DISCOURSE AND CONVERSATION

PAPER

Submitted to Fulfill Course Assignments Discourse Analysis

Lecturer: Dewi Kurniawati M.pd

Arranged by:
Group 4

1. M. Cahyo Nugroho (1911040406)

2. Silvia Anisa Putri (1911040209)

Class: 6E

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

TARBIYAH AND TEACHER TRAINING FACULTY
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY RADEN INTAN LAMPUNG
2022
 DISCUSSION

A. Definition of Discourse and Conversation

Discourse analysis investigates the relationship between language and the social
and cultural settings in which it is used, as well as patterns of language across texts.
Discourse analysis also explores the ways in which language is used to present various
worldviews and understandings. It investigates how participant interactions influence
language usage, as well as the effects of language use on social identities and
relationships. It also analyzes how language shapes people's perceptions of the world
and their identities.
Conversation analysis is a key field of research in discourse analysis. Discussion
analysis examines common spoken dialogue with the goal of determining how people
manage their interactions through a fine-grained examination of the conversation. It
also looks at how spoken speech is used to build social relationships.
Conversation analysis is a method of analyzing spoken language that focuses on
how people manage their daily conversational encounters. It investigates how spoken
discourse is structured and evolves when speakers engage in these exchanges.
Conversation analysis has examined aspects of spoken discourse such as sequences of
related utterances ( adjacency pairs), preferences for particular combinations of
utterances ( preference organization), turn taking, feedback , repair, conversational
openings and closings, discourse markers and response tokens. Conversation analysis
uses recordings of spoken material to do detailed and fine-grained analytics on it.

B. Background to Conversation Analysis

Conversation analysis was developed at the University of California, Los
Angeles, in the early 1960s. Its roots can be found in sociology's ethnomethodological
tradition, particularly in the work of Garfinkel (e.g. 1967) and Goffman (e.g. 1981).
Sacks (e.g. 1992, 2007) and his collaborators developed conversation analysis as
follows: Sacks was particularly interested in the ordered aspect of speech and the ways

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in which there might be systemic commonalities in spoken exchanges that occur across
people and circumstances (Liddicoat 2011 ). The conversation analysis process began
with a review of phone conversations to the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Centre.
This research was then expanded to include spoken contacts such as doctor–patient
consultations, judicial hearings, press interviews, psychiatric interviews, and
interactions in courtrooms and schools, among other things.
Conversation analysis, unlike some other types of discourse analysis, takes a
less linguistic approach to spoken conversation. This stems from its fascination with
how language performs social action in particular. Conversation analysts are
particularly interested in how speakers form and perceive social environments as they
engage in conversational speech.
 Issues in Conversation Analysis
The main issue in conversational analysis is the view of ordinary conversation
as the most basic form of speech. For conversational analysis, conversation is the
primary way people come together, exchange information, negotiate and maintain
social relationships. A further key feature of conversational analysis is the primacy of
data as a source information. The analysis, however, does not include speakers'
reflections on their interactions, field notes or interviews as a means of gathering
information about discourse. Conversational analysis focuses on analyzing texts for
argumentation and explanation, rather than psychological considerations or other
factors that may be involved in the production and interpretation of discourse.
Conversational analysis, which aims to show how participants both generate and
respond to the evolving social context, uses conversational data, not contextual data, as
a source of claims to make.
 Transcribing and coding conversation analysis data

The transcription of the data is also the analysis in conversation analysis. Texts
are thus recorded (either on tape or on video) and transcribed simultaneously while
being analyzed. If a specific trait, such as higher pitch or certain sequences of

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utterances, emerges from the analysis, it provides the beginning point for future
investigation. The analyst listens and transcribes to see how often this part of the
conversation comes up and, more crucially, if the speakers answer in the same way each
time. The goal of the study is to learn how speakers regulate their conversational
encounters in this way.

C. Transcription Conventions

Charlotte : you’re getting engag↑ed

Carrie : I threw up I saw the ring and I threw up (0.5) that’s not normal.

Samantha : that’s my reaction to marriage.

Miranda : what do you think you might do if he asks.
Carrie : I don’t know.
Charlotte : just say ye:::s::
Carrie : well (.) it hasn’t been long enough (0.5) has it?
Charlotte : Trey and I got engaged aft er only a month=
Samantha : =how long before you separated.

Charlotte : we’re together NOW and that’s what matters. (.) when it’s right you
just know
Samantha : Carrie doesn’t know.
Carrie : Carrie threw up=

Samantha : =so it might not be right.

