Qualitative interaction analysis is a set of approaches that focus on language-in-use to understand how people jointly construct the meanings of their interactions. These approaches seek to identify and explain the structures and processes that enable people to produce meaningful interactions. The approaches share a preference for analyzing naturally occurring interaction, and the analyses they produce are situated. However, the approaches differ in the extent to which the analysis considers contextual factors outside [Page 717]the interaction. This entry examines three approaches to qualitative interaction analysis—conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and critical discourse analysis.