The Mutual Relevance of Conversation Analysis and

Linguistics: A Discussion in Reference to Interactive

Discourse

Paul McIlvenny & Pirkko Raudaskoski (Department of English, University

of Oulu)

1. SUMMARY
The reception of interactional studies of natural, routine language use in social
activities from within linguistics has more than often been hesitant and far from
warm. In linguistics it is often claimed that conversation analysis (CA) is trivial,
obvious, unhelpful and theoretically unsound. From adherents of CA, these
criticisms are usually met with the reply that CA has been misunderstood and
misappropriated. They claim that CA is a sociological enterprise, not a linguistic
one, and thus it is concerned with the organisation of social action and not
language structure and function. We will examine this debate to determine to
what extent conversation analysis and linguistics are mutually relevant.
Reference will be made briefly to two areas of study: computational linguistics
and sign language research.

2. INTRODUCTION
It is increasingly recognised that for linguistics “an understanding of the
structures and processes of conversation is . . . fundamental; it is essential to the
understanding of language” (Schiffrin 1990b, p. 10). It is undeniable that
conversation is the primary domain for socialisation and conversation is speech
activity in which all members of a community routinely participate. Also, many
syntactic changes and processes of grammaticalisation have been shown to be
communicatively motivated. For these and other good reasons an interest in the
nature and organisation of conversation is a healthy one. Indeed, this has been
the prime focus of the non-linguistic enterprise known as conversation analysis
for the last twenty years. However, the reception of interactional studies of
natural, routine language use in social activities from within linguistics has more
than often been hesitant and far from warm. Much unnecessary confusion has
arisen in the research literature about the methodology of conversation analysis
and the status of its claims. We feel that a review of the criticisms and
counter-criticisms of conversation analysis is in order and that some perspective
on the mutual relevance of conversation analysis and linguistics be drafted. This
264 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

paper undertakes the former and attempts the latter by reformulating the claims
of both disciplines in the light of recent theories of structure and action.

We will assume that the field of linguistics needs no introduction within the
context of these proceedings. However, it will rewarding to give a brief
introduction to the principles and practices of conversation analysis before we
make comparisons.

3. CONVERSATION ANALYTIC RESEARCH: THE ORGANIZATION OF TALK AND

SOCIAL INTERACTION
Conversation analysis is an empirical approach to the study of spoken
conversation deriving from the field of ethnomethodology (through the
pioneering work of Harvey Sacks, see Sacks 1989), which itself emerged as a
reaction to traditional sociology in the 1960’s (Garfinkel 1967/84). It is claimed
that conversation is a routine and complex accomplishment carried through by
almost all members of society with great skill and transparent ease. The central
goal of conversation analytic research is the description and explication of the
competences that ordinary speakers use and rely on in participating in senseful
conversation. Meaning is not simply built into the codes of language as in
structural accounts, nor is it only to be found in the relation of cognitive
representations to that which is represented. Meaning is constructed in situ by
interactants who are

“simultaneously engaged in fine-grained real time co-ordination of

speaking turns tracked predominantly in terms of surface structural
features and . . . organising their actions in terms of publicly accountable
normative expectations bearing on the nature and design of their turns at
talk.” (Heritage 1989, p. 26)

The early work in the 1960’s has been taken up increasingly in Europe. Indeed,
Scandinavian languages have been the focus of research by Hakulinen (1989)
and Juvonen (1989), among others. Useful summaries of conversation analysis
can be found in Levinson (1983), Atkinson & Heritage (1984), Heritage (1984,
ch. 8), Button & Lee (1987) and Nofsinger (1991). Important recent collections
include those of Psathas (1990), Boden & Zimmerman (1991) and Watson &
Seiler (1992).

In this approach the analysis of conversations is strongly ‘data-driven’. The

methodology avoids the use of interviewing techniques, the use of field notes or
pre-coded schedules, the use of native intuitions to invent examples, and the use
 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 265

of experimental manipulation or directing behaviour which may restrict the

range and authenticity of the activities which are elicited. Instead, the interest is
in revealing the

“organised procedures of talk as they are employed in real worldly

contexts between persons in real relationships whose talk has a real
consequentiality and accountability.” (Heritage 1989)

Some record of the phenomena is essential in order to study it in detail.

