Chapter 7 Conversation analysis Paul Drew Researchers across a range of cognate disciplines - anthropology, sociology, communication, linguistics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics, as well as psychology - have in recent years increasingly turned to the perspective and methods of conversation analysis (CA). They have done so in order to investigate a wide variety of topics, some of which intersect with, or lie within, various fields of psychology. The sheer breadth and richness of these topics begin to give some idea of the adaptability of CA to a great variety of research sites. These topics include medical interaction, especially interactions between patients and doctors and other health-care professionals (Drew et al., 2001; Heath, 1986; Heritage and Maynard, forthcoming; Heritage and Sen, 1992); child-adult interaction, and the development of mind (Wootton, 1997); news media, such as news interviews, political speaking and debate (Atkinson, 1984; dayman, 199S; dayman and Heritage, 2002); paranormal experiences (Woofntt, 1989); delusions and hallucinations (Palmer, 2000); speech disorders relating to aphasia, autism and cerebral paisy (Goodwin, 1995); sexual identity (Kitzinger, 2000); calls to the emergency services (Zimmerman, 1992); counselling of various kinds, including family systems therapy applied to HIV/AIDS counselling (Peräkylä, 1995; Silverman, 1997); and divorce mediation (Greatbatch and Dingwall, 1997). Underpinning the diversity of research in such 'applied' areas as these, however, is the programme of CA research into the basic processes of ordinary social interaction, with which this chapter will be concerned. The origins of CA intersect more closely with psychology - at least with topics which have seemed intrinsically psychological in character - than is perhaps generally appreciated. Having first trained in the law, and then undertaken graduate study at the University of Berkeley, Harvey Sacks (1935-1975) began to develop CA in the course of his investigations at the Centre for the Scientific Study of Suicide, in Los Angeles, 1963/64. Here he was interested initially in psychiatric and psychodynamic theorizing. Bui staff at the centre were recording suicide counselling telephone calls handled by a suicide prevention centre, in an attempt to understand more fully the problems which callers were facing and thereby to devise means ol 132 Conversation analysis 133 counselling callers effectively. It was these recordings which provided the stimulus for what was to become CA. Drawn by his interests both in the ethnomethodological concern with members' methods of practical reasoning (arising from his association with Harold Garfinkei), and in the study of interaction (he was taught at Berkeley by Erving Goffman), Sacks began to ! investigate how callers' accounts of their troubles were produced in the í course of their conversations with Suicide Prevention Centre (SPC) coun- \ sellors. This led him, without any diminished sensitivity to the plight of persons calling the SPC, to explore the more generic 'machineries' of conversational turn-taking, and of the sequential patterns or structures associated with the management of activities in conversation. (For a definitive account of the origins of Sacks's work in CA, its subsequent development and the range of issues it spawned, see Schegloff, 1992a; Edwards, 1995, provides a clear and important review not only of Sacks's work, but also of the differences between his interactional approach and psychological perspectives, especially in cognitive psychology.) Through the collection of a broader corpus of interactions, including group therapy sessions and mundane telephone conversations, and in collaboration with Gail Jefferson (1938- ) and Emanuel Schegloff (1937- }, Sacks began to show that: talk can be examined as an object in its own right, and not merely as a screen on which are projected other processes, whether Balesian system problems or Schutzian interpretative strategies, or Garfinkelian commonsense methods. The talk itself was the action, and previously unsuspected details were critical resources in what was getting done in and by the talk; and all this in naturally occurring events, in no way manipulated to allow the study of them. (Schegloff, 1992a: xviii) At the heart of this is the recognition that 'talk is action, not communication' '■ (Edwards, 1995: 579). Talk is not merely a medium, for instance, to communicate thoughts, information or knowledge: in conversation as in all forms of interaction, people are doing things in talk (Austin, 1962). They are engaged in social activities with one another - and what is beginning to emerge is a quite comprehensive picture of how people engage in social actions in talk-in-interaction. Sacks focused on such matters as the organ- \ ization of turn-taking; overlapping talk; repair; topic initiation and closing; í greetings, questions, invitations, requests, etc. and their associated sequences! (adjacency pairs); agreement and disagreement; storytelling; and the; integration of speech with non-vocal activities. Subsequent research in CA / over the past 40 years has shown how these and other technical aspects of talk-in-interaction are the structured, socially organized resources - or methods - whereby participants perform and coordinate activities through talking together. Thus, they are the technical bedrock on which people build Qualitative Psychology Conversation analysis 135 their social lives, or in other words construct their sense of sociality with one another. Essentially, CA is a naturalistic, observation-based science of actual (verbal and non-verbal) behaviour, which uses audio and video recordings of naturally occurring interactions as the basic form of data (Heritage, 1984). CA is distinctive in its approach in the following kinds of ways. First, in its focus on how participants understand and respond to one another in their turns at talk, CA explores the social and interactional underpinnings of intersubjectivity •- the maintenance of common, shared and even 'collective' understandings between social actors. Second, CA develops empirically Goffman's insight that social Interaction