Conversational Analysis

 

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

What is Conversation?

A conversation is an exchange of ideas, thoughts and information between two or more than two people.

A conversation occurs when people cooperate with each other in order to introduce and sustain a single focus of attention by taking turns with each other.
Conversation Analysis
A major area of study in the analysis of discourse is conversational analysis. Conversational analysis looks at ordinary everyday spoken discourse and aims to understand, from a fine grained analysis of the conversation, how people manage their interactions.
It also looks at how social relations are developed through the use of spoken discourse (Paltridge,2006:106).

For Harvey Sacks, two important functions of CA are
– that it kept its grip “on the primary data of the social world
– that it was testable and examinable by more than the sociologist performing the analysis.
Definition
1. Conversation Analysis (commonly abbreviated as CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life.

2. Conversation analysis is : “an approach within the social sciences that aims to describe, analyse and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human life...”
As its name implies, CA began with a focus on casual conversation but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, educational settings, and the mass media.

Talk

The primary focus of research in conversation analysis is ‘talk’ rather than language. “Talk is understood to be an occasion when people act out their sociality.”            (Schegloff-1986)
Talk is, first, “what appears to be the primordial site of sociality” (Schegloff, 1986, p. 112). This is an important notion with its implication that it is talk above all else that allows us to transcend isolation and to share our lives with others.

Talk is a crucial activity at the center of world changing events: summit meetings between world leaders, policy decisions in board rooms of multinational companies, international conferences on environmental policies. It is also a means we use to do the mundane and routine in life: the exchange of greetings with a neighbor, polite chitchat with workmates during a break, ordering a snack at lunch time.

The Development of CA
CA was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and his close associates Emanuel Schegloff & Gail Jefferson.
CA is an established method used in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech communication and psychology.
It is particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive psychology.
SSJ model
SSJ argue for the existence of a turn “taking mechanism”. They have handled three problems :
1.How people take turns in conversation
2. How to open a conversation
3. How to close a conversation
Their model accounts for the speaker’s role as well as for what is said and done during the time for which the speaker role is continuously held by one individual.
What is Turn –taking?
It is a highly skilled activity. It involves many kinds of behaviour in addition to speech (e.g. Eye-contact , head movement ), which are initiated by precise timing and reacted to with great accuracy by other participants .
What Is a Turn?
Ochs( 1979 : 63) defines a turn as “an utterance bounded by significant pause or by utterance of other participants’’.
In other words , a turn is the speech of one person continued until another takes the floor.
Contents of Turn- Taking System
SSJ (1978: 91) describe the turn-taking system in terms of two components:
     A set of facts
     A number of rules

The Components
1. The turn constructional components
2. The turn Allocational Components

The Turn Constructional Components
This component simply shows that a turn is constructed of various syntactic unit-types such as sentences, clauses, phrases, and single words through which a speaker may set out to construct a turn.
The Turn Allocational Components
This component includes techniques that could be classified into:
Those in which the next turn is allocated by a current speaker selecting a next speaker;
Those in which a next turn is allocated by self-selection.
The Set of Facts
Sacks et al. offers a set of facts whose validity and verification determine the organization of the discourse as stated hereunder:
1. Speaker change recurs, or at least occurs.
2. Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time.
3. Occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common, but brief.
4. Transitions from one turn to a next with no gap and no overlap between them are common. Together with transitions characterized by slight gap or slight overlap, they make the vast majority of transitions.
5. Turn order is not fixed, but varies.
6. Turn size is not fixed, but varies.
7. Length of conversation is not fixed, nor specified in advance.
8. What the parties say is not fixed, nor specified in advance.
9. Relative distribution of turns is not fixed, nor specified in advance.
10. Number of parties can change.
11. Talk can be continuous or discontinuous.
12. Turn-allocation techniques are obviously used. A current speaker may select a next speaker (as when a current speaker addresses a question to another party); parties may self-select in starting to talk.
13.Various turn-constructional units are employed. Turns can be projected one-word-long, or, for example, sentential in length.
14. Repair mechanisms for dealing with turn-taking errors and violations are obviously available for use. For example, if two parties find themselves talking at the same time, one of them will stop prematurely to repair the overlap.

