Part of
Dialogue across MediaEdited by Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas
[Dialogue Studies 28] 2017
► pp. 95–116
Edited by Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas
[Dialogue Studies 28] 2017
► pp. 95–116
Studying everyday conversation
News announcements and news receipts in telephone conversations
Conversation Analysis (CA) is interested in the orderliness of our everyday communication and the social practices we engage in when trying to achieve various interactional goals. This article provides a brief overview of CA as a method and some aspects of everyday conversation from the CA perspective. As an example, the paper discusses the social action of delivering news and informings and responses to those actions in Finnish telephone conversations. It will be shown that telling a piece of news is an interactional process where the positioning of the informing and the way it is received by the recipient play a significant role in the final outcome of a news delivery sequence (Maynard 2003). Furthermore, the telephone as a medium has an impact on when and how a piece of news is delivered and how it is received.
References
Atkinson, J. Maxwell, and John Heritage
(eds) 1984 Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Button, Graham, and Neil Casey
1984 “Generating Topic: The Use of Topic Initial Elicitors.” In Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 167-190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1985 “Topic Nomination and Topic Pursuit.” Human Studies 8: 3-55. 
Davidson, Judy
1984 “Subsequent Versions of Invitations, Offers, Requests, and Proposals Dealing with Potential or Actual Sequences.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 102-128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, Paul
1984 “Speakers’ Reportings in Invitation Sequences.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 129-151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drew, Paul, and John Heritage
1992 “Analyzing Talk at Work: An Introduction.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(eds) 1992 Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ford, Cecilia
2001 “At the Intersection of Turn and Sequence: Negation and What Comes Next.” In Studies in Interactional Linguistics, ed. by Margret Selting and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 51-79. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Giles, David, Wyke Stommel, Trena Paulus, Jessica Lester, and Darren Reed
2015 “Microanalysis of Online Data: The Methodological Development of ‘Digital CA.’” Discourse, Context and Media 7: 45–51.
Heritage, John
1984a Harold Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
1984b “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 299-345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hepburn, Alexa, and Galina Bolden
2013 “The Conversation Analytic Approach to Transcription.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 57-76. Malden: Blackwell.
Hopper, Robert
1992 Telephone Conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jefferson, Gail
1981 The Abominable ‘ne’?: A Working Paper Exploring the Phenomenon of Post-Response Pursuit of Response. Department of Sociology, University of Manchester.
Koivisto, Aino
2013 “On the Preference for Remembering: Acknowledging an Answer with Finnish ai nii(n) (“Oh that’s right”).” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46: 277-297.
2015 “Dealing with Ambiguities in Informings. Finnish aijaa as a “Neutral” News Receipt.” Research on Language and Social Interaction. 48(4): 365–387.
Koivisto, Aino and Nykänen, Elise
(eds) 2016 Approaches to fictional dialogue. Special issue. International journal of literary linguistics 5 (2).
Leech, Geoffrey, and Short Mick
2007[1981] Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman.
Levinson, Stephen
1992 “Activity Types and Language.” In Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 66-100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2013 “Action Formation and Ascription.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 103-130. Blackwell Publishing.
Maynard, Douglas
2003: Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
2013 “Everyone and No One to Turn to: Intellectual Roots and Contexts for Conversation Analysis.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 11-31. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Mondada, Lorenza
2013 “The Conversation Analytic Approach to Data Collection.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 32-56. Blackwell Publishing.
Raevaara, Liisa, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
2006 “Vuorovaikutuksen Osanottajien Toiminta ja Genre. Keskustelunanalyysin näkökulma [The Participant Activity in Interaction and Genre. Conversation Analytic perspective].” In Genre – tekstilaji, ed. by Anne Mäntynen, Susanna Shore, and Anna Solin, 122-150. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.
Sacks, Harvey
1975 “Everyone Has to Lie.” In Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, ed. by Mary Sanches and Ben G. Blount, 57-80. New York, NY: Academic Press.
1984 “Notes on Methodology.” In Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 21-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1992 Lectures on Conversation, Vol. 2. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Sacks, Harvey, and Emanuel Schegloff
1979 “Two Preferences in the Organization of Reference to Persons in Conversation and Their Interaction.” In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. by George Psathas, 15-21. New York, NY: Irvington Press.
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking for Conversation.” Language 50: 696-735.
Schegloff, Emanuel
1968 “Sequencing in Conversational Opening.” American anthropologist 70 (6): 1076-1095.
1986 “The Routine as an Achievement.” Human Studies 9 (2/3): 111-151.
1995 “Discourse as an Interactional Achievement III: The Omnirelevance of Action.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28: 185-211.
1996 “Turn Organization: One Intersection of Grammar and Interaction.” In Interaction and Grammar, ed. by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson, 52-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, Emanuel, and Harvey Sacks
1973 “Opening Up Closings.” Semiotica 8: 289-327.
Schegloff, Emanuel, Gail Jefferson, and Harvey Sacks
1977 “The Preference for Self-Correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation.” Language 53: 361-382.
Sidnell, Jack
2010 Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena
2001 Responding in Conversation: A Study of Response Particles in Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stivers, Tanya
2008 “Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (1): 31-57.
Thomas, Bronwen
1997 “ ‘It’s Good to Talk?’ An Analysis of a Telephone Conversation from Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies
.” Language and Literature 6 (2): 105-119.
2012 Fictional Dialogue: Speech and Conversation in the Modern and Postmodern Novel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Thompson, Sandra, Barbara Fox, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2015 Grammar and Everyday Talk: Building Responsive Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Toolan, Michael
1985 “Analyzing Fictional Dialogue.” Language and Communication 5 (3): 193-206.
Wilkinson, Sue, and Celia Kitzinger
2006 “Surprise as an Interactional Achievement: Reaction Tokens in Conversation.” Social Psychology Quarterly 69: 150-182.