Seminar in Qualitative Communication Research

Com 473 —Baldwin—Communication—Illinois State University

 

Conversation/Discourse Analysis

Notes Updated: October 31, 2005

 

Logistics:

Update on projects.  Any questions?

Review of last week:

 

Conversation and Discourse Analysis

Overarching Questions

How are CA and DA similar and different in terms of:

q       general focus?

q       method?

q       background?

 

When might you want to do one or the other?

 

The Specifics:

 

Conversation Analysis

Ten Have (1999): A how-to guide!

 

Chapter 1:

What is the background of CA?

            --discipline?

            --authors? (GoffmanàSacks, SchegloffàJefferson, Pomerantz)

 

What are some underlying assumptions?

            --naturalism

            --orderliness

 

How would CA feel about?

            --traditional scientific methodologies?

            --ethnography/interviews

            --people’s own accounts of why they do what they do

            --a priori theoretical paradigms (e.g., Grice’s maxims, Searle’s Speech Acts?)

            --role of such things as background of interactants, hierarchies, etc.?

 

What are 2 types of CA? (Ten Have, p. 8)

 

Some terms:

            --conversation activity; talk-in-interaction

            --adjacency pairs

            --sequential organization

            --organization of topic talk

            --categorization (p. 6)

            --“alternatives” (p. 22)

 

Ex:      What are some of the conditions/rules for telephone greetings? for goodbyes?

 

Mini-Exercise:  In pairs, choose a conversational activity, e.g., joke-telling.

Come up with a list of possible felicity conditions or rules.

Do a “skit,” showing what it would be like to violate some of the rules (Garfinkelism)

 

Some ideas from Atkinson & Heritage & Sacks

 

Chapter 2: Be able to briefly describe the three exemplar studies and what each looked at.

What do you learn about the method by seeing the specific examples?

 

Some ideas from Ch. 6

  1. Outline the steps for doing conversation analysis
  2. What are some possible conversational “interlocking organizations” you could look for? (p. 107, pp. 110-119)
  3. Think about some of your own interactions today! Where do you see some of these types of organizations occurring?

 

 

Method: 4 things to look at cf Pomerantz & Fehr [class notes!]

 

Exercise:        Apply the 4 to dissertation pages

What are the “problems” or “problem” for which what is happening might be a solution? (TH, p. 17)

 

BREAK

Discourse Analysis I

Starting Example: The story of the arm…

Background:   Blum-Kulka [class notes]

            Grice’s Maxims: Gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning

            The maxims:

1.      The maxim of quantity

2.      The maxim of quality

3.      The maxim of relevance

4.      The maxim of manner

Conversational implicature

            Apply Grice’s Maxims to a story

            --conversational implicatures

            --cultural/contextual variation (e.g. how might application of maxims vary from

                                    classroom to party to religious gathering)

            Speech Act Theory:

            --different types of speech acts [See Miller, 2005]

            1.  Represenatitives

            2.  Directives

            3.  Commissives

            4.  Expressives

            5.  Declaratives

            [Note: What are some other functions that are beyond or serve as a part of these?]

 

            Searle’s Speech Act Theory:

            Locutionary act [Utterance + Proposition]

            Illocutionary act

            Perlocutionary act

            --Mini-exercise: Come up with a statement that has different functions!

           

            Conditions for speech acts (felicity conditions)

 

            Applications (Blum Kulka)

 

Approaches (Tracy, 1991). [class notes]

            Ethnomethodology                    Sacks, Schegloff, etc.

            Formal/structural                       Brown & Levinson (politeness theory)

            Cultural                                    Gumperz, Tannen (culture, gender), EofC

            Discourse Processing                Schank, Kellerman (MOPs)

            Discourse and Identity  McLaughlin & Cody (accounts), CAT

 

Differences in Method:  Tracy’s 5 methods differ on the dimensions of

                                                            Naturalness

                                                            What counts as “data”

                                                            Role of prior theory

                                                            “Tightness” of transcription

 

EXERCISE (Part 2):  Dissertation excerpts—look out a level:

What theories do you see? What type of general framework might you uncover?

How might culture (or gender) influence the discourse in the examples?

How might the discourse either stem from or construct certain identities?

 

Exercise: Classify the following:

How might each be useful?

--no author

--K. Hall

--Gumperz

 

Exercise: Imagine a study that would use each. What would be strengths and limitations of the different approaches? For example, what could you do with each in the organization?

 

 

 

Differences and Similarities

Ø                        Background?

Ø                        Purpose/Focus?

Ø                        Method?

 

v          When might you use each one?

v          What kinds of data would you use?

v          What kinds of claims might one make?

v          What metatheoretical stance might guide you?

Conversation Analysis

Background:

 

 

Focus/Assumptions:

 

 

Method:                          

            Ten Have                                            Pomerantz/Fehr

      1.                                 1.

      2.                                 2.

      3.                                 3.  

      4.                                 4.

                                          5.

 

Types:

 

 

Terms:

 

 

Exercise

Discourse Analysis

Background:

 

 

Focus/Assumptions:

 

 

 

Method:                          

           

 

 

Types: (Tracy, 1991):            Examples

1.   Ethnomethodological

2.   Formal/Structural

3.   Cultural

4.   Discourse Processing

5.   Discourse & Identity

 

Terms:

 

 

Exercise

Discourse Analysis

Applying Stillar’s (1998) Model

 

Ideational Resources

Ø   Process Types

Ø   Participant Roles

Ø   Time & Perspective

Ø   Concept Taxonomies

--lexical clusters

--dimensions, locations (semantic relations?)

 

Interpersonal Resources: positional, relational

 

Ø   Speech Function

Ø   Modality

Ø   Attitudinal Lexis

Ø   Sentence Adjuncts

 

Textual Resources

Ø   Theme

Ø   Cohesion

 

Context Resources

Ø   Field, Tenor, Mode

Ø   Register

Discourse Analysis

Background (Blum-Kulka, 1997)

 

 

Grice’s Theory of Meaning

            Maxims

Ø     Maxim of quality

Ø     Maxim of quantity

Ø     Maxim of manner

Ø     Maxim of relevance

Conversational implicatures: irony, tautology, sarcasm, etc.

          Contextual and cultural variation

 

Searle’s Speech Act Theory

            Performatives and felicity (appropriateness) conditions

          Communicative Acts

Ø     Locutionary act

Ø     Illocutionary act

Ø     [Perlocutionary act]

Illocutionary Acts

Ø     Representative

Ø     Directive

Ø     Commissive

Ø     Expressive

Ø     Declaration

Conditions for speech acts (felicity conditions?)

Ø     Propositional content

Ø     Preparatory conditions

Ø     Sincerity conditions

Ø     Essential condition

 

Applications

          Politeness theory (strategies of face management)

          Intercultural communication competence

          Gender differences/communicating hierarchy