Robin Wooffitt, Conversation analysis and discourse analysis: A comparative and critical introduction

Culture and society are produced through interactions between people, objects, and environments. Within these interactions it has become clear that the modes of spoken and written language are only some of a diverse range of modes involved in producing meaning and experience. As topics of study, the modes of spoken and written language have been joined by modes like gesture, gaze, composition, and layout. Multimodal discourse analysis names a range of approaches to studying social interaction and meaning as multimodal, that is, produced with and through multiple modes. However, multimodal discourse analysis is not about identifying and studying modes as isolated but rather about understanding the world as multimodal. This understanding is developed through theoretical and methodological developments. Three major theoretical bases are in use in multimodal discourse analysis: (a) Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics (SFL), underpinning a social semiotic and SFL approach; (b) mediated discourse analysis, underpinning a mediated action based approach; and (c) conversation analysis (CA), underpinning a turn-taking based approach. The simple idea of identifying modes beyond language belies the growing complexity of research in this area. The multimodal literature contains significantly different definitions of mode and different foci. For example, systemic functional approaches began by analyzing how meaning is embedded within images and artifacts, and these studies have been extended at times to include studies of interaction. Mediated discourse analysis focuses primarily on interaction and understands images and artifacts through how social actors interact with them, rather than seeking to decode possible meanings from the perspective of the analyst. Conversation analytic approaches also focus on interactions and only engage with images and artifacts as they appear in interaction. All three theoretical bases develop from studies of language. Researchers in CA still often argue that talk remains the most important mode, while social semiotics and mediated discourse analysis dispute this. Multimodal (inter)action analysis builds upon mediated discourse analysis but is the only approach designed specifically for the study of multimodal interaction and multimodal action. The ongoing development of frameworks within multimodal discourse analysis is indicative of intellectual diversity. For some scholars, this is a source of concern, and they attempt to unify multimodality, while for others it is desirable, especially for a research domain that offers applications to so many areas of social life. This bibliography explores central texts under the umbrella of multimodal discourse analysis in five domains: mediated discourse analysis, multimodal (inter)action analysis, social semiotics, systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA), and conversation analytic style multimodality. A sixth area focusing on introductory texts begins the bibliography.

The study of discourse has a long history in health communication, healthcare, and medical communication. This entry pairs conversation analysis and discourse analysis. While each approach has a unique history, methods, and aims, both approaches have a broad scope, and both approaches obscure the lines between theory and method traditionally drawn by social science methodology. This overview first synthesizes key similarities and differences of conversation analysis and discourse analysis as distinct qualitative research methods focused on language, language use, and language‐in‐action as constitutive of social life related to health communication. Separate sections highlight unique contributions for a diverse range and scope of studies using each approach. Conversation analysis typically uses audio and especially video recordings of medical encounters and other health‐related contexts and contributes understandings of turn design, action sequences, and overall occasions of medical and health interaction. Discourse analysis employs a variety of analytic methods and data types ranging from audio‐ or videorecorded interactions or texts on one end of the spectrum to a wide array of texts and images that are sometimes used together in a single analysis. This section uses the framework of macro, meso, and micro levels to discuss contributions to discourses of/in health communication. The entry concludes with some suggested future directions for conversation analysis and discourse analysis in health communication.

Legislating at the shopfloor level: Background knowledge and relevant context of parliamentary debates

Gay men's health typically relies on traditional forms of qualitative analysis, such as thematic analysis, and would benefit from a diversity of analytic approaches. Such diversity offers public health researchers a breadth of tools to address different kinds of research questions and, thus, substantiate different types of social phenomenon relevant to the health and wellbeing of gay men. In this article, I compare and contrast three qualitative analytic approaches: thematic, critical discourse, and conversation analysis. I demonstrate and distinguish their key analytic assumptions by applying each approach to a single data excerpt taken from a public health interview conducted for a broader study on gay men's health. I engage in a discussion of each approach in relation to three themes: its utility for gay men's health, its approach to dilemmas of voice, and its capacity for reflexivity. I advocate that qualitative researchers should capitalise on the full range of qualitative analytic approaches to achieve the goals of gay men's health. However, I specifically encourage qualitative researchers to engage with conversation analysis, not only because of its capacity to resolve dilemmas of voice and to achieve reflexivity, but also for its ability to capture forms of social life hitherto undocumented through thematic and critical discourse analysis.

