Analyzing Single Episodes of Interaction: An Exercise in Conversation Analysis

Abstract

A variety of analytic resources provided by past work in conversation analysis are brought to bear on the analysis of a single utterance in its sequential context, drawn from an ordinary conversation. Various facets of the organization of talk-in-interaction are thereby both introduced and exemplified. The result displays the capacity of this analytic modality to meet a fundamental responsibility of social analysis, namely the capacity to explicate single episodes of action in interaction as a basic locus of social order.