ABSTRACT
Conversation analysis (hereafter CA) represents a naturalistic and inductive approach to the study of generalizable patterns of interaction that are ultimately amenable to quantification (Robinson, 2007). CA originated at the University of California during the 1960s and has its roots in the work of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel (for reviews, see Heritage, 1984a). CA is now the dominant, contemporary, and methodological framework for the analysis of social interaction (Heritage, 2009). As Robinson (2012) reviewed, CA primarily deals with three questions that are fundamental to communication research:
How do speakers ‘make sense’ or ‘make meaning’ when they talk, and, similarly, how do listeners know what speakers ‘mean’ when they talk;
How does an utterance’s meaning affect subsequent talk; and
How does an utterance’s meaning affect speakers’ ‘relationship’ with each other?
