Mighty Digests # 10: TEN HAVE, Doing Conversation Analysis

(Book: Ten Have, P. (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications) [Chapters 5-6]

I think that some of the most important concepts that emerge from chapters 5 and 6 of ten Have’s book are:

1. the importance of an accurate sampling (almost with a “naturalistic” approach), observing as many cases as possible (“from as many sites as possible”).
2. The importance of the different contexts from which data emerge.
3. The field of interest of CA is not limited to the “main species” (it might be important to look at other, different species too, for comparative purposes).
4. Recordings are CA’s basic data, all the rest is “background information” (“the data is enough”, p. 75).
5. A researcher should always consider “issues of consent”.
6. Access to places and data is a key factor in the work of the (CA) researcher. These issues may be very controversal, and it is difficult to catch all their subtleties, especially if we are dealing with public recordings, TV/broadcasting, and the Internet.
7. “Transcriptions should not be taken as a substitute for the recordings.” (p. 95)
8. The problem of an “idealized”, standard orthography of the spoken language. (p. 99)
9. The timing of silence as an “internally consistent” phenomenon, not an absolute one. (p. 102)

A very interesting concept is that about “setting sensitivity” (p. 71), and the reflection the researcher should be considering about the influence of the setting on the observed interactions.

I like the notion of  “transcribable” (p. 88), as the minimum requirement for our recordings!

In my opinion (but this is probably due the short paragraph), the system proposed by Goodwin to represent visual information (pp. 108-109) is difficult to read and it somehow “breaks” the fluidity of a CA transcript.