However, the record must be of the details that were meaningful for the
participants, and constitutive of the activities under investigation. Conversation
analysis has shown that audio and video tapings are adequate for investigating
spoken conversation on the telephone and in copresence. A recording allows
repeated viewing of the event and consequently peer group ratification of a
finding. Also, an impressionistic transcription system has evolved, that is now
quite complex (Psathas & Anderson 1990). For example, details of overlapping
speech, particular speech production characteristics like pace and mid-phrase
cutoffs, and split-second timings of pauses are notated. This renders the talk
‘strange’ (but readable) and thus can help expose the everyday accomplishment
that is taken-for-granted.

The early interest of conversation analysis was in everyday mundane

conversation, particularly on the telephone, with a parallel interest in
institutional talk in comparison to the general core findings about multi-party
conversations. Findings that are now part of the established body of conversation
analytic work are the turn-taking systematics (Sacks et al. 1978), the
organisation of adjacency and the mechanisms for dealing with talk troubles. In
the last ten years, work has gradually located vocal talk in the context of other
activities participants might be engaged in and to culture, see Moerman (1988).
This research is still in its infancy but suggests that language, body and
perception are intricately interleaved in the interactive achievement and
coordination of practical activities (Heath 1986, Goodwin & Goodwin 1987).

4. MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND LINGUISTICS

So, conversation analysis is in many respects quite different from traditional
linguistics. Increasingly though, conversation analysis and linguistics have been
seen to be competing for the same territory, viz. an account of conversation.
Let us consider just how conversation analysis and linguistics could be mutually
relevant. In order to begin, the analyses presented by each of the other may help
us understand the interdisciplinary confusions.
266 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

4.1. Critiques of conversation analysis from linguistics

A range of criticisms of conversation analysis have been made by linguists. It is
often argued that conversation analysis has some interesting findings but that
they are not theoretically interesting and are uninformative. For example, Power
& Dal Martello (1986) and Brown & Yule (1983) acknowledge the main
findings - turn-taking and adjacency pair - but claim they are simple and
theoretically they contribute nothing to an understanding for the analyst of how
conversational function is systematically realised in linguistic form; for instance,
of when an interrogative form might serve as a question. Power & Dal Martello
(1986) also argue that conversation analysis does not use quantitative data, that
single instances are inadequate, and that intuition is valid as a means of
investigating conversation, so natural data is unnecessary. Another opponent,
Searle (1986), thinks that conversation does not have an underlying structure
about which a relevant theory can be formulated, and that conversations are not
subject to rules. Indeed, the turn-taking systematics is not and could not be
followed in a conversation. Thus he is arguing that conversation analysis, while
it is descriptively obvious, is not theoretically sound as the rules are not and
could not be followed.

4.2. Rebuttals by conversation analysts

These criticisms have been met squarely by conversation analysts who argue that
linguists are trespassing on a quite different territory. For example, Lee (1987)
points out that

“the enterprise is sociological and this should stand as a warning to those

who have associated CA more with linguistics and have seen it as a
possible solution to the problems of linguistics and found it wanting
precisely in terms of its inability or refusal to take some of these
problems on board.... The point is that whilst CA might appear to concern
itself with language as generally conceived by linguistics, it is in fact
concerned with social activities and their organisation.... language in use
is pervasively a matter of social organisation.” (Lee 1987, p. 50-51)

Sharrock & Anderson (1987) also argue that conversation analysis has been
misunderstood and misappropriated. They claim that conversation analysis is a
sociological enterprise, not a linguistic one, and thus it is concerned with the
organisation of social action and not language structure and function.

Specific replies to the charges of Power & Dal Martello (1986) and Brown &
Yule (1983) take the following forms. First, the findings of conversation
analysis may seem innocuous and uninteresting for theories concerned with
 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 267

power or ideology in discourse, but the local organisation of action is not

irrelevant for the constitution of social structures. Second, theorising was
initially abandoned by conversation analysis because of the proliferation of ad
hoc categories and unjustified speculations. By taking a naturalistic and
inductive approach, regularities and patterns that are not intuitive nor
immediately apparent were revealed and built on. Third, conversation analysis
cannot say anything about a general set of rules for mapping form onto function
because it is a local and circumstantial matter in which conversational sequence
is a crucial resource (Sharrock & Anderson 1987). The aim is not to provide
analysts with a mechanical procedure for categorising talk, but with identifying
and describing the methods which participants themselves use to accomplish
senseful talk.

