Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications

Talk is a central activity in social life. But how is ordinary talk organized? How do people coordinate their talk in interaction? And what is the role of talk in wider social processes? Conversation analysis has developed over the past thirty years as a key method for studying social interaction and language use. Its unique perspective and systematic methods make it attractive to a multidisciplinary audience. Yet while much has been written about the field, little of this is designed to be accessible to the undergraduate student encountering this area for the first time.In this book Ian Hutchby and Robin Wooffitt offer the first wide-ranging, accessible introduction to the field. The book offers a basic grounding in the theory and methods of conversation analysis and demonstrates its usefulness by analysing a variety of concrete examples. With an emphasis on practical demonstrations, they show how it addresses key questions in social science and in other professional fields such as human-computer interaction, political communication and speech therapy. Conversation Analysis is written in a lively, engaging and jargon-free style, and will be indispensable reading for undergraduates and their teachers on courses in sociology, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, social psychology, communication studies and anthropology.

Table of Contents:
Transcription Glossary. Introduction. Part I: Principles: 1. What is Conversation Analysis? 2. Foundations of Conversation Analysis. Part II: Practices: 3. Data and Transcription Techniques. 4. Analysing Phenomena I: Building a Collection. 5. Analysing Phenomena II: Extended Sequences and Single Cases. Part III: Applications: 6. Talk in Institutional Settings. 7. Conversation Analysis and Interview Data. 8. Analysing Versions of Reality: The Organization of 'Factual' Accounts. 9. The Practical Relevance of Conversation Analysis. References. Index.

About the Author :
Ian Hutchby is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Communication at Brunel University. Robin Wooffitt is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey.

Review :
"Conversation analysis is increasingly understood as providing a major contribution to theories and methods across the social sciences. Hutchby and Wooffitt have written an introduction to conversation analysis which is clear, authoritative and engaging. It is the best book on conversation analysis so far, and it will be hard to better it. It is a splendid textbook that will be eagerly adopted by those teaching conversation analysis but it will also be read widely by researchers and academics who want to find out what this thriving and challenging field has to offer." Jonathan Potter, Loughborough University "The book makes a distinctive and welcome contribution ... compares favourably with others of its kind ... As CA continues to develop, and as the task of presenting a comprehensive summary of its findings becomes increasingly challenging, it may be that the best introductions to the field are those that provide the reader - as Hutchby and Wooffitt aim to do - with "the basic means of beginning on a piece of CA research." On those terms this book is a success and can be recommended." Language in Society