embodies a distinct moral and institutional order that can he treated like other social institutions, such as the family, economy, religion, etc. By the interaction order, Goffman (1983) meant the institutional order of interaction; and CA explores the practices that make up this institution, as a topic in its own right. Third, conversational organizations underlie social action (Atkinson and Heritage, 1984); CA offers a methodology, based on analysing sequences in which actions are produced and embedded, for investigating how we accomplish social actions. Fourth, it is evident that the performance by one participant of certain kinds of actions - for instance, a greeting, question, invitation, etc. - sets up certain expectations concerning what the other, the recipient, should do in response. That is, recipients may be expected to return a greeting, answer the question, accept or decline the invitation, and so on. Thus, such pairs of actions, called in CA adjacency pairs, are normative frameworks within which certain actions should properly or accountably be done: the normative character of action, and the associated accountability of acting in accordance with normative expectations, are vitally germane to the moral order of social life, including ascriptions of deviance. Fifth and last, CA relates talk to social context. CA's approach to context is distinctive, partly because the most proximate context for any turn at talk is regarded as being the (action) sequence of which it is a part - in particular, the immediately prior turn. CA also takes the position that the 'context' of an interaction cannot be exhaustively denned by the analyst a priori; rather, participants display in the 'design' of their turns at talk (this will be explained later) their sense of relevant context - including mutual knowledge, what each knows about the other, the setting, relevant biographical information, their relevant identities or relationships, and so on. Underlying the methodology of CA is the attempt to capture and document the back-and-forth, or processual, character of interaction. The analytic aim is to show how conversational and other interactions are managed and constructed in real time, through the processes of production and comprehension employed by participants in coordinating their activities when talking with one another. This involves focusing on the turn-by-tum evolution of conversations from one speaker's turn, to the next speaker's, and so on. Each participant in a dyadic (two-person) conversation (to take the simplest model) constructs or designs a turn to be understood by the other in a particular way - for instance, as performing some particular action. The other constructs an appropriate response, the other's understanding of the prior turn being manifest in that response. Hence, the first speaker may review the recipient's response to check whether the other has 'correctly' understood his or her first turn; and if the first speaker finds from that response that the other appears not to have understood his or her utlerance/action correctly, that speaker may initiate repair to remedy the other's understanding (Schegioff, 1992b). The first speaker then produces a response, or a relevant next action, to the other's prior turn - and so the conversation proceeds, each turn being sequentially connected to its prior s turn, but simultaneously moving the conversation forward by forming the \ immediate context for the other speaker's next action in the sequence (this is the 'context-shaped and context-renewing' character of conversational (urns/actions described by Heritage [1984: 242]). in broad terms, the objective of CA's methodological approach is to attempt to document and explicate how participants arrived at understandings of one another's actions during the back-and-forth interaction between them, and how they construct their turns so as to be suitably responsive to prior turns, in this way, conversation can be regarded as a co-comtruction between participants. CA's methodology is naturalistic and largely qualitative, and is characterized by four key features. First, research is based on the study of naturally occurring data (audio or video recordings). These recordings are usually transcribed in considerable detail, though the precise level and type of detail (such as whether certain phonetic and prosodic features of production are included) will depend on the researcher's particular focus. Second, phenomena in the data are generally not coded. The reason for; this is that tokens which have the appearance of being 'the same' or equivalent phenomena may turn out, on closer inspection, to have a different interactional salience, and hence not to be equivalent. For example, repeti-lions might be coded in the same category, and hence regarded as undifferentiated phenomena. But different prosodic realizations of repeats (Couper-Kuhlen, 1996) or the sequential circumstances in which something is being repeated, and specifically what object is being repeated (Schegioff, 1996), can all crucially influence the activity being conducted through a repeat. Coding tokens on the basis of certain manifest similarities funs the risk of collecting, in the same category, objects which in reality have a quite different interactional significance. Third, CA's methodology is generally not quantitative. This is not a rigid precept, but rather a corollary of the risks attendant on coding - Qualitative Psychology Conversation analysis 1 following from which, it is clear that quantifying the occurrence of a certain object is likely to result in the truly interactional properties of that object being overlooked. Those interactional properties can be uncovered only by thorough qualitative analysis, particularly of the sequential properties of that object, and how variations in speech production are related to their different sequential imphcature (on reasons for being cautious about, or avoiding, quantification, see Schegloff, 1993). Fourth, CA's methods attempt to document and explicate how participants arrived at understandings of one another's actions during the back-and-forth interaction between them, and how in turn they constructed