4.3. Criticisms of linguistics from conversation analysis

Following from Searle’s misguided comments we should consider the notion of
rule and account. To see the differences between conversation analysis and
linguistic concerns we can start by looking at the early conversation analysis
work which was implicitly critical of linguistics. Levinson (1983) criticised
linguistic models of discourse that contained the following four features: a
specifiable set of unit acts; utterances that are segmentable; a specifiable
procedure mapping utterances onto speech acts; and a set of sequencing rules
regulating conversational sequences. Lee (1987) makes another point: that
linguists work with a priori theories. Instead, conversation analysis rejects the
general procedure of positing putative rules for human activities independently
of the fine-grained examination of those doings themselves. Also, Livingston
(1989, pp. 65-66) questions the traditional theoretical competence-performance
and speech-language distinctions. If competence is an a priori set of objective
formal aspects of language, then the postulation of performance is a result of the
discrepancies between the rendered structures of conversational practice and the
theoretical calculations. The hypothesized distinction is used as a warrant for
investigating how conversationalists manage to produce the wealth of
constructions and patch up ill formed ones.

At this point it is relevant to ask why linguistics has shown increasing interest
in conversation analysis, which conversation analysis has seen fit to reject by
maintaining a purity argument. The influence and promise of Sacks’ writings on
the ‘technology of conversation’ may be one such reason. Indeed, we have seen
the progressive formalisation of conversation analysis to such an extent that
Heritage (1989) almost puts forward a rules and units approach. Button (1990a)
has argued against such a position with respect to the nature of computation,
rules and conversation. And Bilmes (1988) has argued that there is only a
268 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

superficial similarity between structural linguistics and conversation analysis -

conversation analysis has a distinctive way of categorising items, a distinctive
understanding of the rules of arrangement, and a distinctive notion of how rules
and categories interact (p. 53).

The deep problems with a linguistic approach to conversation are also

characterised in a recent attack by Taylor & Cameron (1987), who claim that
many approaches to the analysis of discourse

“take intersubjective agreement, on the conversational units being used

and on the rules being followed, to be the essential basis of the coherence
and the detailed coordination of action that is characteristic of
conversational interaction.” (Taylor & Cameron 1987, p. 123)

They argue persuasively that we should rid our analyses of notion o f

meaning as the goal of all interactive discourse because

“as long as conversation analysis [general field] avoids asking questions

about the nature and extent of intersubjectivity ... the rules and units
framework will continue to dominate, and the problems it poses will
continue to plague analysts trying to construct adequate models of talk.”
(1987, p. 162)

These ideas are echoed in the work of Anderson & Garrod (1987). They
demonstrate experimentally that participants in dialogue negotiate referential
meaning through the dialogue itself and can arrive at competing and divergent
meanings.

4.4. Methodological possibilities

After all this criticism and rebuttal, we see two major positions that could be
discussed in relation to the relevance of CA and linguistics. First, one could
argue that a merging of interests is possible if we sort out the conceptual
confusions. In other words, after both ‘sides’ have a good knowledge of what
the others are doing, and what lies behind their concepts, we should find out
whether there is something that linguistics could contribute to CA concerns and
also what CA could contribute to the linguistics enterprise. A second, but more
radical stance, is that linguistics must revise its methods in the light of
interaction studies, but it may be able to explore conversation as a separate area
distinct from CA. No doubt the language of conversation is highly contextual.
The question is whether linguistics can adapt with respect to accounting in some
way for language use, because its methods have traditionally been abstracting
 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 269

away from situated use of language (eg. grammatical studies). We will discuss
the first and second possibilities next. A third position - that linguistics cannot
deal with conversational phenomena - will not be mentioned here.

