METHODOLOGY
Ethnomethodologists and conversation analysis seek to discover the interpretive practices through which interactants produce, recognize, and interpret their own and others’ actions. (Pomerantz, 1988, p. 361)
3.1 Introduction
This study is informed by the
theoretical principles of ethnomethodology and a conversation analysis (CA)
approach. Both are outlined initially in this chapter, together with procedures
for doing CA work. Since this study examines the social organisation of institutional
activity, and explicates aspects of interaction as constitutive of the setting,
the chapter outlines considerations relevant to undertaking CA work. The
chapter concludes with an examination of a number of specific studies that have
informed the data analysis in this study. These include studies of ordinary
conversation (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974) and of classroom talk.
3.2 Theoretical position of
ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology was developed by Harold Garfinkel (1972; 1991) as an
alternate sociology. According to Garfinkel the “ethnomethodologicalness” of
the phenomena of interest in ethnomethodology involves:
1.
being available to policies of ethnomethodology
but not to classic sociological approaches e.g. ethnomethodological
indifference rather than a priori determinations
2.
in general found uninteresting by social
science (and ignored)
3.
not reducible in the conventional social
science sense without loss of the phenomenon itself
4.
“inspectably the case” (not available through
generalizations, nor typifications nor metaphoric representation)
5.
discoverable only (not imagined)
6.
specifying foundational issues for
ethnomethodology as a sociology concerned with “issues of produced order in and
as practical action”
7.
produced locally, organised within, and
reflexively accountable
8.
“every topic of logic,
order, meaning, or method is eligible for respecification as only locally and
reflexively produced, naturally accountable phenomena of order.” (Garkinkel,
1991, pp. 16-17)
Garfinkel’s comments on ethnomethodology encapsulate
his critique of mainstream sociology and the ways he proposes that
ethnomethodology provides an alternative. For example, he poses that most
sociological studies are driven a priori by theory and typifications that
obscure the very phenomena that they seek to understand. He positions ethnomethodology
as an alternate approach to understanding the central concern of sociology –
the social order. Respecification is proposed as the way in which
ethnomethodology undertakes to examine the social order.
3.2.1. Respecification
Central to the development of ethnomethodology was Harold
Garfinkel’s intention to provide a methodological approach that would challenge
conventional sociology. Although other “new moments” in sociology have sought
to do this, frequently they buy into sociological ways of addressing core
issues and in this way contribute to the maintenance of the very aspects they
would seek to change (Button, 1991). Ethnomethodology has avoided this, since
from its beginnings it was committed to the respecification of what counts as
doing sociological research. Respecification is evident in all aspects of
ethnomethodology, from its approach to topics of study, methods of research and
through to the place of theory in research.
Ethnomethodology claims to be an alternate sociology precisely because
it respecifies how to go about understanding fundamental concerns and issues of
sociology.
A central issue for sociology, for
example, concerns the relationship between social structures and the agency of
the individual (Barnes, 2001). For some sociologists a fundamental belief is
that the individual has little control over what are the wider and more
powerful influences and affects of society. Social structures determine social
reality for individuals. The influence and effect of the individual is constrained
by wider forces. Garfinkel gave attention to what he believed to be the source
of social order: ethnomethods or the ways in which people on an everyday basis
make sense of their world through actions. He gave his focus to interactions in
order to examine the ways in which mutual activities talk social realities into
being (Freiberg & Freebody, 1995). In this way, Garkinkel positioned
ethnomethodology as an alternative to functionalism.
Parson’s Structure of Social Action (Parsons, 1937; cited in Hilbert,
1992) laid the foundations for functional sociology which came to dominate
sociology in
Garfinkel, a student of Parsons, questioned the view that social order
came about through norms and rules of institutionalized systems (Holstein &
Gubrium, 1994) and the shared ideas of people concerning what is morally right.
Garfinkel took a different tack to Parsons. This eliminated a priori theorising
about norms and used investigation instead. Garfinkel’s approach to social
order takes a local approach which focuses on the everyday, the ordinary and
mundane. Conceptually Garfinkel positioned ethnomethodology in opposition to
the focus for social inquiry on a macro level. Garfinkel looked to the
everyday, arguing that the site for inquiry was the local and its focus should
be members’ practices. He claimed the local order had its own accountability
evidenced in its self-organisation and management.
Garkinkel was critical not only of structural approaches to sociology
but also of survey research and quantitative analyses that examined aspects of
it. Although earlier sociological work had drawn on anthropologically inspired
ethnographies, sociological inquiry in the 1950s and 60s involved a central
concern with variable analysis. Conceived by Lazarsfeld (Benson & Hughes,
1991), it involved data collection methods such as questionnaires and
interviews, and statistical analyses of information from these. An
ethnomethodological critique of these included that individual cases were
irretrievable, that coding obscured individual details, and that categories
used were those of researchers rather than those of the researched.
Most importantly, the use of variable analysis reflected sociology’s
concern with “providing a social basis of dealing with the problem of evidence
and inference …” (Benson & Hughes, 1991, p. 110). Garfinkel argued that
ultimately researchers engaged in statistical analysis failed to perceive or
acknowledge the interpretive processes that it involved. In seeking to be
objective, researchers overlooked the role played by their own common knowledge
and interpretive processes. In a study of clinicians’ work in an outpatient
psychiatric clinic Garfinkel determined a range of ad-hocing processes central
to categorising patients. Garfinkel showed the essential nature of ad-hocing to
categorising as an activity and illustrated the way in which social scientists
treated social categories as static (Brandt, 1992, p. 315). Garfinkel has
maintained a program of research that has highlighted the interpretive
processes involved in social and scientific research.
Respecification of the focus for
sociological analyses has resulted in understandings that inform numerous
aspects of sociology. For example, Schegloff’s (1992) study of repair in
ordinary conversation enabled consideration of intersubjectivity as the
practical accomplishment of what is taken to be going on during social
activity. That is, it informed how
people accomplish their shared understandings of what is going on through the
sequential updating of their accounts in their turns at talk. Respecification
has been applied to approach old problems with “fresh” eyes in areas such as
education. For example, Freebody and
3.2.2 A phenomenological
sensibility
Garfinkel
perceived that the emphasis on administrative structures or demographic and
family background variables treated people as cultural or “judgemental dopes”
(Sharrock, 2001). Ethnomethodologists instead have “sought to exhibit the
phenomenal complexity and material embeddedness of conventional
understandings.” (Lynch & Peyrot, 1992, p. 118). The approach developed in
ethnomethodology expresses a “phenomenological sensibility” (Heap & Roth,
1973, p. 363-65; cited Maynard & Clayman, 1991, p. 388).
Phenomenology
then undertakes to see how members experience “the world and all its
manifestations as real through identifiable acts of consciousness.” (Maynard & Clayman, 1991. p. 389). As a philosophical school of thought, phenomenology can be traced back
to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind. However its current expression dates from the
work of Husserl. Husserl maintained that objects and
scientific achievement rest on “a vast prescientific foundation of unclarified
presuppositions” (Maynard & Clayman, 1991. p. 389). To discern and
elucidate these is to reach the ultimate grounds of knowledge (Maynard &
Clayman, 1991, p. 389). Husserl took a descriptive orientation to his approach.
Phenomenology’s influence on Garfinkel was most obvious through the work
of Husserl’s student, Alfred Schutz. The phenomenological notion of Lebenswelt, “the whole universe of life”
(Schutz, 1970, p. 259) or “the mundane world of lived experience” became the starting
point for the phenomenological sociology of Schutz (Heritage, 1984, p. 44). For
Schutz, the social world in the first instance is experientially interpreted as
“meaningful and intelligible” through the social categories and constructs
evidenced in language. Researchers also interpret using their own knowledge of
these things. This is referred to as second order constructs or “constructs of
the second degree” (Schutz, 1970, p. 273).
Schutz maintained this was so even in studies of natural science (Heritage,
1984).
3.2.3 Intersubjectivity
The notion of intersubjective understanding is central to Schutz’s work.
He proposes the “reciprocity of perspectives” (1970, p. 183) to explain the way
in which members interact and, therefore, overcome differences inherent in
their own uniqueness. It involves two basic idealizations: that of the
interchangeability of standpoints and the idealization of the congruency of the
system of relevances. The former involves the taken-for granted assumption that
if the ego and alter ego were to change places things would be experienced and
perceived in the same way. The congruency of the system of relevances takes it
that individuals assume that differences inherent in the uniqueness of their
physical situations are irrelevant in their interactions and, that they have
“selected and interpreted the actually of potentially common objects and their
features in an identical manner” (Schutz, 1970, p. 183). Private experience
according to Schutz is thus transcended by a common world (Schutz, 1962a, cited
Heritage, 1984, p. 55).
