Discourse and social interaction
week 1:
‘any instance of language in use, the little ‘d’ in discourse’
focus on actions and identities
- how are social actions accomplished in discourse?
- how are identities negotiated in discourse?
CA paradigm (Conversational analysis)
- Approach to the study of social interaction- the study of spoken language not
focusing on lab, researcher provoked data, or interviews but only naturally occurring
data which is as close as possible to the phenomenon.
*interviews can be studied in CA when you are looking at how the interviewer does
his job.
- inductive approach (bottom up analysis); from particular to general, being interested
in the sequential organization of talk- in interaction.
*different from discourse analysis, which is a deductive approach (hypotheses); from general
to specific and focusing on producing well- formed units of language larger than a sentence.
This can be applied to spoken and written language.
Roots of the CA paradigm ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology is an approach within sociology that states that social order causes
participants in an interaction process to interpret both the behavior of the other and their own
on the basis of some underlying and well-defined rules. CA studying the order of
conversation; order of behaviour and order of interaction.
- Talk develops turn by turn
- We can inspect how participants make sense of each others turns and how they
display that understanding in the subsequent turn
- We use participants’ displayed understandings as the starting point for our analyses
(members’ methods)
,The focus on how over why questions;
- Why questions inquire about intentions
•A study of talk-in-interaction, using CA does NOT enable us to reach conclusions about
peoples’ intentions.
- How questions inquire how talk-in-interaction emerges
• CA can be applied to study how talk emerges on a turn-by turn basis
werkcollege 1: david silverman
a. his definition of natural data: what is out there in the world without researchers
interception/ provoked/ elicited
b. what does he consider difficult about the distinction; the word natural is difficult,
things still have to be recorded so where do you place the audio recorder, etc. What
is the line between natural and provoked data. It depends on what you are studying.
c. what is his main point of the example of researchers working on the genome project;
why ask people who work on the genome what they do, because then you get a
description this is not what naturally occurs.Interviews are not the best method, but
instead you could record their interaction with each other. Dangerous of losing sight
of what you are studying.
exam
‘Ten have gloss’
you get a little transcript and you have to describe the social actions you get to see;
question: can you gloss the actions in this transcripts line by line?
examples of social actions: complimenting, apologizing, moderating (after complimenting ‘oh
it was nothing), endearment (expressing feelings i love you, i love you too), confirming
answer, request- granting request, offer, , complaint, denial, repair, accepting, proposing,
showing surprise, laughter, alignment, accounting, admitting, accusing, putting someone on
the spot, challenging someone’s views, introducing (mostly a preface), contrasting, avoiding,
redirecting a question, deflecting, checking understanding, clarification, explanation,
referring, inviting, correcting, showing dissapointment, to account for (taking responsibility
by explaining why we are doing something), recommend
*you always look at the second turn!
‘oh’ can be seen as a newsreceipt- you hear something new.
What are sequences or sequence organisation?
,Ordered series of related events, movements or items that follow each other in a particular
order. - relative positioning of utterances or actions.
week 2:
Liddicoat, A.J. (2017). An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. London, UK: Continuum.
Chapter 8 Opening conversation
What do we do when we open a conversation ( using the mobile phone/telephone )
It is expected to answer the telephone relatively quickly, however not to quickly, but to much
delay may lead to the interpretation that no one is there.- orientation instead of continuing
mechanical process.
Which sequences can be identified:
1.Summons-answer sequence
2.Identification-recognition sequence
3.Greeting sequence
4.How are you sequence (this sequence allows the current state of being as a matter for
talk in the conversation)
distributional rules
1. the answerer speaks first. A restriction of which sort of talk happen (small set of
possible utterances) , are ‘hello’ or self identification by name or telephone number.
Self identification is normally used in institutional context. ‘yeah’ or ‘yes’ can be used
when the answerer is super confident about the identity of the caller.
*if this rule is violated and thus the answerer does not speak first. The caller tries to
do an attempt to fix the problem by doing utterances in the place of the
answerer/acting like the answerer, such as ‘hello? (2)
, ’“We can say there’s a procedural rule here, that a person who speaks first in a
telephone conversation can choose their form of address, and in choosing their form
of address they thereby choose the form of address the other uses”.
What do we do when we open a conversation:
1. we undertake ‘gatekeeping’ activities, securing the interlocutor, opening the channel
of communication - availability
2. conforming and reconfirming relationships, getting to know who is the caller - identity
work
The caller knows his own identity and the identity of who he is calling. However the answerer
does not always know who the caller is. Identification is achieved once one party recognizes
the other. The information available in order to recognize each other is limited. Examples of
what the caller can say can be:
- recognitional source; voice sample ‘hello?’- This is done in situations where the
callers have a relationship which is close enough to allow for the expectation that the
caller will be able to identify the recipient from a voice sample.
- recognitional solution; naming of the answerer by the caller ‘(is this) Kim?’- the
answerer cannot do this as s/he does not yet know the identity of the caller and has
little information with which to make the identification.
A final possibility is that the caller may produce a 'reason for call' and again answerers-as-
callers face an interactional problem as they as yet do not know the reason for the call.
A (close) relationship is needed to recognize each other with a minimum amount of
information. Identification is needed to precede the conversation. Sometimes use a signature
hello; a particular delivery which is relatively standard across occasions. (a problem in this
signature hello might cause problems for identification)
Greeting tokens example
try-marked names mum? Kim?
other intonations KATIE, andie.
question or noticing concerning hhhello::?
immediately following the answerer turn [You never guess what just happened
request to speak to someone else Is your mother there?
self identity Hi mum, it’s me
questions regarding the identity Is this Kitty?
produce jokes i’m a princess
week 1:
‘any instance of language in use, the little ‘d’ in discourse’
focus on actions and identities
- how are social actions accomplished in discourse?