4.5. What can linguistics contribute to conversation analysis?

In a simple way, linguistics can offer its theories as a vocabulary resource for
the analyst. But, more relevantly, linguistics has contributed to CA through
phonetics. So far, CA has used a sort of impressionistic description of loudness,
rising tone, etc. in the transcriptions. However, there are researchers like Local
& Kelly (1986) who have looked at phonetic and conversational structure, and
they think that:

“ways in which speakers deploy the phonetic resources of their language

for interactive purposes is clearly an area which will require careful
study.” (Local & Kelly 1986, p. 203).

As a warning about the danger of linguists usurping the claims of CA, Button
argues, against Auer (1990), in reference to phonetics that

“in the course of . . . an analysis a phonetician may not have to reference

social action, though on the other hand it may turn out that she/he does
have to. However, if the two domains are invoked together, little is served
by scorning one set of interests and to replace them wholesale with other
interests. More would be served by looking to see if the different sets of
interests can be aligned.” (1990b, p. 402)

4.6. What is missing from linguistic accounts?

Let us turn to the question of what is missing from traditional accounts of
language structure. We can then shift to suggest how CA can contribute to
linguistics.

It is maybe appropriate to start with a quote from John Lyons, who states in
1977:

“there is much in the structure of languages that can only be explained on

the assumption that they have developed for communication in
face-to-face interaction.” (p. 638).

To go to more recent research, Bolkestein (1991) introduces the Journal of

Pragmatics special volume on syntax and pragmatics, which
270 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

“reflects a part of the struggle which results from trying to fruitfully combine
the two perspectives on language and language use: grammatical theory and
pragmatics”. (Bolkestein 1991, p. 107)

Of individual researchers, Thompson (1990) is interested in:

“research which seeks to understand grammar in terms of the underlying

principles of human communicative interaction.” (Thompson 1990, p.
113)

and,

“grammatical investigations proceed as a matter of course from the

assumption that an understanding of grammatical patterns can only be
achieved in terms of the cognitive and social principles of human
communicative interaction.” (ibid, p. 114)

4.7. What can conversation analysis contribute to linguistics?

So, what could CA then contribute to the linguistics enterprise? There is some
research that has taken a new approach to how grammatical phenomena are
interactionally achieved.

Fox & Thompson (1990) have looked at interaction and relative clauses, and
claim to show that:

“in addition to grammatical and informational considerations, certain facts

about the use of relative clauses can be insightfully accounted for in
interactional terms.” (Fox & Thompson 1990, p. 183).

They argue that an interactional function of relative clauses is to create and

maintain social identities and participant relations. Other studies in a similar vein
include Ford & Thompson (forthcoming), who explore the relations between
linguistic and interactional resources in the completion of turn constructional
units. Tao & Thompson (1991) examine the pragmatic interference from the
second language to the mother tongue performance.

Schegloff (1979) recommends a linguistic study of conversational syntax with

reference to repair processes. He shows how repair
 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 271

“can order a n d reorder the arrangement of the components of the

sentences as well as restructure its overall shape.” (p. 280)

He regards conversational language as the starting point for any examination of

language structure in interactive discourse. This means that repair work, for
example, should not be considered something extra to the syntax of
conversations. Thus, traditionally “unsyntactic” forms will have to be accounted
for as syntactic. So, what will be important is, for example, the position of a
unit in a turn, and also things like pauses and the pace of talk. Ultimately, the
syntax-for-conversation may not have too much in common with traditional
syntax.

As an example of one feature of a syntax-for-conversation, Lerner (1991)

examined collaborative turn completions (which were first introduced by Harvey
Sacks). Lerner states:

“the utterance format described here seems to transcend the particulars of

context, content, and surface syntactic structure, thus demonstrating what
a component of a socially construed, empirically described ‘syntax-for-
conversation’ might look like.” (Lerner 1991, p. 454)

Lerner would not use traditional grammatical terms for syntactic structures, as
he finds them inadequate to explain what is happening in collaborative turn
completions. What he would want to use is the participants’ syntax - an example
of the participant’s interactional orientation to fleeting structures of talk, eg. the
turn, as well as grammatical structures. He claims that:

“... a participants’ syntax (ie. participants’ orientation to talk as segmented

and structured) seems to be shaped by the situated use of language (ie. by
the requirements of talk-in-interaction), and therefore the description of
this syntax by analysts ought to follow suit.” (Lerner 1991, fn 12, p. 456)

We can begin to investigate the possibility of emergent but locally accomplished

and negotiated participants’ orientation to language structures and patterns,
which are not necessarily shared but they are temporally contingent and subject
to dispute and retrospective reinterpretation.