For Schutz the world of shared
experience is created or brought into being through language. He perceives that
individuals’ knowledge is only gained in part through personal experience, with
the rest being socially derived. Schutz focused on language to explain this. He
asserted that “the typifying medium par
excellence by which socially derived knowledge is transmitted is the
vocabulary and the syntax of everyday language.” (Schutz,
1970, p. 96). Inherent in the naming of things is typification and
generalization. Garfinkel’s consequent focus on language, in the development of
ethnomethodology, was ground breaking for sociology and a source of
controversy. Central to his focus were the notions of reflexivity and
indexicality.
3.2.4 Reflexivity and
indexicality
The ethnomethodological “version of reflexivity” (Lynch, 2000, p. 26),
was developed by Garfinkel and predates many current usages and definitions
(Lynch, 2000, Macbeth, 2001). It takes reflexivity to be integral to all social
action, including that of analysts. To Garfinkel and ethnomethodologists,
reflexivity refers to “accounting practices and accounts” (Lynch, 1991) or to
the “embodied practices through which persons singly and together, retrospectively
and prospectively produced account-able states of affairs” (Lynch, 1991, p.
73). In other words, members display their understandings of the actions of
others through actions. These in turn are available as an account for others.
According to Garfinkel (1967, p. 4), “Members’ accounts are reflexively and
essentially tied for their rational features to the socially organised
occasions of their use for they are features
of the socially organised occasions of their use.”.
The “essential reflexivity of accounts” (MacBeth, 2001) is a taken-for-granted
aspect of social interaction and in that sense unremarkable. This is shown in
the way that members treat each others’ accounts as “the most passing matter of
fact” (Garfinkel, 1967).
Language is indexical. That is, its intelligibility is tied to the
circumstances for its use (Maynard & Clayman, 1991, p. 392). As Garfinkel
demonstrated (1967) it is impossible to produce a linguistic utterance that
does not make use of ‘et cetera’. Rather than treating this as a problem,
ethnomethodology takes indexicality to be a resource for members in the
organisation of local action, and makes it a topic for investigation by
analysts. In this sense then, Garfinkel, (1967, p. 11) describes
“ethnomethodology” as the term used to refer to “the investigation of the
rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as
contingent ongoing accomplishments of organised artful practices of everyday
life.”
3.3 Conversation analysis
CA takes the analysis of talk as “situated social practices” (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992) as its focus. It describes “the procedures and expectations in terms of which speakers produce their own behaviour and interpret the behaviour of others.” (Heritage, 1984, p. 241). Central to this is the analysis and understanding of conversation as being sequentially organised as turns at talk (Heap, 1997). CA aims to reveal or make explicit the “lay analysis” (Watson, 1992, p. 263) or “tacit reasoning procedures” (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998) used by members in the production of everyday talk-in-interaction. Its focus of study is the “interactional organization of social activities.” (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998, p. 14).
The
approach was developed initially by Harvey Sacks, and later in collaboration
with colleagues Schegloff and Jefferson (Psathas, 1995), during the mid 1960s.
It involved the detailed examination of recorded conversations so as to
describe the structural organisation of everyday language use and the social
order that it revealed (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998). Specifically Sacks
posited a turn-taking system, also called a speech exchange system. His work
involved the analysis of members’ management of the system (Watson, 1992, p. 263),
using recordings of naturally occurring talk. Sacks rejected the use of
recollections of actual talk, and the use of artificial talk constructed for
the purposes of analysis. The use of tape recordings by Sacks was innovative.
It was part of his attempt to deal with “specific, singular events of human
conduct” (Heritage, 1984, p. 235) rather than type constructs. In this way he
strove to develop an approach firmly grounded in the lived social world, and in
the process “established nothing less than an alternative sociology of an
analytically revolutionary kind.” (Watson, 1992, p. 263).
Sacks’s development of CA evidences
wide-ranging influences. Theoretically it was informed by ethnomethodology. It
drew on Goffman’s work on the interaction order. Other non-sociological
influences on Sacks included: ordinary language philosophy, Chomskian
generative grammar, Freudian psychology and anthropological fieldwork (Sacks,
1995). The influence of ordinary language philosophy (Austin, 1970;
Wittgenstein, 1958) is evidenced particularly in the way in which CA sees the
“identity of action as dependent on community conventions and practices applied
in ways sensitive to local settings of interaction.” (Heap,
1997, p. 221). Sacks’ studies themselves are “demonstration of what the
idea of ‘language game’ might stand for” (Lee, 1991, p. 223).
3.3.2 Conversation analysis and ethnomethodology
CA emerged from its ethnomethodological roots to become a “prominent form of ethnomethodological work” (Heritage, 1984, p. 233) and a “distinctive field of research” (Heritage, 1984, p. 234). Despite its distinctive work, CA retains its relationship to ethnomethodology through shared theoretical perspectives and a common interest in social order. Ethnomethodology and CA are therefore, a “family of related and overlapping empirical approaches" (Watson, 1991, p. 268) or "cognate sociological approaches" (Watson, 1992). Some would suggest that CA is “perhaps the most visible and influential form of ethnomethodological research” (Maynard & Clayman, 1991, p. 396).
The concern with order and the local accomplishment of it is arguably the most salient evidence of the ethnomethodological roots of CA. According to Psathas (1995), CA’s basic assumptions are that order is produced, situated, oriented to by parties rather than conceived by analysts, repeatable and recurrent. The task of the analyst is to discover, describe and analyse the structures of social action (practices and procedures and so on), to put aside issues of frequency and applicability and to produce analysis that is “formal, that is, structural, organizational, logical, atopically, contentless, consistent, and abstract, terms.” (Psathas, 1995, p. 3). Pomerantz determines minimally three central things that ethnomethodologists and CA researchers agree on: the focus on “how participants themselves produce and interpret each other’s actions.”; desire to treat “ordinary events as worthy of serious analytic attention” and preference for analysing naturally occurring interactions (Pomerantz, 1988, pp. 360-361)
According to Taylor and Cameron
(1987) the central principles of CA are accountability, normativity and
intersubjectivity. These show indisputably the ethnomethodological
underpinnings of the approach. In fact, they argue, it is “Garfinkelian
principles which give life to the distinctive methodology characteristic of
CA.” (Taylor & Cameron, 1987, p. 99). Due to this,
it is not possible for conversation analysts to divorce themselves from
ethnomethodology. Although the relationship between the two is contentious
(Sharrock, 2001) reference in this research to CA or to a conversation analytic
approach encompasses the understanding that the approach is
ethnomethodologically informed.
Although CA owes much to ethnomethdological understandings and shares many of its theoretical perspectives, it is obvious that the work of Sacks brought substance to Garfinkel’s aims for ethnomethodology.
The discovery of structure in interaction sequences proved to be an important finding because it confirmed what had been proposed in ethnomethodology from the outset, namely, that there is an order to be found in the most mundane of interactions, and that close examination of actual occurrences would enable the analyst to discover, describe, and analyze that orderliness. (Psathas, 1995, p. 17)
A number of central ethnomethodological concerns are brought to fruition through CA. These include its rigorous attention to detail through the analysis of the transcript data, and its approach to collection studies where all similar cases of a social activity are accounted for in the analysis (ten Have, 1990). CA has been able to provide the attention to detail and order that ethnomethodologists aspired to. Some have even argued that CA is the fruition of ethnomethodology’s ideals and is now its central arm.
A clear example of the way in which
CA has been able to inform ethnomethodology is provided through Heritage’s
account of the “architecture of intersubjectivity” provided by sequential
organisation (1984a, p. 254ff). That is intersubjectivity can be said to be
sequentially constructed so that members display their understanding and
correct/confirm those of their interactants (Taylor & Cameron, 1987, p.
104). In this way conversation, as seen through turn-taking, ensures that:
a context of publicly displayed and continuously updated intersubjective understanding is systematically sustained. It is through this “turn by turn” character of talk that participants display their understandings of the state of “the talk of one another” … Mutual understanding is thus displayed, to use Garfinkel’s term, “incarnately” in the sequentially organized details of conversational interaction. Moreover, because these understandings are publically produced, they are available as a resource for social scientific analysis. (Zimmerman & Boden, 1991, p. 259).
