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Since its inception, Conversation Analysis (CA) has become not only a framework and a set of methods for studying the generic machinery of talk-in-interaction but also a celebrated, qualitative method for studying a wealth of phenomena and exploring and testing concepts and hypotheses from numerous disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, anthropology and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). CA is often resorted to as the key to resolving knots and dead-ends in these neighboring disciplines. Despite the very interesting results that such work admittedly produces, it is too often not accompanied by focused considerations of how the specific concerns from one field match with the aims that CA procedures have been developed for and hence with the procedures themselves. This paper takes recent applications of CA to the study of SLA as a case in point. It discusses a) whether CA can shed light on "learning" as commonly defined in SLA and b) whether the resort to a particular model of learning (LAVE & WENGER, 1991), Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) helps overcoming some of the problems with which CA work in SLA is confronted. It is hoped that the specific discussions of problems involved in the project, CA-for-SLA, will contribute to the ongoing, general discussion of qualitative research methods and their prospects and problems. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs090247, Desde su nacimiento, el Análisis de la Conversación (AC) ha devenido no solo en un marco de trabajo y un conjunto de métodos para estudiar la maquinaria genérica del habla-en-interacción, sino también en un celebrado método cualitativo para estudiar un rico conjunto de fenómenos y explorar y probar conceptos e hipótesis provenientes de diferentes disciplinas, tales como la lingüística, la psicología, la antropología y la adquisición de un segundo idioma (ASI). Se recurre a menudo al AC como la clave para resolver nudos o puntos sin salida en esas disciplinas afines. A pesar de los muy interesantes resultados que ese trabajo produce indudablemente, muy frecuentemente no se acompaña de consideraciones enfocadas a como las preocupaciones específicas de un campo encajan con los objetivos de procedimientos que han sido desarrollados por el AC y, por consiguiente, con sus propios procedimientos. Este artículo toma aplicaciones recientes del AC el estudio de la ASI como un caso particular. Se discute: a) si el AC puede arrojar luz sobre el "aprendizaje" tal como es definido comúnmente en el ASI y b) si el recurrir a un particular modelo de aprendizaje (LAVE & WENGER 1991) el de la Participación Periférica Legítima (PPL) ayuda a superar alguno de los problemas con los cuales el trabajo de AC se confronta en la ASI. Se espera que estas discusiones específicas sobre los problemas involucrados en el proyecto CA- para-ASI contribuyan a la discusión general que actualmente se estás llevando a cabo sobre los métodos de investigación cualitativa y sus perspectivas y problemas. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs090247, Seit ihren Anfängen dient die Konversationsanalyse (KA) nicht nur als Rahmenkonzept und Methodik zur Untersuchung von Talk-in-interaction im engeren Sinne, sondern kommt als qualitatives Verfahren in zahlreichen Disziplinen zum Einsatz, so beispielsweise in der Linguistik, Psychologie, Anthropologie und in Forschungen zum Zweitsprachenerwerb. KA wird in diesem Zusammenhang auch häufig genutzt, um potenziellen Sackgassen in diesen Disziplinen entgegenzuwirken. Trotz sehr interessanter Befunde, die auf diesem Weg erzielt wurden, wird nur sehr selten hinreichend reflektiert, inwieweit die je feld- und disziplinspezifischen Belange mit dem kompatibel sind, wofür KA-Prozeduren konzipiert wurden bzw. ob deren Einsatz in dem jeweiligen Feld überhaupt berechtigt ist. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit jüngeren Anwendungen der KA im Bereich von Untersuchungen zum Zweitsprachenerwerb. Es wird insbesondere diskutiert, inwieweit KA a) erlaubt, "Lernen" im Sinne der in diesem Forschungsfeld üblichen Begriffsverwendung besser zu verstehen und ob b) die Zuwendung zu einem spezifischen Lernmodell – Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LAVE & WENGER 1991) – helfen könnte, einige der Probleme zu lösen, mit denen konversationsanalytische Arbeiten im Bereich des Zweitsprachenlernens konfrontiert sind. Schließlich soll die Auseinandersetzung mit der Anwendung von KA in einem sehr spezifischen Forschungsfeld auch zur weiteren Diskussion qualitativer Methoden, ihrer Potenziale und Probleme, beitragen. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs090247

This study examines the use of e-mail as a tool for long term discussion between teachers and grade six students. E-mail messages between grade six students and teachers were collected over the course of one academic year. Methods of conversation analysis within a framework of social practice are used to examine the data. While identity is more readily constructed and more fully developed in contexts which allow for physical embodiment such as face-to-face discussion, this analysis found that identity can be constructed in a context that does not provide for the physical embodiment of identity: Identity was constructed using the social, cultural, and technological tools provided and supported by e-mail to develop social practices germane to the e-mail discussion. This study has implications for further understanding the relation between identity, goals, constraints and affordances, and the collaborative creation of social practices in asynchronous computer mediated communication. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0803185, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 9, No 3 (2008): Visual Methods

