Final Examination Pragmantic And Discourse Analysis

Conversation Analysis on Communication

By:

Ernita Wulandari

A - 2018

185300113

Academic Year 2020/2021

Universitas PGRI Adi Buana Surabaya

INTRODUCTION

Conversation is one of the most prevalent uses of human language. All human
beings engage in conversional interaction and human society depends on
conversation in order to function :

Social interaction is the primordial means through which the business of the
social world is transacted, the identities of it is participants are affirmed of
denied, and it’s cultures are transmitted, renewed and modified. (Goodwin and
Heritage, 1990: 2838).

Conversation is the way in which people socialize and develop and sustain their
relationships with each other. When people converse they engage in a form of
linguistic communication, but there is much more going on in a conversation than
just the use of a linguistic code. Much that is a important in conversation is carried
out by things other than language, including eye gaze and body posture, silences
and the real-world context in which the talk is produced.

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 DEFINITION OF CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction,

embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. CA
began with a focus on casual conversation. As a consequence, the term
'conversation analysis' has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued
as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of
sociolinguistic interactions.

Conversation Analysis is a specific form of investigation or enquiry. A

conversation refers two or more individuals talking with one another just for the
sake of talking. It is a form of sociability and reflects an individual’s ability and
willingness to interact with others. At a basic level, conversation analysis is
viewed as the study of talk. In a broad sense, conversation analysis could refer to
the study of people talking together, oral communication or even study of
language use.

Sociologist Harvey Sacks, from the University of California, propagated the

conversation analysis approach. He designed it as a means of understanding the
levels of social order that are divulged in everyday conversations. According to
him, conversations are structurally organized phenomenon which have some kind
of order. After his death, his work in this area was carried on by Emanuel
Schegloff, Gail Jefferson and other researchers.

The basic idea behind CA is that conversation is orderly in its details, that it is
through detailed order that conversation has meaning, and that conversational
details manifest themselves in specifiable forms. These include turn types, turn
transitions, membership categorization devices, and forms of indexicality (words
and sentence fragments with multiple possible meanings) that require constant
attention to orderly production and ensure that participants maintain interactional
reciprocity. The need to display attention to these preference orders solves the
problem of how any speaker can know whether or not the listener has understood
what was said and provides a way of explaining how the meaning of words are

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disambiguated in particular situations of use. It also introduces an inevitable moral
dimension to interaction.

According to Sacks, the ability of any speaker to take a recognizably intelligible

turn next, after a prior turn (given a sufficient degree of indexicality in the talk),
displays understanding. Thus, speaking in indexical fragments, which
linguistically would appear to be a problem, is a highly efficient device for
ensuring mutual intelligibility. It ensures that all participants who take turns are
fulfilling their listening and hearing requirements and either understand what has
been said, or display their lack of understanding in their next turn. Even speaking
last demonstrates attention to a long sequence of turns.

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 BASIC STRUCTURE OF CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where

participants speak one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves
processes for constructing contributions, responding to previous comments, and
transitioning to a different speaker, using a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic
cues.

While the structure is generally universal, that is, overlapping talk is generally

avoided and silence between turns is minimized, turn-taking conventions vary by
culture and community. Conventions vary in many ways, such as how turns are
distributed, how transitions are signaled, or how long the average gap is between
turns.

In many contexts, conversation turns are a valuable means to participate in social

life and have been subject to competition. It is often thought that turn-taking
strategies differ by gender; consequently, turn-taking has been a topic of intense
examination in gender studies. While early studies supported gendered
stereotypes, such as men interrupting more than women and women talking more
than men, recent research has found mixed evidence of gender-specific
conversational strategies, and few overarching patterns have emerged.

The turn-taking model sketched here is designed to accommodate a wide range of

turn-taking possibilities, varying numbers of conversational participants, and
circumstances in which the length of turns, and of conversations, and of their
topics is not in any way pre-specified in advance. The system is implemented by
the parties to the conversation without external regulation (party administered),
and on a local unit-by-unit basis. Designed to account for the fact that much
conversation takes place without much silence or 'dead time' but also without
significant amounts of overlapping talk, the described system has multiple
consequences.

1) It defines silences:

● Pause: A period of silence within a speaker's TCU.

● Gap: A period of silence between turns.

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● Lapse: A period of silence when no sequence is in progress: the current
speaker stops talking, does not select a next speaker, and no one self selects.
Lapses are commonly associated with visual or other forms of disengagement
between speakers, even if these periods are brief.

2) It provides that speakers wanting a long turn, for example to tell a story or
describe important news, must use some form of preface to get a go-ahead that
provides that others will refrain from intervening during the course of the telling
(the preface and its associated go-ahead comprise a "pre-sequence" (Sacks 1974;
Schegloff 2007)).

3) It provides that conversations cannot be appropriately terminated by 'just

stopping', but require a special closing sequence (Schegloff and Sacks 1973).

4) It provides that certain types of gaps (following the 'current selects next' option)
are accountable.

