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Part of
Less Frequently Used Research Methodologies in Applied Linguistics
Edited by A. Mehdi Riazi
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 6] 2024
► pp. 83–110

Chapter 6
Conversation analysis

| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This chapter introduces conversation analysis to researchers who are not familiar with this methodology for analyzing naturalistic language use and how it has been applied to develop behavioral alternatives to cognitive approaches to second language acquisition. Specifically, I: (1) review what CA is; (2) discuss typical research questions in CA and how these questions are generated; (3) outline how CA data are gathered, transcribed and analyzed; (4) review turn-taking, repair, sequence, and preference organization; (5) discuss ethical issues in CA; (6) outline important critiques of CA and how CA researchers have rebutted these criticisms; and (7) summarize the arguments presented in this chapter with a view to promoting a constructive, critical dialog between cognitive and socially-oriented SLA researchers.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The ontological and epistemological foundations of ethnomethodology and CA
    • 2.1Ethnomethodology
    • 2.2Conversation analysis (CA)
      • 2.2.1Context in CA
  • 3.An overview of how conversation analysts set about doing emic research
    • 3.1What types of research questions do conversation analysts address, and how do we generate them?
    • 3.2Procedures of data collection, transcription, and analysis
  • 4.The formal structure of talk: Turn-taking, repair, sequence, and preference organizations
    • 4.1Turn-taking
    • 4.2Repair
    • 4.3Sequence organization
    • 4.4Preference
  • 5.Transcription conventions: From words to multimodality and materiality
    • 5.1Jeffersonian transcription conventions
    • 5.2Multimodal transcription
      • 5.2.1Analysis
  • 6.Critiques and responses
    • 6.1Moerman’s contextual critique of conversation analysis
    • 6.2The epistemics debate
    • 6.3The Schegloff/Wetherell/Billig debates
  • 7.Ethical issues
  • 8.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 5 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.6.06mar
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