‘What do you want me to say?’ On the Conversation Analysis approach to bilingual interaction

Abstract

Is language simply a medium for the expression of intentions, motives, or interests, or is it also a site for uncovering the method through which ordered activity is generated? This question has wide-ranging implications for the study of bilingual interaction in particular, and for sociolinguistics generally. This article attempts to explicate the principles behind the Conversation Analysis (CA) approach to bilingual interaction. It addresses some of the criticisms that have been leveled against the CA approach, using both new data and new analyses of previously published examples. (Keywords: Conversation Analysis, bilingual interaction, code-switching).* The last two decades of the 20th century witnessed an increasing diversity of analytic approaches to bilingual interaction, with a gradual move away from an earlier dichotomy between the grammatical analysis of code-switching and the socio-psychological analysis of language choice. One of the new research paradigms is the application of Conversation Analysis (CA) to bilingual interaction; an example is Auer 1998. This work follows the tradition first developed by Gumperz 1982, who described code-switching in bilingual conversation as socially orderly discourse strategies which index localized norms and values (see also Scotton 1988). Particular attention is paid to the way in which individuals strategically use the codes in their bilingual repertoires to achieve specific interactional goals. The CA approach facilitates the analysis of fragmentary and unidealized data and gives primacy to interpretations that are demonstrably oriented to participant actions rather than to global social categories. Nevertheless, the disciplinary heterogeneity of the researchers who use the CA approach to bilingual interaction, often with diverse agendas, has led to confusion and misreading of some key concepts and procedures of the approach. For example, the technical concept of “preference” in CA has often been wrongly equated with the attitudinal notion of liking, acts of compliance, or the grammatical construction of af