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Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics

com~erisat1
Amal~sis
•

Rebecca Clift
Co11vc r tion Analysis
W llv1 1111 1 llv11 111 ·onversation, building families, societies and civilisa-
tion . 111 11 v ·1 11w n thousand languages across the world, the basic infra-
sln1 ·1111 111, y wl1 •II w · communicate remains the same. This is the first ever
book l1111 p,ll1 11111 111Nli · introduction to conversation analysis (CA), the field
that hall d1J111 11 u11· t1111n any other to illuminate the mechanics of interac-
tion. Stt11li1111 li y lo ·11ting CA by reference to a number of cognate dis-
ciplirn..:s i11 vu 1IIf 111 i111\ language in use, it provides an overview of the
origins a11d 1111ll1od,ll )gy of CA. By using conversational data from
a range of' l1111g111111• , it ·xam ines the basic apparatus of sequence organ i-
sation: turn-t11ki 11 v, pr l' ·rcncc, identity construction and repair. As the
basis for these in v ·st il\111 ions the book uses the twin analytic resources of
action and scq u ·11 • • 10 rllrow new light on the origins and nature o r
language use.

REBECCA CLI FT is Seni or Lecturer in the Department of Language and

Linguistics, Univers ity or l.issex. She is co-editor of Reporting Talk
(Cambridge, 2006).
CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS

General editors: P. AUSTIN , J. BRESNAN , B. COMRIE, s. CRAIN, w. DRESSLER,

C. EWEN, R. LASS, D. LIGHTFOOT, K. RICE, I. ROBERTS, S . ROMAINE,
N.V. SMITH.

Conversation Analysis
III this series

H. ANN Formal Semantics

J . 1, A VER Principles ofPhonetics
I'. 11. P ALMER Grammatical Roles and Relations
M . 11 . J O NES Foundations of French Syntax
11 . R/ll)FORD Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimalist Approach
,c o. v /IN v ALIN, Jr, and R. r. LAPOLLA Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function
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I, K. ( ' 11/IM BE RS and P . TRUDGILL Dialectology Second edition
<'. 1,Y() NS Definiteness
1 • 1 /IOJI. R Optimality Theory
1, A . 11 <l1. M An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles
!I , , 1, ( '() RHETT Number
I ', ! , liW 11, N and I·). VAN DER HULST The Phonological Structure of Words
11 ll. l' /1 1,M l'. 11 Mood and Modality Second edition
11 1. 111, AKH ase Second edition
11 , 111NS M/IN Phonology: Analysis and Theory
M II ' 'Iii/IC
w I •111 w 1·7 ,pology and Universals Second edition
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)1 11,M/I S
1• 1 11 1w1•1\ 1t nnd E. c. TR/IUGOTT Grammaticalization Second ed iti on
1 w 1111 H Sctond language Acquisition and Universal Grammar

1 l'I 11 1 Wo, 1- f<'o rmation in English

w 1 ,,., ,, ,. 11 11d 11 . CR SE 'ognilive Linguistics
,\ l l'W I Hl! N A Person
A 11 ,\ 111 ,, 11t 11 M/11i111alisl Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English
11 11/h, 1N• 1 //!1uli11g Ti, o,y
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11 111 lllN , '1 IIIN, J. N IJ ES nnd K. G RO HM/INN Undersla11di11g M/11/111(1 /i.1·111
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CONVERSATION
ANALYSIS

REBECCA CLIFT
University ofEssex

BCAMBRIDGE
~ UNIVERSITY PRESS
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I, ltll11p111 pld ·111 rcforcnces.
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I I ·: 11 ( '1111v rsntion analysis.
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Imagination is not, as is sometimes thought, the ability to in v ·nl , ii
is the ability to disclose that which exists.
John /11•1,1:1•1
 Contents

List offigures page xii

List of tables xm
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xix

I Introduction: why study conversation? 1

1.1 The basics: the 'Two Things' 2
1.2 The view from linguistics 5
1.2.1 The search for meaning 5
1.2.2 Observational approaches 23
1.3 Beyond language: discourse analysis and CA 28
l .4 Action and sequence: the implications 31
1.5 The organisation of this volume and overview of chapters 32

2 Towards an understanding of action: origins and perspectives 35

2. 1 On Goffman and Garfinkel 36
2.2 Harvey Sacks: from ethnomethodology to conversation analysis 40
2.3 Jefferson's transcription system 44
2.4 Capturing phenomena 47
2.4. 1 Developments of the Jefferson system 52
.5 A transcription conventions: an overview 53

, Why that, now? Position and composition in interaction 64

l. I n position and composition 64
. I. I How position matters: What are you doing? 65
I. Adjacency and the adj acency pair 68
3.2. I Adjacency and cross-linguistic validity 73
I. \ lixpu nsion beyond the adjacency pair 76
3... I Pre-ex pansion 77
.I. . lrrnorl ex pans ion 82
.IJ.'.I 1'<,st- xpunsions 84
\.' I 'J'h s q11 11 · ·: ()Ohurence and distributed cognition 89
I '1 ( '011t:l11sio11 : 's ·q11 0 11 ' a~ inf'ras lruclure and con text 94

l11j111·11dlo11 In llnrn: lhl rnntrnmy of h1r11- fold11g 9

I I '1'11111 111 ld 11f : 1111 ,1 v1,1vlow %
,, I A 11111fl •lt 111 ·,, l111 pi11 I I y l\111111111 . I)/
X CONTENTS

4.2.1 The tum-constructional component 98

4.2.2 The tum-allocational component 111
4.2.3 Beyond the first TCU 122
4.3 The tum-taking rules 124
4.4 More than one at a time: 'interruption', overlap and choral
production 126
4.5 No-one speaking: forms of silence 130
4.6 Transforming silence: the role of grammar 132
4.7 Local variation, universal system? 134
4.8 Conclusion: grammar and social organisation in context 139

