Conversation analysis

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. 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, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media, and focus on multimodal and nonverbal activity in interaction, including gaze, body movement and gesture. As a consequence, the term conversation analysis has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of interactions. CA and ethnomethodology are sometimes considered one field and referred to as EMCA. Conversation analysis was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and his close associates Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. Sacks was inspired by Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Erving Goffman's conception of what came to be known as the interaction order, but also a number of minor sources of contemporary influences such as the generativism of Noam Chomsky and its focus on building an apparatus. The speech act theory of John Searle was a parallel development rather than influencing or influenced by CA. Today CA is an established method used in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology, and has developed subfields such as interactional sociolinguistics and interactional linguistics, discourse analysis and discursive psychology. The method consists of detailed qualitative analysis of stretches of interaction between a number of people, often with accompanied by a detailed transcription.