Conversation Analysis - Science topic

You can review Conversation Analysis or Discursive Psychology. Depending on what you intend to address, you may consider reviewing Membership categorization analysis, positioning theory, politeness theory, or communication accommodation theory.

Acredito que as confissões públicas de erros de todos os profissionais são importantes, inclusive, intelectuais. Mas como historiador é preciso ter cautela. Existem tipos variados de erros, e nem sempre a conjuntura histórica é favorável ao reconhecimento do erro. Tem coisa que numa época é errada e outra não. E não estou falando de relativismo histórico. A escravidão, a submissão das mulheres, a exclusão de deficientes, a discriminação de negros já foram defendidas no passado, noutras conjunturas que depois mudaram. Os parâmetros aplicáveis devem ser bem pensados. É precisa saber se havia no dito momento do erro arsenal teórico para caracterizá-lo como erro ou como um paradigma de época. Nem todo erro implica má-fé. Mas, erros criminosos.

Dear colleague,

Thank you for your question!

I think that much depends on the purpose of research: what exactly is to be under concideration - lexis, syntax, pronunciation/prosody, cognitive categories, style (dialect) etc. If I was to do this, I would pick up one-level language unit (word, phrase, syntagm etc.) and include into the sample only those ones.

Dear Mohammad Nadeem Akhtar

I would suggest you that the splitting test is not appropriate in this scenario. Because it would provide erronous outcomes. I would suggest you to perform a direct tensile test.

I don't think it is ethical to record such data without the consent of the subject.

Dear Dr. Mehran Shahpari I got your point, and thanks for the excellent technical explanation of my query. I have already done splitting tensile strength; there is any significance if will explain load vs. displacement curves in the results and discussion section....

On YouTube please watch and listen to Professor Maya Khemlani David on ethnographic research (emic/etic).

It is a CLINICAL relationship and praxis -not a coffee chat or between friends- that usually has a Psychodynamic basis, Support Therapy and Ventilation, Catharsis, Relationship of Help, or Counseling (and can be more than one of the at the same time) ... in the end, is to use THE WORD (the "LOGOS") as a therapeutic weapon; the Asclepiades -and Hippocrates was- already told us in Classical Greece that "the Sanitary heals with the knife, the poison and the word": the knife has given foot to Surgery, the poison to Pharmacotherapy and, the word , to Psychotherapy (and they do not have to be exclusive).

Hi, I am from India, doing research on subtitles (AVT) in foreign language like Chinese, English. If you have done any research on same, may share with me also.

Thank you! @Agata Bednarek

I am also searching for the questionnaire. Any luck so far?

If they repeat themselves only or more often after Alexa's non- or wrong response, I would consider it an attempted repair. The first video clip shows a variety of both repairs and confirmations IMO. The girl frequently says 'Yeah' as a confirmation, but almost all of what I hear and see in both videos are attempted repairs. Some are way more clear than others, as when volume or annunciation changes. Although toddlers are not bad at inferring why a conversational partner doesn't respond appropriately, they are far from skilled & not infer that the partner doesn't process the pronunciation appropriately.

Personally, I would do this sort of thing in Python 3, which is free, high-level, has a number of nice distributions with built-in IDEs, and is pretty quick to learn. I just spent a few minutes looking over your example, and I think I produced the behavior you desire with the following code:

infile = open('*the file path containing your source text*', 'r')

outfile_partner_a = open('*the path where you want partner a's output text*', 'w')

outfile_partner_b = open('the path where you want partner b's output text*', 'w')

current_outfile = outfile_partner_a

for aline in infile:

if aline == ('Partner A:' + '\n'):

current_outfile = outfile_partner_a

elif aline == ('Partner B:' + '\n'):

current_outfile = outfile_partner_b

else:

current_outfile.write(aline)

infile.close()

outfile_partner_a.close()

When this is executed, the output text file for Partner A is:

Hello how are you?

Im good, What year are you in?

And the output text file for Partner B is:

Hey, Im good thank hbu?

Im in forth year.

Of course Tyrone Bishop , but try not to be limited to the simple T-test ; there are a lot of statistical methods in this field.

That's the idea of Conversation Analysis, if you look at the coding legend you will see that it accounts for overlaps, pauses, breaths and a whole host of other data.

