A microanalytic, empirical method for describing the sequential organization and interactional practices of naturally occurring spoken (and multimodal) interaction by transcribing turns, repair, turn‑taking, pauses, overlaps and embodied conduct to reveal how participants produce and interpret social action moment‑by‑moment.

Principle

Interactional order is locally accomplished: participants rely on recurrent procedural devices (turn‑allocation, repair sequences, preference organization, recipient design) that make social actions recognizable and accountable in real time; these procedures, not assumed intentions, explain how meaning is produced in interaction.

Demonstration

Illustrative Scenario → Situation: A recorded clinic consultation between patient and clinician is transcribed using CA conventions. Recognition: repeated use of delayed responses and partial repeats for confirmation, plus the clinician’s question format. Action: analyst maps turn sequences, repair initiations and overlap patterns. Consequence: analysis shows how the participant’s hesitations function as displays of uncertainty and how clinician’s next turn designs close or expand diagnostic options, informing interactional interventions or training.

Misapplication

Inferring stable private mental states or broad personality traits directly from single interactional features (e.g., treating a single long pause as proof of deception) without situating the feature in the sequential context; the error is collapsing sequentially contingent practices into dispositional claims.

Consequence

Properly applied it provides fine‑grained descriptions of how social actions (requests, offers, complaints, instructions) are accomplished in situ and supports applied work (communication training, design of conversational agents); misapplied, it can generate unwarranted psychological or moral inferences about participants.

Reversal

In heavily mediated or scripted interactions (pre‑recorded broadcasts, mediated customer service with fixed prompts), the locally emergent procedures characterizing naturally occurring conversation are constrained or replaced by institutional formats; CA’s explanatory resources must be adapted to account for such institutional scripting.

Boundary

Clearly within: naturally occurring face‑to‑face or telephone interactions transcribed and analyzed sequentially. Boundary case: semi‑structured interviews where interviewer’s instrument shapes but does not wholly determine sequence. Clearly outside: aggregated corpus studies that treat isolated sentences without sequential context or methods that infer internal states without transcriptable interactional evidence.

Semantic Tension

Description of Micro Procedure ↔ Psychological Explanation — CA emphasizes observable, sequential procedures over unobservable mental state explanations; applied contexts often demand interpretations that bridge to psychology or sociology, creating an interpretive tension requiring careful empirical linkage.

Synthesis

Conversational meaning is moment‑by‑moment accomplishment: to explain interaction one must map the sequential procedures participants use to make actions recognizable, resisting inferences that leap from single features to stable inner states.