4.8. A more radical paradigm shift

A different concern mentioned in the methodological possibilities section is that
each paradigm may not be able to continue as an integral whole that informs the
272 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

other: if the criticisms raised earlier are indicative of a general malaise then
more radical change may be necessary. For example, the following quotations
suggest something of a turmoil in the foundations of linguistics.

Recently, Thompson (1990) and Schiffrin (1988) have reopened the inquiry into
how interactive discourse may shape language structure.

“Communicative processes underlying conversation have been shown to

guide the emergence and development of syntactic structures in language
over both historical time and developmental time.” (Schiffrin 1988, p.
252)

“Grammatical regularities emerge out of recurrent forces in the way

discourse is put together.” (Thompson 1990, p. 113)

Importantly, Schiffrin (1990a) also claims that what we are witnessing now is
the breakdown of the integrity of the notion of ‘language’ and of shared rules
and lexical units. Schiffrin suggests that

“grammatical structures and patterns may be emergent from specific

instances of communication ... and they need not be shared.” (p. 149)

So, from these quotations we find a definite trend towards re-evaluating

linguistic foundations in terms of a new understanding of the relations between
language structure and social action. Talk activity should now be regarded as the
locus for language, society and culture, in which structure constrains action, but
action also reproduces and shapes structural relations (see the stimulating work
of the social theorists: Giddens 1984 and Bourdieu 1977). For example, Ochs
(1988) in her work on language acquisition and development has formulated this
trend in the following way: participants in routine, everyday verbal activi-
ties/practices draw on linguistic and sociocultural knowledge to mutually create
and define what is taking place; but also, routine verbal activities/practices are
the means through which aspects of linguistic and sociocultural knowledge are
reproduced.

We would like to draw together this discussion and note the following major
points that must be taken into account if some sort of alignment or
accommodation of conversation analysis and linguistics is to be undertaken:

i. language is constituted in social activities, of which conversation is primary.

 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 273

ii. language structure can no longer be seen in isolation from situated interaction
and conversation.

iii. the traditional notion of rule and the intersubjective assumption should be
abandoned.

iv. participants in talk may maintain competing and divergent analyses of

talk-in-progress, both of language structure and social action.

5. SOME THOUGHTS ON APPLICABILITY

5.1. Sign language research

In reference to sign language research we propose that it is timely and
appropriate to reconsider our conceptions of language and to develop new
methods of inquiry. Because of the relatively short time that sign language has
been studied and also the lack of a indigenous written form, future research has
a chance to make a distinct break with the traditional study of spoken languages
(with the written language bias). We argue that a more appropriate framework
of issues and questions can be formulated, see McIlvenny (1991, forthcoming).

5.2. Computational linguistics

In an earlier part of the paper we discussed the growing interest in CA and its
formalisation. Unfortunately some disciplines have taken CA’s results as
superficial evidence for a structural, rule-governed model. Indeed, computational
linguistics has thought of implementing CA computationally. However, the
mistake is to think that CA’s results as they stand are formalisable; it is thus
fallacious to argue that because formalisation fails then CA’s accounts are
inadequate. Let us expand on this a little.

One of the common misunderstandings of CA and the notion of rule can be

found in Hirst (1991). He argues that CA’s rules could be nicely fitted into an
AI reasoning system, as they can be represented declaratively (but not
procedurally). David Chapman (forthcoming) corrects Hirst by reminding him
that rules as CA understands them are not representable at all. Rules are not
properties of agents but rather are patterns of interaction.

