Conversation Analysis - the Ethnomethodological kind (2008/9)
Conversation Analysis is a technique from Applied Linguistics that goes
back to the 1960's when tape recorders first became widely available and
call centres were in their infancy. In CA there is a real focus on
starting with (recorded) data and working up to theory. The early
literature has a rather "behaviourist" feel, but the more recent
writings have emphasised the ethnomethodological roots and the idea
that the scientist can, when studying language in use, call on his or her
folk understanding of what is said. If he or she cannot understand
what was said, then no communicative act took place. I was most
convinced by Paul
ten Have - a beautiful piece of writing. The challenge for CA
researchers is to notice that something interesting is happening.
I have applied conversation analysis to the recordings of the
Communicator project. The observation is that just under a
third of calls result in the user "not wanting to use the system on a
regular basis". Given the tallent and resources put into that DARPA
programme it seems obvious there is something we don't know about
language in use.
@article{Wallis08,
author="Peter Wallis",
title="Revisiting the {DARPA} Communicator Data using {Conversation
Analysis}",
journal="Interaction Studies",
volume=9,
number=3,
month="October",
year=2008,
}