I'm in the process of transcribing a lot of radiotelephony interactions between pilots and controllers using a system proposed by Nevile (2006) which is based on CA. Take a look, really interesting.

----

Nevile, M., 2006. A conversation Analysis model for examining aviation communication in context: part II - processes for analysing data. Human Factors and Aerospace Safety, 6(2), pp. 155-175.

Hello Michael,

Conceptually, a generalized measure should simplify to the specific measure (for the minimum number of raters). But...

The Cohen kappa and Fleiss kappa yield slightly different values for the test case I've tried (from Fleiss, 1973, Table 12.3, p. 144). (Cohen's kappa = 0.0, Fleiss's kappa = -.00775, in both an excel worksheet I made and R library irr.)

The reason for the discrepancy is in the computation of the chance-level agreement (Pe or Pc, depending on whose notation you're following). In Cohen's kappa, it is based on the products of the two raters' marginal proportions. In Fleiss's (1971) kappa, only the marginal proportions of the respective rating categories are used (having been summed across raters, and presumed equal, it would appear, for all raters), Hence, you'll most likely get a different chance-level agreement, and the computed kappa indices will therefore not agree.

If I only were using two ratings, I'd use the Cohen kappa formula.

Good luck with your work!

References:

Fleiss, J. L. (1971). Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. Psychological Bulletin, 76(5), 378-382. doi:10.1037/h0031619

Fleiss, J. L. (1973). Statistical methods for rates and proportions. New York, NY: Wiley.

This might help:

'Speaking for and about a spouse with dementia: A matter of inclusion or exclusion?'

Elin Nilsson, Anna Ekström, Ali Reza Majlesi

2018 Discourse Studies

(Sorry about the horrible formatting, I'm sending this from my phone!)

Sourabh Shastri

Assistant Professor

Kathua Campus

University of Jammu

Thanks to Reza, Carl, and Maria for your responses. (Don't know how to respond to your responses individually). The suggestions made will be helpful. I do know the Hutchby reference but doing a focus on "institutional settings" may offer more, as Carl states...good idea. Also, while I am engaged in CA work, the EMCAwiki site is one I didn't know so it will be helpful in a number of ways, Mara...as will the mention of grounded theory (as are most of Reza's contributions on researchgate). Thanks to the three of you for your help!

Jack

Maria Eleonora Sciubba it seems as I had already found one of Laurier‘s texts

I've been taught to work with the Leipzig Glossing Rules. That means glosses align vertically for ease of identification. You can have as many lines per item as needed for your analysis. I have worked with spoken Greek dialectal data (which I wanted to present to English-speaking audiences). I had 6 lines per item: 1. Dialect transcribed in Greek 2. Standard Greek equvialent transcribed in Greek 3. Standard Greek equivalent transliterated with roman characters 4. Word for word English translation 5. Morphological analysis 6. English Translation

I'm not sure how that would feed back into a Conversational Analysis piece that also has its own coding conventions. I'd imagine going with a 6-line gloss per turn will be way too much.

But then again it is more of a matter of what you want to actually claim. Is there morphological variation away from the standard language in your data? Or is it that the dialect only differs phonologically? Remember a morphological analysis deals in morphemes. So the dialect may present different morphs (allomorphs), but not different morphemes. If that's the case, glossing from the standard equivalent is fine. If not then you'could go with a phonemic gloss first and then morphologically gloss that (essentially treating the dialect as a 'different' language).

Dear Colleague Jelena Marjanovic ,

Good question.

For those not exactly in your field I give a Wikipedia definition:

Design-based research (DBR) is a type of research methodology used by researchers in the learning sciences, which is a sub-field of education. The basic process of DBR involves developing solutions (called "interventions") to problems. Then, the interventions are put to use to test the how well they work. The iterations may then be adapted and re-tested to gather more data. The purpose of this approach is to generate new theories and frameworks for conceptualizing learning, instruction,[1] design processes, and educational reform. Data analysis often takes the form of iterative comparisons.

I have some ideas about texts that might help

_An Introduction to Discourse Analysis_ by Malcolm Fairclough (Longman, 1985).

Fairclogh covers that most important rhetorical communications topic of "framing" a discussion. For me, this text made the concept quite understandable.

