Interaction Analysis
Lecture 1
Indexicality = the meaning of utterances comes not from the words alone, but from their use
in a specific context.
Ethnomethodology = branch of sociology = social structures as produced by members of a
culture/community themselves.
Qualitative research:
Bottom-up/data-driven/inductive research
Attention to detail
Patterns that emerge from the data
Everyday life
Normal/ordinary: not who we are, but how we construct our actions.
- We present ourselves as ordinary
- Achievement
- By abiding by implicit procedures and assumptions
- ‘Doing being ordinary’
Implications:
- People can choose to play by the norms or not.
- They can negotiate the norms and change the context (negotiating in
supermarket).
- Social situations are flexible, never fixed, situations can be negotiated and changed.
How do we know what the ordinary procedures are?
Violating the rules Breaching experiments
Suspicion of an implicit norm/procedure/assumption.
Violate that suspected norm/procedure/assumption.
Observe how you feel and how others respond to your behaviour, e.g. other people’s
responses will probably display if you have indeed violated an implicit norm, e.g. avoiding
you, irritation display, sanctions.
Indexicality = meaning of words depends on the context of use + range of assumptions.
How do we open jars, we should take jelly out of the jar before putting it on the sandwich,
how do we grab sandwiches.
Documentary method of interpretation
Every action is taken as a piece of evidence for a particular pattern.
The pattern is used to understand the action.
Usually implicit (e.g. how we stand in a queue)
Sometimes explicit:
- When doing a breaching experiment, e.g. why students pretending to be renting a
room in their parents’ house.
- When adapting to a new culture, e.g. handing over payments with two hands in
shops in parts of Asia.
Procedures and assumptions of ‘being ordinary’ are a resource:
, - To produce our own behaviour as normal.
- To recognize other’s behaviour.
It makes human interaction and social life possible.
Use an appropriate level of detail Depending on context
Construct an ‘accountable’ story
Construct a story that reflects the teller’s relationship to the events and addressee
Tell the story at an appropriate time
Accountable = reportable, making sense, following the normal procedures, account of.
Liable = needing explication/justification, account for.
The second meaning becomes relevant when actions fail to make immediate sense.
Similarities:
- Methods members of a community use to organize social life.
- Looking for patterns and underlying norms in everyday human life.
- Social actions (and identities) as product by the members.
Differences
Ethnomethodology = social actions in CA = focus on talk (but, multimodality)
general. Natural departures of norms + responses,
Breaching experiments deviant cases transcription, turn by turn
Notes analysis.
What is meant by ‘doing being ordinary’?
Ordinary is not how we are, but how we present ourselves.
What is the documentary method of interpretation?
Treating observations as pointing to an underlying pattern.
Conversation analysis
- Conversation analytic studies can concern everyday talk.
- And all sorts of institutional interaction (legal, medical, business, governmental).
- And multimodality (speech, posture, head, arms).
- And text-based interaction (chat, WhatsApp, email).
Which actions do speakers accomplish towards each other?
‘Why didn’t you wash the dishes?’
Grammatical format: question
Social action: complaint
A: ‘You look like you’re not really in the mood for this party.’
B: ‘No, not really.’
Format B’s response
Social action: confirmation
Context = sequential context = what happens in the turns before and the turns after.
What happens before
,
, Chapter 1. Introduction to the study of conversation analysis
Ordinary conversation = everyday interactions between friends, relatives, colleagues, or
others which are not specifically work or task oriented.
Studying ordinary conversations in everyday contexts is important for two reasons:
1) It enables us to understand the most prevalent mode of interaction between people
of all ages as they live their lives.
2) It is the basis for interaction in organizations and institutional settings, through which
we live our work lives, receive services, and conduct other business.
Talk-in-interaction is the principal means through which lay persons pursue various practical
goals and the central medium through which the daily working activities of many
professionals and organizational representatives are conducted.
Chapter 2. Understanding ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology = an approach to sociological inquiry that challenges the way sociologists
typically conceptualize and study the social world.
Social structure is viewed as a cultural artifact much like any other cultural artifact, whether
it be a physical object such as a vase or a cell phone, or a cultural practice such as music or
science.
Ethnomethodologists investigate this by studying the procedures and methods people use to
create social facts, social structure and social order.
Ethnomethodology = theory of social action + method of studying human action
Social relationships are created through a series of procedures that people in a culture use
to accomplish that purpose.
America Conversation begins with a recitation of someone’s resume
China Conversation begins with complimenting the person you’ve just met
Misunderstandings
Breaching experiments = studies to reveal the procedures underlying social processes in a
wide range of situations
Ethnomethodology enables us to study this work as it is being done and to accurately and
precisely discover how it is done, why things go wrong when they do go wrong, and how
problems can be avoided.
Garfinkel designed a series of studies to reveal the procedures underlying social processes in
a wide range of different realms of social life. The goal of these studies was to discover the
‘common sense understandings’ and ‘background assumptions’ that members of society
base their actions on.
Deliberately breach the norms of everyday reality.
If a specific understanding or procedure was in fact a social norm, when it was violated
people would respond to that violation.
