The Routledge Handbook of Conversation Analysis by Burdelski, Matthew; Greer, Tim;

Short description:

This handbook offers a detailed overview of how everyday interaction shapes social life—from classrooms and hospitals to courtrooms, homes, and online spaces. It introduces the key principles and practices of Conversation Analysis, which examines how people coordinate actions through talk, gesture, and other embodied and material resources.

Long description:

The Routledge Handbook of Conversation Analysis offers a detailed overview of how everyday interaction shapes social life—from classrooms and hospitals to courtrooms, homes, and online settings. This volume introduces the key principles and practices of Conversation Analysis (CA), a framework for examining how people coordinate actions through talk, gesture, and other embodied and material resources.

With contributions from over sixty scholars across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and beyond, the handbook explores how interaction operates across languages, cultures, and institutions. The chapters examine how people build relationships, manage social roles, and navigate complex environments through moment-by-moment communication. In addition to established research areas, the contributors highlight growing areas of research such as multilingual interaction, neurodivergent communication, and human-AI encounters. They likewise show how CA is applied across fields including second language learning, law, healthcare, and technology design. Each chapter provides a clear entry point into a particular area of study, along with suggestions for further exploration.

This comprehensive handbook will appeal not only to CA specialists, but also to researchers and students in applied linguistics, education, communication studies, anthropology, and human-computer interaction.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction Part I. Foundations of CA  2. The Emergence and Consolidation of CA as a Scientific Field  3. The Architecture of Interaction  4. Multimodality  5. Participation   6. Intersubjectivity in CA  7. Stance in Interaction  8. Narrative in CA  9. Identity and Membership Categorization Analysis  10. “Routines” and “Formulaic Language” in CA  Part II. CA and Methodology  11. Doing CA: Collecting, Transcribing, and Analyzing Data  12. Applied and Interventionist Approaches to CA  13. CA and Quantitative Approaches  14. CA and Qualitative Research Interviews  15. CA and Longitudinal Studies  Part III. CA for Language Teaching and Learning  16. CA and Second Language Acquisition  17. CA and Interactional Competence  18. CA and Classroom Discourse  19. CA and L2 Literacy  20. CA and Technology in Language Teaching and Learning  21. CA and Language Teacher Education  22. CA and Language Testing and Assessment  23. CA and Advising, Mentoring, and Tutoring  24. CA and Second Language Use Beyond the Classroom  Part IV. CA in Other Domains of Inquiry  25. CA in Early Childhood Studies  26. CA in Education and Schooling  27. CA in Language Policy and Planning  28. CA in Political Discourse  29. CA in Forensic Linguistics and Legal Discourse  30. CA in Healthcare  31. CA in Gender and Sexuality Studies  Part V. CA in Specific Contexts and Communities  32. CA and Video-mediated Communication  33. CA and Social Media  34. CA and Multilingual Interaction  35. CA and Intercultural Communication  36. CA and Service Encounters  37. CA and Neurodiversity  38. CA and Signed Language Interaction  Part VI. Afterword  39. Afterword.