Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
Ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel) investigates the members’ methods by which ordinary people produce and sustain social order in real time. It treats order as an ongoing accomplishment, made visible through practical reasoning, talk, and mundane routines. Conversation Analysis (CA)—developed by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson—extends this agenda by examining the organizational machinery of talk-in-interaction (turn-taking, sequence, repair), using fine-grained recordings and transcripts. Together, they provide a rigorous micro-sociological lens on how social reality is done.
I. Origins & Intellectual Context
- From Phenomenology to Practice: Builds on Husserl (intentionality, lifeworld) and Schutz (intersubjectivity, stock of knowledge), but shifts to observable practices.
- Anti-positivist: Rejects treating social order as external “structure”; seeks how order is produced through members’ methods.
- Empirical turn: Records and analyzes naturally occurring interaction (not elicited statements) to reveal the “seen-but-unnoticed” routines of everyday life.
II. Ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel)
| Core Idea | Explanation | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Indexicality | Meanings are context-bound; words/acts “point” to local circumstances. | Undermines fixed meanings; interpretation requires situational knowledge. |
| Reflexivity (EM sense) | Accounts and actions make sense of—and simultaneously shape—the very situations they describe. | Order is produced by the practices that describe/enact it (“self-explicating” scenes). |
| Documentary Method of Interpretation | Particulars are read as “documents” of an underlying pattern; the pattern is inferred from the particulars. | Explains how people ‘see’ coherent patterns in fragmentary events. |
| Accountability | Members render actions recognizably organized and intelligible; they provide “accounts.” | Social actions are done so as to be seen and understood as orderly. |
| Breaching Experiments | Deliberately disrupt norms to expose tacit rules (e.g., treat home as a hotel; ask “What do you mean?” for obvious remarks). | Reveals the fragile, taken-for-granted background expectancies sustaining order. |
Flowchart: Ethnomethodology’s Logic of Order
Members Act in Situations Using Tacit Background Expectancies
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Indexical Practices + Accounts Make Actions Intelligible
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Reflexivity: Descriptions Help Constitute the Order Described
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Observable, Reportable Social Order Emerges (Moment-by-Moment)
Methodological Toolkit (Ethnomethodology)
- Naturalistic Data: Audio/video of everyday interactions (homes, offices, service encounters).
- Breaching & Re-specification: Strategic disruptions; re-describe practices without imported theoretical gloss.
- Transcripts + Artifacts: Close reading of talk, documents, forms, screens, signage, bodily conduct.
- Analytic Focus: How participants display understanding to one another in and through the interaction.
Classic Illustrations (Ethnomethodology)
- Garfinkel (1967), Studies in Ethnomethodology: Breaching tasks (e.g., bargaining over prices in fixed-price stores) show tacit rules.
- Agnes case study: How gender is methodically accomplished via accountable practices of “passing.”
- Institutional settings: Queues, service counters, clinical encounters—order emerges from local methods.
III. Conversation Analysis (Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson)
Conversation Analysis (CA) examines the organization of talk-in-interaction. It treats talk as structured and rule-governed, focusing on how participants manage turns, sequences, repairs, and actions (requests, invitations, refusals) without relying on prior psychological or institutional categories. Evidence comes from repeated patterns observed across many recordings.
| CA Construct | What It Means | Analytic Payoff |
|---|---|---|
| Turn-Taking System | Rules for who speaks next (current selects next; self-selection; one-at-a-time bias; minimal overlap). | Explains orderly talk without chairperson; shows how interruptions/overlaps are managed. |
| Adjacency Pairs | Two-part sequences (Q/A, greeting/greeting, offer/acceptance) with normative expectations. | Reveals the “projectability” of next actions; predicts preferred/ dispreferred responses. |
| Preference Organization | Design of turns favors certain actions (e.g., agreement) over others; dispreferreds are delayed, mitigated. | Accounts for subtle formats of acceptance vs refusal, blame vs excuse, etc. |
| Repair | Mechanisms for fixing trouble in speaking/hearing/understanding (self-/other-initiated; self-/other-repair). | Shows participants’ commitment to mutual intelligibility and normativity of clarity. |
| Jeffersonian Transcription | Notation capturing timing, overlap, intonation, volume, micro-pauses. | Enables reproducible, fine-grained analysis of interactional detail. |
Flowchart: Conversation Analysis – From Talk to Action
Audio/Video of Naturally Occurring Talk (Phone calls, service encounters, clinics)
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Jefferson Transcription → Turn-Taking, Adjacency Pairs, Repair
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Sequential Analysis → How Actions (Requests, Offers, Advice) Are Accomplished
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Cumulative Findings → Generalizable Organizations of Talk
Data & Method (CA)
- Data: Naturally occurring calls/meetings; institutional talk (medical, legal, helplines, classrooms).
- Sequential Analysis: Examine how each turn shapes the next; focus on participant orientations.
- Comparative Accumulation: Build collections of similar phenomena (e.g., all refusals) across many cases.
- Reliability: Transparency via shared audio, transcripts, and conventions.
IV. Applications (EM & CA)
- Institutional Interaction: Doctor–patient advice delivery; police interviews; courtroom questioning; counseling.
- Service Encounters: Queuing, complaints, upselling, helpdesk troubleshooting.
- Workplace Studies (HCI/CSCW): How teams coordinate via talk, screens, forms, artifacts.
- Education: Classroom turn-taking; teacher questioning; participation frameworks.
- Public Life: Broadcast interviews, call-ins, emergency calls, political canvassing.
V. Strengths, Limitations, and Quality Safeguards
| Dimension | Strengths | Limitations | Quality Safeguards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytic Focus | Reveals fine-grained mechanics of order; actor’s perspective-in-action. | Micro-focus may underplay macro power/structure. | Link to institutional settings; triangulate with documents/artifacts. |
| Data | Naturalistic recordings; replicable transcripts. | Access/consent sensitive; time-intensive analysis. | Ethics-by-design; anonymization; transparent archives. |
| Findings | Cumulative generalizations about organization of talk. | Limited predictive scope; context-dependent. | Build “collections,” show deviant-case analysis, document robustness. |
VI. UPSC Quick Revision Bullets
- Ethnomethodology: Order as members’ methods; indexicality, reflexivity, documentary method, accountability, breaching.
- Conversation Analysis: Turn-taking, adjacency pairs, preference organization, repair; Jefferson transcription.
- Data: Naturally occurring recordings; sequential analysis; collections across cases.
- Use: Clinics, courts, classrooms, customer service, media, emergency calls.
- Limits: Micro-bias, access/ethics; address via institutional linkage & transparent procedures.
- Takeaway: EM/CA show how social order is made visible, accountable, and reproducible in everyday interaction.
Two-line takeaway: Ethnomethodology exposes the tacit methods that make social life orderly; Conversation Analysis details the machinery of talk that accomplishes social actions. Together, they provide a reproducible micro-foundation for understanding institutions and everyday life.