their turns so as to be suitably responsive to prior turns. Therefore, (>k focuses especially on those features of talk which are salient to participants' analyses of one another's turns at talk, in the progressive unfolding of interactions. But all this is pretty abstract. It is time to give a more concrete, practical picture of CA's methodology. The Data Used in CA J mentioned that the data which researchers in CA use are always recordings of naturally occurring interactions: data are not gathered though simulations, through experimental or quasi-experimental tasks, and are not fabricated. Nor, generally, are interviews treated as data, although, for certain analytic purposes or enterprises, some interviews may be considered as naturally occurring interactions. There is no easy guide to making recordings in the field, the difficulties of which include access {and the ethical standards of obtaining consent), technical aspects and attendant frustrations. (I once videotaped an open-plan architects' office in the north of England over one week: some of the best action was lost as data, as it turned out that for two days the sound had not been recorded; loose connections can drive you crazy! But see Goodwin [1993] on technical aspects of recording.) And one can learn only from experience how to handle the personal relationships and expectations which can develop from extended involvement with those whom one is recording. Once recordings have been obtained, the next step is to transcribe (ail or some portions of) the data collected. Later, in the next section, i will begin to introduce CA's approach to analysing data by focusing on a brief extract from a telephone call between Emma (all names are pseudonyms) and a friend, Nancy, whom she has called. This extract begins about eleven minutes into the cali when, after they have talked for some time about ü class which Nancy is taking {as a mature student, in middle age) at a local university, Emma abruptly changes the topic. To give you some idea of what we try to put into and convey through our transcripts. Box 7.1 by contrast, shows a simple transcription of what the participants say to one another. Box 7.1 Simple transcription (1) [NB:II:2:9] Emma: . . .some of that stuff hits you pretty hard Nancy. Yes Emma: And then you think well do you want to be part of it What are you doing? Nancy. What am i doing? Emma: Cleaning? Nancy. I'm ironing would you believe that Emma: Oh bless its heart. Nancy. In fact 1 1 started ironing and I I somehow or another ironing just kind of leaves me cold Emma: Yes Nancy. You know Emma:' Want to come down have a bite of lunch with me? Nancy. It's just Emma: I've got some beer and stuff Nancy. Weil you're reai sweet hon Emma: Or do you have something else Nancy. Let I No I have to call Roul's mother. . . . This is the kind of transcript which might be produced by Hansard, as a record of Parliamentary debate, or by court stenographers as they write down what's said during a trial, it records, in standard orthography, the words which were spoken - or rather, as they should have been spoken. But it does not record what was actually said. It does not, for instance, record the difference between words which were fully articulated, and those which were 'shortened' or run together {for instance, Emma does not say bite of in the thirteenth line: she runs them together, as bahla). Nor does it record the way in which things were said, the pacing, intonation and emphasis in their talk. Finally, it does not capture anything about the relationship between one person's turn at talk, and the next, an order to represent these and other aspects of talk, CA has developed a transcription system which aims to capture faithfully features of speech which are salient to the interaction between participants, including - as well as characteristics of speech delivery (such as emphasis, loudness/softness, pitch changes, sound stretching and Curtailment, etc.) - aspects of the relationship between turns at talk. This relationship includes whether, and when, one speaker talks in overlap with another, and whether there is a pause between one speaker's turn and the next (see Atkinson and Heritage, 1984: ix-xvi; Jefferson, 1985; ten Have, 1999: ch. 5). To capture these features, we use the symbols shown in Box 7.2. 138 Qualitative Psychology Conversation analysis 139 Box 7.2 Transcription symbols The Relative Timing of Utterances Intervals either within or between turns are shown thus (0.7) A discernible pause which is too short to be timed mechanically is shown as a micro-pause (.) Overlaps between utterances are indicated by square brackets, the point of overlap onset being marked with a single left-hand bracket Contiguous utterances, where there is no discernible interval between turns, are linked by an equals sign. Also used to indicate very rapid move from one unit in a turn to the next Characteristics of Speech Delivery Various aspects of speech delivery are captured in these transcripts by punctuation symbols (which, therefore, are not used to mark conventional grammatical units) and other forms of notation, as follows: A period (full stop) indicates a falling intonation A comma indicates a continuing intonation A question mark indicates a rising inflection (not necessarily a question) The stretching of a sound is indicated by colons, the number of which correspond to the length of the stretching .h indicates inhalation, the length of which is indicated by the number of h's h, indicates out breath, the length of which is indicated by the number of h's (hh) Audible aspirations are indicated in the speech in which they occur (including in laughter) °° Degree signs indicate word(s) spoken very softly or quietly Sound stress is shown by underlining, those words or parts of a word which are emphasized being underlined Particularly emphatic speech, usually with raised pitch, is shown by capital letters Marked changes in pitch are shown by i for changes to a higher pitch, and | for a fall in pitch If what is said is unclear or uncertain, that is placed in parentheses Using these symbols to transcribe the same extract results in something which, although formidably difficult to comprehend