Studies of business discourse examine how the work of a business institution gets accomplished through talk and texts. Academic and practitioner interest in business discourse has emerged in a social context where business institutions, notably corporations, have a powerful presence in the world. Close attention to business discourse is predicated on the following suppositions: that people spend a significant portion of their lives in business institutions, that this work gets accomplished primarily through talk and texts (especially as managers and in a knowledge economy), and that there are better and worse ways to practice discourse. The study of business discourse is international and approached from multiple disciplines and perspectives, including various forms of → Discourse Analysis – such as → action‐implicative discourse analysis, discursive psychology, and critical discourse analysis – conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, organizational communication, management theory, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, genre analysis, ethnography, and narrative analysis.

The main objective of Discourse Analysis is the study of language in use, either oral or written, and verbal or nonverbal, by particular speakers on particular occasions. Discourse Analysis focuses not only on what is said but also on how it is said, to whom, when, and where. In political communication, it is important to take into account not only what politicians say but how, when, to whom, and in what context. Sometimes their gestures say much more than their words. There are different schools in Discourse Analysis and all of them focus on language not as an abstract system but rather as the means of communication. Some of the most widely known perspectives are: Pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Conversational Analysis, Ethnography of Communication, Variation Analysis, Functional Perspective, Discursive Psychology, and Critical Discourse Analysis. They study how people use language and how they do things with language (express feelings, entertain others, or exchange information). Depending on the perspective, studies can focus on: cooperative principle and conversational maxims, speech acts, explicature and implicature, inferences, felicity conditions, face‐work, politeness, topic organization, turn‐taking, language variation, information structure, expression of attitude and emotion, or power relations.

Critical and descriptive goals in discourse analysis

This paper describes how discourse analysis, and in particular critical discourse analysis, can be used in nursing research, and provides an example to illustrate the techniques involved. Discourse analysis has risen to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s in disciplines such as the social sciences, literary theory and cultural studies and is increasingly used in nursing. This paper investigates discourse analysis as a useful methodology for conducting nursing research. Effective clinical reasoning relies on employing several different kinds of knowledge and research that draw on different perspectives, methodologies and techniques to generate breadth of knowledge and depth of understanding of clinical practices and patients' experiences of those practices. The steps in a discourse analysis include: choosing the text, and identifying the explicit purpose of the text, the processes used for claiming authority connections to other discourses, construction of major concepts, processes of naming and categorizing, construction of subject positions, construction of reality and social relations and implications for the practice of nursing. The limitations of discourse analysis, its relationship to other qualitative approaches and questions for evaluating the rigour of research using discourse analysis are also explored. The example of discourse analysis shows how a text influences the practice of nursing by shaping knowledge, values and beliefs. Discourse analysis can make a contribution to the development of nursing knowledge by providing a research strategy to examine dominant discourses that influence nursing practice.

This entry presents an overview of the role of discourse analysis in language assessment research, focusing on the use of conversation analysis (CA) in examining discourse in speaking assessments (e.g., between test‐takers in paired/group discussion tasks, or between the test‐taker and the examiner in interview‐based tests). We start by considering the various questions that discourse analysis can help address in language test development and validation, from defining the test construct to validating task types and task conditions, through to enriching rating criteria and scrutinizing rater discussions in the rating process. Next, we look at the key features and steps of the analytic procedure in CA. These include collecting and transcribing authentic discourse data, identifying phenomena of interest, building a collection, and examining variations across cases. We then turn to explore the specific contributions CA can make and has made as part of mixed‐methods designs in more recent language assessment studies—how it prepared for or complemented quantitative analyses, resulting in more robust analysis and/or more carefully considered validity claims. The entry concludes by briefly outlining possible avenues for future research involving the use of discourse analysis, as well as suggested further readings for the interested reader.

