Conversation Analysis (CA) at UCSB has strong interdisciplinary ties, an international reputation, and a distinct formal methodology and subject matter suited to sociological concerns. Although this area is known as conversation analysis, its subject matter is broader than conversation, encompassing the organization of social actions at their point of production through talk-in-interaction and other embodied conduct. Thus, CA contributes to work in many areas of sociology, as well as making fundamental contributions to social theory. The growing understanding of basic structures and practices of interaction has furnished analytic resources for studying interactions in a range of institutional settings, including medical encounters, classrooms, emergency calls and other service provision encounters, television and radio news and interviews, political speechmaking, business meetings, police encounters, courtroom examinations, jury deliberations, parent-teacher conferences, playground interactions, and peer interactions among very young children. It has also been used to examine the interactional organization and reproduction of a range of social categories of traditional interest to sociologists, including gender, race, sexuality, age, and various occupational or professional categories. Faculty members and graduate students with interests in CA are also typically affiliated with the Language, Interaction, and Social Organization (LISO) research focus group and interdisciplinary Ph.D. emphasis.
Working Group Schedule (TBA)
Faculty:
Relevant Links:
- UCSB Language, Interaction, and Social Organization Ph.D. Interdisciplinary Emphasis and Research Focus Group
- Ethno/CA News-Information on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
- ASA Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
- American Association for Applied Linguistics
- Sandra A. Thompson's Bibliography of research on interaction, grammar, and prosody
- Mary Bucholtz's Sociocultural Linguistics Website
- Mary Bucholtz's Language and Gender