Michael E. Lynch (Cornell University), "Harvey Sacks and the 'Linguistics Turn' in the Analysis of Conversation"
Harvey Sacks (1935–1975) is generally acknowledged as the founder of conversation analysis, which originated as part of the sociological subfield of ethnomethodology. Although he died at the age of 40 in an automobile accident nearly 50 years ago, there has been renewed interest in his work, in part because the field of Conversation Analysis (CA), which became established in the social and behavioral sciences in the decades following his death, appears to some of us to have drifted from Sacks’ radical treatment of conversation as a social production. This presentation is part of an effort based on readings and online discussions of Sacks’ transcribed lectures and some preliminary research at the Sacks’ archive. The focus of this presentation will be on the ‘linguistics turn’ in Conversation Analysis (not to be confused with, the linguistic turn in mid-20 th century Anglo-American philosophy). This ‘turn’ from ethnomethodology (the investigation of elementary features of human actions) to subfields of linguistics (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics) has broadened interest in CA, but calls for a reminder of Sacks’ use of linguistic resources in his investigations. The talk will focus on how Sacks, in his transcribed lectures and writings, invokes grammatical features of sentences as resources that parties to a conversation to compose and coordinate social actions. Sacks’ turn is from linguistic order to orders of coordinated action. In recent years, the professional ‘turn’ in CA has gone from a focus on social action to analysis of particulars of language and psychology.
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