Abstract: Considerable analytic attention has focused on interviewees’ talk as ‘accounts’, or ‘versions’, rather than as direct reports of attitudes or perceptions. However, despite recognition of the ‘co-construction of accounts’, little analytic attention has been given to the interviewer as central in the production of the talk. With this attention, we are left with an analysis of some decontextualized-features-of-talk (or discourse/identities/narrative/repertoires/rhetoric). By contrast, this article argues that interviews are inherently social encounters, dependent on the local interactional contingencies in which the speakers draw from, and co-construct, broader social norms. Through a close reading of one published paper and extracts from an interview, I document how interviewees and interviewers work to construct themselves as certain types-of-people in relation to the topic of the interview and reflexively the interview itself. I then show how a prescription from some interview methods texts document an id...

Abstract: In this article the author reviews a segment from a report of a research project that she undertook in 1991. In this initial entry into the research world, the research process used aimed to make a...

Abstract: Background It is clear that much of the success of health-care provision depends on the quality of interactions between health professionals and patients. For instance, it is widely recognized that patients are more likely to take medication eAectively if they have been involved in discussions about treatment options, and understand and support the decision about what is prescribed (patient concordance). Hence, patient participation is important for the success of medical outcomes. The key is to explore how communicative choices made by health professionals impact on the quality of interactions in general, and of patient participation in particular. However, to date there has not been an appropriate method for investigating this connection or impact. Objective To outline the perspective and method of Conversation Analysis (CA). Developed within sociology and linguistics, CA oAers a rigorous method (applicable to large data sets) to the study of interaction in health settings. Strategy The method of CA is illustrated through a review of CA studies of doctor‐patient interactions. Two such studies, one from the US and the other from Finland, are reviewed, in order to show how CA can be applied to identifying both forms of patient participation, and the interactional conditions which provide opportunities for patient participation. These studies focus principally on the medical examination and diagnostic stages of the consultation. Further research will examine the forms and conditions of patient participation in decision-making.

Abstract: In this article the treatment of context in two schools of contemporary discrse analysis – Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Conversation Analysis (CA) – is discussed. Starting from the observation that critical trends in discourse analysis identify the intersection of language and social structure as the locus of critique, I first qualify the treatment of context in some CDA work as largely backgrounding and narrative. Contextual information that invites critical scrutiny is often accepted as ‘mere facts’, framing the discourse samples analyzed in CDA. On the other hand, context is reduced to a minimal set of observable and demonstrably consequential features of single conversations in CA, and ‘translocal’ phenomena are hard to incorporate in CA analyses. Both treatments of context have severe defects, and in the second part of the article I offer three sets of ‘forgotten contexts’: contexts that are usually overlooked in critical discourse studies but that offer considerable critical potential becau...

Abstract: This paper reviews new theoretical and practical developments in working with partners of people with aphasia and describes the development of a clinician's resource entitled 'SPPARC: Supporting Partners of People with Aphasia in Relationships and Conversation'. It focuses particularly on one part of that resource: the SPPARC Conversation Training Programme, which adapts conversation analysis for clinical use. The paper describes the stages involved in assessing and working on conversation in everyday life.

Abstract: This article provides a critical review of Wetherell and Edley’s (1999) discursive reformulation of the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. While I retain some familiar features from Wetherell and ...

Abstract: This article examines how physicians and patients interactionally accomplish the transition from the activity of history taking to that of physical examination. Prior research focuses on participants’ reliance on overt verbal resources (e.g., physicians’ requests for permission to examine patients or explanations that foreshadow examination). Using the methodology of conversation analysis, this article draws on a corpus of 40 primary-care encounters to demonstrate that: (a) In addition to verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior is integral to the accomplishment of transitions; and (b) patients’ understandings of physicians’ verbal and nonverbal behavior as communicating transitions are achieved through situating those behaviors in other contexts of embodied action, talk, activity, and social structure (i.e., the phase structure of encounters). Findings have implications for: (a) the theoretic relationship between verbal and nonverbal behavior in terms of social meaning, (b) what it means to explain transitions and reduce patients’ uncertainty, (c) the organization of physician-patient interaction, and (d) the relationship and interface between macro- and microconceptualizations of context.

