Interaction Analysis, Qualitative

Conversation Analysis

Conversation analysis (CA), often referred to as talk-in-interaction, originated in the 1960s mainly in the works of Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. They argued that social activities are carried out through interaction and interaction is a microcosm for understanding society. CA assumes interactions are structured as a result of what people do in interactions. During interactions, people attune to each other and their utterances are connected. Utterances produce social actions, such as inviting or greeting, that affect what can occur next in an interaction. CA seeks to identify and describe what is occurring in interactions. The descriptions focus on the structure of the interaction, looking at turn taking and how utterances relate to each other.

CA examines naturally occurring interactions. Appropriate conversations for analysis include dinner conversations, business meetings, face-to-face conversations, and phone conversations. Interactions that occur for research purposes (i.e., interactions created as part of an experiment) are not appropriate interactions for CA. Interactions are audio or video recorded and transcribed. Recordings enable researchers to review interactions multiple times, which allows them to attune to information that might be missed during an initial hearing of an interaction and to develop more detailed transcriptions.

Jefferson developed a transcription system that allows researchers to incorporate details such as length of pauses, in-breaths, out-breaths, sharp cut offs of words, rising inflection, emphasis of words, sections of louder speech, and overlapping speakers. These types of details are included in the transcription because they are part of what people are interpreting in interactions and are an essential part of the meaning-making that occurs in interaction.

Data analysis focuses on turns, turn-taking, and sequences of utterances in order to understand what is occurring in the interaction. Researchers identify and describe the purpose of an utterance: the action it performs and how it connects to previous and subsequent utterances in the interaction. An utterance is never analyzed in isolation. In looking at an utterance, CA considers how it relates to previous utterances and sets expectations for types of future utterances. For instance, a question during one speaker’s turn can set an expectation for an answer in a second speaker’s turn. Similarly, invitations set expectations for responses, and complaints responded to with justifications or apologies.

The analysis of sequences is based on the interaction and how the people in the interaction are interpreting utterances. The researcher does not impose motives, emotions, or structure on the interaction and does not use people’s biographical information to analyze an interaction. Motives, emotions, structure, and biographical information are only relevant to the analysis if participants attune to them in the interaction. If one speaker mentions that the other person is angry and that comment becomes relevant to how they are interpreting the interaction, then that emotion can become part of the analysis. If a researcher initially views an utterance as a question, but the people in the interaction interpret the utterance as an invitation, the research must describe the utterance as the participants interpret it.

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