Methods in Conversation Analysis

This chapter provides an overview of foundational principles that guide CA research, offered both on the basis of our own experiences as researchers, and from our discussions with other conversation analysts as they authored contributions for the present volume. We begin by briefly sketching of some of the fundamentals of human social interaction, in order to underscore CA’s central focus, the study of social action, and describe some of the basic features of how interaction is procedurally organized. These basic features of interaction, which CA research has rigorously evidenced and which guide our examination of new data, are then shown directly to inform CA as a research methodology. Put another way, it is precisely due to the procedural infrastructure of action in interaction that conversation analysts use and work with interactional data in particular ways. We conclude with advice for readers as they continue to explore the volume’s contents.