It has also been argued that CA does not provide an adequate detailed account
of how coherence and sequential organisation in discourse is produced and
understood. Computational linguistics has found the systematics of turn-taking
and the organisation of repair problematic if a formal specification for
274 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

generation or categorisation is required. This is missing the point. CA findings

are not woolly because they do not specify the motivations or mechanisms for
producing conduct. That is not the aim of CA. The rules or structures found by
CA are predicated on the situated practices of engaging in conversation - they
do not specify courses of action. They are used by participants to interactively
construct the sense of their actions as accountably engaged in conversation.
There is a very real danger of reifying the findings and notions of CA. This is
similar to the artificial intelligence conception of ‘plan’, which regards action as
the execution of a program. The regularities found in conversational action by
CA, eg. the adjacency pair and insertion sequence, are very easily made into
rules for classifying or generating. However, they are indeterminate, indexical
and constituted within the practice of dialogue.

Besides these confusions we argue that it is unavoidable that interactional and

linguistic concerns will have to be mutually addressed in computational
linguistics. Interactional demands simply cannot be ignored in spoken language
artifact design, for example (see Raudaskoski 1992). If we understand
computational linguistics in the broad sense of modelling language use and
structure using computers as a tool and with language technology as a product,
then it should be clear that interactional concerns are crucial.

6 . CONCLUSION
Not only will the study of signed and spoken interaction benefit the field of
linguistics, but also linguistics itself may have to reflect on its own methods and
results as a consequence of interactional findings. If we accept that the
interactional pressures of routine language use in everyday social activity
reproduce, shape and transform talk and thus language, then what new tools
could be used to study the ‘structures of a language’? We conclude that one
must not only study the structure of a language, but also how it is constituted,
maintained and used in real, practical settings that participants routinely
encounter and actively construct in their community. Ultimately, conversation
analysis and linguistics - the investigations of action and structure - are mutually
relevant if they are studied in the primary context of real knowledgeable
participants in situated, routine human activity.
 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 275

REFERENCES

Anderson, A. & Garrod, S. 1987. The dynamics of referential meaning in

spontaneous conversation: Some preliminary studies. In Reilly, R. (ed.),
Communication Failures in Dialogue and Discourse, Elsevier: North
Holland, 161-183.
Atkinson, J. & Heritage, J. (eds.) 1984. Structures of Social Action: Studies in
Conversation Analysis. CUP: Cambridge.
Auer, P. 1990. Rhythm in telephone closings. In Human Studies 13, 4, pp.
361-392.
Bilmes, J. 1988. Category and rule in conversation analysis. In IPrA Papers in
Pragmatics 2, l/2, 25-59.
Boden, D. & Zimmerman, D.H. (eds.) 1991. Talk and Social Structure: Studies
in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Bolkestein A. Machtelt 1991. Syntax and pragmatics: Apartheid or integration?
In Journal of Pragmatics 16, 107-l11.
Bourdieu, P. 1987. Outline of a Theory of Practice. CUP: Cambridge.
Brown, G. & Yule, G. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge.
Button, G. 1990a. Going up a Blind Alley: Conversation and Human-Machine
Dialogue. In Luff, P., Gilbert, N. & Frohlich, D. (eds.), Computers and
Conversation. Academic Press: London.
Button, G. 1990b. A clash of ideas: A response to Auer. In Human Studies 13,
4, 393-404.
Button, G. & Lee, J. (eds.) 1987. Talk and Social Organisation. Multilingual
Matters: Avon.
Chapman, D. forthcoming. Compter Rules, Conversational Rules. In Computa-
tional Linguistics.
Ford, C.E. & Thompson, S.A. forthcoming. On projectability in conversation:
grammar, intonation and semantics.
Fox, Barbara, A. & Thompson, Sandra, A. 1990. On formulating reference: An
interactional approach to relative clauses in English conversation. In IPrA
Papers in Pragmatics 4, No. l/2, 183-196.
Garfinkel, H. 1967/84. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory o f
Structuration. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. 1987. Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the
interactive organisation of assessments. In IPRA Papers in Pragmatics 1,
1, l-54.
276 MCILVENNY & RAUDASKOSKI

Hakulinen, A. (ed.) 1989. Kieli 4: Suomalaisen Keskustelun Keinoja I.

