Presenting Conversation Analysis in LA

Merran delivering her presentation

Merran Toerien was delighted to get a chance to visit the University of California at Los Angeles last week - not only because they have sunshine, palm trees and blue sky in LA (just as the clocks were going back in York!) but because it was a fabulous opportunity to work with scholars who have pioneered the application of conversation analysis to the study of medical interaction.  

Merran was invited to give presentations to CLIC (Center for Language, Interaction and Culture - see:http://clic.ss.ucla.edu/) and the CA Working Group (CAWG).  She also met for one-to-one discussions with 8 dynamic graduate students, participated in the CAWG weekly data session, and worked intensively with Professors John Heritage and Tanya Stivers on a collaborative study of treatment recommendations.  

She is immensely grateful for this opportunity and would like to thank Professors Elinor Ochs and Tanya Stivers for the invitation, Clara Bergen for all her hard work in organising the week's activities (ably assisted also by Alex Tate), and the large number of people at UCLA who made the week both intellectually rewarding and lots of fun.   

Honorary Professor Sue Wilkinson in Sociology Department

The Sociology Department is delighted to announce some exciting news. Prof. Sue Wilkinson has been appointed as Honorary Professor in our Department from 1 October this year until September 2020. She is taking early retirement from Loughborough University this summer.

As well as continuing with her research and collaborating with colleagues at York, Sue will be working with colleagues in our Language and Social Interaction research cluster in the development of short Continuing Professional Development courses in conversation analysis.

Landmarks and future adventures: celebrating 50 years of conversation analysis

On the 29th July, the Language and Social Interaction Research Cluster in the Department of Sociology at York held a symposium to mark the significance of 2014 in the history of conversation analysis (CA). 

It is 40 years since the publication of the highly influential paper, A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974); 30 years since the landmark publication of edited collection, Structures of Social Action(Atkinson & Heritage, 1984); and, as we were recently reminded at the world’s largest ever CA conference – held in June at the birthplace of CA (UCLA) – it is now 50 years since Sacks gave his first lecture on conversation analysis. 

Capitalising on this moment in time, we held the symposium to celebrate and reflect critically on the accomplishments, challenges, and future possibilities created by the field’s exponential growth over the last five decades. 

With invited facilitators from Europe (Dennis Day, Simeon Floyd, Trine Heinemann, Anssi Peräkylä) and the US (Galina Bolden), the event was based around semi-structured discussion sessions aimed at creating space for reflection that is often absent from our busy working lives. 

We were delighted by the creative way in which participants entered into the spirit of the day, generating exciting ideas for future collaborative working.