ABSTRACT
The study of institutional interaction poses specific challenges for conversation analysis, since analysis of institutional interaction differs from the analysis of interaction itself. In order to illuminate the institution's role in and for interaction in a given setting, the analyst needs to show the ways in which the context functions in a particular aspect or segment of an interaction, i.e. we need to examine the context's procedural relevance. In terms of methodology, this focus on procedural relevance provides criteria and a toolkit to avoid arbitrarily invoking a countless number of extrinsic, potential aspects of context. However, in order for the analyst to use procedural consequentiality as an analytical criterion, s/he must have sufficient knowledge of the context in question. Put simply, in order to analyze the endogenous construction of context, CA necessarily draws on a preliminary understanding of that context, just as in analyzing ordinary talk we draw on our everyday competence to recognize "what is going on". Normally, we routinely proceed from recognizing the activity type of talk to analytically explicating it, from "what is said" to "how it is said". In analyzing foreign cultures, isolated subcultures, or institutionally distinct settings, however, the analyst may not necessarily have sufficient cultural knowledge to recognize what the activities stand for to the parties themselves. In institutional settings an agent may orient to expert knowledge or organizational procedures taken for granted in the practice in question but not known to outsiders. If the analyst is unable to trace the relevant features the parties are orienting to in the setting, the analysis may remain superficial with regard to the institutional practice even if the
sequential course of interaction could be accounted for. This reconstruction of the methodology for the study on institutional interaction also offers a potential point of contact between CA and other social scientific endeavours.
