Conversation Analysis 101
Conversation Analysis examines talk primarily as a way people accomplish what?
Social Action
There are 3 key elements that distinguish institutional talk from ordinary conversation. What are they?
Task/Goal orientation; constraints on contributions; special patterns of inference/implicature (Intro slides part 3, p 89)
What does it mean that call takers are treated as gatekeepers in 911 calls? (hint: list the two ways that they “do” gatekeeping)
They assess whether the call warrants services (emergency relevance)
They monitor for signs that the caller is genuine (credibility/genuineness) (Heritage p. 73)
What are the two models of policing that make up a majority of police-civilian encounters?
Proactive policing: police officers on patrol actively looking to enforce laws; encounters are initiated by officers
Reactive policing: police officers responding to calls for service generated by 911 and non-emergency calls
(Raymond and Meehan 2026)
Two sociologists’ interest in social interaction led the way to the development of conversation analysis? Who are they?
Ervin Goffman - social interaction is a form of social organization
Harold Garfinkel - interested in how people make shared sense of social circumstances (Heritage, p 9)
What does the conversation analysis saying, "Why that Now" mean or convey?
This describes the CA approach to examining what an action does in relation to the preceding action(s), and what it projects about the succeeding action(s). (Heritage p. 14)
In other words, it helps us understand and figure out why “why” behind a given practice in a specific position in conversation.
Compared to ordinary conversation, does institutional talk feature: the exact same set of interactional practices used by participants, a broader array, a narrower array, or a totally different set altogether?
A narrower array. (Heritage p. 17) (Lecture slide 88)
Two features are common in calls where there is no obvious emergency relevance. What are they?
The narrative account is geared toward portraying prior efforts to deal with the problem, as well as the exogenous input that led to the decision to place the call (Heritage p. 79)
What is the interactional structure of a traffic stop?
Opening (can include request for license and registration)
Reason for the stop
((Request for license and registration if not already requested))
Inquiry sequence, a.k.a. Interrogative series
Outcome (citation, warning, etc.)
(Kidwell 2018 and Lecture 3A)
What is the 5-phase structure of the 911 call? If this structure it not unique to 911 calls, then how is it different from conversational calls?
Structure: opening, request, interrogative series, response
911 calls are task-focused rather than open-ended, and 911 calls are impersonal (strictly business) rather than sociable (911 slide, p31; Heritage, p 61)
What is this an example of?
A: Hi, how are you?
B: I'm doing well! How are you doing?
A: I'm pretty tired today. I couldn't sleep.
An adjacency pair (CA Foundations slides)
What 3 arguments does Heritage make in chapter 3 regarding institutional talk?
Small behavior sequences are deeply aligned to the workings and ideology of large institutions. Changes in these sequences can be really significant for the nature of the institution and how its workings are managed.
Understanding the logic of these sequences is crucial to understanding how deeply embedded many of them are in institutional contexts and processes.
This doesn’t make sense without accepting the idea that sequential organization helps shape and renew contexts.
(Heritage p. 32)
What type of stance is the caller taking, and what type of entitlement is this?
911: Midcity emergency
CLR: Yes I'd like tuh report a loud party.
911: Where is it ma'am.
Simple description or ID of a problem? How does "I'd like tuh" impact entitlement?
What interactional practice do civilians do in a majority of traffic stops (can occur both before or after an officer has given a reason for the stop)
An account
The traffic stop itself and especially the giving of a reason for the stop highlight an accusation of negative conduct that invites an account for the wrongdoing
(Lecture 3A slide 26)
In 911 calls, what are the two types of callers that can lead to “problematic calls”? What is the main feature that differentiates these two calls?
Hysterical callers - display emotion from the beginning
Angry callers - emotion emerges over the course of the call
What are some common characteristics of dispreferred answers?
They’re often slower
They often have accounts
They’re often delivered with hesitation and/or mitigation
They’re often more elliptical
(p. 49 of lecture slides)
In everyday conversation, we often see Q-A-OH. In what institutional setting do we typically see Q-A-E, and why is it different?
Classroom interaction, where the teacher’s evaluation in third position confirms the epistemic supremacy of the questioner. (Heritage p. 28)
What are two features of distressed/”hysterical” callers that can impact information transfer in a 911 call?
Verbalizations such as “oh my god” and paralinguistic behaviors including screaming, gasping, and sobbing (Heritage and Clayman p.88 and lecture 3A)
How is progressivity demonstrated in police-civilian encounters?
Officers (institutional actor) initiates the activity and forward progress relies on alignment by civilians
When civilians do not align, things do not progress
(Raymond and Meehan 2026 and Lecture 3A slide 16)
What does alignment entail according to the Kidwell paper?
It entails participants producing, or working to produce, discourse and embodied contributions at appropriate sequential junctures relative to those of their cointeractants, thereby supporting the identities, activities, and projects that comprise an encounter.
What role does sequential organization play in the process of understanding?
Sequential organization captures both how we build actions, and how we understand them. It’s the engine room of interaction! (p. 111 of slides)
Heritage and Clayman favor the “yellow brick road” view of talk and social context over the “bucket” view. What does this mean?
Unlike the bucket theory, which assumes that interaction accommodates to the context, the yellow brick road view states that social context is never independent of actions. People are continuously creating, maintaining, or altering the social circumstances in which they are placed. (Heritage p. 21)
What are the core components of Gillooly’s (2020) reconceptualization of the 911 call-taker as a risk appraiser?
Call-takers must extract, interpret, and classify caller information into categories manageable for policing.
Discretion and assessments used to do so can be imprecise, and are often over-estimated in cases of uncertainty because it is less risky to have an over-heightened response than an under-heightened response
In what ways to police officers seek alignment in a traffic stops?
They can leave space for civilians to respond (leaving gap after TCU)
They may work to secure alignment with tags or account inquiries
(additional turns at talk following no uptake from civilian)
(Lecture 3A slide 32)
What does Huma argue makes resistance possible?
The interactional structures underpinning the organization of sequences and in particular one type of sequence—the adjacency pair—make resistance in talk-in-interaction possible.