at first sight, captures a considerable amount of detail which may be relevant to our analysis of the interaction between them, it is important to note in this respect that our transcriptions are 'preanalytic', in the sense that they are made before the researcher has any particular idea about what phenomena, patterns or features in the data that might be investigated, indeed, the purpose of the transcript, used in conjunction with the recording, is that it should be a resource in developing observations and hypotheses about phenomena. The following is what the extract from the conversation between Emma and Nancy looks like transcribed in these symbols (this has been extended to include a little more of their conversation than was shown in Box 7.1). Try not to be put off by the detail, which, to begin with, will look like a mess: if you read it through a couple of times, you'll quickly begin to follow it. (2) [NB:1I 1 2 Nan: 3 Emm: 4 5 Nan: 6 Emm: 7 8 Nan: 9 Emm: 10 Nan: 11 Emm: 12 Nan: 13 14 15 Emm: 16 17 Nan: 18 Emm: 19 Nan: 20 Emm: 21 22 Nan: 23 24 Emm: 25 Nan: 26 27 Emm: 28 Nan: :2:9] .......so[me a'° s]ome a'that stuff hits yuh pretty ha:rd= PVe:ah° | ~'n then: "yuh thin:k we:ll d'you wanna be" (0.7) hhhhhbfhh r|PA:RrT Of ut.W;Wuddiyuh TDOin. (0.9) What'm I do[in? [Cleani:ng?= =hh.hh I'm ironing wouldju belie:ve |tha:t. Oh: bless it[s |hea:rt.j [In f a :c]t I: ire I start'd honing en I: d-I: (.) Somehow er another ahrning js kind of Iea:ve me: co:[ld] [Ye] ah, (.) [Yin know, ] [Wanna c'm] do:wn 'av fa bah:tai lu:nch w]ith me?= [°U's js H n =A!i gut s'm beer'n stu:ff, (0.3) íWul yer ril sweet hon: uh:m (-) [Or d'y] ou'av] sup'n [eise °( )° [I. e t-] I : ] hu. fn:No: i haf to: uh caüo Rouľs mother.h 1 tolďer I:'d call'er this morning I [ gotta letter ] from'er en [°(Uh huh.)°] .hhhhhh A:nd uhm 140 Qualitative Psychoiogy 29 30 Nan: 31 32 33 Emm: 34 Nan: 35 36 Nan: 37 Emm: 38 Nan: 39 40 Nan: 41 42 Nan: 43 44 Nan: 45 46 (1-0) .tch u.-So: she in the letter she said if you cam why (.) yihknow call me Saturday morning en 1 jst haven't, h | ihhhh) | "Mm h!m:"= ='T's like takin a beating. (0-2) ......." kh[hh Ihnhh hnh]-hnh- [hnh [°M m : : :, °] [No one heard a wo:rd hah, >Not a word,< (Ö-2) Hah ah, (0-2) n:Not (.) not a word,h (-) Not el all, except Roui's mother gotta call .hhhhhh (0.3) "l think it wuss:: (0.3) th'Mondee er the Tuesday after Mother's Da:y, This telephone conversation is, of course, like any other, quite unique - in terms of time and place, and its having been held by these two participants, with whatever relationship and history they have with each other, and in whatever circumstances the call happened to be made. Notice that we can begin to see something of their relationship in Nancy's referring to 'Roui's mother', thereby assuming that Emma will recognize whom she is referring to when she names her ex-husband. Furthermore, it is evident thai Emma already knows something about the circumstances associated with the difficulties Nancy is having with her ex-husband, when in response to Nancy's reference in line 34 to 'takin a beating./ she (Emma) asks in line 37, 'No one heard a wo:rd hah,'. And finally, in lines 18-20, Emma invites Nancy over for lunch {'Wanna c'm do:wn 'av a bah:ta lu:nch with me?=Ah gut s'm beer'n stu:ff,'); presumably, there are not many people Emma could or would cail mid-morning to invite over for an informal lunch that same day (that Roul is Nancy's ex-husband and that it is 11.15 am emerge later in the call). Thus, details in their conversation reveal something of their relationship and the uniqueness of what they know about each other. Some First Steps in Analysing the Data But against this (ethnographic) uniqueness, we can make out some familiar things in the data, things that we recognize to be happening in other conversations. Foremost among these is perhaps what seems central to this Conversation analysis 141 extract, and that is Emma's invitation. There are various ways to begin to approach data for the first lime (see Pomerantz and Fehr, 1996, for a useful and more extended outline than can be provided here). But an initial - and quite essential - starting point is to consider the ways in which participants are not 'just talking', but are engaged in social activities. Whenever we are examining talk in conversation, we iook to see what activity or activities the participants are engaged in - what are they doing? Here the activity being managed or conducted in this sequence is Emma's invitation. The social character of such an action or activity cannot be too strongly emphasized. People's engagement in the social world consists, in large part, of performing and responding to such activities. So again, when we study conversation, we are studying not language idling, but language employed in the service of doing things in the social world. And we are focusing on the social organization of these activities being conducted in conversation. - ■■■, In referring to the management of Emma's invitation, I mean to suggest / that we can see that Emma manages the interaction in such a way as to give herself the opportunity to make the invitation. Looking at what occurs immediately before, it is clear that Emma's invitation in lines 18-20 follows her having inquired about what Nancy was doing (line 6). It appears that Nancy's response - indicating that she started doing something (line 12) but might rather not continue it (ironing just kind of leaves me cola, lines 13-14) - encourages Emma to make her invitation. Now, we cannot be sure whether Emma asked what Nancy was doing with the intention of finding out whether she was free, and, if so, to invite her; or whether, having asked an innocent question, perhaps about their daiiy chores, and finding that Nancy was at a loose end, Emma decided at that point (that is, after Nancy's response) to invite her. This illustrates the difficulty in trying to interpret: participants' cognitive or other psychological states, on the basis of verba! '■ conduct. In short, we cannot know whether her inquiry in line 6 was 'innocent', and therefore that the invitation was interaciionally generated by Nancy's response; or whether she made the inquiry specifically in order to set up the invitation she had already planned (and that, indeed, she might have made the cail with the purpose of inviting Nancy over for lunch). Ali íí that we can say at this stage is that invitations, and similar actions such as \ requests, are regularly preceded by just such inquiries. Here are two quite r1 clear cases, in which an initiai inquiry receives an 'encouraging' response, after which the first speaker makes the invitation which the recipient might well have been able to anticipate. {3) UG:CN:1] 1 A: Watcha doin' 2 B: Nothin' 3 A: Wanna drink? 