Conversation Analysis in Dialogue With Stocks of Interactional Knowledge: Facework and Appraisal Interviews

Abstract

The literature tells that performance appraisal interviews (AIs) are approached with trepidation by appraisees and appraisers alike. However, despite this observation, few fine-grained analyses have been carried out into the in situ communicative strategies deployed by practitioners to deal with the face-threatening nature of AIs. Using conversation analysis as a research methodology and transcripts of naturally occurring talk from an AI, this article explicates the seen but unnoticed machinery of talk by which facework during AIs is accomplished. Furthermore, it is argued that such fine-grained analysis of what actually goes on in AIs can add to our stocks of interactional knowledge concerning AIs which, as they stand, are more often based on second-order accounts rather than on direct observation of AIs as communicative events.