Conversation analysis (AB) is an approach to the study of social interaction. It covers verbal and non-verbal behavior in everyday situations. His methods are adapted to cover targeted and institutional interactions that occur in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement agencies, telephone helplines, educational institutions and the media.
History
The analysis of the conversation came as a result of joint research by Harvey Sachs, Emanuel Sheglov, Gail Jefferson and their students in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1974, a landmark article was published in the journal Language, entitled "The Simplest Systematization for Organizing a Turn to Conversation." She provided a detailed example of an analytical method of talking to each other while formulating linguistic problems. The article remains the most cited and downloaded of all ever published in the history of the magazine.
Idea and goals
The central goal of the analytical study of the conversation is to describe and explicate the competencies that ordinary speakers use and rely on when participating in a clear, socially organized interaction. It consists in describing the procedures by which the interlocutors develop their own behavior, understand the behavior of other people and have interaction with them.
The idea is that the conversations are streamlined not only for observing analysts, but also for the subjects. Methods of sociolinguistic research have a twofold characteristic. On the one hand, they are quite general, and on the other hand, they allow you to subtly adapt to local conditions (context-free and context-sensitive).
Motherland of language
The fundamental, guiding assumption of the study in the analysis of the conversation is that the home environment of the language is a joint interaction. Its structure is in some way adapted to this environment. This distinguishes AB from many linguistic sciences, which usually understand language as having its own home in the human mind and reflecting its organization in its structure. For the most part, they can be seen as complementary, rather than opposing, points of view. Language is both a cognitive and interactive phenomenon. His organization should reflect this fact.
Aspects of Interaction
Hoffman described interaction as a normally organized structure of attention. It begins with a conversation with each other. AB seeks to discover and describe the fundamental norms and practices that make it streamlined. For example, one of the fundamental aspects is the distribution of opportunities to participate in a conversation. That is, how a participant determines when it is his turn to speak or listen. Another aspect relates to an apparatus for solving problems of hearing, speech or understanding. The third aspect is related to the way in which the speakers produce and perceive the essence of the conversation. They should represent actions by which they can achieve their goals.
Methodology
Analysis of the conversation begins with the statement of the problem associated with the preliminary hypothesis. The data used in it are video recordings or audio recordings of conversations. They gather with or without researchers. A detailed transcription is built from the record. Researchers then perform inductive data analysis to find repetitive patterns of interaction. Based on it, rules are developed to explain the occurrence of amplification, modification or replacement of the original hypothesis.
Priorities
There are various ways in which a conversation can be organized. For example, the order may be pre-arranged so that each potential participant has the right to speak for two minutes, and the order of speaking is determined in advance (debate).
There is also a basic conversation model. It consists in the fact that the participants in the conversation should express their statements (phrases, sentences or parts thereof) during their turn. The simplest forms take place in conversations between two people, where the completion of a sentence or a pause may be enough to justify the next turn to another person.
Recovery
An important area of research in the analysis of the conversation concerns a systematically organized set of practices of “restoration”, or “repair”. Participants use it to solve problems of speech, hearing and understanding. The beginning of recovery means a possible discrepancy with the previous conversation. The result of the repair leads either to a solution or to the rejection of the problem. The specific segment of the conversation to which recovery refers is called the “source of problems” or “maintainable”.
Repair can be initiated either by the speaker or by another participant.
Turning mechanism
The turns of the conversation are used for even distribution - who is given the floor during the conversation. They include the use of repetitions, the allocation of lexical forms (words), the use of temporal regulators and speech particles. The rotation system consists of two different components:
- distribution mechanism;
- lexical components that are used to fill pauses.
In this regard, the rules of a business conversation have been developed:
- The current speaker selects the next. This can be done by using addressing terms (names) or by initiating actions with a visual contact.
- The next speaker chooses. When there is no obvious addressee and potential respondents. This can be done by overlapping using rotation input devices such as "good" or "you know."
- The current speaker continues. If no one takes the conversation, he can speak again to supplement the essence of the conversation.
Preference Organization
Analytical conversation can reveal structural preferences in a conversation for some types of actions over others. For example, response actions that are consistent with the positions occupied by the first action are more straightforward and faster than actions that are not aligned. This is called an unmarked form of rotation that is not preceded by silence. A shape that describes a turn with opposing characteristics is called marked.
Research Practice Model
The following steps are used to build an idealized conversation analysis model:
- The production of the analyzed materials is delegated to a technique that records everything that its receptors can hear or see. While the recording sounds natural, it provides useful data. It can be made more accessible by transcription.
- The episodes to be analyzed are selected from transcripts based on various considerations. This may be a set of circumstances, such as opening consultations. Or finding the purpose of the conversation.
- The researcher is trying to figure out this episode using his common sense.
- A reasoning is constructed that leads to typifications, defining its analytical resources. The researcher uses both the details of the interaction and his own knowledge.
- The current episode and its analysis are compared with other examples. Comparison with similar or dissimilar cases is an important resource for the so-called “single case analysis,” which focuses on explicating a particular episode.
Limited database
Chat analysis tends to use a very limited database. These are records of naturally occurring interactions. Criticism on this subject can take many forms. Mentioned data that are not based on the topic of conversation or the identity of the participants. Questions are asked why sources such as interviews with participants, their comments on recordings, or interpretation of recorded material by groups of “judges” are not used. This criticism is unacceptable for AB until local procedural relevance is demonstrated.
Quantification
From a phenomenological point of view, conversation analysis is close to becoming another form of constructive analysis. He seeks to analyze devices and competencies at a fairly general level. From this point of view, many studies are not limited to an extensive discussion of one or more fragments of the conversation, but undertake a systematic study of larger collections of examples. A discussion of specific cases takes on a broader meaning as an exemplary approach to what is typical or atypical. Quantitative information remains relatively vague. The focus is still on the cited fragments themselves.