Abstract: Building on previous work that showed the importance of discussion for teaching literature and that discussion in low-achieving high school English classes is particularly infrequent (Nystrand, 1997), this study investigated a low-achieving class that featured regular discussions to gain insights into how dialogically organized instruction emerged within the context of a traditional recitation instructional setting, further complicated by poverty and linguistic diversity. Using a combination of grounded theory (Strauss, 1987) and conversation analysis, for 18 weeks the researchers observed a ninth-grade English class in a Midwestern inner-city high school, the majority of whose students were Hispanic. Though the profile of classroom discourse was typical of that found in most American high schools using a dominant IRE (Initiation--Response--Evaluation) pattern, the teacher sought to open up her classroom; she characterized herself as a teacher in transition. To investigate the dimensions of this transition, the researchers conducted 51 observations during the spring semester, observing 14 discussions, or instructional conversations (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988). The study documents three key strategies that the teacher used in her efforts to make such discussions possible: developing an ethos of involvement and respect, using scaffolding and specific ways of phrasing questions to encourage (and discourage) discussion, and, most importantly, acknowledging and making space for the presence of students' interpersonal relationships. This study shows that dialogic discourse can happen when teachers are adept at linking--and enabling links between--academic objectives and student concerns that often originate beyond both the classroom and the school. (Contains 46 references, a figure, and 3 notes. Appendixes contain Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. definitions of key variables, details of discussions analyzed, and transcription conventions.) (Author/RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. CELA RESEARCH REPORT TAKING RISKS, NEGOTIATING RELATIONSHIPS: ONE TEACHER'S TRANSITION TOWARDS A DIALOGIC CLASSROOM JULIE NELSON CHRISTOPH MARTIN NYSTRAND CELA RESEARCH REPORT NUMBER 14003 NATIONAL RESEARCH CENTER ON ENGLISH LEARNING &ACHIEVEMENT THE UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

Abstract: Public participation broadcasting has recently become the focus of attention in media studies, as well as from the social interactional perspectives of discourse and conversation analysis, and it has been argued in particular that the talk show genre has given new and enhanced status to the `authentic' voice of lay members of the public. What remains largely unexplored is how lay participants discursively construct authentic positions for their own knowledgeable participation in such discourse. Expert speakers in public participation broadcasts are typically attributed names, rank, institutional affiliation and status, which legitimizes their position, and in so doing provides their warrant to talk about whatever issue they have been brought in to discuss. Lay participants typically do not have this status attributed to them, but need to establish their own position from which to talk. In this article I examine the public identities that lay speakers build for themselves in these broadcasts, and show how they routinely draw on a range of discursive resources to construct situated, local identities which provide a warrant for what they have to say.

Abstract: Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atrocity stories and considers how they accomplish boundary-work in the hospital setting. I focus on the stories British nurses told about doctors and use data generated in ethnographic research into the routine accomplishment of nursing jurisdiction. I conclude with some general observations about how the detailed analysis of stories and storytelling can contribute to the wider study of social group formation.

Abstract: Within linguistic anthropology, the anthropological concern with reflexivity and critique emerges most explicitly in debates over discourse analysis. Through critical discussion of the contributions to this two-part special issue, several dominant approaches to discourse – including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, and natural histories of discourse – are assessed for their ability to yield insights into culture and power. It is suggested that an ethnographically grounded discourse analysis can be critically effective not only within linguistic anthropology but within anthropology more generally.

