Albert et al Discourse Studies 2018 IR version.pdf (1.84 MB)
The conversational rollercoaster: conversation analysis and the public science of talk
journal contribution
posted on 2017-09-08, 12:43 authored by Saul AlbertSaul Albert, Charlotte Albury, Marc Alexander, Toby Harris, Emily Hofstetter, Edward Holmes, Elizabeth StokoeHow does talk work, and can we engage the public in a dialogue about the scientific study of talk? This paper presents a history, critical evaluation and empirical illustration of the public science of talk. We chart the public ethos of conversation analysis that treats talk as an inherently public phenomenon, and its transcribed recordings as public data. We examine the inherent contradictions that conversation analysis is simultaneously obscure yet highly cited; it studies an object that people understand intuitively, yet routinely produces counter-intuitive
findings about talk. We describe a novel methodology for engaging the public in a science exhibition event, and show how our ‘conversational rollercoaster’—involving live recording, transcription and public-led analysis—addressed the challenge of demonstrating how talk can become an informative object of scientific research. We conclude by encouraging researchers
not only to engage in a public dialogue, but also to find ways to actively engage people in taking a scientific approach to talk as a pervasive, structural feature of their everyday lives.
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge funding for the Conversational Rollercoaster from Queen Mary University of London and Loughborough University. We also acknowledge our funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the Media and Arts Technology Programme, a Research Councils UK Centre for Doctoral Training (EP/G03723X/1), and support for Edward J. B. Holmes' participation by Economic and Social Research Council doctoral award conferred by the Department of Sociology at the University of York. Dr. Hofstetter's participation was funded by Alex Stein, partner.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Discourse StudiesVolume
20Issue
8Citation
ALBERT, S. ... et al, 2017. The conversational rollercoaster: conversation analysis and the public science of talk. Discourse Studies, 20(3), pp. 397-424.Publisher
SAGE (© The Authors)Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-09-05Publication date
2017Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Discourse Studies and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445618754571ISSN
1461-4456eISSN
1461-7080Publisher version
Language
- en