Certainly any "intervention" will involve a careful framing of the discussion. Where the frame is and what falls outside the frame are key issues of forensics, historiography, and other fields. And Fairclough gives good examples.

I hope this aids in your preparation. Best wishes!

Gloria

Dr. Al-hindawi,

Thank you for your comments.

As I am dealing with nonnative speakers, it does become relevant that I suggest language learning implications to which your contrastive design with native speakers can certainly play a role. While evaluation of L2 learner performance is not the main interest of my research (for now), I will take into mind your suggestions.

Best,

Ye Ji Lee

Dear Maria,

I suggest two approaches:

Hope this will help you.

Hepburn & Bolden have some on the companion site of their recent book, Transcribing for Social Research: https://study.sagepub.com/hepburnandbolden

You certainly can. In addition to the already brough up issues, it might be useful to see papers that use or argue for 'digital conversation analysis'. It is a fairly new strand of CA research that uses as its data different online interactions.

Since long researchers have talked about the 'observer paradox', which is pretty much an obstacle that it difficult to overcome. I quite like Richard Watts' (1999) uptake - he suggests simply not to bother but admit this as a natural concomitant of working with real-life data collected in such a way.

Sorry, I guess this doesn't really respond your query... In my own recordings I simply do not bother, but this is of course just my 2 cents on this.

Yup, it would. But they didn't know they'd been recorded. We got in, probed for the material we were looking for and when we felt we had enough we stopped recording, informed them about the project and asked permission to use the recorded material. We only used material we were given permission for and deleted the rest. Most, even if surprised -or even annoyed- at first, were more than eager to allow use of the 'bootleg' recordings when we explained why we needed them, some asked for anonymization, only a few downright denied involvement.

I'd recommend brand24.com and sotrender.com - both have a free trail version for two weeks, thus enough for students to analyze data and prepare reports.

Hello,

Notably, Flanders's (1970) interaction categories are divided into two types; namely, direct influences and indirect influences. The issue of empathy is generally related to indirect influences where L2 tearchers' response to learners' emotions and feelings has a great bearing on learning and teaching processes. Accordingly, research regarding conversational analysis addressing emotional management (empathy) is of a great empirical significance. The following links can hopefully provide you with the targeted literature you are looking for.

1) https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/23524/psychoth.pdf?sequence=2

2) citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.775.8179&rep=rep1...pdf

3) https://www.ipu-berlin.de/.../research/.../conversation-analysis-of-empathy-in-psychot

Best regards,

R. Biria

Hi dear

Translation is a mature activity and to be able to translate you have to acquire the two languages fully.  Concerning the role of ^{translation in fluency, I think if the translation is oral both of them have mutual importance. But if you mean written translation, I don't think that it has direct effects.  Liqaa} 

It sounds like both variables are categorical in nature.  Appropriate descriptive statistics are counts and percentages for each category or combination of categories.

Appropriate plots include bar plots of counts and mosaic plots.

Descriptive statistics for continuous variables make no sense for categorical variables.  These include mean, median, standard deviation, and so on.

Dear Paul Sevigny,

Notably, stylistics, as you have very rightly observed,  provides a useful link between literature and linguistics (Birch, 1985; Gupta& Srivastava, 1991).  The Handbook of Linguistics and the Handbook of stylistics are two authoritative sources by prof. Peter Stockwell, which I believe can be very useful in this regard.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Thank you Stephen. I'll check it out.

Let's not have a tiresome discussion of the pros and cons of "intelligence" tests. We can agree that cross-cultural comparisons are problematic. You may not wish to review the extensive literature on the predictive validity of these measures within any given culture (especially not if you hadn't known the major tests get updated and revised regularly), but to be brief: grades in school, years of education, complexity/status of job, performance on job (especially when complex), response to training, response to psychotherapy, reaction time, nerve conductance speed, inspection time, consistency & complexity of evoked potentials, and at least a few more things I can't think of right now.

Maibe Budzhak-Jones 1995, about language contact manifestations.

Maria:

You have gotten very good resources from Harshvardhan. I can only add that teenagers in school can also use it to deal with similar issues regarding their classmates, perhaps, those who might have attempted suicide. An example of how Social Media was used to engage students in their popular communication space can help to show the process to be used:

Best regards,

Debra

If you have separate files for each participant you may want to perform Voice Activity Detection on each signal. This will tell you when the participant is speaking. You would then look for overlaps and the other information you need by comparing the active times.