5 The structure of sequences I: preference organisation 140

5 .1 Preference organisation: an introduction 141
5.1.1 Preference and adjacency pairs 141
5.1.2 Actions and formats: interactional implications 148
5.1.3 An exception 150
5.1. 4 Between preferred and dispreferred: agendas, social
norms and deontic authority in responsive turns 151
5.1.5 Preference and action categories 162
5 .2 Preference and the recognition of action 168
5.3 Preference in person reference 170
5. 3. l Preference, principles and defaults in person reference 170
5.3.2 Preference and grammaticalisation 172
5.3 .3 Departures from default usage 179
.4 Conclusion: preference in the tum and the sequence 184

(1 The structure of sequences II: knowledge and authority

in the construction of identity 185
6.1 identity in CA: the 'membership categorisation device' 186
6. I. I Categories and collections of categories 189
6.1.2 The rules of application 193
6.2 Knowledge and authority as resources for action recognition 195
6.2. I Territories of knowledge in interaction 196
6.2.2 Authority in interaction 221
6. onclusion: knowledge, authority and agency in indirection 228

7 llnlting progressivity: the organisation of repair 232

7. I c l f-repair 236
7.1. 1 Self-initiated self-repa ir in same T U 236
7. 1.2 Sclf-ini tiu t ·cl trnn sifion-sp11 · r p11irs
7.1. Th ird position 1·1111 d 111
7.1.4 S If" J11 Jtl11t 11d 0111111 11 p11l,
7..
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 Contents

7.3 Implicit forms ofrepair initiation: embodiment and gaze 264

7.4 Conclusion: the defence ofintersubjectivity 270

8 Conclusion: discovering order 27

I? eferences 27
Author index . ()
, neral index ) ()11
 ures

I I < >v, 1I 1p or ·ornprehension and production processes

111, 1111Vl'1,•11 tio11 (based on Levinson, 2013a:104) page3
I 11111 pl ·s of adjacency pairs 70
I I 11111111 111si1ions : mean time across 10 languages
u: 11 v1 111 ·I 11 1., 2009:10589) 76
I I• p 111 Ni o11s ol'a base adjacency pair (from Schegloff, 2007a:26) 77
I h p 111Ni o11s of' a base adjacency pair, with example sequence types 89
I I 11111 11· 1110d ,1of the turn-taking system (after Sacks et al., 1974) 97
I I 1'11111 111 ·di:il anti cipating token: 'went cuz', extract (18), l. 9
( I 111·1 111111d Wnlker, 2012:262) 105
1'11111 111 ·dial token showing close proximity: 'flat still', extract (19),
I 11 (Lol::t l nnd Walker, 2012:265) 105
'1'11111 1110di:1l reduction of word-final consonant: 'back again',
1 xii irt ( 0) (Local and Walker, 2012:268) 106
11 I ,111111 prn ·ti ·es for indexing relative primacy and subordination of
11 1•sN111 11t s: a summary of Heritage and Raymond (2005) 198
r, ' I 1•1 iti v pislernic access before and after extract (19) 203
11 I l•p1 lu ni · gradients embodied in question design (Heritage
111d I{ 11 mond, 2012: 181) 204
IiI l•p1 l1•111 i ·s and action formation (adapted from Heritage, 2012a:24) 210
I I h11111 • or r ·pair, with preference ordering 236
I ' :: p111111 111 ol'olher-repair initiation types (Sidnell, 2010; Manrique
111dl l111ild, 2015) 251
I• pltl' tl ollt ·r-rcpair initiation types: a summary 264
/ M1 1111 ' v rhnl rcpair initiation (from Seo and Koshik, 2010:2222) 266
I 1 1111 ' 11 • '/. ·-look': a schema (adapt d from Manrique and Enfield,
1
0 1 1: I ,u 11d l•loydet al. ,201 5:5) 267
I 11 I• 11 l\'I ( 6 Manriqu · 1111d l•: 11l h•ld , 101 ', I ', ) 26~
// l·~ l1H:l(. 7)( Floydl'lnl. . 1() 1 1 1 1) (i<)
 Tables

7. 1 Three basic repair initiation format types (a summary

of Dingemanse and Enfield, 2015) pag 250
 Preface

.· - I write, conversation analysis (CA) has just marked the first half-century of its
=ristence as an established domain ofresearch since the first of Harvey Sacks's
:_ectures on Conversation in 1964. While CA emerged through sociology, it has
_ :each that goes far beyond, into anthropology, psychology, communication,
. _ ·tive science, evolutionary theory, education, clinical research and practice,
~ electrical engineering.
T particular, however, this book is for linguists: students oflanguage who may
__ familiar with some approaches to the study of language, but less so with
.·estigating its use in interaction. However, it is a testament to both the cen-
_::2rry of language in interaction and the growing influence of CA in linguistics
-=- the groundbreaking paper of Sacks et al. (1974) on tum-taking is 'by far the
-: cited' paper to have appeared in Language, the journal of the Linguistic
__ ·ety of America since 1924 (Joseph, 2003:463).

disciplinary scope of the book ·

As an overview of the methods and findings of CA, the format of
: :>ook may be unfamiliar to those expecting a textbook organised along
-: ·onal linguistic lines. So those areas within the standard linguistic corn-
.:. mch as phonetics, morphosyntax and semantics, are not represented here
-. · ·ar guise, as subjects of 'top-down' investigation. Rather, in accor-
- <! ith the 'bottom-up' methods of CA, interactional phenomena usually
-- ..:gated within such domains are the focus insofar as they are implicated
-~ onstruction of action . Moreover, while the concern with action may be
- -: to linguists, it is in the bottom-up methods of investigating action - in
.ces rather than as discrete acts - that CA diverges from much familiar
=-5tic inquiry. A orientational overview with respect to the central con-
- of CA, and its relationship to work in relevant linguistic territory, is
.:..~ in the first chapter. This makes it clear that, while CA's investigation
.,--_,, age in context' announces its obvious pertinence to semantics and
.=--" .· cs, its focus on the construction and recognition of action makes it
- _: far beyond these domains. So, as we shall see in the chapters that
. the concern with the construction of action is germane to

xv
xvi PRE?ACE

investigations of its phonetic, prosodic and morphosyntactic resources; and

the focus on how action is recognised speaks to central questions in both
psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics.

