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 Ethnomethodology
was itself influenced by the social phenomenology
of Alfred Schutz, a student of Edmund Husserl who
focused on everyday practices in the lifeworld
(e.g. Schutz & Luckmann, 1974). (Schutz also
had a large influence on one of the earliest
explorations of the "social construction of
reality," that of Berger and Luckmann, 1967). Like
Husserl and like Schutz, ethnomethodology examined
the problem of intersubjectivity--how individuals
can act together in a common world. Rather than
assuming a pre-existing and unproblematic context,
or that everyone comes with the same assumptions,
ethnomethodology sought to investigate "how members
negotiate or achieve a common context" (Goodwin
& Duranti, 1992, p. 27). It offered a fresh
approach to social scientific inquiry, an effort at
"systematic analysis of how members of a society
build the events they participate in...
[T]he way in which social order and social
organization are constituted" (p. 27).
It
will be useful if I quickly sketch some of the
features of talk that CA pays attention to. When we
are trying to understand a particular utterance or
conversational action it is important to consider
where and how that action is located in a sequence
with other conversational actions. When people
speak in an ongoing conversation they do so in the
light of what has just been said, and in
anticipation of what might take place in the
future. They "design" or "construct" their own
speech, and understand the talk of other people
accordingly. They also shape their utterances to
take account of the identity of the speakersand
what they take their interests to be. The force of
an utterance--the way it is interpreted, and the
end for which it was designed--depends, then, on
its context, both verbal and non-verbal.
An
illustration of this can be found in the fact that
conversational actions often occur in pairs. We
speak of an "exchange of opinions" and an "exchange
of greetings" because many conversational actions
call for a particular kind of conversational
response in return. Greetings and farewells
typically call for another utterance of the same
type. Other actions call for a different type of
action: invitations for acceptances (or
rejections); congratulations for thanks (or
demurrals); offers for acceptances (or refusals).
Such pairs of conventionally linked conversational
actions are said to be "adjacency pairs" or
"two-part pairs" made up of a "first pair-part" and
a "second pair-part."
One
adjacency pair may follow another (question,
answer; question, answer). For example, a
"presequence" occurs when some preliminary action
is taken before initiating the first part of an
adjacency pair, and the preliminary action itself
involves an adjacency pair. Before making a
request, for instance, it often makes sense to
check whether the other person has the item , one
wants. Or before asking a question, preliminary
work often needs to be done. For example, early in
their conversation Laing declaims to Leila, "Ah, I
don't know anything about (.) you at all, ah, and I
don't know what (.) to ask you about yourself"
(line 12), before going on to ask his first
question. (EDITORS NOTE: See the
Appendix
for the transcript, and an explanation of
transcript symbols. Line numbers refer to the
transcript.) j
Or
one pair may be embedded within another. An
"insertion sequence" occurs when the person towards
whom the first part of an adjacency pair has been
directed undertakes some preliminary action before
responding with the second part. For example, a
request for clarification by the recipient will
take place after the first pair-part, but before
the second pair-part. For example, after Laing asks
her a question about her "mom and dad an that I
sort of thing..." Leila inquires, "Who my parents?"
before offering her reply (286-290).
Participants
in a conversation show to one another their grasp
of the ongoing talk. Each utterance displays some
kind of interpretation of prior utterances, as well
as projecting what is to come. Assessments ("That's
good"), newsmarks ("Oh, wow!"),continuers ("uh
huh"), formulations (offering the gist of what's
been said), and collaborative completions
(finishing another's utterance), all provide
evidence to the speakers of how their talk is being
understood. "Conversation, as opposed to monologue,
offers the analyst an invaluable analytical
resource: as each turn is responded to by a second,
we find displayed in that second an analysis of the
first by its recipient. Such an analysis is thus
provided by participants not only for each other
but for analysts too" (Levinson, 1983, p. 321).