(King 2001)
Key
↑ shift into especially high pitch
NOW especially loud sounds relative to the surrounding talk

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:: prolongation of the immediately prior sound

(.) a brief interval (about a tenth of a second) within or between utterances

(0.5) the time elapsed (by tenths of seconds) between the end of the utterance
or sound and the start of the next utterance or sound
now stress

= latched utterances – no break or gap between stretches of talk

? rising intonation
. falling intonation
, unfinished intonational contour

The analysis, shows a rising pitch in Charlotte’s exclamation ‘You’re getting

engaged!’ The . at the end of this utterance indicates an ending with falling intonation,
as with most of the other utterances in the conversation. There is no delay between
Charlotte’s statement and Carrie’s response. There is, however, a .5 second pause in
Carrie’s response before she adds ‘That’s not normal’. Charlotte’s lengthened vowel in
‘Just say yes’ emphasizes the point she is making before Carrie replies with ‘well’
followed by a microsecond pause which allows her to hold the floor in the conversation,
and a further .5 second pause before she invites a response from the others with her use
of rising intonation and the tag question ‘has it?’ The next two lines are examples of
latched utterances. That is, Samantha adds her comment to Charlotte’s statement
without allowing anyone else to intervene. The underlining and use of capitals in ‘
NOW ’ in Charlotte’s response to Samantha indicates both loud talk and word stress.
Charlotte’s microsecond pause, again, enables her to hold the floor so that no one is
able to intervene and she is able to complete what she wants to say. If she had not done
this, one of the other speakers could have taken the turn from her as her completed
syntactic unit, intonational contour and ‘completed action’ would have indicated a point
at which another speaker could taken the turn; that is, a transition- relevance place

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(TRP) in the conversation. The final example of latched utterances shows that Samantha
is able to project, in advance, that a TRP is approaching as Carrie is speaking and takes
the floor from Carrie with her consent, and without difficulty. This analysis, thus, shows
how Carrie and her friends manage their conversation in a cooperative manner. They
let each other continue with what they want to say, rather than compete for a place in
the conversation. It also shows the strategies they use when they want to take a turn in
the conversation, such as not letting too much time to lapse before speaking, in case
another speaker should take the turn.

D. Sequence and Structure in Conversation

A particular interest of conversation analysis is the sequence and structure of spoken

discourse. Aspects of conversational interactions that have been examined from this
perspective include conversational openings and closings, turn taking, sequences of
related utterances (‘adjacency pairs’), preferences for particular combinations of
utterances (‘preference organization’), feedback and conversational ‘repair’.

 Opening conversations
One area where conversational openings have been examined in detail
is in the area of telephone conversations. Schegloff analysed a large data set of
telephone openings to come up with the following ‘canonical opening’ for
American private telephone conversations:
((ring)) summons/ answer sequence
Recipient: Hello
Caller: Hi Ida? identification/recognition sequence
Recipient: Yeah
Caller: Hi, this is Carla= greeting sequence
Recipient: =Hi Carla.

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 In a study conducted in Australia by O'Loughlin (1989), the caller most
frequently self-identified in their first turn after they had recognized their
recipient, rather than in their second turn, as in the American data.
 Closing conversations
Schegloff and Sacks ( 1973 ) have also looked at conversational
closings. This work has since been continued by Button ( 1987 ) who in his
discussion of telephone closings points out that telephone closings usually go
over four turns of talk, made up of pre-closing and closing moves. The pre-
closing is often made up of two turn units consisting of items such as ‘OK’ and
‘all right’ with falling intonation. The closing is made up of two further units,
such as ‘bye bye’ and ‘goodbye.’ Button ( 1987 : 102) calls this an archetype
closing. Equally the closing may be extended by continued repetition of pre-
closing and closing items (such as ‘bye’, ‘bye’, ‘love you’, ‘love you’, ‘sleep
well’, ‘you too’, etc.). Closings are, thus, complex interactional units which are
sensitive to the speaker’s orientation to continuing, closing (or not wanting to
close) the conversation (Button 1987 , Thornborrow 2001 ).
 Turn Taking
Conversation analysis has also examined how people take and manage
turns in spoken interactions. The basic rule in English conversation is that one
person speaks at a time, after which they may nominate another speaker, or
another speaker may take up the turn without being nominated (Sacks, Schegloff
and Jefferson 1974 , Sacks 2004 ). We may end a unit with a signal such as
‘mmm’ or ‘anyway’, etc. which signals the end of the turn. The end of a turn
may also be signalled through eye contact, body position and movement and
voice pitch.
 Adjacency pairs
Adjacency pairs are a fundamental unit of conversational organization
and a key way in which meanings are communicated and interpreted in