Unguistic data
The vast majority of work in CA to date has been conducted on the
data of English, and so the foundational expositions inevitably, and regrettably,
reflect this linguistic bias. There is now a growing body of CA work on languages
other than English, and many of the foundational arguments here could be
exemplified in data from a variety of languages; however, in keeping with the
primary expository function of the book, I have, for the sake of clarity, kept in the
main to English exemplars. Where possible, however, cross-linguistic data are
included to illuminate how linguistic variation is accommodated in the universal
principles of interactional organisation. So in keeping with the design of the
volume as an overview, the number of exemplars of each analytic point are here
limited. This, it should be stressed, goes against usual CA conventions, which
standardly require at least three exemplars to show that a practice is not idiosyn-
cratic to a particular episode of interaction. Only one or two are generally used in
this book for illustrative purposes, to keep the size of the volume under control.
The excerpts themselves are transcribed according to the conventions developed
by Gail Jefferson, and described in Chapter 2. In a few cases, where the source
uses slightly different notation, the reader is referred to the source material for
detailed information on conventions.
With respect to coverage of linguistic resources, the skewing towards
morphosyntactic phenomena is representative of the research in the discipline
as a whole. Sustained conversation-analytic engagement with phonetic and
prosodic features of interaction has come late, relative to the development of
the field. I have, where possible, included some of this work to indicate the
scope of investigation in this field, aware that for some it will be nowhere near
enough.
It should also be noted that, while work on phenomena such as eye-gaze and
embodiment are increasingly the subject of analytic attention, consideration of
those domains is here restricted, in keeping with the linguistic focus of the book.
The same applies to a stream of work that has been termed 'Applied CA': that is,
the examination of interaction in work or institutional settings, such as the
clinical environment, courtroom interaction or broadcast interviews. Certainly,
data from these contexts are employed in what follows, but their institutionality is
not necessarily germane to the points they are illustrating.
These caveats are offered on the premise that the reader will be guided by the
references and further reading suggestions below.
 Preface xvn

~ note on how to use this book

In aiming to introduce some of the foundational work in CA and
present an overview of its core working methods, this book aims for a logical
progression and coherence, such that each chapter presupposes familiarity with
concepts introduced in earlier ones. Chapter 1 is an orientational overview for those
who have some background in linguistics and approaches to language use. It aims
to show how the 'bottom-up' analytic focus of CA has yielded insights inaccessible
to top-down methods. It is not intended to be an overview of various approaches,
but rather assumes some knowledge of them in order to stake out the distinctive
territory of CA. Chapter 2, on the origins of CA, and the rationale for CA
transcription conventions, is relatively self-contained, so readers wishing to
move straight to findings may wish to go straight from the Introduction to
Chapter 3 and pick up Chapter 2 later. However, like the Introduction, Chapter 2
unavoidably - and designedly - looks ahead to material in other Chapters.
Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 do, in particular, nevertheless, assume progression;
Chapter 7 less so. In some places, it is inevitable that examination of the data in
an earlier chapter makes reference to phenomena in a later chapter. This is
particularly the case for Chapter 7, on repair. In the same way that repair is
potentially relevant at any moment - it occurs in the course of many exchanges
throughout the book- so Chapter 7 may be potentially relevant at any moment. It is
thus relatively independent and can be read for clarification regarding repair at any
earlier stage. Chapter 8, the Conclusion, returns to the issues raised in the
Introduction, Chapter 1. There is a certain amount of cross-referencing between
chapters - data excerpts being examined in one chapter may include phenomena
pertinent to discussion in another, and so in some cases, an excerpt in one chapter is
re-examined with a different lens in another.
As an introduction to CA, this book does not aim to be comprehensive and has
had to be selective. The references should provide a guide for further reading.
The most useful collections of primary sources are Atkinson and Heritage (1984),
Lerner (2004), Drew and Heritage (2006, 2013). Sidnell and Stivers (2013) is
a collection of specialist overviews. With respect to specific topics, Schegloff
(2007a) is the baseline resource for sequence organisation, and Hayashi et al.
(2013) is a cross-linguistic collection of work on repair. Sidnell (2009) is a cross-
linguistic collection on a variety of topics. Linguistically informed collections
include Ochs et al. (1996), Selting and Couper-Kuhlen (2001), Ford et al. (2002),
Hakulinen and Selting (2005), Szczepek Reed and Raymond (2013) and
Thompson et al. (2015). Couper-Kuhlen and Selting (1996) and Barth-
Weingarten et al. (2010) focus on prosody and Couper-Kuhlen and Ford (2004)
on phonetics. For CA in institutional settings, Drew and Heritage (1992) and
Heritage and Clayman (2010) are the places to start.
CA work appears in a number of journals, including Language in Society,
Journal of Pragmatics, Discourse and Society, Discourse Studies and Text and
 xviii PREFACE