142 Qualitative Psychology Conversation analysis 143 (4) UGH(b):8:14] 3 John: So who'r the boyfriends for the week. 2 (0.2) 3 Mary: .k.hhhhh- Oh; go::d e-yih this one'n that one yihknow, 1 jist, 4 yit^rcow keep busy en go out when i wanna go out John it's 5 nothing .hhh I don' have anybody serious on the string, 6 John: So in other words you'd go out if I:: askedche out one a' these 7 times. 8 Mary: Yeah! Why not. Such inquiries as are made in the opening lines in extracts (3) and (4) are termed pre-'mvitations: they are designed to set up, as it were, the invitation whicrfthey presage - by finding out whether, if the invitation were made, it is likely to be accepted. Whether or not Emma had in mind, when making her inquiry, to invite Nancy {and hence whether her inquiry in line 6 was designed as a prc-invitation), we can see that the invitation did not come out of the blue. It was preceded by, má arose out of, an interactional sequence {lines 6-17) from which Emma couid discern that Nancy might be free to come for lunch. Another aspect of the management of her invitation is the way in which it is constructed or designed as a casual, spontaneous idea. This is conveyed, not only in the timing of the invitation (only an hour or so beforehand), but also in using phrases like 'come down' and 'bite of lunch'. The sociability being proposed is not portrayed as a luncheon parry, an occasion to which others have been invited, or for which one should dress up, or an RSVP do: rather, it is an impromptu affair, on finding that Nancy might welcome some diversion from her chores. So the kind of invitation if is, and the concomitant expectations and obligations which might attach to the recipient of such an invitation, are manifest in the specific design of the turn in which the invitation is made. Therefore, having outlined a first step in analysing data: 1. Look to see what activity or activities the participants are engaged in. We can add the second and third steps. 2. Consider the sequence leading up to the initiation of an action, to sec how the activity in question may have arisen out of that sequence (and even whether a speaker appears to have laid the ground for the upcoming action). 3. Examine in detail the design (the specific words and phrases used, including prosodic and intonationa! features) of the turn in which the action is initialed. That latter point concerning turn design can be developed in the context of a fourth step: A. Consider how the recipient responds to the 'first' speaker's torn/ action. In this respect, we can notice a number of features of Nancy's response. First, she does noi answer immediately: there is a 0.3-second delay (line 21) before she begins to speak. (5) [From (2)1 18 Emm: |Wanna c'm] do:wn 'av |a bahita] lu:nch wjith me?= 19 Nan: [°It's |s] ( n 20 Emm: =Ah gut s'm beer'n stu:ff, 21 (0-3) 22 Nan: f Wul ycr ril sweet hon: uh:m 23 (.) 24 Emm: [Or d'y] ou'av] sup'n else °( )" 2.S Nan: [L e t-i 1 : ] hu. Bearing in mind the first analytic step, to consider what action a speaker is doing in a turn {or sequence), we can notice here that when she does respond, Nancy does an appreciation of the invitation (line 22, 'Wul yer ril sweet hon: uh:m'). She could, of course, simply have accepted Emma's invitation, with something like 'Oh, that'd be lovely', which would have simultaneously both appreciated and accepted the invitation. Here, though, Nancy appreciates the invitation without (at least yet) accepting. Two further observations about Nancy's turn/appreciation in line 22: it is prefaced with 'Wul' (that is, Weil); and then she hesitates before continuing, as indicated by 'uh:m' and the slight (micro) pause {line 23) before she begins with 'Let-' (line 25). Of course, having invited Nancy over for lunch, Emma is listening for whether Nancy will accept, it is quite plain from her turn in line 24, 'Or d'y ou'av sup'n else', that already Emma anticipates that Nancy might have some difficulty in accepting: having something else to do is a standard reason to decline an invitation. A way to think about Emma's anticipating Nancy's difficulty/possible declining is that Emma analyses what Nancy has said. This again is fundamental to our investigations of conversation: we are focusing on friß analyses which participants make of each other's talk and conduct - on how they understand what the other means or is doing. Looking at what it is that has led Emma to anticipate that Nancy might be going to decline, we can see that the only basis Emma has so far for making this analysis is the delay before Nancy speaks (in line 21), her appreciating the invitation without yet accepting it, and Nancy beginning her turn with 'Well'. Taken together, these three features indicate to Emma that Nancy might, after all, not be free to come over for lunch. Qualitative Psychology ] mentioned before lhal although this is a unique conversation, many features of their talk are quite familiar. Nancy's appreciation is one of tin-familiar features, and appreciations are familiar, particularly when our speaker is declining another's invitation (or offer). Here is another example. (6) fSBL:l:l:J0:14] 1 lios: And uh the: if you'd care tuh come ovuh, en visit u 2 littie while this morning I'll give you [cup a'coffee. 