The thing is ...

One thing that appears to get up people's noses about conversation analysis is the way that it deals with context. For example, in my thesis I analysed the sequences of talk involving Ivan without drawing on my knowledge of his age and so on. Excluding this information, unless it was made obvious in the data, is a methodological imperative of conversation analysis.

A friend read my blog this week and wrote suggesting that my analysis of the sequences of talk involving Ivan provides the basis for a journal article. She commented that she enjoyed a good story. That comment was interesting because I would not draw on my knowledge of Ivan as a tricky character in his classroom, if I were to turn my blog posts that involved him into an article informed by conversation analysis. I think that it was my use of background information, in one of my blog posts, that formed the story for her.

The position that I took in my PhD is that the talk is interesting for what is shows about social interaction made evident through the talk that occurs between those who participate in it. In the case of talk that involved finding words, I was able to describe the methods used consistently by students and their teacher during independent writing. Ivan broke the mould ie. the teacher's question about where do you find it (the word wanted by a student) was mostly not answered by students. They walked away, and so my analysis was that they took her question to be a direction to find the word they needed in the room. Ivan answered the teacher's question. I decided that he made a joke. Whether it worked is another question. Ditto my interpretation of it.