Ethnography of Communication A Comparative Analysis of a Casual Conversation and a Formal Interview INTRODUCTION (original) (raw)
Related papers
CHAPTER 62 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS
Conversational analysis (CA) is a methodology for analyzing a broad range of speech exchange systems, or spoken interaction. This chapter begins by briefly describing what ethnomethodologically oriented conversation analysis is and then considers the intellectual roots of CA. It then describes how CA researchers typically set about developing analyses of interactional behaviors, and shows how such analyses may be used to address questions that are of interest to specialists in applied linguistics (AL) and second language acquisition (SLA) studies. Finally, it outlines some of the major issues and problems that must be addressed if CA is to become widely accepted in AL and SLA studies.
INVESTIGATIONES LINGUISTICAE , 2018
Intercultural differences in discourse patterns have been considered the most important cause of communication problems. It is less certain if these differences are relevant for talk participants in handling communication problems in intercultural interactions. The aim of the case study presented in this paper is observing if talk participants orient to intercultural differences in discourse patterns and what knowledge of these differences they have. I use ethnomethodological approach in analyzing the interaction of Polish students with their Chinese interlocutor. The interactions is an interview conducted in English as a lingua franca. I also conduct an ethnographic interviewwith the Polish speakers to study their knowledge concerning communication problems which appeared in their interactions with the Chinese speaker. Analyzing the ethnographic interview as interaction, I focus on the content co-construed by the interview participants.
Jack Sidnell (ed). 2009. Conversation Analysis. Comparative perspectives
Language and Dialogue, 2011
This volume brings together a series of articles written by academics with experience and expertise, all involved in the study of spoken interaction from a conversational analysis perspective. The twelve contributions are grouped together into five parts, the first containing an "Introduction" and "Comparative perspectives in conversational analysis" by Jack Sidnell who puts forth the topic of diversity and commonalities between languages spoken in different sociocultural and linguistic communities. It also includes theoretical reflections about the differentiation between CA and other approaches to the study of interaction, the most interesting one being the comparison between CA and cross-cultural pragmatics methodologies, general aims and possible outcomes, which helps differentiate between the two theoretical frameworks. Sidnell also offers interesting information about the organization of repair in relation to grammar and culture and, in general, about previous work done from CA perspectives, some of it made by contributors to this volume; this gives the reader the opportunity to appreciate the researchers' evolution and to better evaluate their present articles. Finally, the focus is on the mobilization of local resources to solve generic interactional problems. Lexical and syntactic practices are looked at mainly in relation to turn construction in various languages. Part I "Repair and beyond" deals with repair and repetition practices and is developed in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. "Repetition in the initiation of repair" by Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu addresses the topic of the organization of repair across languages through the study of repetition in Mandarin interactions and compares it with English. The analysis of the intonation of questions might have been improved if the curves had been considered as adding independent meaning to utterances in a given language. In English and Spanish, for example, both rises and falls may add to the elicitations of different assumptions about the expected answer (see Brazil 1997 for English intonation and Granato 2005 for Spanish). The consideration of prosodic aspects often ignored as meaningful resources is a strength of this work. In "A cross-linguistic investigation of the site of initiation in same-turn self-repair",
Dealing with Communicative Problems in English as a Lingua Franca
Kalbotyra, 2008
The aim of the article is to discuss, first, how the differences in socio-cultural interaction styles can influence communication, second, what is interaction participants’ orientation to the problems originating in those differing styles and finally, how such troubles are negotiated, and more specifically, repaired in communication. Conversation analysis (CA) will be used to analyze an illustrative excerpt of interaction in English. [...]
Interactional Sociolinguistics
Interactional sociolinguistics is concerned with how speakers signal and interpret meaning in social interaction. The term and the perspective are grounded in the work of John , who blended insights and tools from anthropology, linguistics, pragmatics, and conversation analysis into an interpretive framework for analyzing such meanings. Interactional sociolinguistics attempts to bridge the gulf between empirical communicative forms -e.g., words, prosody, register shifts -and what speakers and listeners take themselves to be doing with these forms. Methodologically, it relies on close → discourse analysis of audio-or video-recorded interaction. Such methodology is central to uncovering meaning-making processes because many conventions for signaling and interpreting meaning in talk are fleeting, unconscious, and culturally variable.
Review of Liddicoat, A.J. (2007) An Introduction to Conversation Analysis
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 2009
An Introduction to Conversation Analysis makes a valuable contribution to the study of talk-in-interaction by fulfilling the promise of the title: this book is a clear and systematic guide to the methodology (and method) of conversation analysis for those who are new to the field. The book opens with a brief history of the sociological roots of conversation analysis (CA) and then progresses in three stages: the first dealing with turn taking (chapters two and three); the second is concerned with the sequential organisation of turns (chapters four, five and six) and the third describes particular contexts in which turn taking and the sequential organisation of talk have been studied at length, in conversational openings and closings and storytelling in conversation (chapters seven, eight and nine). This structure is likely to prove useful as a reference guide for students looking for explication of a particular feature of interaction studied by conversation analysts. The introductory chapter does not so much set up the scope of the book but instead briefly covers some essential ground in conversation analysis by identifying key tenets of orderliness and recipient design. This first chapter does well to stipulate that 'context needs to be seen more as something which is invoked in interaction, rather than something which impacts on interaction" (p.8) underscoring a preoccupation in CA with what participants treat as relevant at any given point. Anthony Liddicoat makes the sagacious decision to present the transcription conventions of CA early in the piece, introducing the reader to the tools used for the 'unmotivated looking' that characterises the analysis in CA. Chapter two presents a logical and useful guide to transcription-particularly of paralinguistic features of the interaction-which provides an ideal place for the student to begin. This chapter presents a more comprehensive account of how nonverbal features of the interaction can be captured in a transcript (particularly gaze and interaction with inanimate participants e.g. computer) than is provided for elsewhere. The introduction to transcription in CA provided in this book is an excellent resource for a novice-or indeed experienced-reader. Chapter two also provides a background to the extracts that are used throughout the remaining chapters to illustrate key principles of talk-in-interaction. Chapter three sets out the most fundamental of these by illustrating the properties of turn-taking, namely the turn constructional component, turn allocation, transition relevance place, BOOK REVIEWS 14.1
A Sociocultural Conversation Analysis: Broadening the context of Empirical Research
Traditionally, CA has argued for a 'sequential' view where context is not defined in a fixed manner, but is something that continuously shifts as talk unfolds (Schegloff, 1992a). As a form of Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), CA aims at understanding how intersubjectivity is formed and maintained through turn-taking (Heritage, 1984b; 1987; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Peräklyä, 2004; Sacks et al., 1974). Typically, researchers do not consider wider social contexts, so that questions like Goffman's (1974) "What is going on here?" would attempt to understand an interaction from its setting and social influences. This question is fundamentally different from Sacks' (1992b, p. 530) "Why that now?" which focuses on the unfolding sequence of an interaction. The differences between these two questions cannot be overstated. Sacks' question is a methodological one relating to how people construct their language, while Goffman is asking a more global question and its influence on talk. III. An Example By way of example, the following sample, showing two Japanese university students conversing in English illustrates how their turn-taking operates: