Sequence analysis in the development of ethnomethodological conversation analysis

When Harvey Sacks and Emanuel A. Schegloff explored the possibility of a ‘naturalistic observational discipline that could deal with the details of social action(s) rigorously, empirically, and formally’ (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973), it was not by chance that their attention was attracted by records of natural conversations and by conversation as an activity in its own right. For, in conversation, every action, every speaking turn of its participants presents itself as a clearly determinable unit with a beginning and end. This appearance is reinforced by the conversation's transcript, which presents in a seeming order, a sequence of turns. Sequence analysis was developed for ‘conversations’ from this observational basis. In this paper, the requirements and implications concerning the role of indexicality in organising and interpreting participants' turns are examined critically and it is investigated whether sequence analysis is also applicable as a proof procedure to ‘talk in interaction’ and multimodal face-to-face interaction. It is argued that unclearly determined non-verbal actions and multiple forms of simultaneous events may restrict the applicability of sequence analysis or even prevent its successful application altogether. It is argued that for different forms of (communicative) interaction and their constitutive conditions of perception an empirical investigation of the relation between simultaneity and sequentiality may be necessary.