- how are identities negotiated in discourse?
CA paradigm (Conversational analysis)
- Approach to the study of social interaction- the study of spoken language not
focusing on lab, researcher provoked data, or interviews but only naturally occurring
data which is as close as possible to the phenomenon.
*interviews can be studied in CA when you are looking at how the interviewer does
his job.
- inductive approach (bottom up analysis); from particular to general, being interested
in the sequential organization of talk- in interaction.
*different from discourse analysis, which is a deductive approach (hypotheses); from general
to specific and focusing on producing well- formed units of language larger than a sentence.
This can be applied to spoken and written language.
Roots of the CA paradigm ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology is an approach within sociology that states that social order causes
participants in an interaction process to interpret both the behavior of the other and their own
on the basis of some underlying and well-defined rules. CA studying the order of
conversation; order of behaviour and order of interaction.
- Talk develops turn by turn
- We can inspect how participants make sense of each others turns and how they
display that understanding in the subsequent turn
- We use participants’ displayed understandings as the starting point for our analyses
(members’ methods)
,The focus on how over why questions;
- Why questions inquire about intentions
•A study of talk-in-interaction, using CA does NOT enable us to reach conclusions about
peoples’ intentions.
- How questions inquire how talk-in-interaction emerges
• CA can be applied to study how talk emerges on a turn-by turn basis
werkcollege 1: david silverman
a. his definition of natural data: what is out there in the world without researchers
interception/ provoked/ elicited
b. what does he consider difficult about the distinction; the word natural is difficult,
things still have to be recorded so where do you place the audio recorder, etc. What
is the line between natural and provoked data. It depends on what you are studying.
c. what is his main point of the example of researchers working on the genome project;
why ask people who work on the genome what they do, because then you get a
description this is not what naturally occurs.Interviews are not the best method, but
instead you could record their interaction with each other. Dangerous of losing sight
of what you are studying.
exam
‘Ten have gloss’
you get a little transcript and you have to describe the social actions you get to see;
question: can you gloss the actions in this transcripts line by line?
examples of social actions: complimenting, apologizing, moderating (after complimenting ‘oh
it was nothing), endearment (expressing feelings i love you, i love you too), confirming
answer, request- granting request, offer, , complaint, denial, repair, accepting, proposing,
showing surprise, laughter, alignment, accounting, admitting, accusing, putting someone on
the spot, challenging someone’s views, introducing (mostly a preface), contrasting, avoiding,
redirecting a question, deflecting, checking understanding, clarification, explanation,
referring, inviting, correcting, showing dissapointment, to account for (taking responsibility
by explaining why we are doing something), recommend
*you always look at the second turn!
‘oh’ can be seen as a newsreceipt- you hear something new.
What are sequences or sequence organisation?
,Ordered series of related events, movements or items that follow each other in a particular
order. - relative positioning of utterances or actions.
week 2:
Liddicoat, A.J. (2017). An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. London, UK: Continuum.
Chapter 8 Opening conversation
What do we do when we open a conversation ( using the mobile phone/telephone )
It is expected to answer the telephone relatively quickly, however not to quickly, but to much
delay may lead to the interpretation that no one is there.- orientation instead of continuing
mechanical process.
Which sequences can be identified:
1.Summons-answer sequence
2.Identification-recognition sequence
3.Greeting sequence
4.How are you sequence (this sequence allows the current state of being as a matter for
talk in the conversation)
distributional rules
1. the answerer speaks first. A restriction of which sort of talk happen (small set of
possible utterances) , are ‘hello’ or self identification by name or telephone number.
Self identification is normally used in institutional context. ‘yeah’ or ‘yes’ can be used
when the answerer is super confident about the identity of the caller.
*if this rule is violated and thus the answerer does not speak first. The caller tries to
do an attempt to fix the problem by doing utterances in the place of the
answerer/acting like the answerer, such as ‘hello? (2)
, ’“We can say there’s a procedural rule here, that a person who speaks first in a
telephone conversation can choose their form of address, and in choosing their form
of address they thereby choose the form of address the other uses”.
What do we do when we open a conversation:
1. we undertake ‘gatekeeping’ activities, securing the interlocutor, opening the channel
of communication - availability
2. conforming and reconfirming relationships, getting to know who is the caller - identity
work
The caller knows his own identity and the identity of who he is calling. However the answerer
does not always know who the caller is. Identification is achieved once one party recognizes
the other. The information available in order to recognize each other is limited. Examples of
what the caller can say can be:
- recognitional source; voice sample ‘hello?’- This is done in situations where the
callers have a relationship which is close enough to allow for the expectation that the
caller will be able to identify the recipient from a voice sample.
- recognitional solution; naming of the answerer by the caller ‘(is this) Kim?’- the
answerer cannot do this as s/he does not yet know the identity of the caller and has
little information with which to make the identification.
A final possibility is that the caller may produce a 'reason for call' and again answerers-as-
callers face an interactional problem as they as yet do not know the reason for the call.
A (close) relationship is needed to recognize each other with a minimum amount of
information. Identification is needed to precede the conversation. Sometimes use a signature
hello; a particular delivery which is relatively standard across occasions. (a problem in this
signature hello might cause problems for identification)
Greeting tokens example
try-marked names mum? Kim?
other intonations KATIE, andie.
question or noticing concerning hhhello::?
immediately following the answerer turn [You never guess what just happened
request to speak to someone else Is your mother there?
self identity Hi mum, it’s me
questions regarding the identity Is this Kitty?
produce jokes i’m a princess