So the “problem of intersubjectivity”, or the “how” of members’ shared understandings, is shown to be an “ordinary practical accomplishment” (Taylor & Cameron, 1987, p. 104) in which members’ display their understanding and correct and/or confirm those of their interactants. (Taylor & Cameron, 1987, p. 105). According to Schegloff, “particular aspects of particular bits of conduct that compose the warp and weft of ordinary social life provide occasions and resources for understanding, which can also issue in problematic understandings.” (1992, p. 1299). Schegloff outlines the way in which turn taking works to maintain members’ shared understandings of ‘what is going on’ in a study of misunderstandings and repair.
The work of Goffman was another
influence on Sacks. In the 1950s Goffman focused on the “ritual nature of
face-to-face interaction” (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998, p. 27). He viewed our
social selves as performed and thus affecting how others orient towards us.
Although in his later work, Goffman showed an increasing focus on language, his
interest in the ritual aspect meant that he attended to ‘ceremonial’ aspects of
interaction. The use of ceremonial as distinct from basic intelligibility meant
that for Goffman there was a distinction to be made between the focus of the
interaction order and that of CA on the orderly nature of talk-in-interaction.
Sacks would not have maintained this distinction.
Erving Goffman contributed significantly to the analysis of face-to-face interaction for example, through developing analytic frameworks for describing and analysing multi-party interaction and through investigating framing invoked by a single speaker in a strip of talk (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992, pp. 24-25). Goffman’s work showed the value of the focus on the everyday interactions of people, including the social significance of it (Psathas, 1995). However, methodologically, Goffman’s data collection and analyses lacked the systematic methods employed by CA. Goffman eschewed recordings. Instead he used observation field notes and even constructed examples. Data was often used to illustrate Goffman’s concepts rather than to develop them. This method of using data contrasts with the approach taken by Sacks, who sought to develop theory that was data driven. Goffman also used concepts which “glossed” many of the situational particulars which had been his original focus. Finally and ultimately, some would argue his interests were with the individual, and the psychological, rather than with considerations of the structuring of interaction (Schegloff, 1988).
This section introduces and discusses methodological considerations for analyzing and explicating the social organisation of institutional activity. Many conversation analysts have examined talk-in-interaction within institutions, creating what has become a particular and dominant “arm” of the approach (Hester & Francis, 2001). The discussion draws out areas of contention relevant to this study.
One particular arm of conversation
analytic work is the study of institutionalized talk in order to describe the
machinery of the talk and the “recurrent and relatively specialized sets of
situated identities” Zimmerman & Boden, 1991, p. 13). For some researchers
this will involve comparisons with ordinary mundane conversation as a method of
explicating the features of talk that are “specialized and respecified in various
ways” (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1991) within the individual institutionalized
setting.
A key argument in the CA approach to institutional talk is that rather than people talking as they do because they are in a particular institutional context, “people’s ways of managing their talk itself constitutes the ‘institutionality’ of such settings” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 76). Studies of institutionalized talk have included, for example, talk in classrooms (McHoul, 1978), courtrooms (Atkinson & Drew, 1979), news interviews (Heritage, 1985), doctor-patient interaction (Heath, 1986), talk radio (Hutchby, 1996) and emergency services (Whalen & Zimmerman, 1989; Zimmerman, 1984).
Garfinkel’s early
ethnomethodological work examined such things as juries. His studies maintained
a focus on ‘the methods used by societal members to render their circumstances
orderly and intelligible” (Maynard & Clayman, 1991), and he employed
ethnographic methods of examination. The early studies of Sacks and Schegloff
sought to “explicate the endogenous organization of the talk-in-interaction”
rather than to detail the relationship between the talk and its setting (ten
Have, 2001, p. 3). Much later work by conversation analysts shifted the focus
from ethnographic data to the sequential analysis of talk. Their work can be
considered along several lines or forms of work (Maynard & Clayman, 1991,
p. 406). One is explicating the turn-taking that constitutes particular
activities, such as job interviews (Button, 1987). Another is describing the turn-taking
systems that organise aspects of institutional settings (Mehan ,1979) and
similarly, how modifications of the ordinary conversation speech exchange
system serve to accomplish certain functions such as neautrality in new
interviews (Clayman,1988). Another approach has been to examine how sequence
types exhibit reductions of conversations’ “options and opportunities for
action”, and “specializations and respecifications” of the remaining
conversational functions (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1991, p. 95) that carry
over from ordinary conversation. For example, Heritage (1984) examined third
turn responses in question-answer sequences.
Heritage and Greatbatch (1991) draw
out salient methodological aspects central to many conversation analytic
studies that examine institutional talk. Integral is an understanding of
aspects of it as different from ordinary conversation, though both involve “an ordinariness”. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974)
established the practice of taking ordinary conversation as “primary and as
collectively constituting a fundamental matrix through which social interaction
is organized.” (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1991, p. 94).
This view of ordinary conversation invites comparative studies (ten Have,
2001). Comparing the talk of ordinary conversation and that of a particular
institution is a methodological device used by some conversational analysts to
explicate features of institutionalized talk. The employment of comparison as
an analytic method adds to understandings of talk and the institutionalized
“whatness” of it. Comparative studies make it possible to identify both
distinctive and generic qualities of interaction in institutions (Maynard &
Clayman, 1991).
Drew and Sorjonen (1997) consider that all analytic approaches that examine institutionalized talk or dialogue involve some comparative aspect. They cite sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, microethnography of face-to-face interaction, discourse analysis, and CA as examples. Drew and Sorjonen claim that a necessary condition of establishing the distinctiveness of institutionalized talk is comparison with ordinary conversation. Further, features characteristic of certain settings “are associated with distinctive patterns of sequences in institutional interactions, as compared with, for example, ordinary conversation.” (Drew & Sorjonen, 1997, p. 106). Differences often involve the third position response in sequences involved in questioning and answering (Drew & Sorjonen, 1997). An example would be the evaluation act, in third position, in the classroom teacher-led IRE sequence. As well, some expected response types may be missing. For example, “oh” is not used for news receipt in news interviews (Heritage, 1985). Other features commonly occur in institutionalized talk and less frequently in ordinary conversation, for example ‘and’ (Heritage & Sorjonen, 1994).
According to Drew and Heritage
(1992, p. 22) there are three main differences between institutional and
ordinary talk. At least one participant
is oriented to the core “goal, task or activity” of the institution and talk is
informed by “goal orientations of a
relatively restricted conventional form”; “special and particular” constraints
are involved in contributions; and talk is associated with “inferential frameworks and procedures”
(cited in Cameron, 2001, p. 101). Cameron takes talk in magistrate’s court
(Harris, 1984, cited in Cameron, 2001, p. 101) to illustrate these. It is:
directed towards a specific goal reflected in the many questions and answers
about defendant’s resources; involves in particular a constraint on defendant’s
rights to ask questions; and exhibits inferences regularly made by defendant’s
concerning magistrates’ intentions (Cameron, pp. 101-103).
In a consideration of ‘talk and social structure’, Schegloff (1992) draws out two issues: the problem of relevance and the issue of procedural consequentiality. The former involves the need to show members’ orientations to aspects of context. Consideration of the problem of relevance provides a way to approach analysis so as to enrich through further detail. It may also be used to establish how social structure is “confirmed, reproduced, modulated, neutralized, or incrementally transformed in that actual conduct to which it must finally be referred.” (p. 110).
How does the fact that the talk is being conducted in some setting (e.g. “the hospital”) issue in any consequences for the shape, form, trajectory, content, or character of the interaction that the parties conduct? And what is the mechanism by which the context-so-understood has determinate consequences for the talk? (1992, p. 53).
The challenge, then, as stated by
Schegloff, is for the analyst to show a direct connection between the setting
and the talk that constitutes it. One way to do this is though detailing the
speech exchange system (Schegloff, 1992, p. 112).
Hester and Francis (2001) take issue with the institutional talk ‘arm’ of CA as it is conceived by Drew & Heritage (1992), and Schegloff (1992). Specifically, they disagree with what they describe as presuppositions of this work; most notably that it is the properties of talk-in-interaction which are “foundational for the recognizable production of given institutionalized settings.” (Hester & Francis, 2001, p. 207). The focus in particular on the sequential involves two claims. The first is that sequential forms are what compromise “institutionally specific and distinctive adaptions” of the speech-exchange system of ordinary talk (Hester & Francis, 2001, p. 210). The second claim is that the distinctive forms of turn-taking constitute what is the recognizable institutional character of a setting.
