Tim Greer’s guest blog is a very welcome account of the pleasures (and pains) of working in two languages which are phonetically, syntactically and typographically very different.

Tim Greer, Kobe University, Japan

Having lived in Japan for over 20 years, I have learned how to juggle Japanese and English in my daily life. And since my research focuses on Japanese/English bilingual interaction and learner talk, I have also had to discover ways to deal with these two very different languages in my analysis as well.

Which script?

One of the first decisions I needed to make was which script to use when transcribing. Japanese uses a combination of four “alphabets”—one pictographic, two phonetic and one Romanized. So any word can be written in four ways: Continue reading →

Saul Albert has a terrific blog of his own, but has also been part of a lively and committed team setting up and curating the indispensable EM/CA wiki. Here he explains its genesis and its ambitions.

Saul Albert, Queen Mary (University of London)

The EM/CA wiki (http://emcawiki.net) is a wiki bibliography and information repository for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and has been running since July 2014. This guest blog post aims to give readers a little background on the site and what I learned from setting it up.

The first thing to say about the EM/CA wiki is that it is by no means an individual project, and only exists because of the long and dedicated work of Paul ten Have setting up and running his Ethno/CA News site from 1996-2014. During that time Paul published tens of thousands of EM/CA bibliography entries along with a treasure trove of useful information and links assembled at a time before there were as many primers in EM/CA methods for students and researchers. Continue reading →

Our guest is Eric Laurier, Institute of Geography & the Lived Environment, Edinburgh University (whose own blog has the unimprovable title Ordinary Life As It Happens). Here he  gives us a capsule account of the EM/CA culture wars in the social sciences as they’ve played out in Human Geography.

Eric Laurier, University of Edinburgh

On joining the company of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, you are told war stories of the early history of incomprehension, misunderstanding and antipathy it met from prominent figures in Sociology. The Purdue Symposium in Ethnomethodology from 1968 provides a transcript of one of the skirmishes that illustrates very nicely all of these qualities. In other disciplines there are other histories that have lead to other sorts of relationships.

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Timo Kaukomaa is finishing off his doctoral studies in one of the world’s premier centres of interactional analysis. It’s an honour to host this guest blog, in which he explains his work – and why he is leaving it for a very different life.

Timo Kaukomaa, Helsinki University

I am a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Helsinki, and a member of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Intersubjectivity in Interaction, which comprises CA researchers in the fields of linguistics, sociology and behavioural sciences. I will soon defend my PhD thesis (in June), and I will reflect here upon my thoughts regarding my PhD project and future plans.

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Multi-modal work has been an increasing, and welcome, presence in ROLSI, and here Jackson Tolins gives us a blow-by-blow account of working with complex data.

Jackson Tolins, UC Santa Cruz

For researchers of language and social interaction, capturing the intricacies of spontaneous talk-in-interaction has always posed a challenge. We hope to present in our manuscripts not only what is said, but the subtle details of how it was said, capturing the critical features of the talk relevant to how the interlocutors create, coordinate, and respond in conversation. For talk, this challenge has been met with the standardized transcription practices such as the Jeffersonian system.

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This guest blog is by Brian Lystgaard Due,  University of Copenhagen, who has been researching the fascinating question of what it means to wear a mobile camera while going about one’s everyday business.

Brian Lystgaard Due

The social implications of using Google Glass

When I first heard of Google Glass (GG) I was struck by its design and functionality, and thought to my self: How will these works in social interaction? So I contacted a Danish spectacles foundation (Synoptik Fonden) and applied for extra research funding. I bought a pair of GG in January 2014, and wore them as part of a breaching experiment with my self and my different soundings as research objects. I experienced many interesting possibilities but also vast limitations. So I organized three different social experiments and video recorded them.

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We’re exceptionally pleased to host a guest blog from Maurice Nevile (University of Southern Denmark), who tracked down and listed every single article published in ROLSI between 1987 and 2014. Here is his account of how he did it.

Did Harvey Sacks ever publish in ROLSI? Which studies examine repair? Do any ROLSI papers investigate interactional phenomena of German? A complete chronological bibliography for ROLSI (from 1987) now makes it easier to search within the journal for particular authors, analytic interests and phenomena, settings and forms of data, languages, or whatever. I initially compiled the bibliography to support a review study on embodiment, and then developed it for wider public use. Every item is listed with full citation details, and web address for access via the publisher’s website.

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We are delighted to welcome Dipti Kulkarni, Assistant Professor at MICA, Ahmedabad (India) who contributes a fascinating blog on CA in India.

A guest ROLSI Blog Entry – from Emily Hofstetter, Loughborough University, UK

Compared with other research students, postgraduates using conversation analysis have to do their work ‘backwards’. Instead of diving into their literature review as their first major hurdle, it often makes sense for CA PhD students to write their literature review last, or nearly last, and use their first year to acquire data and begin analysis. But the more challenging mental hurdle isn’t necessarily getting access to data; it’s wrapping one’s head around a completely new method of research.

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