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 conversations. Adjacency pairs are utterances produced by two successive
speakers in a way that the second utterance is identified as related to the first
one as an expected follow-up to that utterance.
1. Adjacency pairs across cultures
'Did you have a pleasant weekend?' was a common greeting among
French workers, according to Be'al. This upset the English-speaking
employees. They were unaware that this is not a common question asked
by French speakers in regular conversation, and while they occasionally
responded by telling them about their weekend, they also perceived the
question as an invasion of their privacy. As a result, expected follow-
ups in the use of adjacency pairs differ by language and culture.
2. Adjacency pairs and stage of the conversation
When assigning an utterance the status of a specific pair part, the context
and stage of the discourse are extremely crucial. 'Hello,' for example,
might have a variety of purposes in a conversation. It might be a
summons over the phone or a response to a summons over the phone. It
can also be used to welcome someone on the street, however it is by no
means the only way to do so. A response to a praise, congratulation, or
offer of service can all be expressed with the word 'thanks.' As a result,
an utterance might play multiple roles in a discourse.

E. Preference organization

The basic rule for adjacency pairs, is that when a speaker produces a first pair
part they should stop talking and allow the other speaker to produce a second pair part.
For example a compliment can be followed by an ‘accept’ or a ‘reject’. Thus, some
second pair parts may be preferred and others may be dispreferred. When this happens,

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the dispreferred second pair part is often preceded by a ‘delay’, a ‘preface’ and/or an
‘account’. The following example illustrates this:

A: Are you going out with anyone at the moment? (Question)

B: Uhhh . . . (Delay)

 Insertion sequences
Sometimes speakers use an insertion sequence; that is, where one adjacency pair
comes between the first pair and the second pair part of another adjacency pair.

F. Feedback

Another aspect of spoken interactions that has been examined by conversation

analysts is the ways speakers provide each other with feedback; that is, the ways in
which listeners show they are attending to what is being said. This can be done, for
example, by the use of ‘response tokens’ such as ‘mmm’ and ‘yeah’, by paraphrasing
what the other person has just said or through body position and the use of eye contact.
It is not always the case, however, that an item such as ‘yeah’ or ‘mm’ performs an
acknowledging function in a conversation. Gardner ( 2001 ), for example, shows that
the item ‘mmm’ can perform many other functions as well. The function response items
such as ‘mmm’, ‘yeah’ and ‘OK’ perform are also influenced by the intonation, place
and timing of the utterance.

G. Repair

An important strategy speakers use in spoken discourse is what is termed repair;

that is, the way speakers correct things they or someone else has said, and check what
they have understood in a conversation. Repair is often done through self repair and
other repair.

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Barrister : Michael is employed as an apprentice butcher.=

Client : =oh not MIC hael, ALL an

H. Discourse Markers

Discourse markers (Schiffrin 1987 , 2001 , Fraser 1990 , 1999 ) are items in
spoken discourse which act as signposts of discourse coherence. This includes
interjections such as oh , conjunctions such as but , adverbs such as now and lexical
phrases such as y’know (Schiffrin 2001 ). They can be at the beginning, middle or end
of an utterance and can serve both as anaphoric (pointing back) and cataphoric (pointing
forward) reference in the discourse (Mendoza-Denton 1999 ).

Oh can be a marker of information management where it indicates an emotional state

as in:
Jack Was that a serious picture?
Freda Oh :! Gosh yes!

But can be used to preface an idea unit as in:

Jack The rabbis preach ‘Don’t intermarry’
Freda But I did- But I did say those intermarriages that we have in this country are
healthy

Y’know can be used (among many other things) to gain hearer involvement and
consensus as in:
b. I believe . . . that . . . y’know it’s fate.
s. So eh y’know it just s- seems that that’s how things work

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 Fraser ( 1990 , 1998), also, discusses discourse markers. He defines discourse
markers as items which signal a relationship between the segment they introduce and a
prior segment in the discourse. Fung ( 2003 , 2011 ) examined the use of discourse
markers by British and Hong Kong speakers of English. She found that British speakers
of English use discourse markers for a variety of pragmatic functions whereas the Hong
Kong speakers in her study used a much more restricted range of discourse markers,
mostly functional discourse markers such as and , but , because , OK and so , etc., and
to a lesser extent markers such as yeah , really , sort of , I see , well , right , a ctually
and you know , etc.

I. Gender and conversation analysis

Conversation analysis may disclose a lot about how people 'do gender,' in
Butler's phrase, that is, how gender is constituted as a collaborative activity in
interaction. When'speakers make it apparent that this is a relevant element of the
conversational encounter,' Weatherall (2002: 114) introduces the concept of gender
noticing for accounting for gender. Data analysis from the standpoint of conversation
analysis can uncover characteristics of gendered encounters that would otherwise go
unnoticed.