5) It provides that special resources be deployed in the case of overlapping talk

(Schegloff 2000; Jefferson 2004b).

SEQUENCE ORGANIZATION IN CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

The notion of sequence organization is based on the premise that the central
consideration for the organization of talk is that talk is a form of social action: that
is, turns at talk are places in which the participants in a conversation perform
actions through talk. Turns at talk cluster together in order for speakers to develop
a course of action. This view maintains that the action being performed is a more
important resource for understanding how conversation is organized. CA views
the positioning of an utterance in the ongoing conversation as fundamental to the
understanding of its meaning and to the analysis of its significance as a social
action.

ADJACENCY PAIRS

In the 1970s, Schegloff and Sacks (1973) noted that conversations appear to be
made up of sequences of two utterances. They noted that the utterances are:

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 ● adjacent
● produced by different speakers
● ordered as a first part and a second part
● typed so that a particular first part requires a particular second part

In addition, they pointed out that when the current speaker has produced a first
pair part he or she should stop speaking and the next speaker should produce
a second pair part at that juncture. These paired utterances are referred to as
adjacency pairs and they appear to be a fundamental unit of conversation. To
understand these characteristics better, consider the following simple example.

1. John:   hello

2. Kath:   hi

The first pair part of the adjacency pair is the utterance hello in line 1. Now, this
type of utterance may be defined as a greeting. The first pair part is,
therefore, typed (as a greeting). We have noted that a characteristic of adjacency
pairs is that they are typed so that a particular first part requires a particular
second part. It should be self-evident that greetings are usually followed by
greetings. Consequently, when the first pair part is a greeting then the required
second pair part is also a greeting. It is relevant, therefore, that after a greeting is
uttered the current speaker should stop speaking and the next speaker should
produce the relevant second pair part greeting at that juncture. Failure to produce
the required second pair part greeting would be noticeable to the interlocutors. In
fact, in our example, John does stop speaking and Kath produces the relevant, and
required, second pair part greeting hi in line 2. We see, then, in this brief extract
how (1) the utterances are adjacent, (2) they are produced by different speakers,
(3) they are ordered as a first part and a second part, and (4) they are typed. Now
consider the following pair of utterances.

1. Rey:      would you like a cup of tea?

2. Parmjit:   yes please

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In this brief sequence, Rey utters the first pair part would you like a cup of tea? in
line 1, which is interpretable as a question. Now, it is relevant that a question is
followed by an answer. We can state, therefore, that when the first pair part of an
adjacency pair is typed as a question then the expected second pair part is typed as
an answer. The person who has uttered the first pair part should then stop
speaking and the next speaker should produce a second pair part at that juncture.
In fact, in the above extract, this is exactly what happens: Parmjit responds in line
2 with the second pair part yes please, which is interpretable as the answer to the
immediately prior question. This all seems fairly straightforward. However,
consider the following.

1. Pam:       do you want to become a member?

2. Steve:     how much does it cost?

3. Pam:       twenty pounds.

4. Steve:     I don’t think so

This sequence begins like the previous one, with a question. Now, according to
the conditions set out above, a first pair part question should be followed by a
second pair part answer and this should be adjacent. However, this is not what
occurs. In this instance, Pam’s opening question in line 1 is not followed by the
expected answer in line 2 but by a question how much does it cost? This so-
called request for clarification is, clearly, directed back to Pam and it is
appropriate that she should, therefore, speak next. This she does in line 3,
providing the answer twenty pounds to the immediately prior question. Steve then
takes up the next turn at talk in line 4 with I don’t think so. This final utterance is
now interpretable as the second pair part answer to Pam’s original opening
question do you want to become a member?

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 CONCLUTION

Conversation Analysis is a specific form of investigation or enquiry. A

conversation refers two or more individuals talking with one another just for the
sake of talking. It is a form of sociability and reflects an individual’s ability and
willingness to interact with others. At a basic level, conversation analysis is
viewed as the study of talk. In a broad sense, conversation analysis could refer to
the study of people talking together, oral communication or even study of
language use.

All human beings engage in conversional interaction and human society depends
on conversation in order to function. Much that is a important in conversation is
carried out by eye gaze and body posture, silences and the real-world context in
which the talk is produced. Conversation is the way in which people socialize and
develop and sustain relationships with each other. Sociologist Harvey Sacks, from
the University of California, propagated the conversation analysis approach. He
designed it as a means of understanding the levels of social order that are divulged
in everyday conversations. His work was carried on by other researchers. After his
death.

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 REFERENCES

Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational Organization. New York: Academic Press.

Gnisci, A., & Bakeman, R. (2007). Sequential Accommodation of Turn Taking

and Turn Length : A Study of Courtroom Interaction. Journal of Language and
Social Psychology.

Fitzgerald, P. (2014). Therapy Talk : Conversation Analysis in Practice . New

York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wikipedia “Conversation Analysis”

Ten Have, P. (1999). Doing Conversation Analysis. London: SAGE Publications.

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