ABSTRACT
Conversation analysis (CA) provides tools for analyzing the resources which are drawn upon in structuring participatory frameworks and in accomplishing interpreters’ participation and effectiveness of service in multiparty interactions. Conversation analysis is a sociological approach to the study of face-to-face human interaction which looks at verbal as well as non-verbal communication practices. It has grown out of the founding work of American sociologist Harvey Sacks and his colleagues, and is a rigorous empirical approach within the ethnomethodological tradition, which focuses on conduct as the foundation of social order. CA has informed much research in the growing area of community and public service interpreting, defined as “interpreting performed in health and mental health care settings, at the police and other legal institutions, and in social security and immigration centres”. CA has also been applied to other settings, covering the wider spectrum of socially organized face-to-face interpreter-mediated communicative activities which can be subsumed under the term dialogue interpreting.
