Conversation Analysis — Complete
Course Summary
Part 1 — Foundations
1. What is Conversation Analysis (CA)?
CA is a way of studying social life through talk. The goal is to describe, analyse, and
understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life (Sidnell, 2010, p. 1).
Two guiding questions (Garcia, 2013):
● How do people communicate through talk?
● How do people structure and coordinate their actions to produce coherent
interaction?
CA isn't interested in what people could say in theory — it's interested in what people
actually do with each other, turn by turn.
2. CA's Approach
CA works from recordings of real talk, transcribed in fine detail using Jefferson
transcription conventions. The data is what people actually said — not what we imagine
or remember.
CA uses an emic perspective: it tries to understand talk the way the participants
themselves understand it, by looking at how each speaker responds to the one before. The
response shows the interpretation.
3. Jefferson Transcription Conventions
Key symbols you'll see in transcripts:
● °word° — quieter than the surrounding talk
● (( )) — transcriber's description (e.g., laughter, nods)
● .hh — audible in-breath; hh — audible out-breath
● word (underlined) — emphasis (louder or higher pitch)
● (0.5) — silence in tenths of a second (called a gap if the turn isn't finished yet)
● [ ] — overlap in talk
● ↑ ↓ — sharp pitch rise or fall
● wo:rd — stretched sound
● = — latching: no gap at all between turns (0.0 second onset)
● - — cut-off (a sudden stop, often glottal)
,A negative onset = an overlap that begins before the current speaker has reached possible
completion.
4. Ordinary vs. Institutional Talk (Week 1 Q1)
CA looks at two broad types of interaction.
Ordinary conversation — everyday interactions between friends, family, colleagues,
strangers, etc., that are not specifically work- or task-oriented (Garcia, 2013, p. 6).
Examples: dinner-table chat, phone calls between friends, hallway gossip.
Institutional talk — talk through which professionals do their work and lay people pursue
practical goals with those professionals (Drew & Heritage, 1992, p. 3). Examples:
doctor–patient consultations, courtroom hearings, classroom lessons, news interviews,
customer service calls.
Key insight: ordinary conversation is the foundation. Institutional talk shows characteristic
modifications of ordinary turn-taking (e.g., restricted question/answer rights in news
interviews, fixed sequences in cockpit communication).
5. Why CA Matters
CA has real-world applications:
● Medicine — doctor–patient interaction, surgical team coordination
● Aviation, shipping, control rooms — high-stakes professional coordination
● Education — how teachers explain, question, and engage students
● Politics and news media — how participants manage turn-taking and produce
interactional effects
● Training professionals — passing on "professional vision" through talk
● Storytelling research — e.g., the CIARA project (Conversational Interaction in
Aboriginal and Remote Australia) across four Aboriginal language communities and
Anglo-Australians
How people structure talk is consequential for what they accomplish.
6. The Five Domains of Conversation Organisation
Lecture 1 mapped the field into five areas, all covered in the course:
● Practices for taking and constructing turns — chapters 3 and 8
● Building sequences of action — chapters 4 and 6
● Preference — chapter 5
● Repairing trouble — chapter 7
● Stories — chapter 9
7. Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity = shared understanding between people in conversation.
, CA shows that intersubjectivity isn't magic — it's built through:
● The structures of turn-taking, sequence organisation, and repair
● Each response publicly displays an interpretation of the previous turn
● If a misunderstanding occurs, repair is available to fix it
Example: when you ask "Can you pass the salt?" and the other person hands you the salt,
their response shows they understood your turn as a request. Sequential organisation gives
you a continuously updated context of mutual understanding.
Part 2 — Turn-Taking (Chapter 3)
8. The "Grossly Apparent Facts" of Conversation
Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) noted ten basic facts that any turn-taking model must
account for:
1. Speaker change recurs.
2. Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time.
3. More-than-one-at-a-time happens, but only briefly.
4. Transitions with no gap and no overlap are common.
5. Turn order varies.
6. Turn size varies.
7. Length of conversation is not fixed in advance.
8. What parties say is not fixed in advance.
9. Distribution of turns is not fixed in advance.
10.Number of parties can vary.
The system is locally managed and party-administered — designed to preserve
one-at-a-time.
9. The One-at-a-Time Rule and Its Exceptions
The core principle: only one person speaks at a time. This minimises gaps (silences) and
overlaps.
But there are recognised exceptions:
● Choral occasions — group greetings, simultaneous "happy birthday"
● Assessments — often produced in overlap (e.g., two people saying "wow" together)
● Laughter — usually a group activity
These exceptions don't break the system — they're places where simultaneous talk is
socially expected.
10. Why "Waiting Until the Other Person Finishes" Doesn't Work
You might think people just wait for the other to stop, then start. This can't be right.