The Rules
Additionally, Sacks et al. suggest a number of rules that operate on turn units using the symbol NS (the next speaker), and TRP (Transition Relevant Place) defined as the recognizable end of a turn constructional unit.
Rule (1)
Rule (1) applies at the initial TRP of any turn.
(a) If CS (Current Speaker) selects NS in current turn, then CS must stop speaking and NS must speak next, transition occurring at the first TRP after NS selection.
(b) If CS does not select NS, then any (other) party may self-select, first speaker gaining rights to the next turn.
(c) If CS has not selected NS, and no other party self-selects under option (b), then CS may (but need not) continue.
Rule (2)
Rule (2) applies at all subsequent TRPs.
If neither rule (a) nor rule (b) has been applied, and (c) is operated by CS, then, at the next TRP, rules (a-c) are reapplied recursively until speaker-change is affected.

Adjacency Pairs

It is a particular type of turn taking structure.
An adjacency pair is a sequence of two related utterances by two different speakers . The second utterance is a response to the first.
Features of Adjacency Pairs
The features were indicated by SSJ, as follows :
1. They are two utterances long
2. The utterances are produced successively by different speakers
3. The utterances are ordered – the first must belong to the class of first pair parts  the second to the class of second pair parts.
4. The utterances are related , not any second pair can follow any first pair part , but only appropriate one.
5. The first pair part often selects next speaker and always selects next action – it thus sets up a transition relevance and expectation which the next speaker fulfills. In other words, the first part of a pair predicts the occurrence of the second.
Varieties of Adjacency pairs
Prototypical examples of adjacency pairs would be the following:
1) greeting-greeting:

A: Hello.
B: Hello.
2) offer-acceptance:

A: Would you care for more tea?
B: Yes, please.
3) apology-minimization:

A: I’m sorry.
B: Oh, don’t worry. That’s O.K.
There is a class of first pair parts which includes questions, greetings, challenges, offers, requests, complaints, invitations, announcements etc.
For some first pair parts the second pair part is reciprocal (Greeting-Greeting)
For some there is only one appropriate second (Question-Answer), for some more than one (Complaint-Apology/Justification)                      Coulthard,1985:69.

Sacks suggests that a current speaker can exercise three degree of control over the next turn.
Firstly, s/he can select which participant will speak next, either by naming him or by alluding to him with a descriptive phrase, ‘the most talkative person of the class’.
If the current speaker selects the next speaker, he usually also selects the type of next utterance by producing the first part of an adjacency pair. For example a question or a greeting which constrains the selected speaker to produce an appropriate answer or return greeting.
DOCTOR: Hello Mrs. Jones
PATIENT: Hello Doctor
DOCTOR: Hello Catherine
CHILD: Hello
The current speaker’s second option is simply to constrain the next utterance, but not select the next speaker.
The third option is to select neither and leave it to one of the participants to continue the conversation by selecting himself (Coulthard,1985:60).
The Functions of Adjacency Pairs
Adjacency pairs are used to coordinate turns. They help in,

Opening and closing a conversation
Negotiate deals
Change topics
Preference Organization
Preference is a very powerful concept and once it has been established, it can be used to explain the occurrence of a quite number of other conversational phenomena as the results of speakers trying to avoid having to perform disprefered seconds.                                                                                                                                           Coulthard 1985:71
The concept of preference organization underlies the idea that there is a hierarchy operating over the potential second parts of an adjacency pair. Thus, there is at least one preferred and one dispreferred category of response to first parts.
A compliment can be followed be an ‘accept’ or a ‘reject’. Thus, some second pair parts may be preferred others may be dispreferred.
For example, a question may be followed by an expected answer (the preferred second pair part) or an ‘unexpected or non- answer’ (the dispreferred second pair part).
When this happens, the dispreferred second pair part is often preceded by a ‘delay’, a ‘preface’, and/or an ‘account’.
For instance:
A: Are you going to Lahore with us? (Question)
— B: Uhhh….. (Delay)
Well, kind of ….. (Preface)
There is some problem….. (Account)
Actually, I have got an emergency at home. My son is suffering from diarrhea (Unexpected answer)