For the loudness of each speaker you could analyze the energy contour of each signal.

If the signals were recorded in a quiet environment, and there's no much interference between speakers this should not be that hard.

 A good tool to perform these task is Praat.

''Mordor actually has two meanings: The Black Land or The Dark Land in Tolkien's contrived language Sindarin, and The Land of Shadow in Quenya. The root mor ("dark", "black") also appears in Moria. Dor ("land") also appears in Gondor ("stone-land") and Doriath ("fenced land"). The Quenya word for Shadow is "mordo". It is pronounced with a Russian-sounding r. The gate of Mordor, Morannon, means The Black Gate. It was named this by the elves in the Second Age.

A proposed etymology out of the context of Middle-earth is Old English morthor, which means "mortal sin" or "murder". (The latter are descended from the former.) It is not uncommon for names in Tolkien's fiction to have relevant meanings in several languages, both those invented by Tolkien, and "real" ones, but this of course happens with any two languages. Mordor is also a name cited in some Nordic mythologies referring to a land where its citizens practice evil without knowing it, imposed on themselves by the society long created for that purpose. This quite fits with Tolkien's Mordor.''

This is a corpus of Spanish varieties. May be this could be helpful.

Many thanks for your comment! We found it useful to bring the voice of the offenders to listening; not to defend or excuse what they did but to study how they use or misuse language and other human qualities - and they do it, surprisingly, very skilfully.This permits a more encompassing view of these people as they are not only sex offenders but traumatized, in early years often violated and exposed to violence, trying to make something of a life that started from very disturbed conditions. And one can begin to hear it, not only to diagnose it. This, I hope, increases chances of dialogue with them and then chances of therapy.

However, I hope that other CA-studies will follow.

Best

Michael

Dear Emo, many thanks for looking things up. Obviously you couldn't find a transcribed example of "moments" as well as I could not. However, your hints to co-constructions is very valuable for me. I have used the papers be Hutchins/Nomura

Hutchins, E., & Nomura, S. (2011). Collaborative Construction of Multimodal Utterances. In J. Streeck, C. Goodwin, & C. D. LeBaron (Eds.), Learning in doing : social, cognitive and computational perspectives. Embodied interaction. Language and body in the material world (pp. 29–43). New York: Cambridge University Press.

and

the work of Gene Lerner

Lerner, G. H. (2013). On the place of hesitating in delicate formulations: a turn-constructional infrastructure for collaborative indiscretion. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Studies in interactional sociolinguistics: Vol. 30. Conversational repair and human understanding. (pp. 95–134). Cambridge, UK, New York: Cambridge University Press.

who uses the term "other completion" for the phenomenon you described.

Thanks for your paper which is rich and exiting for me! I attach one of my recent works and here is a link on my work on "musical empathy"

Best

Michael

Dear José,

As you know, Núria Esteve-Gibert recently discussed her PhD thesis exactly on the alignment between gesture, prosody and segmental material. Since the research question of "gesture-prosody-text alignament" is actually not new (dating back to even before McNeill's 1992 book), Nuria's thesis focussed on some more specific and new issues, that had to do mainly with language adquisition and infants. In case you are interested in the alignmanet/interplay among gesture, prosody and segmental material in adults, you might have a look at the Introduction of Nuria's thesis, where she summarizes in a few pages the most relevant studies about this subject.

See you in June :-)

Paolo

Dear Anna,

I think everything depends on a certain language. Please, google the keywords "mother tongue influence", "test results" ,and so on, and you will find many interesting works (for ex., "http://jeteraps.scholarlinkresearch.com/articles/Effect%20of%20Mother%20Tongue.pdf).    

Interculturalism strengthens connections with other countries by accepting their immigrants into our society.As people come together different ideas are shared and others can learn things from cultures that can help make the community better. Pizza for example is a food loved around Canada but it was made by the Italians.

Dear Akin Adetunji,

I'd suggest you the two following volumes:

- Duszak, Anna (ed.). 2002. Us and Others: Social Identities across Languages, Discourses and Cultures. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

- Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula  (ed.) Constructing Collectivity: ‘We’ across Languages and Contexts, Benjamins.