Talk, but its home base has become Research on Language and Social
Interaction. There are two main international conferences where CA work is
prominent: the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA), once
every four years, and the biennial International Pragmatics Association
Conference (IPRA), where CA represents a significant stream of work.
The International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA) is at: isca
.clubexpress.com. ISCA is a professional association designed to serve the
needs ofresearchers, both faculty and student, oflanguage and social interaction
across a variety of disciplines. In its own words, a major aim is to 'encourage and
enhance interdisciplinary research into the structure and dynamics of social
interaction through the creation of a multi-disciplinary community of scholars'.
The ISCA website contains useful links to other relevant professional associa-
tions, and to the academic journal Research on Language and Social Interaction.
With respect to other online resources, there is a helpful CA tutorial established
by Charles Antaki at http://homepages.lboro.ac.uk/-sscal/sitemenu.htm.
The research materials databases originally set up by Paul ten Have have been
an invaluable resource over many years and are continuously updated. These are
the main page and bibliography pages for materials in ethnomethodology and
conversation analysis: http://emcawiki.net/Main_ Page; http://emcawiki.net
/EM CA_bibliography_database.

l
 Acknowledgements

I have benefited enormously along the way from the generosity of many. Paul
Drew, David Good, Rachael Harris, the late Gail Jefferson and John Local
have, at various times and in various places, been wise and inspiring teachers.
Paul read an early draft and provided invaluable guidance. The LSA Summer
Institute at UCSB 2001 and the term I spent at UCLA in 2002 were the most
intense and intellectually stimulating times of my academic life; for them,
I am hugely indebted to Manny Schegloff, Steve Clayman, John Heritage,
Gene Lerner, Sandy Thompson and Don Zimmerman. Over the years - and in
many a data session - I have found in Charles Antaki, Liz Holt, Celia
Kitzinger, Irene Koshik, John Rae, Hiroko Tanaka, Ray Wilkinson and Sue
Wilkinson sources of insight and support. I have also very much appreciated
the support of Steve Levinson and his group, especially Nick Enfield and
Tanya Stivers, formerly at the MPI, Nijmegen; subsequent MPI researchers
Joe Blythe, Simeon Floyd, Elliott Hoey, Elizabeth Manrique and Giovanni
Rossi gave generously of their material, some still in press. A number of
people - Charles Antaki, Liz Holt, Leendert Plug and Ray Wilkinson - read
drafts and provided very helpful observations and nudged me in the direction
of clarification. I owe a particular debt to John Heritage, Chase Raymond and
Kobin Kendrick for extremely detailed and constructive comments on the
entire manuscript. They gave my first draft more care than I had a right to
expect. What improvements resulted are due to all of these people. I also pay
tribute, with gratitude for his unfailing forbearance, to my editor, Andrew
Winnard, who kicked the whole thing off, and Bethany Gaunt, Christina
Sarigiannidou and my hugely conscientious copy-editor Jacqueline French,
and the rest of the team at Cambridge University Press.
Closer to (my) home, colleagues, current and former, provided welcome
support in ways too numerous to mention (usually over meals too numerous
to mention): Doug Arnold, Bob Borsley, Dave Britain, Sonja Eisenbeiss,
Adela Ganem, Wyn Johnson, Florence Myles, Beatriz de Paiva, Andrew
Radford, Louisa Sadler and Andrew Spencer. My students over the last
twenty years have taught me more than I have taught them, but I must single
out Faye Abu Abah, Angeliki Balantani, Ariel Vazquez Carranza and
Caroline Dunmore for their thoughtful comments on various drafts. Those
anonymised in the pages to come, whose interactions we are privileged to
witness, deserve the thanks of us all.

xix
XX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Closer still, I am deeply thankful for the wisdom and guidance of Kathryn
Burton at a vital time. I'm also very grateful to my sister Naomi; my brother-
in-law Jonathan Seglow and my dear friend James Allen were also a source of
encouragement from other comers of the academic world.
All of these people, directly or indirectly, had some positive influence on
the production of this book.
My debt to four people goes beyond words: my parents, Jean and Marc,
whom I miss every day; and at home, Graeme and Esme. Together, over the
years, they have kept 'My suspect edifice upright in Air/As Atlas did the sky',
and it is to them that this volume, and its author, are dedicated.
1 Introduction: why study
conversation?
This chapter shows the importance of studying conversation as a route into
understanding language in social life. As an introduction to the chapters that follow, it
establishes the 'Two Things': the two fundamental things at the core of conversation
analysis (CA): action and sequence. We examine some basic linguistic conceptions of
the purpose of language, the often indirect relationships between grammatical forms
and functions, and the role that 'meaning' and 'context' have played in the
investigation of language, within the domains of semantics and pragmatics.
Understanding how actions are accomplished collaboratively across sequences of talk
provides insights into the basic infrastucture of interaction that may be overlooked in
the face of the structural diversity of, and constant evolution in, the languages of the
world. We explore areas of commonality and difference between CA and other
domains of work within linguistics. This is done initially through an overview of three
dominant theories within pragmatics, Speech Ad Theory, Gricean implicature, and
Relevance Theory, showing something of how some of the phenomena examined in
these approaches are treated in the data of CA. We then examine more overtly
observational approaches, such as sociolinguistics, interadional linguistics,
anthropology and discourse analysis, to show the distinctive contribution CA brings
to work on language in interaction: one that goes far beyond the traditional domains
of linguistic study. This Introduction ends with an overview of the chapters to follow.

