This reminds me, I once ask a member of UNH’s Family Research Laboratory (nationally known for studying family violence), if they actually had any. The answer was ‘no’.

From

Pomerantz, A. (1990). On the validity and generalizability of conversation analytic methods: Conversation Analytic Claims. Communication Monographs, 57:3, 231-235.

Can I just leave you with this:

“My point is that characterizations of the actions are less central to analyses than is sometimes believed. The thrust of an analysis is to explicate how methods of accomplishing actions work rather than with finding the right names with which to label actions”

And I think Jefferson (1980) deals with something like this.

I’m sure Manny Schegloff has worked this out somewhere or there must be stuff in Sacks’ lectures. One thing it can do is short circuit the ‘reason for the call’ - if you don’t get ‘fine’.

For HAYs in this place, you can then ask what does it do there. What is the sequence doing there and then what can the various responses accomplish.

First ask, ‘where does this small sequence occur?’ There are, perhaps, several places, but there is (or was, ’in the olde days’) one structurally locate-able place: in opening sections.

I’m not sure that’s the question to starting with, and perhaps not the place to begin the analysis.

"Those were choices they made."
"That's a thing you can wear."
"That was an action he took."

These appear to be responses. It could be helpful if you’d post an actual instance including the thing that your target response is addressing.

FYI: The Personal Names article is now available on the Pragmatics website.

I wonder if work on ‘online commentary’ in medical interactions might be useful.

Heritage (2016). Online Commentary in Primary Care and Emergency Room Settings. Acute Medicine & Surgery.

Heritage & Stivers (1999 ). Online Commentary in Acute Medical Visits. Soc. Sci. Med.

From the Abstract:

Kevin Whitehead & I have something coming out in Pragmatics on this topic:

Whitehead, K. A. & Lerner, G. H. (2026). When Personal Names Are Mentioned in Conversations: Presumed Known, Perhaps Known and Presumed Unknown.

No idea what issue it will appear in.

A report claims left-wing terrorism is rising. The data paints a complicated picture The report's claim comes with caveats. Its critics say it does more to reveal issues around collecting and analyzing domestic terrorism data than it does to clarify the current state of the problem.

The report's claim comes with caveats. Its critics say it does more to reveal issues around collecting and analyzing domestic terrorism data than it does to clarify the current state of the problem.

This olde exchange concerning the place of ‘social-structural’ considerations in descriptions of the organizations of talk-in-interaction was recently brought to mind. (Perhaps the ‘obscurity’ involved was there to shield the suggestion from promiscuous application!) #EMCA

Yes, it’s important to have CA work available in ASR. AJS is another important leading outlet with a recent CA paper:

Whitehead, Raymond & Bowman, (2025), "Cross-Cutting Preferences in Interactional Trajectories Toward Violence", American Journal of Sociology.

How about running this again, but increasing the data set by a power of 10 - and not including any data collected before 1984?
Also, would it be feasible to introduce the original Pomerantz report, rather than just a summary (and perhaps Sacks’ piece on Agreement & Contiguity)?

I would be curious to see the results of another kind of instruction to AI: Reproduce the investigation that resulted in a published CA report and compare/contrast the new results with that of the original/target published report.

…asked them to "find a something". The results are less impressive than the conceptual acrobatics in their PhD proposals.
——
Perhaps your instruction to AI came in the wrong place (as a starting place). Sacks’ instruction would have come after seeing what he could do/notice in data sessions.

Here’s the whole thing:

“I asked five AIs to draft PhD proposals in conversation analysis.”

I wonder what would happen if you directed them to (as Sacks did to Pomerantz) “Find a something,” instead of starting by requiring a proposal.”

Here’s my brief contribution to Manny’s memorial.

I should make it clear, that when I recommend these readings, it’s NOT to expose the intellectual history of our field, but because I strongly believe they furnish students with a necessary deep backdrop for doing good CA work.

When I offered my ‘Sacks reading list’ from memory I would have included IA Richards and Parry’s student Alfred Lord.

And I believe he was connected to a research proposal of Garfunkel’s on ‘Kids’ Culture’ but he told me that his relationship to that stuff was “historical.”

Sacks was drawn to stuff about children, not because they were children, but because of how people wrote about them. See One Boy's Day: A Specimen Record of Behavior
by Roger Barker (& Sacks had Baker’s unpublished records too) or Children's Games in Street and Playground by the Opies.

Sacks was engaged in self-consciously groundbreaking methodological empirical studies. I believe he was scanning the world of scholarship for investigations that resonated in some way. Each of the readings on the list do that in very different ways.

Over the years, I’ve sometimes given grad students the list of reading - as I then recalled it - that Sacks gave me when we first met. Yesterday, I came across my original list, while rummaging through a file folder of my earliest lecture notes from grad school. Here is the actual list. Enjoy!

I just came across another (apparent) handout:

“Some Ways Conversation Analysts Interrogate Talk-in-Interaction”

but cannot remember the venue at which it was circulated. Nonetheless, some might find it or bits of it useful…

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/poylj...

Because CA findings are necessarily tied to and grounded in and configured by reference to participants’ situated participation, I was wondering just how broad or general purpose CA findings could be (without becoming untethered).

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k4f6n...