Best wishes,

Carla Bazzanella

I have participated in a roundtab;e along the lines that Rafael suggests, and found it very useful. The co-chairs tailored the questions to each participant's background, and then the others were able to expand the ocus to add their own insignts. This way the co-chairs were ab;e to determine the focus, but in a way that alowed for cross-pollination.

Здравствуйте Кевин! Я изучаю педагогические взгляды Джалаладдина Руми и там я обнаружила интересные данные.про дискуссии и про разговор и рекомендую вам для методологии анализа разговора читат книгу "Фихи мо фихи", и "Маснави". Это не только относится в Восточные знание. Я как то работала над этим в своих статьях если можете читайте их. Если не смогла нечем помочь извиняюс.   

I my MPhil i looked at a philosophy for children programme and its effect on the development of metacognition of 4 and 5 year olds. You might want to look at the p4c and teaching thinking literature,  i read a lot on the conversation and thinking skills. I am sure there is a lot more on the topic now.

Hello Miranda

These papers cover your criteria, but I'm not sure about the examination of simulation debrief:

This first paper is a case study of an Australian rural community using principles of grounded theory and ethnographic techniques - a purposeful sample - The majority of data was collected  from individuals (interview, diaries, personal tapes and tape recorded meetings) but the researchers also tape recorded 'meetings'; one was in a doctors' waiting room (p.16), or other meetings (pp.13-14), including a craft club (p.15).

Falk, I., & Kilpatrick, S. (2000). What is social capital? A study of interaction in a rural community. Sociologia Ruralis, 40(1), 87-110.

This paper looks at 'senior citizens’ day program at a social service agency in an urban Latino community in the Midwestern United States'. There was tape recording and some observational data collected and analysis was from a conversation analytic perspective.

Cashman, H. R. (2005). Identities at play: language preference and group membership in bilingual talk in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(3), 301-315.

This draws on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis:

Vom Lehn, D., Heath, C., & Hindmarsh, J. (2001). Exhibiting interaction: Conduct and collaboration in museums and galleries. Symbolic interaction, 24(2), 189-216.

There might be something useful in this book (available to read certain sections on Google):

Llewellyn, N., & Hindmarsh, J. (Eds.). (2010). Organisation, interaction and practice: Studies of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Cambridge University Press.

This is old now, but may have some relevance:

Tang, J. C., & Leifer, L. J. (1988, January). A framework for understanding the workspace activity of design teams. In Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work (pp. 244-249). ACM.

Best wishes with this

Mary

Regarding your question about the difference between an assessment and an opinion, I do think they are the same thing in principle: they involve evaluating a particular entity/issue/state of affairs (the assessable). What I have found in some examples is that it is not clear whether the FPP includes an opinion or a fact. In these cases, it could be thought that the FPP presents a fact, but it is treated as an opinion by the next speaker, who agrees or disagrees with it. Other references I can think of are:

Heritage, J. and Raymond, G. (2005) "The terms of agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Talk-in-Interaction", Social Psychology Quarterly 68(1), 15-38.

Stivers, T. (2005). "Modified Repeats: One Method for Asserting Primary Rights From Second Position", Research on Language and Social Interaction 38(2), 131-158.

Hope it helps!

Dr Shannon Clarks dissertation on the topic of openings in therapy might help. It's available at aiemca.net 

I agree with the above to a certain extent. Sociocultural norms of interaction can be negotiated but they need to be understood.

I believe that learners need to become aware of the sociocultural norms of interaction. These can be highlighted by using conversation analysis as it reveals the orderliness of conversation and what norms conversationalists orient to. To be able to do that you need to use authentic videoed conversations and by exploring speech acts you can highlight pragmatic features. I have devised a methodology in which we use awareness-raising activities whereby learners focus on particular L2 sociocultural norms of interaction which they compare and contrast with their L1. That way they can learn intercultural competence as they have to reflect on the new norms and then interact with other learners. This methodology based on conversation analysis and politeness pragmatics has been encapsulated in a course book called Beyond Talk. It can be downloaded for free, if interested, on the link below.

Have your checked out Deborah Tannen's work on different communication styles? She has several books out and I believe is a linguistics professor in New York.