Abstract: This article reports on a qualitative study of dyadic discourse between university students of Spanish as a foreign language (FL). In light of the common acceptance of pair work as an effective pedagogical practice in the FL classroom, the study was designed to explore the social and cognitive behavior of learners as they participated in second language speaking activities. The construct of repair as it is formulated in the ethnomethodological approach to conversation analysis provided the lens through which data were examined. Trouble sources were identified and repair sequences were classified in terms of which learner brought attention to the trouble source and which learner resolved it. A clear preference for self-repair and for self-initiated repair was found. Collaborative repair, as well as unsolicited other-repair, operated almost exclusively on the lexicon, whereas self-initiated self-repair included morphosyntax. The study supports the Vygotskian notion that talk is used for cognitive as well as for social purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: An illustrative analysis is offered demonstrating the potential of conversation analysis for psychotherapy research. Extracts are presented from an unresolved problematic theme selected from an unsuccessful eight-session psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy of a female client presenting with a major depressive episode. The authors identify descriptive devices and communicative skills on which the client and therapist draw in the process of problem formulation. They demonstrate the way in which differing versions of the client’s problems were presented and how the client and therapist pursued differing attributional projects. Specifically, the authors examine how internal and external accounts of the client’s underlying problems were accomplished and warranted and how the therapist attempted the transformation of problems. The quality criteria pertaining to conversation analysis are indicated, the implications for therapeutic practice explored, and the relationship between the present findings and previous ...

Abstract: Autonomy is considered to be one of the central ethical principles of health care practice and as such is a significantly relevant concept for health care practitioners. With the many political and ideological drivers that challenge the way health care for older people is currently delivered, it is important to consider how the autonomy of older people is facilitated in everyday practice. In this paper I challenge the dominant understanding of autonomy as ‘individualism’. Through research undertaken with nurses who work with older people, it identifies the conflicts that arise between an individualistic understanding of autonomy set alongside an emphasis on ‘person-centred’ practice.Data were collected by recording ‘naturally occurring’ conversations between nurses, patients and associated practitioners. Primary nurses recorded conversations occurring between them and four patients throughout their hospital stay. In addition, a recognised expert gerontological nurse and a community nurse specialist participated as a means of testing out initial themes generated by the primary nurses. A total of 14 case studies were recorded. The data were analysed using principles of conversation analysis and thematic analysis set within a hermeneutic interpretive framework. In order to illuminate presentations of autonomy in practice, focus group discussions with nurses and older people were used as part of the interpretative process. I discuss the factors that prevented the operationalisation of an individualised rights-based concept of autonomy for older people. Issues including information-giving, the conversation style of nurses, internal and external constraints and patients' competence to decide are considered. In addition, the role of families in decision-making is addressed. The paper ends with a discussion of an alternative view of autonomy based on ‘interconnectedness’ in the nurse-patient relationship. This perspective is not based on either the patient or nurse being the ‘final arbiter’ of decisions, but is instead set within a framework of negotiation.

Abstract: We examine critically the two traditions of work that have informed discursive approaches to identity: social constructionism and conversation analysis. Within both strands, identity is theorized as a flexible phenomenon that is situated in conversations. But although constructionists locate identity within the social, such work remains at a theoretical and rather abstract level and often fails to interrogate the discursive practices through which identity is constituted. Conversely, this attention to the occasioning of identity in everyday talk is precisely the focus of the second, conversation analytic strand of work. Whereas constructionists attend to the wider cultural positioning of identities, conversation analysts resist commenting upon the social significance of what is constructed in interaction. Conversation analysis is therefore limited by its restricted notion of culture in the study of the situated social self. Despite the apparent conflict between these approaches, we suggest that a synthesis of the two provides a comprehensive framework for analysing identity. Drawing upon the BBC Panorama interview between Martin Bashir and Princess Diana, we explore how culturally situated identities are located in this conversational context. We conclude that analysts must not only attend to the micro-level organization of identities but also engage in a wider understanding of the cultural framework within which they are located.

