Transitioning from conversation analysis to mixed methods

Abstract

This reflective piece tells the story of how I started out doing Conversation Analysis (CA) and have been transitioning into doing mixed methods for some years now. My basic argument is that language learning talk is too complex a phenomenon to analyse using a single methodology. Specifically, it is extremely difficult to isolate from the interaction concrete evidence of the learning of specific individual items in terms of change of cognitive state. This is owing to the singular complexity of language learning, which adds an extra level of complexity to language learning talk, hence supercomplexity. Of course, the counter-argument to this would be that CA as a methodology is designed to reveal the complexity and fluidity of spoken interaction. The complex organisation of ordinary conversation (Sacks et al., 1974) and of varieties of institutional interaction (Drew & Heritage, 1992) have been very well established for a very long time. CA has been extremely successful and popular as a methodology for the analysis of spoken interaction in a huge range of settings. There have been many CA studies of language learning talk over the last few decades, including my own. So why do I now feel that it cannot portray the full complexity of language learning talk on its own? There is an idiosyncratic problem with language learning talk, namely that it has an additional level of complexity superimposed on top of the regular problems of analysing spoken interaction. This is because language is the object as well as the vehicle of language learning talk.