Hi Ivan

academic lectures involving students' talk, conference panels and  forums interviews, and radio dramas,

and radio news announcers could also be utilized to make the comparison  .

read STEVE TAUROZA and DESMOND ALLISON please.

If your first question can be rephrased as 'How can the frequency of words in published articles on sociolinguistics be measured?', the first step would be to create a corpus of articles on sociolinguistics and use some kind of corpus tool to count the words.

I think you will find an answer to your second question in: Bybee, Joan. (2007). Frequency of use and the organisation of language. Oxford: Oxford University press.

I have a vague memory of reading an article in Language in Society on this topic.  I'll see if I can verify that the memory is correct and, if so, supply the citation.  

Here is another one I found out about. Haven't read it yet.

Bredmar, Margareta & Linell, Per 1999: Reconfirming normality: The constitution of reassurance in talks between midwives and expectant mothers. In Srikant Sarangi & Celia Roberts (eds.), Talk, work, and institutional order: Discourse in medical, mediation, and management settings pp. 237–270. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Hello Christian! I know a person how is currently developing a research on student presentations (in Spanish) at the University of Costa Rica. She is doing using discourse analysis. 

I am running a similar project entitled "The Acceptance of Bilingual Terminologies Extraction of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature: the Case of Veterinary Terminologies".

I believe you need to run this paper based on a quantitative method; preferably a multi-method approach and/or triangulation. I recommend survey; however, if you would like to evaluate the cause-and-effect relationship you may need to do a DA or SA to understand the rationale for popularity of one term or rejection of the other.

Popular contemporary model:

Why is conversation so easy?

Garrod S, Pickering MJ.

Trends Cogn Sci. 2004 Jan;8(1):8-11.

Toward a neural basis of interactive alignment in conversation.

Menenti L, Pickering MJ, Garrod SC.

Front Hum Neurosci. 2012 Jun 27;6:185

But see also:

Dialog as interpersonal synergy

Fusaroli R, Raczaszek-Leonardi J, Tylén K

New Ideas in Psychology 32 (2014) 147–157

The content analysis cannot be seen as a linear approach. There are no simple and objective guidelines to conduct qualitative data analysis: each research is distinctive and the results depend on the knowledge, analytical skills and style of the researcher. In fact one of the challenges of content analysis is that there is no simple and correct manner to conduct it, in a way, that no unique defined standard or pattern has been established according to which content analysis should be carried on.

You can findin in the attached books the methodology or complementary methods that best fits in your investigation.

Best regards

Have a look in the journal of discourse & society. Also Margaret Wetherell's edited collection on identities research as part of her work at The Open University (uk). I would also reiterate Michael's recommended reading.

Hi Maria,

I as I understand you, your goal is to look at interviews as performative events--instead of looking for narrative segments the interviewer has brought out, the interview as a whole can be understood as an interactive performance between the interviewer and respondent. I think you might find Bamberg's adaption of the Labov & Waletzky narrative model useful:

Bamberg, Michael GW. "Positioning between structure and performance." Journal of narrative and life history 7, no. 1-4 (1997): 335-342.

Bamberg presents an example of how to use functional aspects of narrative in interviews (e.g. temporality, evaluation, narrative positioning) to achieve pragmatic ends in interviews.

BTW, if you haven't read Labov & Waleztsky's original piece on narrative structures in personal experience, I highly recommend it--it's the foundational work for narrative analysis methods:

Labov, William, and Joshua Waletzky. "Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience." (1997).

Greetings Christopher! Thanks for your comments and for the differentiation of what Atlas can do: not the analysis but facilitates data management. This is what CA-purists often do not distinguish.

Give me a day or so to read your paper and I will send a comment.

Meanwhile, I do attach what I wrote about "empathy" and which is obviously similar to what you call "interactional sensitivity".

Best

Michael

Schegloff, E. A. (2010). Some Other “Uh(m)”s. Discourse Processes, 47(2), 130-174.

I think you might find some parts of Victor Lim Fei's doctoral dissertation useful. The thesis is available at http://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/29928.

This might help you find an answer to the discursive-side of your question, Abdelmadjid. But it takes a different path from some of the other discussions.

The gist is that Max Weber (1921/1952) did something like this and Harvey Sacks (1999) and Emmanuel Schegloff (1999) examined the methods that Weber used to interrogate a sacred text so to answer a sociological question.

