Conversation Analysis

This encyclopedia entry outlines the background, development, and core methodological commitments of Conversation Analysis (CA). As a qualitative approach, CA enables researchers to apply systematic analytic techniques to interactional data as a mechanism to examine not only what is said, but what is accomplished through talk in localized contexts. CA is grounded in the premise that communication is an active, organized, and socially consequential practice. Emerging from ethnomethodology, ethnography, and linguistic psychology, CA was initially developed to investigate how normative assumptions and social expectations become observable through the sequential organization of everyday communication. These assumptions take on different forms across historical moments and institutional contexts (e.g., legal, educational, and healthcare settings). To study interaction in such contexts, this entry introduces applied CA, which extends core analytic principles to institutional talk. With its focus on interactional (micro) details, CA has been taken up across diverse disciplines, including education, psychology, and organizational studies.