Conversation Analysis: A Brief Guide
Michael A. Forrester
Department of Psychology
University of Kent
(2002)
How to do conversation analysis: a brief guide
Chapter 8 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
Contents
8.1. The background to conversation analysis (CA)
8.2. Using conversation analysis: a step-by-step guide
8.2.1. Formulating a research question
8.2.2. Obtaining audio or video recordings
8.2.3. Transcription and the ‘orthography of CA’
8.2.4. The process of transcription
8.2.5. Developing analytic strategies
8.2.6. Conversation analysis and data interpretation
8.3. Summary overview
8.4. Suggestions for further reading
8.1. The background to conversation analysis
During the 1960’s and 1970’s conversation analysis emerged from within sociology and, in particular, from a small group of sociologists who were dissatisfied with what they saw as the excessive quantitative formalism in their discipline. These researchers were influenced in significant ways by a small group of social scientists who had developed an approach which they coined ‘ethnomethodology’. This methodological outlook was very sceptical about the fact that when social scientists turn to a particular problem or group of people and start studying them, they bring certain pre-conceived ideas about what they are looking at to the analysis which influences their classification and coding procedures. Instead, ethnomethodologists focus on people’s own ideas and understandings about whatever it is they are doing and it is these understandings which should guide the analysis. Ethnomethodology can be defined as the study of ‘ethnic’ (the participant’s own) methods of production and interpretation of social interaction. Ethnomethodology focuses on providing a rational analysis of the structures, procedures and strategies that people themselves use when they are making sense out of their own everyday
Department of Psychology
University of Kent
(2002)
How to do conversation analysis: a brief guide
Chapter 8 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
Contents
8.1. The background to conversation analysis (CA)
8.2. Using conversation analysis: a step-by-step guide
8.2.1. Formulating a research question
8.2.2. Obtaining audio or video recordings
8.2.3. Transcription and the ‘orthography of CA’
8.2.4. The process of transcription
8.2.5. Developing analytic strategies
8.2.6. Conversation analysis and data interpretation
8.3. Summary overview
8.4. Suggestions for further reading
8.1. The background to conversation analysis
During the 1960’s and 1970’s conversation analysis emerged from within sociology and, in particular, from a small group of sociologists who were dissatisfied with what they saw as the excessive quantitative formalism in their discipline. These researchers were influenced in significant ways by a small group of social scientists who had developed an approach which they coined ‘ethnomethodology’. This methodological outlook was very sceptical about the fact that when social scientists turn to a particular problem or group of people and start studying them, they bring certain pre-conceived ideas about what they are looking at to the analysis which influences their classification and coding procedures. Instead, ethnomethodologists focus on people’s own ideas and understandings about whatever it is they are doing and it is these understandings which should guide the analysis. Ethnomethodology can be defined as the study of ‘ethnic’ (the participant’s own) methods of production and interpretation of social interaction. Ethnomethodology focuses on providing a rational analysis of the structures, procedures and strategies that people themselves use when they are making sense out of their own everyday