We live our lives in conversation; between the first 'hello' and the last 'goodbye',
conversation is where the world's business gets done. Each of us owes our very
existence, at least in part, to conversation; we conduct our lives through it, building
families, societies and civilisations. Yet the means by which this is done is anything
but obvious. This book is an introduction to the study of conversation through the
methods and findings of conversation analysis (CA), the domain that has done
more than any other to examine interaction, that is, action between people.
Language - at the meeting point of biology and culture - has been the object of
intellectual inquiry for centuries, and long regarded as the core of what it is to be
human; the investigation of language structure is a basic project in the cognitive
sciences. However, only in the last half-century has systematic attention been
given to the domain of interaction - where language may be the central compo-
nent, but not the exclusive one.
In taking interaction as its focus, this book seeks to investigate the commu-
nicative and cultural constraints shaping language as they intersect with the
cognitive. It takes the stance that, to establish what it is to be human, what
happens between minds - the visible work done by participants in interaction -
is fundamental to finding out what is in them. We start by establishing the twin
foundations of CA: action and sequence, and how they promise to illuminate
some of the central concerns in linguistics. Through the lens of these, we examine
a number of traditional linguistic domains to offer some of the insights CA has
2 INTRODUCTION: WHY STUDY CONVERS ATIO ?

made into some long-standing linguistic conundrums concerning the meaning of

utterances. In doing so, we not only show what linguistics has to gain from an
apprehension of both action and sequence, but also introduce the analytic themes
to be pursued in the following chapters.

1.1 The basics: the 1'.wo Thin s'

The 'Two Things' game invites us to identify the two fundamental
things about any domain. 1 For CA, the two things from which all else follows are
action - broadly, the things we do with words2 - and sequence - ' a course of
action implemented through talk' (Schegloff, 2007a:9). For those more used to
dealing with sentences, utterances, meaning and grammar, the terms represent a
wholesale methodological tilt of a familiar planet, linguistics, on its axis, and it
may not be immediately apparent how either figures in language use. However,
the importance of both goes back to the very origins of human evolution.
While the dating of the origins oflanguage is a matter of some dispute (see Dediu
and Levinson, 2013, for a reassessment of the usually quoted 50,000-100,000 years
to half a million years), what is beyond doubt is that there is evidence of cooperation
among our earliest human ancestors, Homo habilis, around 2 million years ago. In
other words, joint action in the form of cooperation and coordination has been
central in the development of humankind. In addition, around seven thousand
languages, at a rough estimate, have evolved and are in present-day use; and the
study of this diversity and its origins provides linguistics with some of its funda-
mental and motivating questions regarding the basis for linguistic structure and the
nature of its biological and cultural underpinnings.
In seeking to understand this diversity, many have recognised the origins of
language change in language use (see, e.g., Hopper, 1987; Lehmann, [1982]1995;
Croft, 2000; Cousse and Mengden, 2014; Bybee, 2015). As Evans and Levinson
put it: 'most linguistic diversity is the product of historical cultural evolution
operating on relatively independent traits' (2009:444). Thus, the examination
of linguistic structure reveals 'general cognitive abilities: the importance of
repetition in the entrenchment of neuromotor patterns, the use of similarity in
categorization, and the construction of generalizations across similar patterns'
(Bybee, 2006:730; see also Edelman, 1992, and Hurford, 2007).
There are, of course, uses of language that are not embodied in interaction -
jotting down a shopping list, reading a novel or working on a computer - but
overwhelmingly, we encounter language, and are socialised, in interaction, and
specifically in that particular form of interaction that we recognise as ordinary

1 This proposes that for any subject, 'there are only two things you need to know. Everything else is
the application of those two things, or just not important' , e.g. trading in stocks and shares: ' l. Buy
low 2. Sell high'; acting on stage: l .'Don't forget your lines' 2. 'Don't run into the set.' See Glen
Whitman, 'The Two Things' website, currently at: www.csun.edu/-dgw61315/thetwothings.html.
2
To paraphrase Austin (1962).
 1.1 Th e basics: the 'Two Things' 3

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------""'
Time
.----.----ccc-,---------;100 ms gap
A's turn ~---""'
B's production lanning B's turn
~ ------------ ----- ------ ------------ ""'
- -- --- -
600-1200 ms

Figure 1.1 Overlap of comprehension and production processes in conversation

(based on Levinson, 2013a: 104)

conversation. 3 This is equally the case in the phylogenetic development of

language down the ages as in the ontogenetic development of the individual.
A major contribution to work on the emergence of linguistic structures has been
that which examines the discourse basis of various grammaticalisation traits,
whether features such as grammatical transitivity (Hopper and Thompson, 1980),
lexical categories (Hopper and Thompson, 1984), syntactic change (Giv6n, 2008,
Traugott, 2010) and phonology (Bybee, 2001 ).
Alongside the interest in the interactional foundations of language evolution
and structural diversity, work in psycholinguistics (Clark, 1996) and formal
linguistics (e.g. Traum, 1994; Ginzburg, 2012; Ginzburg and Poesio, 2015) has
also sought to ground investigation oflanguage in its interactional home base. As
such work has recognised, actions - and specifically linguistic actions, such as
requesting, inviting, complimenting, complaining, agreeing, disagreeing and so
forth - are not unilateral, but jointly and collaboratively achieved. Moreover, as
we shall see in the course of this book, this applies as much to actions that, on the
face of it, appear to be unilateral, such as referring or informing.
While the value of investigating language as action is thus recognised in many
domains of linguistic research, less so is the means by which action is implemen-
ted: the sequence. In its focus on how actions are implemented across sequences,
CA is committed to studying the spontaneous online production and understanding
oflanguage in time. One of the most striking facts about the temporal production of
turns-at-talk is that while it takes over 600 milliseconds to plan and produce the
shortest turn in conversation (Levelt, 1989), on average, and depending on the
particular language, gaps between conversational turns are around 200 millise-
conds (de Ruiter et al., 2006, Stivers et al., 2009); see Figure 1.1.
There thus has to be an element of linguistic 'double-tasking' in comprehen-
sion and production processes. As Levinson notes, conversational participants
must have parsed what they have heard and understood its grammar well
enough to predict both the content and its structure, so that they can predict
when it will come to an end (otherwise their response may come too early or too
late) ... action ascription involves numerous dimensions . .. so it would seem to