Abstract: Social scientists have devoted a great deal of attention to how much people talk, but have paid little attention to what they talk about. Research in the tradition of conversation analysis suggests that transitions between topics of conversation are accomplished in a systematic, structured way, and that social status can affect whose topics are developed and whose are lost. The authors use insights from conversation analysis to develop a systematic coding system for identifying topic shifts in task-oriented discussions. Hypotheses from the literature on group processes predict who will suggest topic changes in a task-oriented group and whose topics will be lost. Event history methods model the dynamics of topic change in two data sets: a study of six-person laboratory task groups and a replication study of dyads. Topic changes in these task-oriented discussions are more sensitive to status structures that develop within the conversation than to a relatively weak status characteristic like gender. Some of the sequential mechanisms that conversation analysts have studied in the context of less structured, more wide ranging talk may be generalizable to this more constrained conversational environment.

Abstract: As many readers will no doubt anticipate, this short article and the paper to which it responds are just two turns in a much broader conversation between critical discourse analysts and conversation analysts about how to best study talk (cf. Schegloff, 1997, 1998, 1999a and b; Wetherell, 1998; Billig, 1999a and b – see also Kitzinger, 2000). It is perhaps inevitable that such a debate should emphasize the differences between these two analytic approaches, but it is also important to bear in mind that they share many things in common. Such a recognition is implicit in Susan Speer’s paper in that, compared with my and Margaret Wetherell’s discursive analysis of hegemonic masculinity (Wetherell and Edley, 1999), she offers ‘a more conversation analytic alternative’ (my emphasis). One of the main claims of the present paper is that there is even less of a difference between our approaches than Speer seems to imagine. More specifically, I will show that her work, like ours, reveals there to be some significant problems attending a fully conversation analytic approach to studying men and masculinity. Following from Schegloff (1997), Speer’s main argument is that an adequate discursive psychology need not, and perhaps should not, ‘venture further than the limits of the text to explain why participants say what they do’ (emphasis in original – see abstract). She recommends that analysts restrict themselves to ‘the orientations, meanings, interpretations, understandings etc. of the participants’ (Schegloff, 1997: 166; emphasis in original) rather than reading people’s discourse through various socio-political concepts.1 It is on precisely this basis that she rejects the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Carrigan et al., 1985; Connell, 1995). It is discarded not because of any conceptual vagueness or operational difficulties (see Wetherell and Edley, 1999), but because it fails to emerge as a participants’ concern. The concept of hegemony has its origins in the political theorizing of Antonio

Abstract: The focus of this article is the management of arguments between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Israelis and Palestinians are 2 groups that have been in severe conflict about land, culture, history, and national rights. In this study we draw on the traditions of conversation analysis, logic, and rhetoric to explain how participants used arguments to manage certain dilemmas and problems. The data were group encounters between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. This analysis highlights the role of symbolic ethnocentrism in argument, the problem of grounded premises that forestall progress, and various argumentative strategies (e.g., question asking, collaborative argument, limited topical space) that serve the rhetorical goals of the participants.

Abstract: Against the theoretical and methodological background of conversation analysis (CA), the author addresses the issue of the contextual conditions for a specific type of grammatical phenomenon: answers to yes-no questions. She distinguishes five kinds of answers: two minimal ones, one next to minimal one, and two sentential types of answers. Minimal and non-minimal types of answers are shown to be doing different kinds of work in an interaction, full sentence answers addressing a wider range of features oriented to in the context either by the questioner or in the interpretation. The different types are placed along a confirmation-negation continuum. Keywords: Yes-no question, Answer, Conversation, Typology, Grammar and context

Abstract: Family therapy literature has emphasized the importance of examining contextual variables in supervision. This study explored how the talk of race, ethnicity, and culture is accomplished within the supervision session using conversation analysis. Conversation analysis is a naturalistic and descriptive methodology that examines patterns across naturally occurring conversations. The results indicated that the participants accomplished four domains of talk that involved the discourse of race, ethnicity, or culture. These domains included contextual markers, self of the therapist issues, cross cultural issues in the therapeutic relationship and cultural issues affecting the supervisory relationship. Implications for supervision and future directions are discussed.