Insertion Sequences
Insertion Sequences occur (Schegloff, 1972, cited in Alba-Juez,2009) in which, for example, a question-answer pair is embedded within another.
—Child: Mom, can I play video game? (Question 1)
—Mother: Have you finished your homework? (Question 2)
—Child: No. (Answer 2)
—Mother: Then, NO! (Answer 1)
Occasionally, either because he doesn’t understand, or because he doesn’t want to commit himself until he knows more, or because he’s simply stalling, a next speaker produces not a second pair part but another first pair part. The suggestion is ‘if you
answer this one, I will answer yours’ (Coulthard, 1985:73).
Other Sequences
Apart from the local organization operating in conversation by means of turn-taking and adjacency pairs, there are other orders of organization, such as certain recurrent kinds of sequence which can only be defined over three or four or more turns.

Repair
An important strategy speakers use in spoken discourse is what is termed as Repair, that is, the way speakers correct things they or someone else has said, and check what they have understood in a conversation. Repair is often done through self-repair and other repair (Paltridge, 2006:119).
Self-initiated repair is differentiated from other initiated repair. Self-repair within a turn may be signaled by phenomena such as glottal stops, lengthened vowels, etc. Repair initiated by a participant other than the speaker may be achieved by the use of echo-questions, repetitions of problematic items with stress on problem syllables,
or by using expressions such as What?, Pardon?, Excuse me?, etc.( Alba-Juez,2009).
Pre-sequences
Some sequences prefigure a turn which contains a reason for the sequence. For example, a summons prefigures a turn which contains the reason for the summons (Levinson, 1983, cited in Alba-Juez, 2009), as in:
A: Jim! (Summons)
J: Yes? (Answer)
A: Could you come down here and help me with the washing up?

(Reason for summons)
Most pre-sequences can be said to prefigure the specific kind of action that they
potentially precede. Other clear examples of pre-sequences are pre-closings, preinvitations, pre-requests, pre-arrangements, pre-announcements, etc.
Overall Organization
There is what conversational analysts call overall organization, due to the fact that it organizes the totality of the exchange within some specific kind of conversation. Thus, we may speak of classes of verbal interchanges (e.g. telephone calls, a talk over
the garden fence, etc.)
Opening Conversations
One area where conversational openings have been examined in detail is in the area of telephone conversation.
Schegloff (1986) analyzed a large data set of phone openings to come up with this ‘canonical opening’ for American private telephone conversations:
    Summons/answer sequence
    Identification/recognition sequence
    Greeting sequence
    How are you sequence
    Reason for call sequence
    Closing Conversations
Schegloff & Sacks (1973) have looked at conversational closings, and this work has been continued by Button (1987).
Button points out that telephone closings usually go over 4 turns of talk (archetype closing), made up of:
Pre-closing: ‘OK’ & ‘all right’ with falling intonation.
The closing: ‘bye bye’ & ‘goodbye’
In the closing turn, both speakers mutually negotiate the end of the conversation.
Insertion sequence can be introduced between the two units which make up these turns, before the closing finally takes place.
The closing may also be preceded by a number of pre-sequences e.g. making of an arrangement, referring back to something previously said, a new topic (which may not be responded to), good wished, restatement of the reason of calling, thanks
for calling.
Closing may be extended by continued by repetition of pre-closing & closing items such as:
‘bye’, ‘bye’
‘love you’, ‘love you’
‘sleep well’, ‘you too’
Closing are complex interactional units which are sensitive to the speaker’s orientation to continuing, closing (or not wanting to close) the conversation
                                                                                           (Paltridge, 2006:110-113).
Criticisms of CA

CA is an invaluable tool for the analysis of spoken discourse, yet it is somewhat ‘monolithic’.

CA’s view of itself as self-sufficient research tool is problematic, it does not need data other than the conversation to explain and justify its claims.
Data analysts are working as ‘spectators’ not ‘participants’.
CA is lack of attention to issues of power, inequality and social disadvantages. It is also lack of attention to wider historical, cultural and political issues.
                                                                                                       (Paltridge, 2006:122).