“IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE DETAILED STUDY OF SMALL PHENOMENA MAY GIVE AN

ENORMOUS UNDERSTANDING OF THE WAY HUMANS DO THINGS AND THE KINDS OF OBJECTS THEY USE TO CONSTRUCT AND

ORDER THOSE AFFAIRS” (SACKS 1984, P. 24) K E L L Y F R E E B O D Y

R E A D I N G , D E S I G N I N G R E S E A R C H 2 0 1 3

A conversation about methods exploring conversation

Why am I interested?

In drama above all you can’t make vague promises…When you say something like, ‘Drama is good for their language’, get rid of it. It doesn’t tell anybody how it does it because it’s too vague. ‘Drama is good for their personality and all that’ – get rid of it because it does a great deal of harm. It doesn’t point to what we really have to consider, which is – how does it do it? ( Heathcote cited in Anderson 2004, p. 31)

Conversation analysis

So what tradition are we working in?QualitativeSocial science Conversation analysis is : “an approach within the social

sciences that aims to describe, analyze and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human life...

... What is most important for conversation analysis is not the theories it produces or even the methods it employs but rather the work of grappling with some small bit of the world in order to get an analytic handle on how it works” (Sidnell 2010 p. 1)

Click icon to add pictureSocial interaction is the primordial means through which the business of the social world is transacted, the identities of the participants are affirmed or denied, and its cultures are transmitted, renewed, and modified (Goodwin & Heritage 1990, p.283)Image from http://www.las.iastate.edu/newnews/alasarchives0506.shtml

Some history…

Conversation analysis was developed in the 1960s by Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson

Other methods in a similar style but with a different world view: Socio linguistic analysis Discourse analysis

Greatly informed by: Erving Goffman Harold Garfinkel

While others at the time were concerned with talk only as relevant to a larger theory, these theorists were interested in social interaction and the ways interaction built the norms of social life

Goffman – Interested in the way we ‘present’ ourselves in everyday life. He thought social interaction (conversation) was the foundation of everything in society (moral order, expectations, rules, standards, and so on).

Garfinkel was interested in the way social order was evident in our interactions. He conducted ‘breaching experiments’ where he got participants to ignore ‘normal’ patterns of interaction. For example:

(S) How are you? (E) How am I in regard to what? My health, my finances, my school

work, my peace of mind, my…? (S) (Red in the face and suddenly out of control) Look! I was just

trying to be polite. Frankly, I don’t give a damn how you are. (Garfinkel 1967, p.44)

Harvey Sacks

“I figured that sociology could not be an actual science unless it was able to handle the details of actual events, handle them formally, and in the first instance be informative about them in the direct ways in which primitive sciences tend to be informative, that is, that anyone else can go and see whether what was said is so” (Sacks 1984, p.26).

For Sacks, two important functions of CA that it kept its grip “on the primary data of the social world” (Heritage 1984,

p.235); that it was testable and examinable by more than the sociologist performing the

analysis.

CA - Some bits and pieces

Talk-in-interaction is structurally organised; Contributions to talk-in-interaction are contextually oriented,

specifically that all interaction is both context shaping and context renewing; and

No order of detail can be dismissed a priori as disorderly, accidental or irrelevant (Heritage 1984)

‘Order at all points’ vs ‘the bucket theory’

“Entailed in this view of context is the abandonment of what may be termed the ‘bucket’ theory of context in which some re-established social framework is viewed as ‘containing’ the participants’ actions. Instead the CA perspective embodies a dynamic approach in which ‘context’ is treated as both the project and the product of the participants’ own actions and therefore as inherently locally produced and transformable at any moment” (Drew and Heritage 1992 P19)

Context – broad context (such as school) and interactional context. For example:

1. Rose: why don’t you come and see me some[times 2. Bea: [I would like to 3. Rose: I would like you to (From Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998, p.48)

Action – “does anyone want a cookie?” is analysed according to what it achieves (an offer) rather than what it’s about (cookies)

Membership categorisaton analysis

Concerned with how, in their everyday interactions, people draw on understandings of identities as they exist in social categorises

Membership categories are classifications of classes of people that carry with them clusters of expectable features, such as personality traits, preferences, or possible actions

Attributions of categories have moral and cultural implicationsMoral reasoning can take place either topically, or be drawn

upon as a resource, when a particular categorisation is made publicly available within an interaction

MCA – some bits and pieces

• Membership Categories (Identities in talk)• Broader category collections – MCDs

• E.g., Teacher belongs to MCD School• Female teacher – MCD School and MCD Gender• Asian Female teacher – MCD School, Gender, Race. • Not all are always relevant.

Eglin and Hester (1992) 8 types of categories

• Transient categorisation (e.g., child)• Event-consequent (e.g., widower)• Event-specific (e.g., best-man)• Action/activity-consequent (e.g., murderer)• Behaviourally implicative (e.g., saint)• Belief dependent (e.g., catholic)• Ability/competence categorisations (e.g., doctor)• Naturally based (e.g., woman)

Moral reasoning...

