Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics

Abstract

Interactional linguistics is grounded on the premise that language should not be analyzed in terms of context-free linguistic structures but as a resource for the accomplishment of actions in social interaction. With this in mind, interactional linguistics takes an interdisciplinary approach to a linguistic analysis that aims at an understanding of how language is both shaped by and itself shapes the actions it is used for. Interactional linguistics combines an interest in linguistic phenomena and structures with the theory and methodology of conversation analysis (CA) and contextualization theory (CT). It is conceptualized as an interface between linguistic analysis and the analysis of social interaction. Keywords: methods; research methods in applied linguistics; interactionist language studies