Hester and Francis argue that these claims involve a linear fallacy. They propose that it is not the sequential organisation of talk but, rather, particular membership categories and their related rights and responsibilities that comprise the accomplishment of everyday activities. Further, Hester and Francis argue that the claim that members orient to their institutional identities (e.g. Drew & Sorjonen, 1997, p. 111) ignores their situated work and the situated “recognizability” (Hester & Francis, 2001) involved in knowing an institutional setting as just that setting. In this way, Hester and Francis explicate what they regard as a fatal flaw in conversation analytic work. If CA studies adopt the view that it is the sequential nature of talk that constitutes the distinctiveness of institutional talk, they compromise the ethnomethodological underpinnings of their work (Hester & Francis, 2001, p. 271).
In a discussion of the issues related to ‘applied” CA, ten Have suggests that it is a matter of where the ‘centre of gravity’ is located in the research; either in “the institutionalized power of one category of participants over another” or in the “local interaction and its procedural infrastructure itself, in the general institutional arrangements” (ten Have, 2001, p. 5). ten Have indicates, that from an ethnomethodological position, the focus must be on the in situ work of members rather than the mechanics of their turn-taking.
Sharrock argues that to attempt to
make CA responsive to the
institutional setting (Sharrock, 1989, p. 657) is methodologically problematic
and represents a misunderstanding of turn-taking studies themselves. Sharrock’s
cites his own research on ‘police work’ to illustrate his claim that the
explication should be about how talk accomplishes the work rather than about
the turn-taking itself. In a discussion of interactional asymmetries in
institutional settings, Drew and Heritage (1992, p. 53) claim that researchers
who examine institutional talk must do one of two things. They must show the
ways in which participants talk is oriented to “role-related asymmetries” and
the consequences of this for its outcomes. In other words they must consider
Schegloff’s problems of relevance and procedural consequentiality. Or, they
must demonstrate by comparative analysis that the features of talk that
“embody” asymmetrical relationships do not usually exist in ordinary
conversation.
3.5 Conversation analysis and classroom interaction
This section outlines key
features (Austin, Dwyer & Freebody, 2003) of CA. It incorporates CA studies
of classroom interaction, selected according to their relevance to the analyses
and findings of the present study. Discussion also draws on some studies of
ordinary conversation, since that work is central to CA. Much of the
influential CA work has followed on from a study by Sacks, Schegloff and
In a groundbreaking study,
Sacks, Schegloff and
(1) For any turn, at the initial transition-relevance place of an initial turn-constructional unit:
(a) If the turn-so-far is so constructed as to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then the party so selected has the right and is obliged to take next turn to speak: no others have such rights or obligations, and transfer occurs at that place.
(b) If the turn-so-far is so constructed as not to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then self-selection for next speakership may, but need not, be instituted; first starter acquires rights to a turn, and transfer occurs at that place.
(c) If the turn-so-far is so constructed as not to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, the current speaker may, but need not continue, unless another self-selects.
2. If, at the initial transition-relevance place of an initial turn-constructional unit, neither 1a nor 1 b has operated, and, following the provision of 1c, current speaker has continued, then the rule-set a-c re-applies at the next transition-relevance place, and recursively at each next transition-relevance place, until transfer is affected (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 704)
In summary, as Cameron (2001, p.
90) neatly put it, the rules for turn taking are: “1 Current speaker selects next speaker or if this mechanism does not
operate, then … 2 Next speaker self-selects or if this mechanism does not operate, then … 3 Current speaker may
(but does not have to) continue”. These rules take account of related aspects
of turn-taking which continue to be, or have since become, the focus for
attention by analysts. These include recipient design; adjacency pairs, repair
and so. The rules also provide “proof procedure”, or the “display of
understandings in the talk of subsequent turns” to which analysts can turn (Sacks
et al., 1974, p. 729) for confirmation of their own interpretive work. As well,
the turn-taking system provides for comparative analysis of turn-taking systems
within speech exchange systems.
Sacks et al. (1974) discussed self-selection techniques in their explication of turn-taking. They considered the need to “begin with a beginning” (1974, p. 719) since beginnings with self-starters may be subject to overlap and potential impairment of analyzability. They suggested that appositional beginnings (e.g. ‘and’, ‘so’, ‘well’) satisfy the need to have a beginning but do so without “revealing much about the constructional features of the sentence thus begun. That is, it is possible for the speaker to start without having a plan in hand as a condition for starting.” (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 719). This allows the speaker to “start fast”. As Sacks et al. put it, in their outline of appositional beginnings and self-starting, “their overlap will not impair the constructional development or the analysability of the sentence they begin.” (1974, p. 719). They referred to the use of appositional beginnings, used in this way, as “turn-entry devices’ or “pre-starts”.
The rules of turn-taking in ordinary conversation provide a base for describing turn-taking features in other systems and a methodological approach to the analysis of institutionalized talk (Psathas, 1995). McHoul (1978) proposed modifications to the speech-exchange system of ordinary conversation in his study of the “feelings of formality” (p. 186) in teacher-led whole class instruction. The speech-exchange system for whole-class instruction involved the following rules:
(I)For any teacher’s turn-so-far, at the initial transition-relevance place of an initial turn-constructional unit:
If the teacher’s turn-so-far is so constructed as to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then the right and obligation to speak is given to a single student; no others have such a right or obligation and transfer occurs at the transition-relevance place.
If the teacher’s turn-so-far is so constructed as not to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then current speaker (the teacher) must continue.
(II) If 1(A) is effected, for any student-so-selected’s turn-so-far, at the initial transition-relevance place of an initial turn-constructional unit:
If the student-so-selected’s turn-so-far is so constructed as to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then the right and obligation to speak is given to the teacher; no others have such a right or obligation and transfer occurs at the transition-relevance place.
If the student-so-selected’s turn-so-far is so constructed as not to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then self-selection for next speaker may, but need not, be instituted with the teacher as first starter and transfer occurs at that transition-relevance place.
If the student-so-selected’s turn-so-far is so constructed as not to involve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then current speaker (the student), may, but need not, continue unless the teacher self-selects.
(III) For any teacher’s turn, if, at the initial transition-relevance place of an initial turn-constructional unit either I(A) has not operated or I(B) has operated and the teacher has continued, the rule-set I(A)-I(B) re-applies at the next transition relevance place and recursively at each transition-relevance place until transfer to a student is affected.
(IV) For any student’s turn, if, at the initial transition-relevance place of an initial turn-constructional unit neither II(A) nor II(B) has operated, and, following the provision of II(C), current speaker (the student) has continued, then the rule-set II(A)-II(C) re-applies at the next transition-relevance place and recursively at each transition-relevance place until transfer to the teacher is effected. (McHoul, 1978, p. 188)
McHoul (1978) argued that the
“rule-modifications” for the management of turns in the classroom form the
basis for the distribution of differential participation rights. McHoul found
that teachers took long pauses during their turns without others taking a turn.
This implied relaxed responsibilities as “hearers” in the classroom; “they only
need attend to others’ utterances which they (teachers) have called for.” (p.
192). McHoul illustrated the rules in terms of features of classroom
talk-in-interaction that differed from ordinary conversation. These included
maximisation of gap and pause, minimization of potential for overlap, and
minimization of permutability of turn-taking (McHoul, 1978, p. 189). The latter
refers to the potential for open-endedness which is strongly evidenced in
conversation. McHoul claimed that “in classrooms, no other parties than
teachers have the right to self-select as first-starters.” (p. 192). It needs
to be noted that McHoul was referring implicitly to all teacher-led instruction
in classrooms, rather than to interaction during time of individual activity.
A rule-of-thumb for when classroom
talk breaks down, and the teacher needs attention to return to order, is to
“Get back to normal procedure as soon as possible by doing something normal
(rule guided) rather than by invoking the rule(s) explicitly. The invocation of
the rule(s) can be done as a ‘reminder’.” (McHoul, 1978, p.
199). One way that teachers’ maintain attention is to have students
answer questions on the lesson’s topic(s). This distributes “the burden of
‘discovering’ knowledge” and requires that parties need to listen in order to answer
questions that might potentially come their way (McHoul, 1978, pp. 200-201).
