Humans are social animals; on a daily basis we use language as a tool for interacting, and conversation is the result. This module will help you to understand the mechanics of conversation from a scientific viewpoint. It will teach you how to analyse the verbal and non-verbal aspects of everyday conversation, using the method and findings of Conversation Analysis (CA). CA is not a method for understanding WHY people speak the way they do - it does not consider underlying psychological processes. Instead it allows researchers to explore HOW people speak in their everyday lives. How they take turns in a conversation, how they fix problems of speaking and understanding (called repair), in sum how they interact with each other to achieve mutual understanding. A key part of the learning experience of this module involves watching and analysing audiovisual recordings of interactions (in English). CA not only provides a method for understanding ‘typical’ interaction, such as peer conversation, child-parent interactions, and interviews, it also extends our knowledge of communication disorders and professional interactions in healthcare and educational settings (e.g. doctor-patient, and teacher-pupil talk). Sessions will cover key findings in these areas, and discuss current CA research at UCL into child language development and acquired communication disorders such as aphasia and dysarthria.

Aims

explain key conversation analysis (CA) concepts such as turns, sequences, repair;
	make students aware of the body of CA literature and how to access it;
	support students to apply CA to audiovisual data of both typical and disordered communication;
	give students the knowledge and skills to transcribe audiovisual conversation data;
	give students the knowledge and skills to use the method of CA in a research project.
By the end of the module you will be able to:

explain key conversation analysis (CA) concepts such as turns, sequences, repair;
	apply these concepts to the analysis of audiovisual data;
	identify and access key CA literature on typical and atypical talk;
	collect, transcribe and analyse your own audiovisual data according to CA conventions;
	use your CA knowledge and analysis skills to inform a research project.
Undergraduate enquiries to d.newton@ucl.ac.uk
Postgraduate enquiries to pals.langsci@ucl.ac.uk