conversation analysis (CA) media n.a research tradition, deriving from a branch of sociology known as ethnomethodology devoted to the detailed analysis of conversation as an instance of the situated social order. CA treats conversation as the outcome of participants’ methods of practical reasoning with the task of analysis being to show how this is accomplished. Thus CA seeks to display by the close analysis of transcribed conversational data the methods adopted by participants in achieving orderliness—the conversational structures to which participants attend and the interpretive work which they undertake. A major and early, but enduring, focus of attention within CA has been on the conversational turn-taking machinery - how participants know when to take a turn, for instance, and how different types of turn cohere with each other. The origins of CA may be traced back to a set of transcribed lectures given by Harvey Sacks (1935-1975) given over a eight-year period from 1964 to 1972 and subsequently published in two volumes in 1994 as Lectures on Conversation. However, the initial emphasis on conversation per se as the object of analysis has gradually been replaced by a broader interest in ‘talk-in-interaction’. This has enabled CA to engage with a wider corpus of data than naturally-occuring conversation and elements of the CA approach have enjoyed wide currency in fields such as education, applied linguistics, health communication, media studies and social psychology. mmo