Heap (1992) made a distinction
between “conversational machinery” and “discourse-action machinery” in order to
explicate goal-oriented talk where classroom members are “working interactively
toward the visible completion of a task” (Freiberg & Freebody, 1995, p.
198). Ordinary conversation is task independent, primarily involves speech
acts, makes relevant turns at talk and can be expanded through talk. Discourse
machinery (Heap, 1992), on the other hand, is task oriented. Its speech acts
are used to accomplish non-verbal acts and may be expanded by them.
Turns-at-talk may be oriented to prior non-verbal turns and to successive
non-verbal acts through directives followed by compliance. One consequence,
then, is that directives may be followed by non-verbal actions that replace
turns at talk. The distinction between conversation machinery and
discourse-action machinery is useful, although discourse-action machinery may
occur in other settings. For example interactions involving parents and
children completing homework may involve directive and compliance pairs
involving non-verbal acts (Freebody, et al., 1995).
3.5.2 Trouble and repair
Turn taking involves a moment-by-moment show of understanding however misunderstandings can occur. Repair occurs in talk when they do (Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks, 1977). So, repair is “addressed to “troubles’ that emerge in interaction” (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998, p. 215). These vary from trouble at a word and pronunciation “level”, through to trouble related to problems of understanding (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1341) or even hearing (Bilmes, 1992). Trouble can involve person reference or speaker selection (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998).
Repairs occur close to their trouble source. This eliminates organisational difficulties that would result if repair involved substantial backtracking to previous talk. Repair works to eliminate escalation of trouble (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998). In conversation the preference is for self-correction (Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks, 1973) and a speaker may address potential trouble in a turn, or just after. A hearer may initiate repair in the next turn after the turn in which the source of trouble occurs. Some trouble may extend beyond this turn if the hearer does not recognize the previous turn as problematic in any way. In that case, the original speaker treats the hearer’s response as problematic and addresses the trouble source “by engaging in some operation on the source of trouble,” (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1303).
This type of repair, termed third position repair, involves four main types of components and is highly recurrent in form (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1304). One component, A, consists usually of a “no” utterance, multiple “nos” or “oh no”. B takes the form of agreement/acceptance with a prior turn that has treated the trouble source turn as a complaint but then goes on to deny that the trouble source turn involved complaining. The C component rejects the understanding inherent in the prior turn, and D does something to an aspect of the prior turn concerning the trouble source turn in order to address the trouble. The D component is the one most likely to be present in the repair turn. As the particular use of “turn” and “position” suggests here, although the third position repair usually occurs in the third turn it need not necessarily be the case.
Fourth position repair is rare. It draws on two conversational components: one is “oh” and a recharacterization of the trouble source, the other is “oh” plus a revised response to the turn involving the trouble (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1323). It is carried out by the recipient of the trouble source turn rather than the speaker of it.
There are also alternatives to
repair. A ‘next turn’ display of misunderstanding can be heard as a joke for
example. Or, a misunderstanding can be ignored and then redone at a later stage
as if it were occurring for the first time so “adopts nonrepair ways of dealing
with it.” (Schegloff, 1992, p. 1331). The absence of
repair has been identified in studies of classroom interaction. Ridley, Radford
and
Freebody (2003) examined trouble and repair in a classroom reading lesson. He established trouble in a sequence of talk that involved a teacher questioning students during whole class activity. Although students were unable to provide the answer that the teacher’s questions required, the teacher did not repair the talk. Instead she provided clues which required that students attended to those to work out the answer. In this way, she “showed the students that they need to attend to the often subtle cues that marked the sustained relevance at work in teachers’ talk.” (Freebody, 2003, p. 116).
The organisation of talk is “sensitive
to the number of participants because those participants can and do design
their conduct and understand one another’s conduct as shaped in part by
reference to numbers of participants.” (Schegloff, 1995, p.
31). Talk tends to “schism” with greater number of participants. In CA
studies, a distinction is made between participants and parties in talk.
Importantly, the seminal description of the turn taking system (Sacks,
Schegloff & Jefferson, 1974) concerned parties rather than numbers of participants.
Multi-party conversation is a
“distinct phenomenon”, not just “a variant off
two-party conversation.” (Sacks, 1995, p. 523).
Therefore rules that members orient to, in settings involving more than two
parties, are of interest. Sacks considered non-directed questions. He made the
point that in two-party conversation every utterance is for the other. In
multi-party conversation this need not be the case; a party may choose to act
as though a certain utterance were directed at a present other. So an utterance in a two-party conversation may do or mean
something quite different in a multi-party conversation (Sacks, 1995, p. 668).
Although two-party talk may contain more than two people, Sacks discussed the
notion of “overhearers” in relation to multi-party conversations. He stated
that in the case of some talk between A and B, C should still listen because
talk might be directed to C at some
time in the future. Therefore the particular case of overhearers in multi-party
conversation requires a different order of analysis (Sacks, 1995, p. 531). “So
one gets, then, a set of intrinsically two-party activities which, when done in
multi-party situations, can be different sorts of things.” (Sacks,
1995, p, 532).
The notion of “overhearers” or “witnesses” is relevant to understandings of classroom interaction given the two-party nature of whole class or small group talk led by the teacher. The dyadic nature of talk in classrooms is evidenced most particularly during teacher-led activities involving the whole class. The teacher controls the speaker turns and talk exhibits a two-speaker pattern, although large numbers of potential speakers are usually present. This pattern of interaction has been found to characterize teaching activity in much of the research examining talk in classrooms (Edwards & Westgate, 1987; Mehan, 1985). Macbeth referred to the two-party organisation of the lesson as “our familiar sense of classroom order and instruction” (2001, p. 61). During teacher-led instructional whole-class setting, most of the students are “overhearers” to the two-party talk that occurs and yet are always potentially the next party to be called on to speak.
The multi-party nature of
teacher-led whole class instruction requires talk that will ensure shared
attention (Atkinson, 1982, p. 97). Teacher-led talk during whole-class
instruction is two-party talk. So turn-taking in teacher-led instruction
involves teacher control of talk. The teacher is able to take many turns, to
nominate individuals to speak, and to evaluate the responses of students. Thus,
talk in classrooms is found to differ from that of mundane conversations in
ways that enable the accomplishment of activities particular to the classroom,
and constitute classroom talk as institutional talk.
Research during times of individual
activity in classrooms suggests differences between it and teacher-led
whole-class instruction. Szymanski (1999) applied Goffman’s notion of
copresence (1963, cited Szymanski, 1999) to describe the interactional nature
of the group work setting. In her study of bilingual children working in groups
in a language arts classroom, the physical proximity of the children resulted
in ever present opportunities for interaction or access to a number of
“interactionally relevant items” (Szymanski, 1999, p, 2). Children did not talk
all the time but rather came in and out of conversations. Szymanski examined
children’s methods for re-engaging and dis-engaging in talk.
Lerner’s (1995) study of students’
participation opportunities included examination of teachers’ turn designs and
opportunities for interaction afforded students by these. One such design incorporated unfinished turns
that invited completion by students. Two forms of these were found to be turns
designed as elicitation questions and turns designed as lists when involving an
“unfinished turn-constructional component” (Lerner, 1995, p. 115). In the case
of the latter the turn performed at least two types of work. It offered a place
where a student might take a turn and
gave a deal of information about what that answer might be. For example the
empty (third) slot in a list needed to be filled by items of the sort already
named by the teacher.
Lerner described the elicitation
question (Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975), as initiating a “small
sequence” consisting of elicitation-reply-evaluation. According to his
analysis, “Asking an elicitation-type question made an answer specially relevant and provided the sequential possibility
of an evaluation.” (Lerner, 1995, p. 115). An answer
that was not acceptable might have resulted in a “sequence expansion” (Mehan,
1982) where withholding a completing act afforded possibilities for continued
student participation (Lerner, 1995). Lerner established that students oriented
to elicitation questions as demonstrations of knowledge rather than as requests
for information (Lerner, 1995, p. 112).
Lerner explicated the way that the
variations of the elicitation questions gave a focus to particular information,
and so he established how teacher known-answer questions took account of
student needs. For example the list construction pattern might have increased
the predictability of students’ attempts. At the same time unfinished turns
still appeared to be another form of “guess what the teacher is thinking”, only
with narrowed options for possible answers.