J. Conversation analysis and second language conversation

Markee (2000) demonstrates how conversation analysis can be used to analyze

and comprehend second language acquisition. He highlights the necessity of looking at
'outlier' data in second language acquisition studies, pointing out that, from the
standpoint of conversation analysis, all participants' behavior makes sense to the
individuals involved and must be accounted for rather than cast aside in the study. In
an ESL classroom, Storch (2001a, 2001b) conducted a fine-grained study of second

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language learner discourse while her students engaged in pair work activities. She
discovered that utilizing this method allowed her to pinpoint the aspects of the
conversation and the type of the interactions they had that helped or hindered their
acquisition of the language elements they were studying. She also discovered that how
pairs were grouped in class had an impact on the character of their discourse, the amount
to which it was collaborative, and whether it aided or hindered their learning.

K. Criticisms of conversation analysis

Hammersley ( 2003 ) argues that conversation analysis’ view of itself as a self-

sufficient research tool is problematic; that is, the view that it does not need data other
than the conversation to explain and justify its claims. In Hammersley’s view the
rejection in conversation analysis of what people say about the world they live in and
their conversational interactions as sources of insight into the data is a major weakness.
He suggests that when we analyse data from a conversation analysis perspective, we
are working as ‘spectators’ not ‘participants’ in the interaction. Bucholtz ( 2003 ) argues
that conversation analysis severely limits what she calls ‘admissible context’ (52). She
argues that it needs to draw on the contextual groundings that ethnography has to offer,
citing the work of Goodwin ( 1999 ) and Mendoza-Denton ( 1999 ) as studies which do
just this. Moerman’s ( 1988 ) Talking Culture and Phillips’ ( 1983 ) The Invisible
Culture are also works that draw together conversation analysis and ethnography.
Wooffitt ( 2005 ) in his book Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis outlines
further criticisms of conversation analysis. The first of these is conversation analysis’
lack of attention to issues of power, inequality and social disadvantage. The second is
the lack of attention in conversation analysis studies to wider historical, cultural and
political issues. Wetherell ( 1998 ) argues that conversation analysis would benefit from
considering poststructuralist views on discourse, such as agency and the subject
positions speakers take up in the discourse, rather than just looking at the text itself.

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That is, the analyses would be enhanced by considering the positions speakers take and
the social and cultural values that underlie how they perform in the discourse. Post-
structuralist discourse analysis, equally, she adds, would be improved by greater
attention to the details of conversational interaction that is typical of work in the area
of conversation analysis. Feminist researchers such as Kitzinger ( 2000 , 2008 ),
however, argue that conversation analysis is not incompatible with work that examines
issues of power and the wider social and political implications of discourse. She argues
that if researchers want to ‘understand what people are saying to each other, and how
they come to say it, and what it means to them’ (Kitzinger 2000 : 174) they have to
attend to the data at the same level of detail and attention that the speakers do in their
talk.

L. A sample study: Refusals

Kitzinger and Frith ( 1999 ) provide an example of a study which draws on

conversation analysis and other data sources to examine what speakers say, why they
say it and how what they say is taken up by other people. Their study commences with
an examination of how the conversation analysis literature says that people typically
refuse offers. The refusal often involves the use of delays, accounts, hedges and
prefaces before the speaker gets to the actual refusal of the offer.

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 CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion

Conversation analysis is a method of performing fine-grained analyses of

spoken dialogue that can help not only describe the social world, but also comprehend
how it is formed via the use of language. However, opinions differ on whether looking
at the data alone is enough to explain what happens in conversational exchanges. It is,
according to several conversation experts. Others, on the other hand, propose
combining conversation analysis with more ethnographic descriptions in a "multi-
method/multi-level" analysis that combines the strengths of conversation analysis'
insights with data gathered through procedures like interviews, questionnaires, and
participant observations (Wodak 1996 ). Cicourel (1992) agrees, noting that the most
crucial thing for researchers to do is to justify what has been included and omitted in an
analysis, as well as how this connects to their specific theoretical and analytical goals.

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 REFERENCE

Yule, George. (2014). The Study of Language. United States of America: Cambridge
University.

Gee Paul James. Handford Michael. (2012). The Routledge Handbook of Discourse
Analysis. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Paltridge, Brian. (2012). Discourse Analysis. Bloomsbury.

Agar, M.H. (1994) Language shock: Understandingthe culture of conversation. New

York: William. Morrow. (Further reading)
Baker, P. and Ellece, S. (2011), Key Terms in Discourse Analysis . London: Continuum.

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