Discussing Conversation Analysis

• What is the status of fine-grained empirical studies of human interaction in CA and how does CA relate to other approaches to linguistic interaction?
• What is Schegloff’s contribution to CA and how does his work relate to that of Goffman, Garfinkel, and Sacks?
• How does CA distinguish its own analytical tools and terms from the categories of the participants in talk?
• What can CA reveal about human-computer interaction?
• What can CA contribute to the neurosciences in the study, diagnosis, and treatment of linguistically impaired individuals?
• How does CA account for the socio-historical dimension of the material and semiotic resources that participants co-deploy in talk?

By addressing these and other questions this volume proposes a critical guide to CA and its applications with an extraordinary interview with Emanuel A. Schegloff, and new contributions towards a debate on his work by six commentators — conversation analysts (John Heritage and Charles Goodwin), critics (Rick Iedema and Pär Segerdahl) and appliers of CA in the study of human-computer interaction (Pirkko Raudaskoski) and language disorders (Ruth Lesser).

Schegloff’s Response and a closing discussion with the editors conclude the volume, which also features a comprehensive bibliography of his work edited by Susan Eerdmans.

Emanuel A. Schegloff is Professor of Sociology with a joint appointment in Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Educated at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, he has taught at Columbia University as well as at UCLA. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a resident Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (1978–79) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford (1998–99).