Lerner (1995) examined how a
teacher’s turn design worked to provide a resource that enabled collaborative
construction of written answers in a word definition writing task. The teacher
instructed students through her talk, although she didn’t tell. The teacher
used an interrupted turn involving the beginning of the form of writing to be
used. The next turn, by a student, required the completion of the teacher’s
utterance and hence the sentence itself. So the teacher “made it clear in the
manner in which she has designed her utterance and gestures that she could
complete the turn unit, but that it is the students’ (instructed) task to do
so.”(Lerner, 1995, p. 122). Lerner found the turn to
be “a vehicle for instruction”. This finding, however, cannot make clear
whether students oriented to the talk as instructional.
Lerner’s work illustrates that
talk, as it is shaped by the teacher, exhibits features particular to the
classroom and to the work of instruction. For example, it demonstrates that
instruction is carried out largely through questioning of students. Further,
Lerner’s work shows that successful instruction in the classroom requires
competent use of particular interactional formats, such as,
question-answer-comment sequences (Heap, 1992). Teachers draw on interactional
formats to lecture, ask questions, accept feelings, praise, use student ideas,
give directions, and justify authority. Students draw on relevant interactional
formats in a classroom to respond appropriately to the teacher, or initiate
talk with the teacher.” (Heap,1992, p. 23).
McHoul noted ‘now’ as a “classic teaching technique” that teachers used to return to the “main events” of lessons (1978, p, 205). This occured, for example, when students introduced a new topic or attempted to change the topic ‘we’re on” during teacher-led instruction. Although referred to “in passing” in some of the literature, the role of “now” in classroom interaction appears not to have been well explored. Schifflin’s (1987) analysis of “now”, used as a discourse marker, is the most extensive study of it, although Schifflin does not employ CA.
Schifflin found that the use of ‘now’ “marks a speaker’s progression through discourse time by displaying attention to an upcoming idea unit, orientation, and/or participation framework.” (Schifflin, 1987, p. 230), and occurs for example, in comparisons, lists and arguments. The word ‘now’ may also mark a switch in modes, from declarative to interrogative turns, or a speaker shift from narrative or evaluative. In its use as a discourse marker, ‘now’ “provides a temporal index for utterances with the emerging world of talk” (Schifflin, 1987, p. 245), looks ahead or operates catephorically. The temporal use of ‘now’ locates an utterance in an “ego-centred space” (Schifflin, 1987, p. 245) and gives a focus to what the speaker is about to say. As well, ‘now’ can mark a speaker shift in orientation to interpretation of own talk. It also may involve a struggle for turn taking, when a speaker needs to negotiate the “right to control what will happen next in talk” (Schifflin, 1987, p. 241). Young children evidence greater use of ‘now’ in their role plays of teachers than in their ordinary conversations (Hoyle, 1994).
3.5.5 Adjacency pairs
The early work of conversation analysts established the primacy of adjacency pairs as an aspect of talk-in-interaction. The discovery of this unit was important in that “for the first time in the study of social interaction, sequential structures of actions were discovered in naturally occurring situations.” (Psathas, 1992, p. 20). The adjacency became one of the most widely known concepts of CA (Hutchby, 2001), perhaps “the linchpin” of the approach (Taylor & Cameron, 1987) and “the most powerful device for relating utterances (Sacks, 1995, p. 554; cited in Silverman, 1998, p. 104).
Adjacency pairs are sequences of at least two turns in length, and they consist of at least two parts. The first part is produced by one speaker and the other by a second speaker. The parts are relatively ordered and discriminately related such that the second part must be an appropriate pair to the first (Silverman, 1998); the sequence involves immediate next turns where the parts are conditionally relevant to each other (Psathas, 1995, p. 18). Or rather more simply put, an adjacency pair involves “a pair of utterances in which the second is functionally dependent on the first.” (Cameron, 2001, p. 96). Examples of adjacency pairs include greetings and return greetings and summons-answer pairs.
Sacks examined and detailed the phenomenon he termed adjacency pairs or “utterance pairs” (Sacks, 1995, p. 104). Adjacency pairs were shown to be ordered such that the two parts normally occur next to each other, and the use of the first part of the pair is regularly followed by the second (Sacks, 1995, p. 667). Adjacency pairs involve the display of mutual understanding such that the absence of the second part is relevant and subject to inference. Thus adjacency pairs exhibit conditional relevance (Schegloff, 1968, cited in Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998, p. 42). This involves a normative aspect in a number of senses. Motivational inferences may be drawn in the absence of the second pair part, the second part need not occur immediately following the first part and dispreferred responses are marked (Hutchby, 2001). The first part of the pair as well as the second may be viewed as constrained in that to get the second you may need to initiate the first (Silverman, 1998).
A complementary notion is that of
preference. Preference refers to the fact that there may be alternative forms
of second part replies. Some adjacency pairs with preferred and dispreferred
second-pair parts are: offer-accept/decline, accusation-rebuttal/justification,
assessment-agreement/disagreement, self-deprecation-disagreement/agreement;
accusation-denial/admission and request-acceptance/refusal. Preference is a
controversial notion (Taylor & Cameron, 1987) best conceived of as being
achieved without ‘markedness’ (Heritage, 1984a; Levinson, 1983), or as “ways
that things are typically done” (Cameron, 2000, p. 97). Dispreferred actions
are problematic (Silverman, 1998) and their status, as such, is marked. Taylor and Cameron, drawing on Levinson
(1983, pp. 334-335), listed the following markers that occur as part of
disprefered utterances: pausing, prefaces (‘uh’, ‘well’), token agreements,
appreciations and apologies, qualifiers, use of accounts and use of a
‘declining component’. The features are important since their use displays
users’ awareness of the relevance of the rule (Taylor & Cameron, 1987).
Wootton’s (1981) examination of
children’s request sequences illustrated some aspects of adjacency pairs and
preferences. Grantings and rejections by parents showed distinct differences on
several points. Rejections were dispreferred and sometimes involved accounts or
“softenings”. There was a greater likelihood of a certain type of rejection
leading to extended sequences of talk. When delay techniques were employed
children were likely to persist with the request. Deliberate/rapid topic
switches could act to terminate a particular sequence (Wootten, 1981, p. 76).
Notwithstanding the integral work of adjacency pairs in talk-in-interaction, it is possible for talk to extend beyond the adjacency pair. For example, three part sequences may occur when someone asks for the time and thanks the respondent as an acknowledgment of the answer (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975, p. 37 cited in Mehan, 1985, p. 126). A question followed by a question extends the adjacency pair. Psathas discerned this pattern in his study of direction giving. He termed it a conversion sequence. In direction giving the question-question turns worked to establish, for example, the starting point for giving directions after the question that asks for directions. A question followed by a question may involve two adjacency pairs, one inserted inside the first. The insert sequence need not disrupt or cause trouble (Schegloff, 1968) but results in the separation of the two pair parts of the first adjacency pair. In the classroom if the first question should come from the teacher then it also involves two adjacency pairs. The conclusion to the first is tied to the completion of the second. The second is completed by an evaluation act which itself rests on the correctness of the answer to the first pair part of the first adjacency pair initiated by the teacher (Mehan, 1979).
Sacks (1972) showed how children’s use of the question “You know what?” serves to produce a question answered by a question. The use of “What?” in response to the original question enables the child to tell the story. This is because the use of “What?” obliges the child to answer and thus, to tell the information or story. Sacks claimed that in this way the child is provided with the opportunity to say what he intended in the first place only it becomes a “a matter of obligation.” (Sacks, 1972, p. 344). The question enables children to get the floor, and perhaps to have a longer turn despite their usually restricted talking rights.
Four-part structures are similar to
adjacency pairs but consist of four turns (Psathas, 1992). Psathas examined the
example of an invitation-acceptance adjacency pair which has a prefactory sequence
(or presequence). For example, the question “Are you doing anything tonight?”
may lead onto an invitation to go out, depending on the response to the
question. The outcome of the presequence is relevant to what occurs next.
Similarly, closings might involve a sequence that prefaces the actual terminal
sequence. So the four-part sequence involves “two ordered adjacency pair
structures in which the first adjacency pair implicates what could be a
relevant second adjacency pair (Psathas, 1992, p. 19).
Sacks referred to chains of
adjacency pairs (1995, p. 529). He considered the example of a question-answer
followed by an invitation-response with the first adjacency pair, for example,
working as a pre-signal that an invitation is to follow (Silverman, 1998, p.
107). Another example might be a series of question and answers since once an
answer is given the first party has the right to speak again and therefore to
ask another question. This is termed the ‘chaining rule’ and it operates in
certain kinds of professional-client settings” (Silverman, 1998, p. 108). Use
of the chaining rule constrains the options open to speakers in ways that make
it different to the turn-taking of casual conversation.
