ABSTRACT
The method of conversation analysis claims to focus attention upon the detailed data of interaction rather than a priori speculation about the orientations and motives of speakers. As an aspect of interactional sociology the majority of those who are actively involved in conversation analysis are sociologists who are very much aware of the social philosophy which underlies the practice. In some respects ethnomethodology is a new force in sociology deriving from the 1960s. In other respects it derives from a long tradition, having inherited aspects of Parsonian structural functionalism, the phenomenology of Schutz and Husserl and some of the philosophical tradition of Heidegger and his predecessors. Thus the concept of role is no longer the static, mechanical concept of structural functionalism but involves the momentary construction by the actor out of his/her definition of the situation. Patterns of interaction are made stable by this process.
