Rationality and Conversation Analysis

This chapter explores the concept of rationality within Conversation Analysis (CA). It critiques the limited consideration of rationality in CA and defends rationality as a prerequisite for the analysis of interaction. Building on Itkonen’s metatheoretical framework of rationality in linguistics, this chapter argues that the systematics of conversation depend on internalized rationality principles (RP) by which various concrete actions may be generated and interpreted. Due to the significant opacity of linguistic actions, such interpretation is a necessary part of interaction itself and, by extension, Conversation Analysis. Further, rationality is most realistically viewed as a general presumption from which more specific RPs may be derived.