Course Summary
Part 1 — Foundations
1. What is Conversation Analysis (CA)?
CA is a way of studying social life through talk. The goal is to describe, analyse, and
understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life (Sidnell, 2010, p. 1).
Two guiding questions (Garcia, 2013):
● How do people communicate through talk?
● How do people structure and coordinate their actions to produce coherent
interaction?
CA isn't interested in what people could say in theory — it's interested in what people
actually do with each other, turn by turn.
2. CA's Approach
CA works from recordings of real talk, transcribed in fine detail using Jefferson
transcription conventions. The data is what people actually said — not what we imagine
or remember.
CA uses an emic perspective: it tries to understand talk the way the participants
themselves understand it, by looking at how each speaker responds to the one before. The
response shows the interpretation.
3. Jefferson Transcription Conventions
Key symbols you'll see in transcripts:
● °word° — quieter than the surrounding talk
● (( )) — transcriber's description (e.g., laughter, nods)
● .hh — audible in-breath; hh — audible out-breath
● word (underlined) — emphasis (louder or higher pitch)
● (0.5) — silence in tenths of a second (called a gap if the turn isn't finished yet)
● [ ] — overlap in talk
● ↑ ↓ — sharp pitch rise or fall
● wo:rd — stretched sound
● = — latching: no gap at all between turns (0.0 second onset)
● - — cut-off (a sudden stop, often glottal)
,A negative onset = an overlap that begins before the current speaker has reached possible
completion.
4. Ordinary vs. Institutional Talk (Week 1 Q1)
CA looks at two broad types of interaction.
Ordinary conversation — everyday interactions between friends, family, colleagues,
strangers, etc., that are not specifically work- or task-oriented (Garcia, 2013, p. 6).
Examples: dinner-table chat, phone calls between friends, hallway gossip.
Institutional talk — talk through which professionals do their work and lay people pursue
practical goals with those professionals (Drew & Heritage, 1992, p. 3). Examples:
doctor–patient consultations, courtroom hearings, classroom lessons, news interviews,
customer service calls.
Key insight: ordinary conversation is the foundation. Institutional talk shows characteristic
modifications of ordinary turn-taking (e.g., restricted question/answer rights in news
interviews, fixed sequences in cockpit communication).
5. Why CA Matters
CA has real-world applications:
● Medicine — doctor–patient interaction, surgical team coordination
● Aviation, shipping, control rooms — high-stakes professional coordination
● Education — how teachers explain, question, and engage students
● Politics and news media — how participants manage turn-taking and produce
interactional effects
● Training professionals — passing on "professional vision" through talk
● Storytelling research — e.g., the CIARA project (Conversational Interaction in
Aboriginal and Remote Australia) across four Aboriginal language communities and
Anglo-Australians
How people structure talk is consequential for what they accomplish.
6. The Five Domains of Conversation Organisation
Lecture 1 mapped the field into five areas, all covered in the course:
● Practices for taking and constructing turns — chapters 3 and 8
● Building sequences of action — chapters 4 and 6
● Preference — chapter 5
● Repairing trouble — chapter 7
● Stories — chapter 9
7. Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity = shared understanding between people in conversation.
, CA shows that intersubjectivity isn't magic — it's built through:
● The structures of turn-taking, sequence organisation, and repair
● Each response publicly displays an interpretation of the previous turn
● If a misunderstanding occurs, repair is available to fix it
Example: when you ask "Can you pass the salt?" and the other person hands you the salt,
their response shows they understood your turn as a request. Sequential organisation gives
you a continuously updated context of mutual understanding.
Part 2 — Turn-Taking (Chapter 3)
8. The "Grossly Apparent Facts" of Conversation
Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) noted ten basic facts that any turn-taking model must
account for:
1. Speaker change recurs.
2. Overwhelmingly, one party talks at a time.
3. More-than-one-at-a-time happens, but only briefly.
4. Transitions with no gap and no overlap are common.
5. Turn order varies.
6. Turn size varies.
7. Length of conversation is not fixed in advance.
8. What parties say is not fixed in advance.
9. Distribution of turns is not fixed in advance.
10.Number of parties can vary.
The system is locally managed and party-administered — designed to preserve
one-at-a-time.
9. The One-at-a-Time Rule and Its Exceptions
The core principle: only one person speaks at a time. This minimises gaps (silences) and
overlaps.
But there are recognised exceptions:
● Choral occasions — group greetings, simultaneous "happy birthday"
● Assessments — often produced in overlap (e.g., two people saying "wow" together)
● Laughter — usually a group activity
These exceptions don't break the system — they're places where simultaneous talk is
socially expected.
10. Why "Waiting Until the Other Person Finishes" Doesn't Work
You might think people just wait for the other to stop, then start. This can't be right.