Numbers apparently talk. With few numbers, qualitative researchers appear to rely on examples or instances to support their analysis. Hence research reports routinely display data extracts which serve as telling instances of some claimed phenomenon. However, the use of such an evidential base rightly provokes the charge of (possible) anecdotalism, i.e. choosing just those extracts which support your argument. I suggest that this methodological problem is best addressed by returning to those features of our theoretical roots which tend to distinguish what we do from the work of quantitative social scientists. Although SAUSSURE is most cited in linguistics and structural anthropology, he provides a simple rule that applies to us all. In a rebuke to our reli­ance on instances, SAUSSURE tells us "no mean­ing exists in a single item". Everything depends upon how single items (elements) are articulated. One everyday activity in which the social world is articulated is through the construction of se­quences. Just as participants attend to the se­quential placing of interactional "events", so should social scientists. Using examples drawn from focus groups, fieldnotes and audiotapes, I argue that the identification of such sequences rather than the citing of instances should constitute a prime test for the adequacy of any claim about qualitative data. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0503301, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 6, No 3 (2005): The State of the Art of Qualitative Research in Europe

In diesem Buch gibt Paul TEN HAVE einen Überblick über qualitative Forschungsansätze und vergleicht einige hiervon mit ethnomethodologischen Ansätzen. Er differenziert Methoden und Methodologien, und in diesem Sinne gewährt Understanding Qualitative Research and Ethnomethodology Einblick in verschiedene qualitative Methoden, bietet aber keine Methodologie zur Durchführung von qualitativen Studien. Methoden versteht TEN HAVE als Forschungsstrategien bzw. Prozeduren, die im Verlauf einer qualitativen Untersuchung Verwendung finden. Das Buch ist in insgesamt neun Kapitel organisiert, wobei Bezüge zu ethnomethodologischer Methodik und Forschung hergestellt und mit ethnographischen Ansätzen bzw. mit der Grounded theory-Methodologie verglichen werden. Die vorliegende Besprechung kommentiert TEN HAVEs Buch, in dessen Zentrum die Ethnomethodologie steht, aus der Perspektive qualitativer Forschung. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0503121, Paul TEN HAVE presents an overview of qualitative methodology approaches and compares selected approaches to ethnomethodology. TEN HAVE differentiates methods from methodology. The book offers a collection of qualitative methods but not a methodology for doing qualitative re­search. TEN HAVE defines methods as research strategies and contends that methods are central to qualitative inquiry from start to finish. The text is organized into nine chapters covering topics re­lated to ethnomethodology's perspective, methods, and research, and comparisons to ethnography and grounded theory. This review provides a com­men­tary on TEN HAVE's text for qualitative researchers. The core of the book is on ethnomethodology. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0503121, Paul TEN HAVE ofrece una panorámica de los enfoques metodológicos cualitativos y compara una selección de éstos con la etnometodología. TEN HAVE diferencia los métodos de la metodología. El libro ofrece una colección de métodos cualitativos pero no una metodología para llevar a cabo investigación cualitativa. TEN HAVE define a los métodos como estrategias de investigación y sostiene que los métodos son centrales para la indagación cualitativa de principio a fin. El texto está organizado en nueve capítulos que cubren temas relativos a la perspectiva etnometodológica, los métodos, la investigación y comparaciones con la etnografía y la teoría fundamentada. Esta reseña comenta el texto de TEN HAVE pensando en los investigadores cualitativos. El tema central del libro es la etnometodología. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0503121

The variant of ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (CA) represented and advocated by Emanuel A. SCHEGLOFF pursues the goal of analyzing discourse in a strictly empiricist manner that excludes the impact of the researcher's subjective "preoccupations" and "presuppositions" from the investigative process. This paper outlines the SCHEGLOFFian research strategy and characterizes it as representing a methodologist—as opposed to naïve—variant of epistemological realism. It is argued that this approach, while avoiding circularity, fails to make feasible an "account of the object itself" (SCHEGLOFF 1997a, p.174). This line of argument is illustrated by its practical consequences apropos one of CA's classical themes, viz. conversational repair (cf. SCHEGLOFF, JEFFERSON & SACKS 1977). It is demonstrated that conversation analytic data analysis presupposes decisions concerning the selection, the preparation, and the (re)presentation of the data that influence the analytic results but that cannot be justified empirically. Accordingly, the adequacy of conversation analytic findings hinges on "the practical purposes" of the processes that yield those findings rather than its correspondence with discourse as "an internally grounded reality of its own" (SCHEGLOFF 1997a, p.171). This conclusion applies the ethnomethodological insight in the locally constructed nature of social interaction and reality to social science itself. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0302432, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 4, No 2 (2003): Subjectivity and Reflexivity in Qualitative Research II

Not only is it often challenging to wade through the many different discourse analytic approaches to studying talk-in-interaction, but it is also often challenging to understand how certain methods adequately capture the complexity of the theories that lie behind them. What is needed are methods that are analytically sophisticated enough to empirically demonstrate the complexity of the theories that make fashionable and relevant the analysis in the first place. To illustrate this quandary, I will trade on some of the recent tensions between two of the most popular approaches—Critical Discourse analysis (CDA) and Conversation Analysis (CA). More specifically, attention is given to recent methodological attempts to synthesize a middle-ground position between CDA and CA. The focus of my overall argument will be that Positioning Analysis offers a viable analytic way to reconcile the discrepant methodological orientations while trading on the shared theoretical convictions of both CDA and CA. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0103119, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol 2, No 3 (2001): Qualitative Methods in Various Disciplines II: Cultural Sciences