On Tuesday we had an introductory workshop on Conversation Analysis led by Ole Gmelin from the Theory and History of Psychology Unit. Ole is the incoming assistant professor for qualitative research methods at the faculty. In this workshop, he illustrated how to systematically study conversation in the context of everyday interactions. This type of analysis is interesting for social scientists who are interested in studying social interaction and communication. By analyzing how people talk and interact in real-life situations, researchers can gain insights into the organization and the construction of social reality. It allows researchers to uncover the implicit rules and norms that govern social interactions and to examine the interplay between individual agency and social structures.
Fifteen attendees from different departments and units at the faculty, ranging from Bachelor’s students to faculty staff, participated in the workshop. Together, we delved into the basic concepts used in conversation analysis, and explored how it approaches the study of everyday talk. In the first part of the workshop Ole gave a lecture introducing the key concepts. He used example data from a gay speed-dating study to demonstrate how consistencies and changes in the way that an individual speaker talks about himself may arise across conversations, and how such patterns can reveal something about the social rules that underlie individual development. The second part of the lecture involved an exercise in which we jointly analyzed a video-recording of a young gay man coming out to his mother.
Through this workshop Ole demonstrated how an analysis of conversations can illustrate how social organization may unfold over time. We also learned how multi-layered conversations can be, and that a careful study of interactions can reveal something about the interplay between individuals and society. This is of particular interest to social scientists who would like to know more about how contexts affect the development of individuals. We would like to thank both Ole a well as all the attendees for their questions and enthusiasm.
