Analysing technological affordances of online interactions using conversation analysis

Meredith, JM

Abstract

The use of conversation analysis (CA) as a method for analysing the interactional practices of online communication has been growing in recent years (Giles et al., 2015). A key challenge for analysing online communication is the varied platforms through which interaction can occur. This paper demonstrates how using CA and the concept of affordances (Hutchby, 2001) can provide a lens through which to analyse not only the interaction, but also the technological context of that interaction. A corpus of instant messaging chats, captured from Facebook chat using screen-capture software, is used as a case study to demonstrate how the concept of affordances can be used alongside CA analysis to address the role of technology in the interaction. Two key interactional practices – turn adjacency and openings – are analysed to show the insights that CA can offer for providing an in-depth analysis of online interaction. By using affordances as a lens through which CA analysis can be refracted, scholars using ‘digital CA’ can better develop an understanding of patterns of interaction across different interactional platforms.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jun 6, 2017
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 2, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 6, 2018
• Journal: Journal of Pragmatics
• Print ISSN: 0378-2166
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 115
• Pages: 42-55
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.001
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.001
• Related Public URLs: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-pragmatics