3
For talk that is not conversational, and a product of specific, standardly work-based, contexts, such
as the medical encounter or courtroom exchanges - so-called institutional talk - see Drew and
Heritage (1992) and Heritage and Clayman (2010). See also Chapter 4 for how the turn-taking
system for ordinary conversation constitutes the baseline for such institutional talk.
4 INTRODUCTIO N : WHY STUD Y CONV E RSATIO N ?

be a much more complex and indeterminate process than decoding the structure
and content of the turn. That is the miracle . . . (2013a:103-4)

The implications for interaction across languages of diverse structures, whether

left- or right-branching, are profound. Prosodic, syntactic and pragmatic signal-
ling of turn completion or incompletion is directly motivated by the tum-taking
system, so that, for example, the English relative clause structure in the tum 'I am
reading the book which I gave you' is potentially more vulnerable to overlap than
the equivalent clause in the comparable Dravidian or Japanese tum, glossable as
'The I to-you given book I am reading' (Levinson, 1983 :365). In the development
of the discipline, and in the body of research to date, the CA focus has been just
this miracle: how actions are implemented and recognised in talk-in-interaction -
or, in its abbreviated form, 'talk' 4 - a term now preferred over 'conversation' as
the more general designation for our interactions through language.
The cross-linguistic study of coordinated action is in its early days relative to the
long-established research programme in modem linguistics. Moreover, evidently
the bottom-up, rigorously empirical working methods of CA are not conducive to
making top-down generalisations. However, the search for universals initiated by
Chomsky (1957, 1965) and, from another perspective, by Greenberg (1963, 1966),
and still subject to vigorous debate (see Evans and Levinson, 2009; and Levinson
and Evans, 2010) resulting in the more recent proposal that recursion is 'the only
uniquely human component of the faculty oflanguage' (Hauser et al., 2002:1569)5
focuses in no small part on issues of methodology, interpretation and standards of
evidence in linguistics (see, e.g., Everett, 2005, 2009; Jackendoff and Pinker, 2005,
and the responses in Nevins et al., 2009). In contrast, the conversation-analytic focus
on participants' own displayed understandings has delivered incrementally.
However, as we shall see, these bottom-up methods have already yielded enough
evidence to suggest that in the face of all the structural variation and diversity across
the languages of the world, elements of the procedural infrastructure of interaction
(Schegloff, 1992b:1338) studied by CA are indeed universal. So tum-taking, the
organisation of sequences, the conversational preference for particular actions and
the organisation of repair mechanisms in talk - all part of that procedural infra-
structure - are proving to be empirically robust across languages and language
groups. As Levinson observes:
language is held to be essentially universal, whereas language use is thought
to be more open to cultural influences. But the reverse may in fact be far more
plausible: there is obvious cultural codification of many aspects oflanguage
from phoneme to syntactic construction, whereas the uncodified, low-level
background of usage principles or strategies may be fundamentally culture-
independent . . . Underlying presumptions, heuristics and principles of usage
may be more immune to cultural influence simply because they are

4
Schegloff notes that none of the research on embodiment and bodily conduct has undermined any
of the findings established on the basis of talk alone (2009:360).
5
We return to this issue in Chapter 3.
 1.2 The view from linguistics 5

prerequisites for the system to work at all, preconditions even for learning
language. (2000:xiv)
-=-- e chapters that follow explore the implications of the methodological tilt
·ards 'action' in 'sequence', starting in this Introduction by examining some
-~- the foundational work in CA and what it has to offer linguistics. It first
~ mines some approaches to language use and the search for meaning within
: anantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and then briefly examines the
. ; mains of interactional linguistics, linguistic anthropology and discourse ana-
:_:;is as the areas of investigation with the greatest perceived overlap with CA .
.3owever, despite areas of cornrnon interest, there are also areas that are metho-
dologically and perspectivally distinct; this stakes out the basic territory.

1.2 The view from linguistics

1.2.1 The search for meaning
All sciences search for underlying regularities - that's the game, and there is
no branch oflinguistics ... that is not a player ... The art is to find the highest
level generalization that still has empirical 'bite'. (Evans and Levinson,
2009:475)
The paper in the Proceedings ofthe National Academy ofSciences puts it crisply:
·language has two functions: to convey information and to negotiate the type of
relationship holding between speaker and hearer' (Pinker et al., 2008:833). 6 In
this, it virtually echoes the perspective of Malinowski a century ago, who in
coining the phrase 'phatic cornrnunion' 7 thereby gave students of language
licence to dismiss certain things done in interaction as essentially social and so
unworthy of consideration by students of language:
Are words in Phatic Communion used primarily to convey meaning, the
meaning which is symbolically theirs? Certainly not! They fulfil a social
function and that is their principal aim, but they are neither the result of
intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the
listener ... we may say that language does not function here as a means of
transmission of thought. (1923:315)
This emphasis on language as essentially 'transmission of thought', its object
'to convey meaning', is preserved in the traditional division of labour within
linguistic study. 8 Here, in very broad terms, the study of word and sentence meaning,