When
alignment is lost and misunderstanding occurs,
"re-pair" must be done to fix the conversational
breakdown. Break- , downs will include
misunderstandings as well as disagreements("I think
you're wrong"), rejections ("No, I won't"), and
other difficulties. "Revisions" occur when a
speaker anticipates that trouble is likely and
reformulates talk before this happens. Actions
taken to restore alignment can be requested or
self-initiated. For example, a sequence of repairs
is made after Laing tells Leila "...in that sense
I'm a Christian." She requests repair work, saying
"You're a what?" but Laing's reply, "Heh?" displays
his misunderstanding of her request. She has to
reformulate, "I didn't hear your last word," before
he can repeat what he said to provide the requested
repair (lines 226-230).
Alignment
is displayed and adjusted not only in responses to
an utterance and repairs but also in advance.
"Preventatives" such as disclaimers ("I really
don't know much about this, but..."), are one kind
of such "pre-positioned alignment devices."
"Presequences" (see above) do this too. After a
five second silence, ) for example, Laing
announces, "If we were just sitting here without
these, uh, uh, cameras on us and these microphones,
I wouldn't say anything just now. But, eh, I feel
impelled to eh eh make an effort to keep talking
for the sake of eh people who are listening to it.
Maybe shouldn't bother" (lines 99-104).
ONTOLOGICAL WORK
Attention
to these conversational devices--adjacency pairs,
displays of alignment and its breakdown and repair,
and so on--can help us understand and interpret the
kind of conversational action each utterance has
been designed to perform. And interpretation of
these conversational "moves" helps us understand
the language-game being played, and its
consequences. In this way CA, in the spirit of its
origins in ethnomethodology, has been used to
investigate "the way in which social order and
social organization are constituted" in everyday
interaction (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992, p.
27).
But
equally important--and of greater interest to
psychologists--is the systematic analysis of how
the members of the social order are constituted. As
Lyotard has put it:
"A
self does not amount to much, but no self is an
island; each exists in a fabric of relations
that is now more complex and mobile than ever
before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or
poor; a person is always located at 'nodal
points' of specific communication circuits,
however tiny these may be....The atoms [of
society; that is to say, people] are placed
at the cross-roads of pragmatic relationships,
but they are also displaced by the messages that
traverse them, in perpetual motion. Each
language partner, when a 'move' pertaining to
him is made, "undergoes a 'displacement,' an
alteration of some kind that not only affects
him in his capacity as addressee and referent,
but also as sender" (Lyotard, 1979/1997, pp.
15-16).
We
must try to understand how an utterance has the
power to change people. This is surely necessary if
we are to be able to I illuminate the 'talking
cure' that is psychotherapy. But how to study such
"alteration"? The ontological work accomplished in
a conversation is undoubtedly the collective,
collaborative resuIt of the pragmatic force of the
moves in the language game. What makes it possible
to accomplish this work, however, is the particular
ontological character of human being, and of the
cultures in which we live. Our analysis,
consequently, goes beyond , the turns and moves of
conversation and further articulates what becomes
apparent from using CA by mining the ontological
analysis undertaken by Heidegger (1927/1962;
1982).
There
is much to find troubling about Heidegger, and I
believe that one should draw from his philosophical
writings only with caution. Nonetheless there is
something very valuable and profound to Being
and Time, for example, not because it is
mystical (Heidegger's writing is sometimes
mystifying, but it is a mistake to see his point or
purpose as mystical) but because it deals with what
is simple and everyday.
Heidegger
offered a historical and cultural account of being.
He raised the question of "the meaning of being,"
and by this he referred not to the question of the
significance of the word "being," but to the
question of what makes it possible for a thing or a
person to be. What are the conditions for the
possibility of something existing? Being, Heidegger
argued, is not a fixed and timeless essence. The
being of objects is not simply "substance"; that of
humans is not simply "mind." Rather, the being of
an entity--and the being of humans, too--is
contextual and temporal. Being is historical and
cultural. What Heidegger calls the "meaning of
being" is the "ground" upon which it is possible
for something to be.
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