3 Bea: [ khhh 4 liea: Uhhh-huh hh W'l that's awf'lly sweet of yuh I don't 5 think 1 c'n make it this morning, hheeuhh uh:m (0.3) 6 'tch I'm running en a:d in the paper 'nd an:ci uh hh 1 7 haftih stay near the pho::ne, Bea's declination of Rose's invitation to come over for coffee that morning consists of three components: [appreciation] + [declines] + [account) Her [appreciation] is 'W'l that's awf'lly sweet of yuh' (line 4): she explicitly [declines! t!ie invitation when she says '! don't think I c'n make it this morning' (lines 4-5). (Note that Bea's declination is softened, or mitigated, by her saying 'I don't think', rather than just I can't make it'), after which she offers an [account] for being unable to make it, which is that 'I'm running en a:d in the paper 'nd an:d uh hh 1 haftih stay near the pho::ne' (lines 6-7). This illustrates the way in which an [appreciation] can be done to preface or lead into declining an invitation. One thing which the [appreciation] does is to delay the declination; and this is consistent with the 0.3-second pause (line 21) before Nancy's responds to Emma's invitation. So this is another feature of Nancy's response which may give Emma the clue that Nancy is about to decline: her 'decision' is delayed, both by the pause and by the prefatory [appreciation]. But it is important that the [appreciation] is itself prefaced by well: it is possible to use an [appreciation] as a way to accept an invitation (as in That's very good of you), but in such cases the [appreciation] is not prefaced by the disjunctive well. Just parenthetically, before taking stock of where we are, it is worth noticing something about Emma's turn in line 24. Up to now, we have been considering what basis she had for anticipating that Nancy might be going to decline her invitation - focusing on details of what Nancy said in line 22, and the delays in her responding which are evident in lines 21 and 23. But when she anticipates Nancy's possible declination, Emma achieves something else: she also pre-empts that declination. If we compare the sequence in Conversation analysis linos 24-37 of extract (2) with Bea's declination in lines 4-7 of (6), it is apparent that there is no explicit declination of Emma's invitation. 17) Ifrom (2)J 22 Nan: jWul yer ril sweet hon: uh:m ;>3 (.) ;m Emm: [Or d'y] ou'av] sup'n [else °( )° 25 Nan: [L e t-] 1 : ] hu. [n:No: i haf to: uh caüo Rouľs mother,h 2<> I told'er I:'d call'er this morning 1 [ gotta letter ] from'er en 27 Emm: ["(Uh huh.)0] 28 Nan: .hhhhhh A:nd uhm 29 (1-0) :ío Nan: .ich u.-So: she in the letter she said if you ca:n why {.) :u yihknow call me Saturday morning en 1 jst haven't, h :i2 [~hhhh] 33 Emm: ["Mm h]m:°= 34 Nan: ='T's like takin a beating. 3.S (0-2) 36 Nan: kh[hh Thnhh hnh]-hnh- [hnh 37 Emm: [°M m : : :, °] [No one heard a wo:rd hah, The square brackets at the beginning of lines 24 and 25 indicate that Emma and Nancy start to speak simultaneously. It appears that Nancy was going to continue with her response to Emma's invitation; but Emma's inquiry anticipating that she might have something else to do manages to come in before Nancy does any more explicit rejection, of the kind which Bea does when she says 'I don't think i c'n make it this morning'. And the way in which the sequence develops finds them having moved on to the topic of Nancy's difficulties with her ex-husband (line 37), without having resolved l he matter of whether Nancy is coming over for lunch. The point to notice here is not only that Emma's turn in line 24 displays her analysis or understanding of Nancy's response thus far, but also that by doing this, she forestalls the declination that she anticipates. And if a declination has not been explicitly or officially made, then perhaps a decision about the invitation is still open (and, indeed, later in the call they do return to the possibility of Nancy's coming over for lunch). A Reprise: the Analytic Steps so Far In beginning to analyse this brief extract from a telephone call, I have suggested four initial steps. Focusing initially on a turn at talk, here on Emma's turn in lines 18-20 of extract (2), a way to begin to see what is going on in the talk, and how that is being done, is to: 146 Quaíitative Psychology 1. Identify what activity or actions the participants are engaged in. Here Emma has invited Nancy for lunch, so that we have an invitation sequence, in which Nancy's response should be to accept or decline the invitation. 2. Consider the sequence leading up to the initiation of an action, to see how the activity in question may have arisen out of ihat sequence (and even whether a speaker appears to have laid the ground for the upcoming action). We saw that Emma's inquiry may have been a pre-invitation inquiry, designed to determine whether Nancy might be free to come for lunch. But we cannot he sure: her inquiry may have been 'innocent'. Nevertheless, she does make the invitation in an environment - after Nancy's less than enthusiastic report about a chore she would rather not be doing - which encourages her to believe that Nancy might be free/willing to take a break and come for iunch. 3. Examine in detail the design (the specific words and phrases used) of each of the participants' turns. For instance, Emma designs her invitation so as to indicate that it is an impromptu, casual affair - which is a way of formulating the kind of occasion being proposed (which may have further implications as regards the recipient's 'commitment' or obligations). 4. Consider how the recipient responds to the 'first' speaker's turn/action. This involves a combination of the first and third steps, applied to the next turn. Emma's invitation has set up an expectation concerning what Nancy will do next (that is, what action her next turn will constitute): she can be expected either to accept the invitation (preferably), or decline it. instead, what she does is to appreciate the invitation. That, coupled with two other aspects of the design of Nancy's turn - her delay before starting to speak, and prefacing her appreciation with the disjunctive Well - are al! indications of her trouble in accepting; and are the basis on which Emma anticipates that Nancy might be going to decline. In summary, we are looking at the data for the ways in which, through their turns at talk, participants manage activities. Our focus is on social conduct, and how conduct is constructed through precisely what participants say - through the design of their turns. Turn design involves speakers selecting from alternative possible ways of saying something. Eor instance, Conversation analysis selecting the prefatory Well in line 22 gives Nancy's appreciation its Not a word,< 39 (6.2) 40 Nan: Hah ah, 41 <(X2) Conversation analysis 149 42 Nan: n:Not (.) not a word,h « (.) 