Accounting for moral judgments in academic talk: The case of a conversation analysis data session

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores one aspect of scholarly work as a situated practice: the way that, in a conversation analysis group data session, scholars juggle their technical talk with personal value judgments ostensibly inappropriate to the practices of this particular branch of the social sciences. We see how value judgments are handled, and what visible part they play in proceeding with the formal, institutionally provided for, technical analysis. In the case we explore, some members of a routine data session (the authors) expressed negative evaluative views of the actions of a participant in the video they were analyzing, which at various points they characterized as ‘cynical’, ‘begging’, and ‘a shocker’. We show the data-session participants' orientation to these moral judgments, and their search for resolution in safely technical terms. Our interest is in bringing to light the workings of a routine piece of scholarly teamwork, not often subject to scrutiny; and to reveal how accountability plays its part in scholars' management of competing institutional, and personal, identities.