6
In his best-selling popular linguistics book, Pinker puts it even more simply: 'This is the essence of
the language instinct: language conveys news' (1994: 83).
7
'phatic communion ... a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of
words' (Malinowski, 1923:315).
8
One prominent pragmatic approach, namely Relevance Theory, does consider so-called phatic
communication within the scope of cogntive pragmatic theory (see Zegarac and Clark, 1999) but
does not question the essential distinction between the so-called phatic and non-phatic.
 6 INTRODUCTION: WHY STUDY CONVE RSATI ON?

largely the preserve of semantics, overlaps with the domain of pragmatics. This takes
utterance meaning - that is, the meaning of a sentence in its context (Bar-Hillel,
1970; see also Levinson, 1983: 18-19) as the object of investigation. Within the
study of pragmatics, three theoretical perspectives in particular have focused on
utterance meaning: Speech Act Theory, Grice's theory of implicature, and
Relevance Theory. The last - and indeed most recent - of these three, Relevance
Theory, has, of all pragmatic approaches, attempted to address the issue of context
and how it figures in utterance interpretation. In its concern with context, it shares a
focus, if not a methodology, with sociolinguistics, the empirical orientation of which
would suggest it has common cause with CA. Moreover, both interactional linguis-
tics and discourse analysis share some, but not all, of the aims and methods of CA.
The following sections briefly examine each of these domains of study in tum to
establish the similarities and differences between these approaches and CA; they
show why, when it comes to interaction, CA puts action and sequence at the heart of
its investigations.

On semantic meaning: stability in action

The linguistic emphasis on language as information transfer, embo-
died in what Reddy (1979) identifies as a conduit metaphor (cf. Malinowski's
' words . . . to convey meaning'), suggests that meaning - encoded and then
decoded in the act of communication-is linguistic 'cargo'. However, it is evident
that as soon as we examine interaction, a conception of 'meaning' may be
enriched by a consideration of both action and sequence. Take, in the first
instance, a simple example, grounded firmly in the realm of the so-called phatic:
thank you.
The fact that meaning does not necessarily map straightforwardly onto use is
evident when we consider the meaning of thank you in French. Standardly, this is
taken to be merci - and, indeed, in the context of, for example, accepting a gift,
this equivalence holds. However, in one everyday context, it is clear that, in
actual fact, thank you in English is used in just the opposite way to merci in
French, and that is in response to an offer. Where a standalone thank you accepts
an offer, a standalone merci rejects one: the actions implemented by these
apparent semantic equivalents are thus here entirely contrastive. Here, a search
for meaning turns up apparent equivalents, whereas an investigation of action
reveals them, in this interactional context, to be sharply divergent.
So understanding that thank you might be appropriate to accept a gift, but not,
in English, to refuse a drink, depends upon our recognition of what the prior tum
was doing. Moreover, with its interactional production, the sequential properties
of thank you become evident, in that the prosody of thank you intrinsically
anchors it in a specific sequential position. That is, while stress on thank
announces this action as initiating thanks, stress on you announces it as recipro-
cating thanks. Thank you implicitly proposes itself as responsive to a prior
expression of thanks.

b lI
 1.2 The view from linguistics 7

Action, then, is implemented across sequences. Furthermore, if an example such

as thank you appears mundane and inconsequential - indeed, to be dismissed as
::nerely phatic - consider this: one contributing factor in the world's biggest airline
· aster to date, at Tenerife airport in 1977, was a misunderstanding of what the
apparently mundane word Okay was doing (Roitsch et al., 1977). The message
=rom the cockpit of a KLM plane to the control tower, 'we are now uh-takin' off' or
·at take-off' (the recording is unclear) is met by 'Okay' and then a pause of nearly
:wo seconds. The next portion of the utterance is obscured for the KLM pilot
because of radio interference. Here, it subsequently emerged that the control tower
was using 'Okay' to acknowledge the prior talk- as a receipt token (on which, see
Schegloff, 1982). The pilot, however, taking 'Okay' not simply as a receipt but to
authorise take-off duly did so, unable, in thick fog, to see the Pan Am plane in his
path. Five hundred and eighty-three people lost their lives in the ensuing collision. 9
We use the same resources to implement actions across sequences, whether
apparently insignificant or hugely momentous - and it is this consequentiality (or,
rather, con-sequentiality) of such communicative actions that an appeal to mean-
ing does not wholly capture, even in the case where the meanings of thank you or
OK are intuitively accessible. For many lexical items, intuitions with respect to
meaning are reasonably straightforwardly accessed, and indeed fairly malleable;
so, as Heritage notes, 'the typification "drink" may be revised towards a more
fringe' meaning, if when offered "a drink", your host is boiling a kettle'
(20 11 :264). 10 In this instance, context clearly picks out the typification, just as
a head nod might either be - according to context - accepting an offer of a drink
or buying a Ming vase worth millions (on the latter, see Heath, 2013). But how to
understand context when, in the case of linguistic objects (in the most general
sense of the term), the semantic core itself may not be easily accessible? The
meaning of drink or, for that matter, thank you or okay may be straightforwardly
and readily available to intuition, but this is by no means always the case. It is at
this point that the analytic relevance, not only of action, but of sequences of
action, becomes apparent, for the apprehension of both meaning and context.
There are clearly cases where specifying the meaning of a linguistic object is
not straightforward. Take, for example, the commonly used English particle
actually. A search for 'high level generalisation', as noted by Evans and
Levinson, clearly needs to account for something so recurrently used in con-
versation; and yet, it does not follow that recurrent use can necessarily lead a