Una de las contribuciones a los estudios del discurso con mayor solidez epistemológica en América Latina es el Análisis Interaccional del Discurso (AID) de Bolívar (2005a, 2007a, 2013, 2018). Se trata de un planteamiento teórico-metodológico que integra los principios de la metafunción interpersonal de la cláusula (Halliday 1994), el análisis de la conversación, los planos del discurso (Sinclair 1981) y el análisis crítico. La combinación de estas corrientes ha permitido la evolución de un enfoque analítico y crítico cuyo espectro abarca los patrones textuales, los géneros del discurso, la lecto-escritura del español en contextos académicos, la (des)cortesía y el análisis del discurso político. En este artículo se presentan las bases teóricas principales del AID, sus conceptos centrales y algunos ámbitos de aplicación que revelan algunos de los parámetros metodológicos proporcionados por este modelo, que en su perspectiva crítica se reconoce como interaccional, en contraste con modelos europeos que se centran más en las representaciones sociales.

This special issue of Discourse & Communication brings together researchers working within different methodologies and theoretical paradigms - linguistic pragmatics, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis - who share a common interest in the analysis of discourse produced by the broadcast media. The authors are all members of the Ross Priory Group for Research on Broadcast Talk, an international group of scholars distinguished by their interdisciplinary approach to the study of mediated communication; and their particular concern for this issue is with personalization in broadcast news.

Ethnomethodology (EM) is an approach through which researchers consider the meaning making behind everyday activities. Related to EM, Conversation Analysis (CA) uses specific transcription conventions to examine social interaction in talk. Through an EM-informed CA approach, this chapter applies CA conventions to interviews with novice language/literacy teachers. Their verbal efforts to construct teacher identities that focused on social justice-oriented education serve as the context through which we examine methodological concepts such as turn-taking, voice inflection, and narrative constructions in relation to CA.

Dialogue interpreting, which takes place in institutional settings such as legal proceedings, healthcare contexts, work meetings or media talk, has attracted increasing attention in translation, language and communication studies. Drawing on transcribed sequences of authentic talk, this volume raises questions about aspects of interpreting that have been taken for granted, challenging preconceived notions about differences between professional and non-professional interpreting and pointing in new directions for future research. Collecting contributions from major scholars in the field of dialogue interpreting and interaction studies, the volume offers new insights into the relationship between interpreting and mediating. It addresses a wide readership, including students and scholars in translation and interpreting studies, mediation and negotiation studies, linguistics, sociology, communication studies, conversation analysis, discourse analysis.

The article focuses on the ontological foundations of lifeworld as Being taken for granted and viewed as a communication phenomenon par excellence, conceptualized as signifying in the presence of others. It is argued that, because there is always a wider horizon of experience against which anything can appear, lifeworld as something continuous can only be thematized in discrete scientific forms. In the article, lifeworld is discussed through the perspectives of four different sciences. From the natural science perspective, lifeworld is conceptualized as an arrangement contingent on the interconnections of human and nonhuman beings. It takes the form of conversation and can be best examined by Conversation Analysis. From the social science perspective, lifeworld is conceptualized as an order that is constituted by symbolic interactions and guided by relevant types and rules that structure our experience. It takes the form of intersubjective action as a meaningful back and forth and can be best examined by Discourse Analysis. From the cultural sciences perspective, lifeworld is the realm of spirit passed from generation to generation that gives human culture its meaning. It takes the form of significant expressions and can be best examined by Textual Hermeneutic Analysis. And, from the philosophical perspective, lifeworld is constituted by phenomena that appear, or monstrate themselves, to consciousness. This lifeworld is of absolute reversibility and immediacy and can be best examined by Critical Analysis, i.e., by postulating our relation to any object through contemplation. Thus, as Being, lifeworld is said in many ways, each lifeworld being relevant in its own way by providing a valuable resource – physico-biological, normative, significational, and transcendental.

The Feminist Perspectives Series seeks to provide concise, accessible and engaging introductions to key feminist topics and debates. The texts in the series are designed to be used on a wide range of courses exploring feminist issues and are written by experienced teachers who are also well known in their respective fields. Each book in the series includes the most up-to-date statistics, research data, key sources and suggestions for further reading.Feminist Perspectives On Language provides an accessible introduction to this complex area. It redresses the balance of current feminist texts which tend to concentrate on discourse analysis and fail to connect with feminist thought in other disciplines such as sociology and politics. The text is divided into two parts, the first looks at language itself, how we learn language exploring such questions as; Does language free or trap us? Does our language affect how we come to understand the world around us? Is our language sexist? If so, does that reflect male dominance in society? and many more issues. Part Two explores questions of methodology and interpretation examining language in use, communication styles and the analysis of conversation.