Doing conversation analysis in Mandarin Chinese

Basic methods

Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu | San Diego State University

This article aims to introduce Conversation Analytic (CA) methods to the community of Chinese scholars, and especially to linguists who work with Mandarin Chinese and are just beginning to adopt CA methods in their work. I believe doing CA requires not only an understanding of its terminology but also a working knowledge of CA methods. To this end, rather than simply explaining CA methods abstractly, I offer the reader a glimpse of the research process in action by presenting data and findings of my own research and then taking the reader step-by-step through the analytic process — from initial observations of a candidate phenomenon, through the process of making a collection of cases, and finally explaining criteria for establishing an empirically-grounded finding. Special focus is placed on the importance of detecting “participants’ orientations to action” and the more difficult process of finding evidence for the phenomenon from nonconforming specimens.

Keywords: application, Chinese, research methods, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics

Published online: 23 December 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/cld.7.2.01wu

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Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina & John Heritage

2017. In Enabling Human Conduct [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 273], ► pp. 273 ff.

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