Abstract
This is an important volume demonstrating that the findings of a linguistic sub-discipline once regarded as esoteric even by other linguists, can be made accessible and useful for non-linguists working in a wide variety of institutional contexts. The contributors provide ample evidence, in their descriptions of widely varying CA-based interventions, of the usefulness of fine-grained analyses of talk-based human interactions for improving the quality of these interactions while furthering institutional aims and objectives. However, for this reader the book’s most exciting and valuable facet consists in the insights the individual accounts provide into the challenges faced by conversation analysts in adapting, modifying and sometimes hybridising their methodology to meet the demands of pragmatic research agendas or the varied needs of practitioners and other stakeholders across a wide variety of sites.
Antaki’s introduction briefly situates the individual studies within the broad and expanding field of applied conversation analysis. It does this briefly. This is definitely not an introduction to CA (recent introductions are Liddicoat, 2007 and Sidnell, 2010). Antaki is here focused on how the analytic methods developed in CA can be applied to solving real-world problems. He recognises six varieties of ‘applied CA’, as follows:
Foundational applied CA – uses CA to shed light on fundamental problems in related disciplines and fields of study (e.g. pragmatics, discursive psychology).
Social problem applied CA – uses CA to shed light on macro-societal problems and issues (Antaki notes that here CA has failed to live up to early expectations).
Communicational applied CA – examines the ‘disordered’ speech of those with communicative disabilities – but also the interactional difficulties of second-language learners.
Diagnostic applied CA – attempts to correlate features of speech and interaction with medical diagnoses or conditions, for essentially diagnostic purposes.
Institutional applied CA – focuses on professional interactions in sites ranging from the GP’s office to the language classroom, putting institutional activity under the microscope, as Antaki calls it.
Interventionist applied CA – here CA is used to solve an interactional problem that pre-existed the analyst’s arrival, and thus to change practices; interventionist CA is generally carried out collaboratively, with the close involvement of local actors.
The contributors to the present volume all describe CA-based interventions, some of which have been published more extensively elsewhere. Heritage and Robinson summarise previous work that focused on primary healthcare consultations and the problem of patients’ unmet concerns. They tested the hypothesis that a simple change of wording in the way physicians question patients about their further concern (substituting ‘any’ for ‘some’) would have far-reaching beneficial consequences, and their hypothesis was supported by the results.
Chapters by Wilkinson and Finlay, Walton and Antaki examine interactions involving individuals suffering from disabilities that affect their ability to interact with others. Wilkinson examines how partners of aphasics often dominate interactions with strings of closed yes/no questions aimed at utterance repair; he encourages them to overlook articulatory problems and respond to the intended message. The intervention described by Finlay et al. aims at educating care staff in residential services to offer more choice (and hence control over their lives) to residents with sometimes quite profound learning disabilities.
Maynard, Schaeffer and Freese investigate response rates of people asked to participate in telephone surveys, and identify a range of interactional factors that influenced the success or otherwise of interactions. Wilkinson describes the difficulties call-takers have on a health-related helpline in managing the transition from talk that is informational and empathic to a call-monitoring task requiring them to ascertain the ethnicity of the caller. In a similar vein, Kitzinger worked with women who answered calls to childbirth helplines, and recommended ways in which they might modify their sometimes dysfunctional responses.
Stokoe develops an innovative conversation-analytic role-play method for communication skills training, specifically to assist mediators and police interviewers dealing with neighbour disputes. The method involves presentation of authentic interactions line by line, using audio files along with line-by-line projection of the transcript, and having participants react to what they have just heard and then role-play alternatives. Toerien, Irvine, Drew and Sainsbury set out to help advisers administering the New Jobseeker Interview in Britain to personalise the way they interact with clients, namely job seekers, while questioning the appropriateness of this general strategy in the light of institutional or political goals.
Lamerich and Te Molder had Dutch teenagers record themselves discussing individuals with health issues and/or disabilities. Transcripts form the basis for a critical evaluation of the ways such individuals were referred to, focusing on negative evaluations; participants then considered interactional alternatives and their hypothetical consequences. Meanwhile, Egbert, working with CA in the broad area of technological innovation, focuses on hearing-aid fitting sessions, revealing fundamental misalignments as to who the ‘user’ is – the dispenser or the user of the hearing-aid. Finally, Peräkylä examines the ways in which her CA expertise has informed her practice as a psychotherapist and, reciprocally, how her therapeutic practice has prompted theoretical rethinking and new insights in CA.
The different interventions described in the book can be situated on a cline running from those that have adhered most closely to CA analytic principles and used the most authentic data, to those that have combined a CA-type focus on talk-in-interaction with other analytic principles and methods. Sometimes, it seems a close adherence to CA principles and close analysis of authentic data by stakeholders have led to changed and/or improved practices. In other cases, a CA-type approach has been combined with concepts and methods from an allied sub-discipline, such as Discursive Psychology. Sometimes the aim has been simply to sensitise individuals to their own conversational practices, and viewing videos – whether or not utilising a CA-informed commentary (Finlay et al.) – led to critical reflection on practice and often changed practice, though the changes were often logistical as much as interactional. Kitzinger is openly sceptical about the benefits of ‘pure’ CA-based interventions, arguing that (while the data gathered may be of immense value to conversation analysts) other analytic approaches, such as thematic analysis or content analysis, can sometimes be more appropriate and more productive. Kitzinger also makes the important point that in order to ensure that any practice or training suggestions are relevant to the aims and concerns of the organisation, researchers also need to engage with the professional knowledge stocks of collaborating practitioners. All told, the accounts contained in this book give rise to a set of very important questions for applied CA. What, for example, are the conditions that give rise to or enable uptake? Does a particular mix of methods work best in some situations? If so, which ones? Is ethnography now an indispensable adjunct to CA?
It is clear that for many practitioners CA is now a method among methods: a toolkit providing what Heritage and Robinson refer to as the ‘basic conceptual ingredients’ (p. 16) for solving non-interactional problems. As such, CA has been appropriated by more eclectic conceptual and analytic frameworks (such as interactional sociolinguistics, which blends concepts and tools from anthropology, linguistics, pragmatics and conversation analysis into a single interpretive framework). CA has come a long way from its ethnomethodological roots but, in responding to the more complex communicative and interactional needs and challenges of evolving institutional practices in a pluralistic society, CA has followed a fairly predictable trajectory. As part of a newly flexible and eclectic focus on analysing talk-in-interaction and troubled communication in institutional and organisational contexts, CA will continue to play a pivotal role in an expanded version of applied linguistics.