Defining Conversations

According to Myers in Culpeper  (2009: 501), the structure of talk is crucial to many areas of language study and talk is crucial to many social processes, from getting a job, to trying a criminal, to making friends. Talk in Myers’ words is apparently loosely structured and even careless. Yet, in fact studies show that it is very orderly, among the most precisely ordered things human beings do. Before going further, it is important to learn the definition of conversation. Basically, It has two meanings: 1) in popular use and 2) in academic study. Academic study is understood as all interaction using language including institutional talk like teachers talk to students or lawyers questioning witnesses. These are named talk-in-interaction.

Conversation can also mean all interaction using language, including institutional talk such as teachers talking to students or lawyers questioning witnesses. It can also mean those every use of talk such as a family talking about events of the day at the dinner table , two acquaintances passing time on a bus. These are called Mundane Conversation, which are crucially different from institutional uses, because there are typically no constraints on who can speak next, for how long or about what.

Conversation is also termed “speech event” that actually refers to “activities … that are directly governed by rules or norms of the use of speech” (Hymes, 1975 quoted in Eggins an Slade, 2001: 33). According to Hymes (ibid.), any speech event comprises several components as listed in Hymes’ “SPEAKING grid” below.

Tabel 1. Hymes’ Speaking Grid

S	Setting scene	Temporal and physical circumstances subjective definition of an occasion
P	Participant	Speaker/sender/addressor/hearer/receiver/audience/addressee
E	Ends	Purposes and goals, outcomes
A	Act sequence	Message form and content
K	Key	Tone, manner
I	Instrumentalities	Channel (verbal, non-verbal, physical forms of speech drawn from community repertoire)
N	Norms of interaction and interpretation	Specific properties attached to speaking interpretation of norms within cultural belief system
G	genre	Textual categories

Hymes argues that the values of the factors identified in the SPEAKING grid on any specific occasion determine our use of language and our interpretation of what people say. The SPEAKING grid provides a necessary reminder of the textual dimensions operating in any casual conversation.

In similar vein, Finegan (2004:306) views conversation as “a series of speech acts—greetings, inquiries, congratulations, comments, invitations, requests, refusals, accusations, denials, promises, farewells. Finegan further elaborates that to accomplish the work of these speech acts, some organization is essential: we take turns at speaking, answer questions, mark the beginning and end of a conversation, and make corrections when they are needed.

Thus, it can be inferred that conversation analysis (CA), in the words of Van Dijk (1998), is the organization of the meaningful conduct of people in society, that is, how people in society produce their activities an make sense of the world about them. The core analytic objective is to illuminate how actions, events, objects, etc., are produced and understood rather than how language an talk are organized an analytical separable phenomena.

References:

Culpeper, J. et al. (eds.). (2009). English Language: Description, Variation and Context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Discourse as Social Interaction: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.