Conversational Analysis (CA)
Conversational analysis (CA) is an established sociological and socio-linguistical approach.CA has a focus on conversations consisting of related utterances (speech acts).
Conversational analysis has its roots in ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967). In that way it is a study of the participants’ own methods for production and interpretation of social interaction. The sociologist Harvey Sacks is the originator and key constructor of this research approach.
CA has a primary focus towards utterance sequences and the organisation of such sequences. A primary concept is turn-taking. This means that one participant is talking and then stops and another participant is talking and stops and so on. CA problematizes how turn-taking is performed. In doing this other constructs are inferred as e.g. next-speaker selection and transition-relevance places.
CA has had a great influence on sociological and linguistic studies of language based social interaction. Levinson claims that “the strength of the CA position is that the procedures employed have already proved themselves capable of yielding by far the most substantial insights that have been gained into the organisation of conversation”.
⠀ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Goeran_Goldkuhl/publication/245792508_Conversational_analysis_as_a_theoretical_foundation_for_language_action_approaches/links/5592907708ae1e9cb429533c.pdf