9
Okay was, as a consequence, dropped from the authorised standard phrases used in air traffic
communications. For conversational uses of okay, see Beach (1993).
10
As Johnson-Laird observes, nouns are in fact more like pronouns than is commonly recognised.
As with Heritage's example of drink, Johnson-Laird illustrates how, at utterance level, context
picks out salient aspects of any given object on the example of the lexical item tomato where
different features are selected by utterance context-in (a) its spherical shape, (b) its colour and
(c) its squishiness:
(a) The tomato rolled across the floor
(b) The sun was a ripe tomato
(c) He accidentally sat on a tomato (1987:197)
8 INTRODUCTIO N : WHY STUDY CONVERSATIO N?

native speaker to formulate what actually means.11 However, it is here that

starting, not from the generalisation but from the 'empirical bite' - examining a
linguistic object on various occasions of its interactional use - may provide some
analytic yield. Of course, 'bite' had been effectively ruled out of the game by
Chomsky in setting out the main aims of linguistics in his distinction between
'competence' and 'performance':
A record of natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from
rules, changes of plan in mid-course, and so on. The problem for the linguist,
as well as for the child learning the language, is to determine from the data of
performance the underlying system of rules that has been mastered by the
speaker-hearer that he puts to use in actual performance. (1965:4)

However, excluding any investigation of 'the data of performance' because of its

apparently 'degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent' (p. 58), and seeking
underlying regularities from idealised and abstracted linguistic data risks ruling
out of the game just the 'record of natural speech', in Chomsky's words, which
may be necessary to the investigation - material such as the following: 12
(1) (Clift, 2001 :277; H88:U:2:2)
(L=Lesley, K=Kevin. Gordon is L's son, who has just done a driving test (l. 2);
Katherine her daughter, who is currently away at university.)
lL [hYe: s. Oh: shame .h . hhhh Gordons_:!idn' t pass his
2 t~st I'm afraid, h=
3K =Oh dear
4L . k. tch He's goin- ( . ) W~ll. hh u-he w~s hoping tih get
5 it (0.2) in: uhinthes~mmerbutu (.) they'reg~tting
6 ::::::erybooked~ so I d.S?_n' t know if he' 11 even: get it in
7 the:n.h
8 (1.1)
9K Y~s I: ah: no doubt he's back e ( . ) t uh
10 (0. 5)
llL .hhhhY~s. We'regoingup- ( . ) we:11- ( . ) we'reget(0.2)
12~ ~ctually it's g'nna be a rather busy J~ :ne, Kathrine' s
13 home f' three week~: n: ds. As it happens people' re coming
14 do :wn' n c' n bring' er d.S?_wn which is rather nice,
15 (1. 2)
16L which e - aa:: : so we' re rather looking forward t' that, hh
17 (1.5)
18L hA[n:
19K [Yes inde~ : [d (--------)

11
In current dictionary definitions, the prime emphasis is laid on its function as a marker of fact and
truth, 'as opposed to possibly, potentially, theoretically, ideally; really, in reality' (Oxford English
Dictionary, 1933), and its sense is also paraphrased as 'strange as it may seem' (Longman Dictionary
of Contemporary English, 1984). The OED states that it is 'not said of the objective reality of the
thing asserted, but as the truthfulness of the assertion and its correspondence with the thing; hence
added to vouch for statements which seem surprising, incredible, or exaggerated'.
12
The transcription conventions for CA are discussed in Chapter 2.
 1.2 The view from linguistics 9

(Clift, 2001 :274; H:1:1)

(L=Lesley, F=Foster. L has rung up F to check that there will be no Sunday school
that week.)
lF T's a gro~p service' n the ~vening whi [eh is ~ery suitable=
2L [Yes.
3F =f'youngsters.
4 (.)
SL Yes. =I is s-u thS?_ught I'd che: ck=
6F =M [!1:l:.
7L [I: n case there wz a: m~sprin: [t. 0 (~gain.) 0
8F [Y~s no no we' re havin:g
9-'> ehm: (0.4) w'l_!'maw~actuallyb'tuh: it'sjustagro~p
10 Sund~e,
llL Yes.

Here is ample evidence of the 'numerous false starts, 13 deviations from rules,
changes of plan in mid-course' that, if our search is solely for meaning, threatens
to obscure the objects of investigation. However, if instead of treating such data
as 'degraded', we start from the premise that there might be phenomena to be
discovered in them - that we focus on the actions being done in the talk - we can
start, at the very least, by making observations. So, for example, attention to
what are known as repairs and their environment (adjustments or alterations in
the talk directed to problems of hearing, producing or understanding- an issue to
which we return in Chapter 7) reveals that the particle actually is implicated in
different ways in the trajectory of the talk. So in (1), 'actually it's g'nna be a
rather busy June' (1. 12) serves to redirect the subsequent trajectory of the talk,
where the lead-up to it, replete with so-called false starts, in the wake of bad
news, had been decidedly delicate. However, in (2), 'w'l I'm away actually'
(1. 9), 'actually' serves to mark the end of a parenthetical insert, after which the
talk resumes its prior topical line 'but uh: it's just a group Sundee'. These two
observations offer only a glimpse of the more extended analysis in Clift (2001),
in which, at one point, we see a single speaker, over a sequence of seventy-eight
lines, producing 'actually' in four different positions in the turn: placements that,
on each occasion, are seen to be wholly systematic, given the actions being
implemented at that given moment (249-51). Thus it is proposed that what
actually does in a stretch of interaction is systematically linked to (a) its position
in a tum, or its component turn-constructional units, 14 and (b) the action
launched by that turn, whether self-repair (as in (1) and (2)), informing, or
topic shift. So in this case the syntactic possibilities exemplified through flex-
ibility of placement are seen to be selected on the basis of interactional exigen-
cies, revealing something of the reflexive relationship between grammatical and
interactional competence.

13
We examine what such 'false starts' can be used to do in Chapter 7.
14
Tums and tum-constructional units (TCUs) are discussed in Chapter 4.
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