33.2424, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Liddicoat (2021)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2424. Fri Aug 05 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2424, Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Liddicoat (2021)

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Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2022 21:11:54
From: Melissa Hauber-Özer [mhauberr at gmu.edu]
Subject: An Introduction to Conversation Analysis

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36811337


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-3169.html

AUTHOR: Anthony J. Liddicoat
TITLE: An Introduction to Conversation Analysis
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Melissa B Hauber-Özer, George Mason University

SUMMARY

Liddicoat’s 3rd edition expands on the previous 2007 and 2011 editions with
three additional chapters covering action formation and epistemics,
multimodality and spoken interaction, and written conversation. This edition
also addresses the topics of online and mobile technology, cross-cultural
conversation, and medical discourse and includes a glossary of key terms and
new exercises. The updated companion website houses resources for Chapters 3,
5, 7, and 9, which comprise audio files and transcriptions to practice
applying chapter concepts, instructions and applications for transcribing, and
exercises for turn taking, organization, and repair. 

Chapter 1 provides background about the development of the conversation
analysis method, particularly its roots in ethnomethodology, the work of
Garfinkel, Goffman, and Sacks, and the core assumptions. It also contains a
comparison of conversation analysis with similar methods (pragmatics,
discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, discursive psychology, and
critical discourse analysis) and then closes with an overview of the book.
Chapter 2 discusses issues related to data collection in detail, including the
goal of capturing naturally occurring conversation, recording procedures, the
role of technology in mediating phone and online interactions, and ethical
considerations. Next, Liddicoat provides a detailed explanation of reasons and
ways to transcribe conversational data in Chapter 4, featuring Jefferson’s
(1984, 2004) transcription system, illustrated by numerous excerpts. The
following chapter comprises a brief discussion of perspectives on and methods
of analyzing conversational data to identify patterns or rules of interaction.
Chapter 5 explains turn-taking in conversation, particularly how turns are
constructed and managed and possible models of turn-taking, guided primarily
by the work of Sacks et al. (1974). Chapter 6 covers gaps and overlaps in
turn-taking, defining transition space and explaining problems in transitions
and speaker selection, and Chapter 7 describes adjacency pairs as typical
exchanges and types of preferred and dispreferred responses.  An extensive
discussion of various ways that sequences are expanded, before, during, and
after the adjacency pair follows in Chapter 8, and Chapter 9 explains types
and positions of repair, which can be initiated by the speaker or the
recipient. Chapter 10, one of the new chapters added to this edition,
investigates epistemics, or “how states of knowledge are built into talk and
are relevant for how talk is designed” (p. 235), including epistemic status
and stance, and then action formation, “how participants in interaction
understand what is being done in the talk and how speakers design talk in ways
that help participants know what actions they are performing” (p. 235). Also
new to this edition, Chapter 11 follows with an explanation of embodied
actions and the multimodality of spoken interaction, in other words, the
non-verbal aspects of conversation. The third new chapter, Chapter 12,
describes distinct patterns that occur in online written interaction,
including non-linguistic modes such as emojis, images, and hyperlinks.
Chapters 13 and 14, respectively, explain adjacency pairs and organization
patterns for opening and closing conversations, both via telephone and face to
face. Chapter 15 describes how storytelling functions as extended turn-taking,
and then Chapter 16 closes the volume by briefly addressing how conversation
analysis can be applied to institutional settings such as classrooms and to
computer-mediated communication and language acquisition processes. 

EVALUATION

Liddicoat provides detailed and thorough coverage of conversation analysis
concepts and procedures, illustrated by extensive examples. The organization
of the text is generally logical and well structured to build upon concepts
sequentially. Each chapter features practical exercises to walk the reader
through the conversation analysis process in a straightforward and accessible
way, with additional resources for learning to transcribe and analyze
interactional data on the companion website, which I did not see referenced in
the text. 

Although the writing can be a bit dry and technical, it provides a helpful
foundation for a reader new to conversation analysis. I was interested in
reading this text because I teach both research methods and language teacher
education courses but had only basic familiarity with the conversation
analysis approach. I wanted to gain a better understanding of the purpose,
process, and differences from related methods such as discourse analysis, and
I certainly achieved this goal. I even found myself analyzing my own
conversations in real time using the concepts from the book. 

That said, the text convinced me that my interests and orientation lean more
towards a discourse analysis approach. Based on my understanding, conversation
analysis deliberately does not take into account contextual factors or speaker
identities such as culture, power relations, socioeconomic class, accent,
race, or gender beyond what is stated in the interaction. As a critically
oriented scholar, I see these factors as crucial to understanding and
interpreting interactions and the researcher’s identity and perspectives as
informing interpretations. In contrast, it seems that conversation analysis
procedures are seen as objective, informed by the positivist assumption that
the researcher can bracket contextual knowledge and theoretical orientations.
This raised questions for me regarding the practical use of conversation
analysis and whether it is compatible with a critical orientation. In my view,
these are limitations of the method rather than the text.

As a language teacher educator, I can see how conversation analysis would be
useful for teaching language patterns through modeling authentic
conversations. I appreciate that distinctions between languages and cultural
differences in interactions were addressed in this edition; however, I would
have liked to see more extended discussion of these important aspects of
interaction in today’s globalized world and the international discipline of
linguistics. Although there were several data excerpts from other languages,
there was very limited discussion of how and why patterns differ. The
examination of turn-taking in Chapter 5, for instance, does not address
language or cultural differences in turn-taking or, to my previous point, the
role of power relations in determining next speaker. Similarly, Chapter 6 left
me contemplating what differences can be seen in overlap and domination of
interactions by language, culture, race, gender, and so on. 

Although references and examples were updated in this edition, many were still
rather dated. For example, the citations for analysis methods in Chapter 5
were mainly from the 1990s and early 2000s, with the latest being from 2009,
which made me wonder whether there have been few developments in approaches
over the past few decades. Despite the rapidity of technological change, many
of the references in the new chapter on online written interaction, Chapter
12, are also from nearly a decade ago. The examples in this chapter, focusing
primarily on internet chat rooms, which are far less commonly used now than in
the late 20th century, also felt dated. Social networking sites, text
interactions and video conferencing would have provided more current
illustrations; for example, with the recent rise in video conferencing for
both social and workplace interactions, written chat communications and how
they relate to concurrent spoken interactions and embodied/non-verbal
communication would be interesting to examine. 

There were also a number of minor typographical errors such as “a pre-formed
conceptions” (p. 4) and “trough” instead of through (p. 381) that should have
been corrected during the copyediting process. 

In summary, despite some missed opportunities for updating and expanding the
application of conversation analysis beyond one linguistic and cultural
context, this text provides the necessary conceptual foundation, procedural
guidance, and instructional material for an introductory course on
conversational analysis. With a bit of creativity, an instructor could bring
in supplementary resources, contemporary and international examples, and
activities relevant to students’ interests. 

REFERENCES

Jefferson, G. (1984). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to
inappropriately next-positioned matters. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage
(Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp.
191-221). Cambridge University Press.

Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In
G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation
(pp. 13-31). John Benjamins.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Melissa Hauber-Özer (Ph.D. in International Education, George Mason
University) is an Assistant Professor of Qualitative Inquiry in the University
of Missouri’s College of Education and Human Development. Melissa previously
taught adult literacy and English as a second language in the United States
for over 15 years in both non-formal and university settings. Her research
focuses on language and literacy education in migration contexts and employs
critical participatory methodology to examine issues of equity and access for
linguistically and culturally diverse learners. She teaches qualitative
research methods courses for master’s and doctoral students and language
teacher education courses.





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