44 Nan: Not et all, except Roul's mother gotta call .hhhhhh (0.3) "I 45 think it wuss:: (0.3) th'Mondee er the Tue:sday after 46 Mother's Da:y, it is evident that Emma knows something of the situation involving Nancy's ex-husband, when she asks 'No one heard a wo:rd hah,' (line 37). Nancy confirms this, in a fairly strong fashion. Nancy adds three further confirmations (lines 40, 42 and at the start of 44). Notice that what Nancy repeats and confirms is a quite categorical version, 'no one' and 'not a word', both indicating the completeness of her ex-husband's lack of communication. However, in line 44, she proceeds to qualify that, when she says 'except Roul's mother gotta call' (she then proceeds to tell what happened during this telephone call). Having initially claimed that no one had heard from him, Nancy changes her story! This, then, is what 1 found puzzling - how is it that Nancy comes up with what are apparently inconsistent or contradictory versions? Now, one might attribute the change in her account, and the inconsistency which results, to some kind of personal or psychological factor, such as a disposition to hyperbole, or that she forgot for the moment, or that her initial version sprang from her being bitter about her ex-husband. Such attributions would treat her 'inconsistency' as generated by factors associated with the individual and her psychology, in the circumstances she finds herself in. But once 1 had noticed Nancy's shift from not a word to except Roul's mother got a call in this extract, 1 began to find many similar instances, in which a speaker initially claims a strong, categorical or dramatic version, but then qualifies that in some way which backs down from the strength or iiteralness of the inüial version. And, of course, once one begins to find a number of cases, the phenomenon - the production of 'inconsistency' -begins to look less like a psychological attribute, and more like something which, for some reason (or, to deal with some contingency), is being systematically generated in interaction. Here are some of the other instances which I collected. (9) [Hoit 289:1-2] 1 Sar: l-> 0:h yes (.) well we've done all the peaks. 2 (0.4) 3 Les: Oh ye:s 4 (0.5) 5 -San A::h 6 (0.5) 7 Sar: 2-> We couldn't do two because you need ropes and that 150 Qualitative Psychology 2 Bee 3 San 4 Bee 5 San 6 Bee 7 San (]()) |Holt:2:!5:4-5) 1 í-es: Only: one is outstandingly clever wuh-an:' the other- .hh 2 1~> an:'"Rebecca didn't get ť coüege," 3 (0.4) 4 joy: Didn't j she:, 5 Les: 2-> Well she got in the end she scraped into a buh- businrsv 6 management, (11) |Drew:St:98:l] (Sandra's friends are going out thai evening to a disco/night club; she has said she isn't going) 3 San: ! don't know hhh hu hu .hhh I dunno it's no! really m c Mw:rh l-> ( ) like it .hh I've never been to one yet, You fHAven't. No Not even t'Ziggy:s 2~> Nope {.) Lve bin twi- no () a bin twhee at home to:: a place 8 called Tu:bes which is really rubbi:sb and then I've been 9 once to a phce in ( ) Stamford called erm: (.) Crystals (.1 10 which i:s o::kay: sorry Olivers (.) which is 11 okay: ( ) but nothimg special, (12) [NB:IV:I3:I8] 1 Emm: l-> I haven't had a piece a'mea:t. 2 0-0) 3 Emm: 2-> Over et Bill's I had taxos Mpndce ni::ght little bitta mea:t the*:re. B't not much. In example (9), Sarah initially claims to have 'done' all the peaks, and then reveals that they did not do them all. In (10), Lesley first says that one of their friend's daughters did not get into college, but subsequently concedes that she did. Sandra first claims in (11) that she has never been to one (a disco/ nightclub), but then mentions some to which she has been. And in (5 2), Emma first reports that she has not had a piece of meat recently, hut then 'admits' to having eaten tacos a few nights before. So, in each instance, there appears to be a discrepancy or inconsistency between the speaker's initial and subsequent versions - just as there was between Nancy's initially claiming that no one had heard from iioui, and her later statement that his mother heard from him a day or two after Mother's Day. In their subsequent versions, speakers seem to back down from their initial claims, revealing those to have been in some fashion incorrect, overstated, too strong and the like. Here then is a phenomenon - a sequential pattern in which a speaker first claims something, and then retracts or qualifies that claim. We can Conversation analysis 151 rolled cases of this phenomenon in whatever data we happen to be working 'ivllli: you can listen for this, and find instances in data that you may collect : the phenomenon is not restricted to telephone calls, or conversations belween friends, or even to 'ordinary conversation'. When we put together a collodion of cases, we can begin to look for features they may have in common. This is the next analytic step. Systematic Patterns in Conversation (II): identifying Common Features in a Collection We have now a corpus of five instances in which a speaker claims something und subsequently retracts that claim - our original case in (2)/(8), together with extracts (9)~(12) (though these are just a few of the many cases 1 have collected of this phenomenon). The next step is to examine the corpus, in order to determine whether instances have any features in common. In effect, this involves two of the analytic steps outlined earlier, namely, looking closely at how turns are designed, and considering how each participant responds to the other. Pulling these together, we can discern a number of features which these fragments have in common. First, the initial versions are very strongly stated, categorical or dramatic ■■■ generally through descriptors which are extreme versions (Edwardi, 2000; ľomerantz, 1986). Thus, in (9), Sarah claims to have done a!! the peaks; in (11), Sandra claims that she's never been to one yet, and, in (12), Emma claims that she hasn't had a piece of meat - each of which is an extreme version {and, in [30], Lesley claims categorically thai Rebecca didn't get to college)- Second, the recipients avoid endorsing these initial versions. Indeed, in various ways, they display some (incipient) scepticism - either through initially not responding (silence), as in examples (9), (10) and (12); through only minimal acknowledgements (example (9)); or through interrogative elliptical repeats, such as Joyce's Didn't she, in (10) or Becky's You haven't in (11). Third, the subsequent versions, in which the speakers appear to back down from the original claims, are characterized by explicitly contrasting elements when compared with the original versions. The sense of retraction is manifest, in part, through a direct contrast between the two versions - a contrast which is achieved through some lexical repetition. So we've done all in (9) becomes we couldn't do two: note the repetition of both the pronoun and the verb; in (10), (Rebecca) didn't get becomes she got; having claimed that/'w never been, Sandra concedes I've been, in (11); and, in (12), I haven't had is changed to / had. The contrast exhibited through such repetition, and in extracts 9-12 through the simple switch between positive and negative forms (for example, I've never been becomes I've been), highlights the Qualitative Psychology speakers' retraction of their initial claims. They Degin by claiming soiueilililji to be the case, and then retract their original claim. Nevertheless, fourth, the retractions are constructed so as to presem-some consistency with the initial versions, and hence the essential coned-ness of those first versions. They seem to back down from its strength, though nol from the core truth of what is claimed or reported. 1 will outline this in jusi two cases. (33) {expanded form of (9) [Holt 289:3-2]) 1 l.es: .hhh but there's some beautiful walks aren't the::[re 2 Sar: [0:h yes (.) 3 well we've done al! the peaks. 4 (0.4) 5 Les: Oh ye:s 6 (0.5) 7 Sar: A::h 8 (0.5) 9 Sar: —> We couldn't do two because you need roj>es and that 10 Us: yej:s. íl Sar: —> [It's a climbers spot Sarah and her family are just back from a holiday on a Scottish island, which Lesley has said is her daughter's favourite stamping ground. They are talking about walking (see line 1), in the context of which Sarah claims to have dune all the peaks, in her subsequent version (lines 9 and 11), Sarah retracts that: they did not do two. However, she constructs this as their being unable to do two, explaining that they could not do two peaks because climbing gear is needed to gel up them; they are not for walkers. She thereby constructs as exceptions the two peaks (note the specific enumeration of how many peaks, that being a small number - rather than that there were some they could not do) which they could not (rather than did not) do, thereby retaining her original claim as essentially true - they did ai! the peaks which could have been walked. In example (10), there are more elaborate components through which the subsequent version is constructed so as to be consistent with the claim Lesley originally makes that Rebecca didn't get to college. From (10) 1 Les: NO.::Tl no they're not. Only: one is outstandingly clever 2 wuh- an:' the other- ,hh an:'DRebecca didn't get ťcoilege," 3 (0.4) 4 Joy: .Didn't Jshe:, 5 Les: --> Well she got in the eriá she scraped into a buh- business 6 —> management, Conversation analysis 153 There are three components especially which 'reduce the distance' between ihb and her original claim. First, she got in the end portrays her as having had U> search for a college to take her, and/or as having been accepted only at the liiM minute. This is consistent with, indeed merges into, the second component - she scraped into - depicting her as only just being sufficiently qualified to gain entry, and therefore as being in that sense among the last to hu accepted. These components together portray her as having considerable dilhculty in getting a place in college. The final component, into business management, depicts her, moreover, as only having been able to get a place jo study that discipline: only having scraped into business management port rays that discipline as being in the academic bargain basement. The ways ; In which subsequent versions are designed to be exceptions to, and thereby "■■ t'j.senlially consistent with, the initial versions are, of course, quite explicit in the case with which we began, Nancy's claim 'Not et all, except Rout's mother gotta call'. Systematic Patterns in Conversation (HI); an Analytic Account of the Phenomenon So far, we have identified a pattern in which speakers make a strong claim about something, but subsequently - in the face of the other's implicit scepticism (even if that is expressed only through failure to respond) - back down from that claim: however, their retractions are designed so as to preserve the essential correctness of their original versions (through constructing the subsequent versions as exceptions of one kind or another). Then, the question is, what are we to make of this pattern? Do speakers just routinely lie, and retract when they are 'caught out' by their recipients' disbelief? This is the final stage in analysing a conversational phenomenon or pattern - providing an account for the pattern, it is not easy to be prescriptive about how or where one seeks such an account; but, broadly, it involves trying to identify the contingency which the pattern systematically handles, or to which it offers a solution. Very often, this wiil involve another of the analytic steps outlined earlier, which is to consider where and how the object or pattern in question arose. If we look at the sequence immediately prior to the over-strong , 'incorrect' versions, it is plain that the initial versions are being 'exaggerated' : in order to fit with the sequential environments in which they are produced, and the actions being done in those environments. For example, in (10), Lesley is disagreeing with Joyce, initially with Joyce's assessment that their ' friend is clever mentally: this is shown here in (14), line 1 (they have been talking previously about how clever she is with her hands, making her family's clothes and so on).