Yliopistopaino: Helsinki.
Heath, C. 1986. Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. CUP:
Cambridge.
Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Polity Press: Cambridge.
Heritage, J. 1989. Current developments in conversation analysis. In Roger, D.
& Bull, P. (eds.), Conversation, Multi-lingual Matters: Clevedon, 21-47.
Hirst, G. 1991. Does Conversation Analysis Have a Role in Computational
Linguistics ? Review article in Computational Linguistics 17, 2, pp.
211-227.
Juvonen, P. 1989. Repair in second-language instruction. In Nordic Journal of
Linguistics 12, 183-204.
Lee, J. 1987. Prologue: Talking organisation. In Button & Lee (1987), 9-53.
Lerner, G. 1991. On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. In Language in Society
20, 441-458.
Levinson, S. C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Livingston, E. 1987. Making Sense of Ethnomethodology. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Local & Kelly 1986. Projection and ‘silences’: Notes on phonetic and
conversational structure. In Human Studies 9, 185-204.
Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics, 2 vols. CUP: Cambridge.
McIlvenny, P. 1991. Some Thoughts on the Study of Sign Language Talk. In
Sajavaara, K. et al. (eds.), Communication and Discourse across Cultures
and Languages. AFinLA Yearbook 1991. Publications de 1’Association
Finlandaise de Linguistique Appliqued, 187-202, Jyväskylä University.
McIlvenny, P. forthcoming. Seeing Conversations: Analysing Sign Language
Talk. Submitted for publication in the Proceedings of the International
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Conference, University of
America Press.
Moerman, M. 1988. Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis.
Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
Nofsinger, R. 1991. The Conduct of Everyday Conversation. London: Sage.
Ochs, E. 1988. Culture and Language Development: Language Acquisition and
Language Socialisation in a Samoan Village. Cambridge: CUP.
Power, R & Dal Martello, M.F. 1985. Methods of Investigating Conversation.
Review article in Semiotica 53, l/3, 237-257.
Psathas, G. (ed.) 1990. Interaction Competence. University of America Press.
 THE MUTUAL RELEVANCE OF CA AND LINGUISTICS 277

Psathas, G. & Anderson, T. 1990. The ‘practices’ of transcription in

conversation analysis. In Semiotica 78, l/2, 75-99.
Raudaskoski, P. 1992. Repair Work in the Context of English Language
Mediated Computer Interface Use: A Conversation Analytic Study.
Unpublished licentiate dissertation, Department of English, University of
Oulu.
Sacks, Harvey 1989. Special Issue edited by Gail Jefferson on Harvey Sacks in
Human Studies, 12.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. & Jefferson, G. 1978. A simplest systematics for the
organisation of turn taking for conversation. In Schenkein (ed.), Studies
in the Organisation of Conversational Interaction I, Academic Press: New
York, 7-55.
Schegloff, Emmanuel, A. 1979. The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conver-
sation. In Givon, T. (ed.) Syntax and Semantics. Volume 12. Discourse
and Syntax. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press.
Schiffiin, D. 1988. Conversation analysis. In Newmeyer, F. (ed.), Linguistics:
The Cambridge Survey IV, Cambridge: CUP.
Schiffrin, D. 1990a. The principle of intersubjectivity in communication and
conversation. In Semiotica 80, l/2, 121-l51.
Schiffiin, D. 1990b. Conversation analysis. In Grabe, W. (ed.), Annual Review
of Applied Linguistics, Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. 1986. Introductory essay: Notes on conversation. In Ellis, D. &
Donohue, W. (eds.), Contemporary Issues in Language and Discourse
P r o c e s s e s , Erlbaum: Hillsdale. [recently revised in Parret, H. &
Verschuren, J. (1991), Searle on Conversation. Amsterdam: John
Benjamin.]
Sharrock, W. & Anderson, B. 1987. Epilogue: The definition of alternatives:
Some sources of confusion in Interdisciplinary Discussion. In Button &
Lee (1987), 290-321.
Taylor, T. & Cameron, D. 1987. Analysing Conversation: Rules and Units in the
Structure of Talk. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Tao, J. & Thompson, S.A. 1991. English backchannels in Mandarin
conversations: A case study of superstratum pragmatic ‘interference’. In
Journal of Pragmatics 16, 209-223.
Thompson, S. 1990. Discourse and grammar. In Text 10, l/2, 113-l15.
Watson, G. & Seiler, R.M. 1992. Text in Context. London: Sage.