Studying interaction in order to cultivate communicative practices

Action-implicative discourse analysis

Karen Tracy

Robert T. Craig | Communication Department, University of Colorado, cBoulder, CO 80309, USA

Action-implicative discourse analysis (AIDA) is an ethnographically informed discourse-analytic approach that works to provide normative understandings of situated communicative practices that are action-implicative for social life. Extending the logic of grounded practical theory (Craig and Tracy 1995), AIDA develops reconstructed accounts of the communicative problems, interaction strategies, and normative ideals of a practice. We introduce AIDA and illustrate the approach with an example from recent research on school board meetings in an American local community. We compare AIDA with other approaches to language and social interaction, focusing on interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz) and conversation analysis (Schegloff). We argue that to understand the distinctive character of these approaches requires recognizing each one’s orientation to the discursive context of a particular academic discipline.

Published online: 18 August 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.196.07tra

Cited by

Cited by 18 other publications

Aakhus, Mark

2017. In The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication, ► pp. 1 ff.

Agne, Robert R.

2018. “You’re Not Listening”: Negotiating and Problematizing Ideal Interaction Through Metatalk About Listening in the Waco Standoff. Western Journal of Communication 82:3 ► pp. 356 ff.

Agne, Robert R. & Heidi L. Muller

2019. Discourse strategies that co-construct relational identities in STEM peer tutoring. Communication Education 68:3 ► pp. 265 ff.

Black, Laura W. & Anna Wiederhold

2014. Discursive Strategies of Civil Disagreement in Public Dialogue Groups. Journal of Applied Communication Research 42:3 ► pp. 285 ff.

Boelé, Amy L.

2017. Does It Say That? Tensions in Teacher Questions When the Text Has the Final Say. Reading & Writing Quarterly 33:1 ► pp. 20 ff.

Craig, Robert T.

2015. In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ► pp. 1 ff.

Craig, Robert T. & Karen Tracy

2014. Building Grounded Practical Theory in Applied Communication Research: Introduction to the Special Issue. Journal of Applied Communication Research 42:3 ► pp. 229 ff.

DeGooyer, Dan H.

2010. Supple Praxis: A Paralogical Strategy for Problems. Communication Theory 20:3 ► pp. 296 ff.

Fritz, Janie Harden

2014. Researching workplace relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 31:4 ► pp. 460 ff.

Gerwing, Jennifer & Thor Indseth

2016. Enhancing Caller Comprehensibility in Emergency Calls with a Language Barrier: Operators in the Role ofAddressee. International Journal of Listening 30:3 ► pp. 163 ff.

Goodman, Sheryl Baratz, Krista Bailey Murphy & Mia Lindquist D’Andrea

2014. Discussion dilemmas: an analysis of beliefs and ideals in the undergraduate seminar. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 27:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Guillem, Susana Martínez

2013. Constructing contexts, (re)defining immigrants: Mental models and social representations in immigration policy defense. Discourse & Society 24:2 ► pp. 208 ff.

Kecskes, Istvan

2016. In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 4], ► pp. 43 ff.

Kecskes, Istvan

2019. In English as a Lingua Franca,

Nodoushan, Mohammad Ali Salmani

2015. Review of Kecskes (2013): Intercultural Pragmatics. Pragmatics and Society 6:1 ► pp. 152 ff.

O’Connell, Daniel C. & Sabine Kowal

2012. In Dialogical Genres, ► pp. 3 ff.

Sprain, Leah & Lydia Reinig

2018. Citizens Speaking as Experts: Expertise Discourse in Deliberative Forums. Environmental Communication 12:3 ► pp. 357 ff.

Tracy, Karen & Jessica M.F. Hughes

2014. Democracy-Appealing Partisanship: A Situated Ideal of Citizenship. Journal of Applied Communication Research 42:3 ► pp. 307 ff.

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