When interactional researchers step out into the medical world to collect data, they might be recording people in discomfort, pain or distress. As well as the researchers’ own conscience and ethics, institutional and legal rules should ensure that dignity and propriety are respected. Wendy Archer gives a personal and topical account of her own work in the very sensitive environment of end-of-life care.
Wendy Archer, Nottingham University
2016 was the 10th successive year we’ve held a Conversation Analysis Days at Loughborough University’s Department of Social Sciences. Here’s a brief account of how we got here, and why we think that it’s such a popular and enjoyable occasion. Charles Antaki and Liz Stokoe, organisers.
Charles Antaki
Liz Stokoe
It started out as a bright idea to invite friends and colleagues doing CA to come to a day’s meeting at Loughborough – no real reason, other than a sudden enthusiasm of the ‘let’s put a show on right here in the barn‘ type, and a list of people we wanted to see.
One of the pleasures of PhD work is the chance to browse in the dustier corners of the digital library. Lucas Seuren reports on finding books and articles which pack a remarkable punch, even many years after first publication.
Lucas Seuren, Groningen University
A few years ago, before I had started as a PhD student, I attended a few talks by Trevor Benjamin who at the time had just finished his dissertation on other-initiation of repair. During these talks he would point out that while conversation analytic research has developed much over the past few decades, there was still so much we did not know about what he called the ‘boring topics’. Continue reading
Readers of the journal will often see Conversation Analysis applied to real-world problems, and in this guest blog, Lisa Mikesell reports on her work with patients with dementia. The full story is in her article in the current issue, and here she asks how caregivers manage the delicate task of monitoring patients’ actions – and on occasion, correcting them when things go wrong.
Lisa Mikesell, Rutgers University
I often work closely with clinicians, from neurologists to psychiatrists. I take a keen interest in how communicative and social behaviors are typically measured, and what those measures end up meaning clinically and practically to both providers and patients. Continue reading
In the most recent issue of the journal, Jackson Tolins and Patrawat Samermit, both of the University of California, Santa Cruz, have a fascinating article about how people use animated clips (GIFs) in their online chat. They’ve kindly agreed to contribute this guest blog to explain more about their research, and what sorts of issues it uncovered. Continue reading
In the latest issue of the journal, Tanya Stivers and Jack Sidnell have an exciting and suggestive account of how children collaborate in joint activities, and specifically on how they propose things to each other. In this short guest blog, Tanya Stivers gives a back-stage account of their project. Continue reading
The year’s volume kicks off with a substantial set of articles about requesting (proposed by Kobin Kendrick and Paul Drew, and commented on by John Heritage and Jörg Zinken and Giovanni Rossi) and two excellent pieces on multiactivity: Kristian Mortensen on the interactional business done by cupping your ear, and Søren Beck Nielsen on what doctors do with the props on their desk while dealing with their patients.
The link to the journal’s website and table of contents for this issue is here. Clicking on the title image in the set below will take you to the on-line paper directly. Readers with University accounts will have direct access if their libraries subscribe.
