Liddicoat A. An Introduction to Conversation Analysis

3rd Edition, Fully Revised, Expanded and Updated. — London, New York, Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2022. — VI, 442 p.Conversation is one of the most widespread uses of human language, but what is actually happening when we interact this way? How is conversation structured? How does it function?Answering these questions and more, An Introduction to Conversation Analysis is an essential overview of this topic for students in a wide range of disciplines including sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and sociology. This is the only book you need to learn how to do conversation analysis.Beginning by positioning conversation analysis amongst other methodologies, this book explains the advantages before guiding you step-by-step through how to do conversation analysis and what it reveals about the ways language works in communication. Chapters introduce every aspect of conversation analysis logically and clearly, covering topics such as transcription, turn-taking, sequence organisation, repair, and storytelling.Now fully revised and expanded to take account of recent developments, this third edition includes:
- 3 new chapters, covering action formation and epistemics, multimodality and spoken interaction, and written conversation
- New topics including online and mobile technology, cross-cultural conversation and medical discourse
- A glossary of key terms, brand new exercises and updated lists of further reading
- A fully updated companion website, featuring tutorials, audio and video files, and a range of different exercises covering turn taking, organisation and repair.Conversation is one of the most prevalent uses of human language. All human beings engage in conversational interaction, and human society depends on conversation in order to function: "Social interaction is the primordial means through which the business of the social world is transacted, the identities of its participants are affirmed or denied, and its cultures are transmitted, renewed and modified."Conversation is the way in which people socialize and develop and sustain their relationships with each other. When people converse, they engage in a form of linguistic communication, but there is much more going on in a conversation than just the use of a linguistic code. Much that is important in conversation is carried out by things other than language, including eye gaze and body posture, silences and the real-world context in which the talk is produced.Conversation has received a great deal of attention from writers over a very long period of time; however, much of what has been written about conversation is prescriptive in nature and deals with the idea of what makes a ‘good conversationalist’ (see Burke, 1993). Such approaches to conversation take the form of a set of prescriptive rules which describe what a conversation should be. They present sets of social rules which indicate which topics are appropriate or how language is to be used for maximum effect. These principles of what constitutes good or appropriate conversation vary from culture to culture and change over time (Burke, 1993). Such approaches to conversation show little about conversation as a normal everyday human activity but frame conversation as an elite activity governed by the conventions of ‘polite society’. However, conversation is not solely an elite activity but rather an everyday one, and it is important to understand how it is that people engage in this everyday activity as a structured social event.This book is essential resource for researchers, whether they are approaching conversation analysis for the first time or established scholars. In the new edition, Liddicoat covers recent developments in the study of conversation, including written talk and the multimodality of interaction, in a clear, engaging style. His work differs from other books... the understanding of what this methodology is about is as important as the discussion of how to apply it. Liddicoat is so successful in explaining complex ideas and subtle observations in a logical step that I hope many L2 researchers, teachers, and learners will be prompted to examine the significance of taken-for-granted mechanisms that make our everyday interactions work. Although the book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, sociology, and applied linguistics, anyone interested in analysing talk will find something in this text. It is to the point, engaging, and an excellent reference for applying conversational analysis in any social setting.This third edition offers a substantial update. In addition to giving a comprehensive and accessible overview of basic conversation analysis, it addresses key topics on CA's expanded agenda, including the interplay of talk and embodied action, text-based digital communication, and cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison. Researchers and students looking for a highly readable introduction to contemporary CA will find this book an outstanding choice.Conversation and Conversation Analysis
Collecting conversational data
Transcribing conversation
Analysing conversational data
Turn-taking in conversation
Gaps and overlaps in turn-taking
Adjacency pairs and preference organization
Expanding sequences
Repair
Epistemics and action formation
Embodied actions and the multimodality of spoken interaction
Online written interaction
Opening conversation
Closing conversation
Storytelling in conversation
Applying Conversation AnalysisGlossary
Transcription conventions
References
Index