Conversation Analysis (CA), a research tradition that grew out of ethnomethodolgy has some unique methodological features. It studies the social organization of “conversation” or “talk-in-interaction” by a detailed inspection of tape recordings and...
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Conversation Analysis (CA), a research tradition that grew out of ethnomethodolgy has some unique methodological features. It studies the social organization of “conversation” or “talk-in-interaction” by a detailed inspection of tape recordings and transcriptions made from such recordings. In doing conversation analysis, the analyst identifies a prevailing theme or object around which a conversation is centered. He then goes on to extrapolate how this chosen theme is constructed in the conversation. This paper explores the theme of identity and power construction in the dialogue between two personalities - Vic and the Unknown Lady. It uses two theories-the speech act theory and the relevance theory. There are hardly any prescriptions to be followed if one is to do a “good CA”. A chosen theme, which a conversation analyst bases his exploration on, is termed in the terminology of Schenkein (1978), as “a sketch of an analytic mentality”. In the words of Heritage and Atkinson (1984), “The
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