Clear and Engaging: A Review of Sidnell's Conversation Analysis: An Introduction

The presentation of a newly discovered concept, topic, or method always starts with an introduction. Quite frequently, this introduction is done with the help of a book. For me, good introductory books are clear and balanced--not overloaded with content, yet providing useful references to the external sources on the subject. Conversation Analysis: An Introduction (Sidnell, 2010) is a book that introduces the principles of conversation analysis "through exemplification rather than argument or description" (p. 17). This book is intended for novices to the field, but it is also suited for those who want to better understand practical applications of different elements of conversational organization because the book is replete with multiple conversation excerpts and their detailed analysis. Although Sidnell is writing from the fields of Anthropology and Linguistics, this book is not limited to these disciplines and can be used by anyone interested in conversation analysis. Presenting conversation analysis as "an approach within the social sciences that aims to describe, analyze and understand talk as a basic and constitutive feature of human social life" (Sidnell, 2010, p. 1), Conversation Analysis is a useful book for those interested in learning about conversation analysis, its development, techniques, and applications. Comprehensive and clear, this book carefully blends the theoretical background of the method from seminal work on conversation analysis (e.g., Harold Garfnkel, 1967; John Heritage, 1984; Gail Jefferson, 1977; Harvey Sacks, 1974, 1995; Emanuel Schegloff 1968, 1996, 2007) with practical examples of conversation transcripts accompanied by the author's explanations and inferences. Conversation Analysis consists of 13 chapters, with an opening chapter on talk serving as an introduction to the book and to conversation analysis as a method and a closing chapter offering a summary of the book. Other chapters describe methods, topics, and context, as well as the elements of conversational organization (e.g., turn-taking, understanding, preference, sequence, repair, etc). Although all chapters can be read individually, they build on each other, and the content gets more complicated as the chapters unveil. Every chapter ends with notes detailing terms or statements from the chapter, while the references are compiled at the end of the book. Sidnell (2010) conveniently lists transcription conventions, accompanied with the detailed descriptions, in the beginning of the book. The first two chapters combine theory and practical examples to frame conversation analysis in a theory-driven, yet engaging way. Sidnell (2010) opens the first chapter, "Talk," with an examination of a short dialogue that introduces readers to a new approach to understanding human interaction--the world of conversation analysis. To present the historical background of conversation analysis, Sidnell draws on works of Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson, Goffman, and Garfinkel and blends history, theory, and examples for better understanding of the origins of the method. Through examples and explanations, Sidnell emphasizes that conversation analysis is different from other methods of analyzing human interaction because it is based on "close observation of the world ... coupled with a method for collecting, organizing and analyzing patterns across instances" (p. 17), different from anthropological, psychological, and sociological analyses of human talk. Concise and well-written, Chapter 1provides a good description of the development of conversation analysis as a method and offers basic data analysis as an example of applying theory to practice. The second chapter, "Methods," focuses on presenting the techniques of doing conversation analysis while working with audio or video data. Sidnell (2010) emphasizes the importance of using recordings of actual conversations because of their inherent complexity. Additionally, the author explains the importance of proper transcribing and shows the difference between the snippets transcribed in different ways. …