‘Incommensurable’ studies of mobile phone conversation: a reply to Ilkka Arminen

Abstract

Arminen(2005) claimsthattworecentstudiesof mobilephone conversation (Hutchby and Barnett, 2005 and Arminen and Leinonen, forthcoming) come up with incommensurate findings. He relates this to two distinct approaches to the methodology of conversation analysis. In this reply I show that the two studies in question are not incommensurate and argue that Arminen's account is based on a partial description of the findings in Hutchby and Barnett (2005). I go on to show how the latter study presents an approach to the problematic relationship in CA between talk and extraneous contingencies that goes further than Arminen's own proposals.