ABSTRACT
Gather a small corpus of conversations around a particular kind of task in an institutional or workplace setting. Identify places in the corpus in which the task seemed to be progressing successfully and times when problems arose and analyse them in terms of their timing and sequential organization. Explore the extent to which deviations from the formal organization of conversation can predict problems in task accomplishment. Choose a particular kind of conversational action (making a request or an apology, for example) and track the different grammatical forms it takes through a range of conversations. Explore how syntactic forms may be related to particular parts or stages in conversations and with particular conversational circumstances and contingencies. Drew and Curl defi ne conversation analysis as an approach to social action and identify its central concern as discovering ‘evidence of practice in conduct’. Two other approaches represented in this book – critical discourse analysis and mediated discourse analysis – also concern themselves with social action and social practice. What are the differences between the way conversation analysis defi nes and approaches ‘action’ and ‘practice’ and the ways these concepts are treated in other perspectives? Conversation analysis has been accused of not paying suffi cient attention to the workings of power in interaction. Think of how the methods illustrated by Nevile and Drew and Curl can inform our understanding of the power relations between speakers in different settings and the implications of such questions for the development of conversation analysis, especially in workplace or institutional settings that you might be interested in. Drew and Curl demonstrate how conversation analysis can be enriched by attention to such issues as grammar and syntax. What other ways can the study of grammar inform conversation analysis? Which other areas in linguistics can be fruitfully blended with conversation analysis, and which cannot?
