Conversation Analysis Review

What is conversation analysis?

• The study of historical conversations

• The study of written communication

• The study of organization and orderliness of social interaction

• The study of body language

What is the fundamental assumption in conversation analysis?

• Human talk is not a form of action

• Participants are not engaging in socially organized interaction

• Context does not play a crucial role in interactions

• Participants share procedures for designing and interpreting talk

What is cohesion in discourse?

• The set of resources for constructing relations in discourse which transcend grammatical structure

• The set of resources for constructing relations in grammar

What are adjacency pairs in conversation analysis?

• Pairs of words that are similar in meaning

• Pairs of words that are opposite in meaning

• Pairs of utterances that are unrelated

• Pairs of utterances that are related and follow each other

Which of the following is NOT the structural characteristics of adjacency pairs?

• They are contiguous.

• They are ordered.

• They are matched.

• They are produced by the same speaker.

What are insertion sequences in conversation analysis?

• Sequences of unrelated words

• Adjacency pairs within another pair

• Sequences of filler words

• Sequences of words inserted randomly in a conversation

What is the distinctive use of 'right' in British and American English interaction?

• It is used to indicate agreement

• It is used to indicate confusion

• It is used to indicate disagreement

• It is used to indicate direction

What is the purpose of conversation analysis?

• To study written communication

• To study the organization of monologues

• To study the organization and orderliness of social interaction

• To study the history of conversations

Conversation analysts bring the following sources of data into analysis EXCEPT?

• Telephone conversation

• A job interview

• An inauguration speech by the president

• An interaction between student and teacher

Speakers can signal the completion point by the following ways EXCEPT?

• A tag question

• An eye contact

• Leave an open pause at the end of a syntactic unit

• “Fill” the pause with a hesitation marker such as er, em, uh, ah