• any person who is a case of a category is seen as a member of the category, what’s known about the category is known about them, and the fate of each is bound up in the fate of the other, so that one regularly has systems of social control built up around these categories which are internally enforced by the members because if a member does something like rape a white woman, commit economic fraud, race on the street, etc., then that thing will be seen as what a member of some applicable category does, not what some named person did. And the rest of them will have to pay for it (Sacks 1979, p.13).

Therefore... Shared understandings are build, through ‘talking a category into being’ about what kind of person a category is.

EG Category Mother contains general attributions about what a mother is (such as caring, maternal etc). These attributions have moral implications

What do these methods tell us about talk in schools?

Organisation of institutional talk generallyLexical choice – technical language, use of pronouns etcTurn designSequence organisation – the importance of the third turn in a

three part sequence.Overall structural organisationSocial epistemology and social relations (caution, asymmetry)(Drew and Heritage 1992)

A focus on asymmetry

Institutional interactions are characteristically asymmetrical.There is often a direct relationship between status (or role)

and discursive rights (or obligations)Asymmetry in institutional talk commonly arises from

question-answer patterns of interactions, with little opportunity for particular roles to take initiative.

A further asymmetrical dimension is participants differential states of knowledge (one participants claim to all the relevant knowledge).

Specifically classroom talk?

Students viewed as pre-competent (rather than competent or in-competent)Talk is therefore often focused on what Students don’t know or have in relation to

what Teachers doAs a result, regular conversation features are not often found in classrooms (for

example, teacher’s don’t often say ‘oh’ and often ask ‘exam questions’Pre-planned by the teacher (topic, turn taking, activity sequences) means the

teacher is ‘in the know’ about upcoming sequences and can therefore make decisions about the relevance of student ideas or interactions

Sequence organisation is driven by teachers – they can make decisions about turn taking, commence a discussion without referring to it’s relevance, change a topic without giving reason, and, most importantly, provide sanctions to those who depart from the teacher-driving turn taking structure.

IRE is a prominent way in which teachers and students organise talk in classrooms.

Socio Cultural Talk

Trac: his parents are selfishLin: that’s what I was just going to sayNick: why (.) why do you say thatTrac: because he’s like really smart and he wants to go and be

one of those genius people, really smart people, and the parents don’t want him to go (.)

Nick: they’re encouraging him not to go aren’t they (.) whyTrac: because they’re [( )]Nick: [just prove] to me you were listening, go onTrac: because they were poor and they wanted him to look

after his brothers and sisters

Moral reasoning? One example

Teacher is it^ would somebody else like to talk to me about that now hang on (.) sh sh one at a time

Trac um if she goes along with her parents like she does the um doctor thing she might end up liking it (1) and if she took the mechanic thing and she didn’t like it

Darr she does like itTrac yeah but then if she took the mechanic thing and she didn’t

like it then she’s already disowned so (.)Teacher ok so you’re saying (.) interesting point so you’re saying Trac she like if she became a doctor and she liked it and if she

became a mechanic and she didn’t like it

What sorts of questions/topics can this method explore?

How learning is facilitated in schools through an understanding of teacher talk (such as how questions are used) Exploring how teachers indoctrinate students into particular ways of inquiry

(such as how to think like a historian or a scientist)How moral reasoning is developed in classrooms – perhaps

focused on a particular issue How people from different background respond to similar questions

Structural details that inform us about how MCD Schools ‘work’ for example, teacher’s don’t often say ‘oh’ – details tell us much about the

different relationships teachers and students have to knowledge

So.. Why do the work?

If some activity is important to our lives, then knowing how it is organized may make a difference to how we act (Heap 1990)

Starting points

ten Have, P. Methodological issues in conversation analysis. www.pscw.uva.nl/emca/mica.htm.)

Conversation Analysis materials: http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/emca

Methodological issues in CA http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/emca/Mica.htm

Get started in CA page: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~ssca1/sitemenu.htm

References

Anderson, M. 2004. Possibilities for research, advocacy, and policy in the 20th century. NJ, 28(2), p. 31-40. Drew, P. & Heritage, J., 1992. Analyzing talk at work: an introduction. In P. Drew & J. Heritage, eds. Talk

at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 3-65. Eglin, P. & Hester, S., 1992. Category, predicate and task: The pragmatics of practical action. Semiotica,

88, p. 243–68. Garfinkel, H., 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goodwin, C. & Heritage, J., 1990. Conversation Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, p. 283-307. Heap, J. L., 1990. Applied Ethnomethodology: Looking for the local rationality of reading activities.

Human Studies, 13 p, 36-72. Heritage, J., 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge UK: Polity Press. Hutchby, I. & Wooffitt, R., 1998. Conversation analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sacks, H., 1979. Hotrodder: A revolutionary category. In G. Psathas, ed. Everyday language: Studies in

Ethnomethodology. New York: Irvington Publishers, p. 1-14. Sacks, H., 1984. Notes on methodology. In J. Maxwell Atkinson & J. Heritage, eds. Structures of social

action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 21-28. Sidnell, J. 2010. Conversation analysis: An introduction. West Sussex: Blackwell Pulbishing.