Do participants’ reports enhance conversation analytic claims? Explanations of one sort or another

Abstract

In response to an article by Waring, Creider, Tarpey and Black (2012), the author argues that the nature of the analytic aims of a research project determines whether or not participants’ reported goals and motives are relevant and useful. Her position is that for traditional conversation analytic studies aimed at explicating culturally shared methods for producing conversational actions and for interpreting interactional behavior (i.e. talk, facial expressions, hand movements, etc.), participants’ reports of their goals and motives are irrelevant. She differentiates between explanations based on participants’ reports of their goals and motives and conversation analytic explanations consisting of preferences or principles to which members of a culture orient while interacting.