recent developments in CA research have allowed for the fine-grained analysis of other, non-verbal, conduct in interaction, including gaze, embodied actions, physical arrangements, etc. This has been described as talk-and-other-conduct-in-interaction (Schegloff 2006). Readers interested in this aspect of interaction are suggested to begin with the excellent work of Charles Goodwin (e.g. 1980, 1986, 2000, 2007)
Section 3.3. This approach requires that analysts follow some basic principles when engaged in data collection and analysis.
In terms of data collection, as stated above, it is generally accepted that data should consist of audio/video recordings of naturally-occurring talk, supported by a finely detailed transcription of the talk. The idea of ‘naturally-occurring’ is a reaction against experimental research on language and/or social life, as well as against a reliance on imaginary examples of linguistic behaviours, as previously championed by Austin and Searle, for example. In an attempt to avoid (either by accident or design) conducting research on an artificial setting, CA researchers typically investigate episodes of social interaction which would have occurred even if recorders were not present.17
Transcripts are required to be as detailed as possible, with all aspects of timing (such as length of pauses between, or within, turns) and verbal conduct (even audible inbreaths, coughs, etc.) acknowledged. This is to ensure that no order of detail can be dismissed as insignificant by the researcher (although, of course, transcripts only serve in support of the recorded data, they are often pored over, and presented to peers. As such, limited transcripts can reflect limited attention to detail). This bottom- up, data driven approach to analysis also works in the opposite direction; while no detail should be ignored, neither should any detail be assumed to be significant. This rules out any a priori theorising, and assumptions of the significance of larger social institutions, such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Outside theories, categories, identities, etc. ought to only be referred to by the analyst if they are demonstrably oriented to by the participants involved in the data under analysis (see Section 3.2.4 for an explanation of this principle).
In the following section, the ‘intellectual parent’ of CA, EM, will be introduced. This will aid understanding of the epistemological position which CA adopts, as well as where is stands in relation to other forms of social research.
17Of course, such a distinction between ‘real’ and ‘experimental’ research is not purely binary, and
some CA studies have analysed ‘prompted’ interactions. However, such studies are open to criticism unless they analyse their created situations as exactly that – created situations.