Rod Watson (2009) introduces the Weber-Sacks-Schegloff sequence and briefly describes the textual analysis that was involved on pages 3-4 of his book. This might be a place to start to gauge whether this material might be helpful for your purposes.

Sacks (1999) located Weber’s methods but it is a complex read because it draws on ethnomethodology; and many people are not familiar with it. But you see how a small extract from a single text is produced as a case study that orients to local organisation of text as a practical accomplishment. It will help you find some commonalities between this and your research intentions, and so help to consider whether it is useful.

Weber used the Old Testament to produce a description of Ancient Israel. Sacks (1999) subjected Weber’s reading of the Old Testament text to praxeological examination so to determine Weber’s methods. Schegloff (1999) helps us to see how Sacks worked, discovered, and described the method used to transform Old Testament text into Weber’s formulation of Ancient Israel. So Schegloff is important because he helps us to see some of the taken-for-granted things in Sacks’ paper.

My offering, Abdelmadjid, is that by tracking these things in a retrospective way (i.e., what was Weber’s method?) that you might be able to determine a practical method that is useful for your studies: A prospective way of working. I hope that it helps in some way.

References

Sacks, H. (1999). Max Weber’s ancient Judaism. Theory, Culture, & Society, 16(1), 31-39. doi:10.1177/026327699016001002

Schegloff, E. A. (1999). On Sacks on Weber’s ancient Judaism: Introductory notes and interpretative resources. Theory, Culture, & Society, 16(1), 1-29. doi:10.1177/026327699016001001

Watson, R. (2009). Analysing practical and professional texts. Farnham, England: Ashgate.

Weber, M. (1921/1952). Ancient Judaism. City, State: Publisher.

I suggest you take a look at Prof. Hans Ladegaard's work. If you look at his full CV you will also find work in Danish.

Hi Maha,

triadic interactions are a very interesting area of investigation, and relatively rarely explored. You might be interested in Alison Pilnick's work on pharmacy consultations with children and their parents. There are clear differences between these interactions and more routine doctor-patient-carer consultations. I briefly commented on these differences in my paper about asymmetry in SSM (2009).

I hope the work goes well.

Wow--this doesn't seem like a project--this seems more like a life's work. The notion of "variables" implies that you're framing your questions using a quantitative (or sociolinguistic) perspective. Discourse analysis don't typically think in terms of 'variables' in quite the same way as, say, quantitative variationist sociolinguists do. You may want to look at the edited volume by Tuen van Dijk called "Discourse as Structure and and process". Chapter 8 deals specifically with argumentation. Also, two communication studies scholars come to mind--Scott Jacobs and Sally Jackson have done quite a bit of work on argumentation discourse. I think the more fundamental question for me is: why would there be any underlying/common argumentative trope common to speech genres as diverse as argumentative essay, online discussion, and oral debates? Whatever similarities there may be seem to pale simply by virtue of the context for each--UNLESS you have some particular topic or subject matter to compare, say, religious freedom or reproductive rights or something. Not sure if that's helpful or not. Good luck!

Sorry to have missed this interesting dialogue. While I think there are a lot of fascinating connections between CA and other theories/modes of analysis, this thread is no longer about CA. From the training I had, we regarded the folks doing membership categorization as its own form of analysis took a tack towards the ethnomethodological and the cognitive. While both the sequence and the category folks were inspired by Sacks, from the "purist" point of view, the stuff on "category bound activities" was not meant as an alternative to the sequential, but as a further specification of it. Schegloff's 2007 article "A tutorial on membership categorization" illustrates how sequential analyses underpins membership categorization. From a CA perspective, the tension is not between the cognitive/membership categorical and the sequential, but the structure vs. the action components. Specifically, the example Michael uses "Why don't you come and see me?" is ambiguous because the sequential and action components leave room for ambiguity--does its composition & position lead to a "hearing" of a request or an excuse. The main difference between the cognitive/psychological and the CA--in my opinion--is that whereas the former proposes that analysts get to say "what something could mean" the later proposes that participants get to say "what something could mean" where the role of the analyst is to prove it. The HUGE problem with the later (CA), then, is that analysts have to jump through hoops and turn inside out to get to that "read between the lines" part that Michael refers to as the exciting part of psychology.