Merritt (1976) examined questions
that followed questions in service encounters. She found for example that a
second question-answer pair could be embedded within a first question- answer
pair such that the answer to the first question is contingent on the answer to
the second question. So, a request for
cigarettes might generate a question regarding details of the brand of
cigarette. She also described another question-question sequence, she termed
“elliptical coupling” (Merritt, 1976, p. 348). This consisted of a first
question-answer “pair” where the answer was ellipsed and a question filled the
slot such that the sequence became question-question-answer.
There are other variants of the
chain rule (Frankel, 1990). A side sequence occurs where “large scale
activities can warrantably be interposed between the initiation of a two-part
sequence such as question and answer and its conclusion.” (Frankel,
1990, p. 236). A distinction between side and insert sequences is that
insert sequences are restricted exclusively to question-answer pairs (Frankel,
1990, p. 236). According to
A question powerfully requires an answer and gives the asker rights to control the next cycle of conversation. So, to respond to a question with a question is to exert countercontrol and may require that the responder has greater or equal social power (Mishler, 1975, p. 106 cited in Frankel, 1990, p. 260). Frankel (1990) established doctors’ dispreference for patient initiated questions during medical consultations. Frankel also noted that jargon in medical encounters generates side and insert sequences, and that the use of “now” generated a “projectably” new sequence.
3.5.6 Extended sequences
Although extended sequences are discussed in some of the CA literature, generally much less attention is given to longer sequences of talk, in particular to those that extend over many turns. Early on Sacks (1995, p. 355) identified “long sequences of talk” as an appropriate area for investigation, though one that was only in its initial stages of development. In his discussion of long sequences of talk, Sacks made a distinction between talk that has a known pre-organisation (as in certain games for example) and talk that does not.
… a basic sort of investigation is that of long sequences as a coherent matter as compared to simply studying, utterance by utterance, a long sequence of talk which you then have as an in-some-way connected series of small fragments. (Sacks, 1995, p. 355.)
According to Sacks, the analysis of
long sequences of talk is not an additive process and treating it as such may
not inform understanding of the whole. Psathas also adopted the analytic
perspective that extended sequences, as he termed them, “need to be analyzable
and understandable as whole units” (1992, p. 99). Psathas (1992) claimed that
extended sequences are more than just a string of sequences. So they need to be
considered and examined from the perspective of their whole, and complex,
structure rather than through a sequence by sequence analysis strung together
(Psathas, 1992, p. 100). He considered extended sequences to be longer than
four turns.
According to Psathas, this type of
sequence includes types of lessons (Mehan, 1979; Psathas, 1992), stories
(Sacks, 1970) and direction giving (Psathas, 1986a; 1986b; Psathas & Kozloff,
1976, cited in Psathas, 1992). Sacks analysed a competition sequence (Sacks,
1995) and stories (Sacks, 1995) as examples of long sequences. The latter
involved his analysis that a story preface asks for the right to take an
extended turn in order to tell the story (Sacks, 1995, p. 226). According to
Sacks, the story preface also contains within it the ‘seeds’ of the closing of
the story since it gives information about what will be in the story for it to be over.
Psathas approached the analysis of
extended sequences from three points: how do parties enter into the activity;
how do they exit, and what is the internal structure of the activity. He used
this analytic approach to examine direction-giving (Psathas, 1986a, 1986b,
1990). Psathas worked from a gross characterization of the features of
direction sets and determined that directions appeared as “coherent
conversational units” (1995, p. 23) that involved methods for entering,
proceeding with directions through a sequence of talk, and closing the direction
giving. Directions were shown to be collaboratively produced and to consist of
“multi-turn extended sequences of talk” (Psathas, 1991, p. 196).
According to Psathas (1991), entry
into direction giving is usually initiated by a request and sometimes this will
be answered by a request for a starting point (Psathas, 1991). This conversion
sequence functions to establish the starting point for directions. Apart from
destination and starting point, initial talk establishes time and mode of
travel and membership categorization of the parties involved in the talk. As
well, direction-giving involves insertions (Schegloff, 1972), or suspensions
from the on-going main activity. These result from orientations to repair or
requests related to further detail. They can be initiated by either party and
do not disrupt the overall function of the activity (Psathas, 1991, p. 205).
The activity is closed in two parts. The talk hearably “arrives at” the
destination, and the first party produces an acceptance and a positive
assessment. Once this is accomplished the conversation moves into closure or
shifts to other topics.
The organisation of giving and
receiving directions was found to be both context sensitive and context free.
It was both responsive to particular parties involved in it and showed orderly and patterned ways
that could be found across any number of instances (Psathas, 1991, p. 214) of
direction sets. Internal features of directions sets included: named and shared
understanding of destination; presumption that movement to the destination was
possible; presumption that there were “recognizable-locatable” sets of
operations related to movement; naming or ordering in sequence; and the
sequence of operations that involved a sequence of utterances or single utterance
of talk (Psathas, 1991, p. 215).
Schegloff (1990) referred to talk
occurring in “clumps”. He took the coherence of these as an analytic focus
rather than their topic since determining topic can be problematic. He
determined that the sequential analyses of “extremely long spates of talk”
(Schegloff, 1990, p. 72) provided understanding of its coherence, as it does in
the analysis of adjacency pairs. Schegloff argued that sequential analysis of
the sequence is the proper unit of analysis of an extended sequence of talk.
Schegloff’s argument highlights the issue of coherence across stretches of talk
and is taken up by other researchers. To illustrate, he analysed a telephone
conversation involving many turns at talk. Schegloff established that attention
to the sequential structure of the talk shows talk-in-interaction that is
coherent (Schegloff, 1990, p. 66) and cohesive, despite what appeared to be a
lack of topical coherence.
Schegloff examined presequences, or
sequences specifically designed to come before some other turn type. For
example, preinvitations come before invitations and preannouncements before
announcements. Presequences act to find out whether a next action will not be
dispreferred. Schegloff examined prerequests and three types of responses.
These were: talk that acts as a go-ahead by moving the action forward to the
request; one which blocks the talk from proceeding to the request; and a
preemptive response in which the one addressed offers what they think will be
requested next (Schegloff, 1990, p. 61). A prerequest may also involve an
action-projection through its format. Schegloff delineated two types of these.
One is a predelicate where the utterance makes it known that what is coming up
may be delicate. The other type is prepres, or preliminaries to preliminaries.
An example of the latter would be “Can I ask you a question?”.
Prepres are frequently not followed by the action projected but by
preliminaries.
Goodwin (1990) examined stories
within the structure of argumentative sequences involving children. She
analysed one story in particular which began with a sequence of paired
exchanges, the challenge and threat/ counter to it, termed paired counters, and
then the introduction of a story. The latter enabled other participants to enter
the interaction. Goodwin noted the role of “ratified overhears” in the initial
part of the dispute (1990) and their later role as invited participants in the
story. Audience requests for expansion or repetition illustrated that oral
stories consist of more than pre-determined sequential structures.
In arguably the most notable studies of classroom interaction, Mehan (1979) established many distinctive features of classroom talk. Mehan described his research as constitutive ethnography but drew heavily on conversation analysts and on Garfinkel’s work. Mehan examined the internal structure of classroom lessons, in particular their instructional phase. His study was of a teacher’s lessons with first, second and third graders in a culturally diverse classroom.
The characteristic interactional
units in lessons were “elicitation sequences” that involved the exchange of
academic information. These were found to be jointly produced, sequential and
consisting of three parts described as the initiation act, reply act and
evaluation act (IRE). The three-part sequence consisted of two “coupled”
adjacency pairs, where the second part of an initiation reply pair became the
first part in the second adjacency pair that was completed by the evaluation
act. The end of the sequence was marked by positive evaluation. Mehan
established that negative evaluations did not appear at the ends of sequences,
only in their interior since they work to “keep the interaction moving until
symmetry between initiation and reply acts is established.” (Mehan,
1979, p. 65). Mehan’s definition of an extended sequence involved the
absence of that completing turn.
According to Mehan, extended
sequences occur in classroom talk when the expected reply does not occur
immediately. This may be because of partial, incorrect or no answers. The
initiator employs strategies to obtain the necessary reply. Strategies include
prompting, repeating initiation acts or simplifying. The completion of an
extended sequence is marked, like three-part sequences, with “positive
evaluation of the content of students’ replies, slowed cadence, and
manipulation of educational material.” (Mehan, 1979, p. 122).
