A respondent role? In the extract we are examining, there are no instances of Jim initiating talk – all his utterances are simple acknowledgement tokens. He demonstrates his orientation to Tom’s extended talk, signaling his ongoing recipiency through the production of the continuers…
What is the function of minimal turns? Recall that, from an examination of our example transcript for recurrent patterns in the data (see Step 4), we noted that Jim appeared to be using a disproportionate number of minimal turns. Consequently, this led us to pose…
Who speaks most? In our ongoing analysis of the example transcript, recall that the first research question that we posed (see Step 5: Ask Questions) following an examination of the conversation data was: Who speaks most? Discussion We have already…
Pose research questions Now, we indicated (see Conversation Analysis) earlier that, whilst CA resists premature theorizing, the interplay between repeated listening to audio recordings and examination of transcriptions leads to the generation of research questions. So, having identified that Jim appears to be only taking…
Identify recurrent patterns Having now gained a feel for the overarching structure and some sense of the interactional business (see Step 3), the next step is to determine whether or not there are any recurrent patterns in the data. Take another look…
Determine the interactional business Again, using an unmotivated approach, re-read the transcript that we used in Step 1 (transcript is reproduced here) and try to determine what sort of interactional business may be taking place (e.g. what is taking place in the interaction, what topics…
Determine the overarching structure Having made a transcription of the conversation to be analyzed (Step 1), it is then necessary to read through the transcript several times. The initial purpose is simply to identify some of the overarching structural features (e.g. exchange structure, turn-taking system)…
Naturalistic data Let us begin by assuming that you have audio-recorded a conversation. Naturalistic data is the bedrock of conversation analysis, so we will use a short extract from a real world, 10-minute conversation that I recorded several years ago in order to exemplify the procedure.