Breach routine behaviour Observe what happened Learn about social norms
Lecture 1
Indexicality = the meaning of utterances comes not from the words alone, but from their use
in a specific context.
Ethnomethodology = branch of sociology = social structures as produced by members of a
culture/community themselves.
Qualitative research:
Bottom-up/data-driven/inductive research
Attention to detail
Patterns that emerge from the data
Everyday life
Normal/ordinary: not who we are, but how we construct our actions.
- We present ourselves as ordinary
- Achievement
- By abiding by implicit procedures and assumptions
- ‘Doing being ordinary’
Implications:
- People can choose to play by the norms or not.
- They can negotiate the norms and change the context (negotiating in
supermarket).
- Social situations are flexible, never fixed, situations can be negotiated and changed.
How do we know what the ordinary procedures are?
Violating the rules Breaching experiments
Suspicion of an implicit norm/procedure/assumption.
Violate that suspected norm/procedure/assumption.
Observe how you feel and how others respond to your behaviour, e.g. other people’s
responses will probably display if you have indeed violated an implicit norm, e.g. avoiding
you, irritation display, sanctions.
Indexicality = meaning of words depends on the context of use + range of assumptions.
How do we open jars, we should take jelly out of the jar before putting it on the sandwich,
how do we grab sandwiches.
Documentary method of interpretation
Every action is taken as a piece of evidence for a particular pattern.
The pattern is used to understand the action.
Usually implicit (e.g. how we stand in a queue)
Sometimes explicit:
- When doing a breaching experiment, e.g. why students pretending to be renting a
room in their parents’ house.
- When adapting to a new culture, e.g. handing over payments with two hands in
shops in parts of Asia.
Procedures and assumptions of ‘being ordinary’ are a resource:
, - To produce our own behaviour as normal.
- To recognize other’s behaviour.
It makes human interaction and social life possible.
Use an appropriate level of detail Depending on context
Construct an ‘accountable’ story
Construct a story that reflects the teller’s relationship to the events and addressee
Tell the story at an appropriate time
Accountable = reportable, making sense, following the normal procedures, account of.
Liable = needing explication/justification, account for.
The second meaning becomes relevant when actions fail to make immediate sense.
Similarities:
- Methods members of a community use to organize social life.
- Looking for patterns and underlying norms in everyday human life.
- Social actions (and identities) as product by the members.
Differences
Ethnomethodology = social actions in CA = focus on talk (but, multimodality)
general. Natural departures of norms + responses,
Breaching experiments deviant cases transcription, turn by turn
Notes analysis.
What is meant by ‘doing being ordinary’?
Ordinary is not how we are, but how we present ourselves.
What is the documentary method of interpretation?
Treating observations as pointing to an underlying pattern.
Conversation analysis
- Conversation analytic studies can concern everyday talk.
- And all sorts of institutional interaction (legal, medical, business, governmental).
- And multimodality (speech, posture, head, arms).
- And text-based interaction (chat, WhatsApp, email).
Which actions do speakers accomplish towards each other?
‘Why didn’t you wash the dishes?’
Grammatical format: question
Social action: complaint
A: ‘You look like you’re not really in the mood for this party.’
B: ‘No, not really.’
Format B’s response
Social action: confirmation
Context = sequential context = what happens in the turns before and the turns after.
What happens before
,
, Chapter 1. Introduction to the study of conversation analysis
Ordinary conversation = everyday interactions between friends, relatives, colleagues, or
others which are not specifically work or task oriented.
Studying ordinary conversations in everyday contexts is important for two reasons:
1) It enables us to understand the most prevalent mode of interaction between people
of all ages as they live their lives.
2) It is the basis for interaction in organizations and institutional settings, through which
we live our work lives, receive services, and conduct other business.
Talk-in-interaction is the principal means through which lay persons pursue various practical
goals and the central medium through which the daily working activities of many
professionals and organizational representatives are conducted.
Chapter 2. Understanding ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology = an approach to sociological inquiry that challenges the way sociologists
typically conceptualize and study the social world.
Social structure is viewed as a cultural artifact much like any other cultural artifact, whether
it be a physical object such as a vase or a cell phone, or a cultural practice such as music or
science.
Ethnomethodologists investigate this by studying the procedures and methods people use to
create social facts, social structure and social order.
Ethnomethodology = theory of social action + method of studying human action
Social relationships are created through a series of procedures that people in a culture use
to accomplish that purpose.
America Conversation begins with a recitation of someone’s resume
China Conversation begins with complimenting the person you’ve just met
Misunderstandings
Breaching experiments = studies to reveal the procedures underlying social processes in a
wide range of situations
Ethnomethodology enables us to study this work as it is being done and to accurately and
precisely discover how it is done, why things go wrong when they do go wrong, and how
problems can be avoided.
Garfinkel designed a series of studies to reveal the procedures underlying social processes in
a wide range of different realms of social life. The goal of these studies was to discover the
‘common sense understandings’ and ‘background assumptions’ that members of society
base their actions on.
Deliberately breach the norms of everyday reality.
If a specific understanding or procedure was in fact a social norm, when it was violated
people would respond to that violation.
Breach routine behaviour Observe what happened Learn about social norms