Mehan took up the issue of how talk
operates and is understood in classrooms, where it frequently occurs across considerable
stretches of interaction and involves numbers of potential speakers. He posited
extended sequences, together with adjacency pairs, as reflexively tied
structures (Mehan, 1979, p. 76). Mehan noted that reflexive tying occurs also
at increasing levels in the lesson, contributing to the social organisation of
interactional sequences and providing “the glue that binds entire interactional
events together.” (Mehan, 1979, p. 76).
Mehan characterised the
instructional phrase of lessons as “a progression of topically related sets”
(Mehan, 1979, p. 122). Topically related sets consisted of a basic sequence and
then often, one or more conditional sequences. The latter built on the topic
introduced through the basic sequence; they never appeared alone and they
appeared only after a basic sequence has been completed. Therefore their
appearance was “dependent upon the prior appearance of a basic sequence.” (Mehan, 1979, p. 65). Hence conditional sequences were tied
to basic sequences. Mehan found that
topically related set beginnings were often signaled by particular
paralinguistic, kinesic and verbal behaviour for example, “uh now” or “now”,
together with changes in tone and cadence of speech. These markers were “a
closed set” –they didn’t appear at other times in the lessons (Mehan, 1979, p.
66).
Mehan’s analysis discerned
sequential and hierarchical structures in lessons. He also established that
students showed their orientation to the components of sequences and the
hierarchical structure of lessons (Mehan, 1979, p. 35). This was a critical
finding since it supported his claim that interaction in lessons was tied by
more than individual sequences of talk. Cohesiveness in lessons was achieved
across extended sequences of talk, and across topically related sets involving
numbers of three-part turn sequences.
McHoul (1990) examined talk aimed at repair (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977) that potentially involved a number of turns. He termed these “expanded sequences of talk”. Expanded sequences are distinctive because they involve trouble and repair, although they involve IRE sequence, so have features in common with Mehan’s notion of extended sequences.
McHoul (1990) considered repair
trajectories in the classroom. One type of trajectory, where students made
corrections to their own trouble source in response to a teacher initiation,
was in greater evidence than teacher corrections of talk or self-corrections
without initiation by the teacher. Classroom repair was seen to be different
from ordinary conversation since it was marked by a preference for
self-correction following initiation of repair by the teacher.
McHoul explicated three related
aspects of repair: clueing, “recycling” in the form of expansion sequences and
“withholding”. Withholds include clueing, reformulations and redirections of
questions to other students during whole-class instruction. Although
withholding occurs in ordinary conversation (Schegloff et al. 1977) it appears
differently in classroom talk. Rather than withholding the initiation of a
correction after trouble has occurred in order for self-repair to occur, the
teacher initiates correction and withholds
other-correction. McHoul also noted the frequently tentative nature of
other-initiation. This “modulation” (Schegloff et al. 1977, cited here p. 367),
is integrally tied to the dispreferred states of other–corrections in the
classroom.
A consequence of this repair is
that its trajectory can extend beyond the pattern found in ordinary
conversation where repair space is frequently limited to a maximum of three
turns (Schegloff, 1992). McHoul suggests that expanded other-correction withhold sequences (McHoul, 1990, p. 364)
may be features of “learning”, “socialization”, or “competent/precompetent
interaction genres.” (McHoul, 1990, p. 367). The
absence of direct repair by teachers has been noted in other studies in the
classroom (Freebody, Ludwig & Gunn, 1995; Ridley, Radford & Mahon,
2002) and found to be potentially confusing for students. Freebody, Ludwig and
Gunn refer to extended sequences of talk in the classroom as requiring “trial
and error, guessing, or other indirect reasoning practices to complete the
task” (1995, p. 343).
According to Mehan an extended sequence resulted from the absence of a completing turn in classroom talk initiated by the teacher. McHoul (1990), on the other hand, described expanded sequences which act to allow students to self-repair their own trouble source in talk and result in talk trajectories that go beyond patterns found in ordinary conversation. There is overlap between the definitions used by Mehan and McHoul. Although Mehan did not refer specifically to trouble, the reasons given for the employment of strategies that expands sequences clearly involve trouble. For example, silence in response to a question could be trouble. Similarly, the strategies that Mehan outlined fit with McHoul’s notion of clueing, reformulation and so on. For Mehan, the sequence was completed when a positive evaluation was given. For McHoul it was when repair occurred.
3.5.7 Applications
Within the field of education ethnomethodology and CA have been applied in areas as diverse as special education (Radford & Tarplee, 2000); early childhood (Danby, 1998; Leiminer, 2000); and music education (Roulston, 2000). Reading instruction has been a strong focus and boasts an impressive body of work (see Baker, 1991a, 1991b; Baker & Freebody, 1993, Freebody & Freiberg, 2000, 2001; Heap 1980, 1985; McDermott, 1976, cited in Mehan, 1985). Writing classrooms in comparison have received limited attention.
Freebody and
Baker (1991) explicated three
benefits to be gained from the application of CA to everyday practice in
education. First, it makes it possible to study events as they are observed,
unlike the case with unseen psychological or sociological processes. Second, it
focuses on instances of observable actions rather than on how they relate to
educational theories themselves. Third, it results in “principled, publicly
available methods” (Baker, 1991, pp. 163-4; cited in Freebody, 2003, p. 97) for
examining actual events and their consequences.
Baker (1991) argued that
pedagogical descriptions and accounts, and conventional reading psychology
accounts miss what is actually accomplished in reading lessons. She showed that it is through the use of
analysis of interactional and situated reading events that we can understand
and describe the ways in which classroom relations are construed as part of
reading in the early years. Baker examined the ways in which question and
answer sequences within whole class reading events were “foundational in the
social construction of classroom literacy and in the social production of
differences among students as classroom-literate speakers. “ (1991, p. 180).
Baker established that reading lessons accomplish “institutionalized ways of
reading and talking about texts with teachers in classrooms, and simultaneously
the assembling of social relations and social order for classrooms and for
schooling.” (1991, p. 161).
Much of the CA research in classrooms has given an emphasis to teacher-led whole class instruction, or small group instruction led by the teacher. It establishes that:
In addition to accumulating a stock of academic knowledge, students need to accumulate a stock of social knowledge. Learning that there are appropriate ways to cast academic knowledge, that certain ways of talking and activity are appropriate on some occasions and not on others, learning when, where, and with whom certain kinds of behaviour can occur are some of the essential constituents of the stock of social knowledge that accompanies academic knowledge; the intertwining of the two is relevant for effective participation in the classroom community.” (Mehan, 1985, p. 119)
As section 3.5 has illustrated, an extensive literature
demonstrates what is known about the ways in which students and their teacher
accomplish aspects of their social activity, particularly in whole-class
settings. This thesis examines the “stock of social knowledge” required to
accomplish the social organisation of independent writing, a time of individual
activity rather than whole-class instruction.
3.6 Summary
This chapter has been used to
outline theoretical, methodological and conceptual aspects of ethnomethodology
and CA. Integral to these is the notion
that both provide an alternate sociology, an alternate way of examining and
explicating sociological phenomenon. The application of CA to studies of
institutional activity involve a number of questions and issues, hence
considerations for this study. The analytic approach taken in this study
involves consideration of Schegloff’s (1992) problem of relevance and issue of
procedural consequentiality. It also involves comparisons using ordinary
conversation and with interaction that accomplishes teacher-led whole-class
instruction.
Many distinctive features of classroom talk have been explicated in CA studies however most give focus on teacher-led talk during whole class or small group instruction. Much less is documented about sequences of interaction between students, or where the teacher is absent from the interaction entirely. Hence descriptions and understandings of classroom talk frequently encompass interaction involving the teacher. Expanded or extended sequences provide a case in hand. Both the terms “extended sequence” and “expanded sequence”, used to describe this in classrooms, define the sequences in relation to the role of the teacher and her instructional goals. This suggests an issue, to be considered later in this thesis, as to whether these terms can be applied to interaction when the teacher is not party to the talk yet numerous turns result.
The next chapter of this thesis
outlines the study design. This involves the broad application of
ethnomethodology and CA to the study of writing, and the development of a focus
on the social organisation of independent writing. The chapter will detail
considerations relevant to ethical clearance and the research site, observation
and collection of data, and the analysis of it.