Data Analysis

Each interaction is unique. It occurs in particular circumstances between people who bring to the encounter their own experiences, beliefs, ambitions, and the history of their relationship.

But conversation analysis shows that each interaction also follows some familiar patterns. CA is concerned with identifying and explaining those patterns. Data analysis draws on a large and growing body of research which offers technical specifications of recurrent patterns in talk.

Such patterns are evident in the two data extracts featured. When people have bad news to tell, there is a recurring feature: they create conditions under which it is the recipient of the bad news who actually says it. (We are drawing here on Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2008, who summarise the earlier findings of Schegloff, 1988, Drew, 1984 and Maynard, 1997.) These transcripts have been slightly simplified (to make them easier for non-specialists to read). You may also want to refer to the Transcription Key box on the previous page.

News of a death

The bad news in the first data fragment (taken from a telephone conversation between two friends, Belle and Fanny) is the death of someone they both know.

01  Bel:  ... I, I-I had something (.) terrible t'tell you.=
02        =So [uh:  ]
03  Fan:      [How t]errible [is it.]
04  Bel:                     [.hhhhh]
05        (.)
06  Bel:  Uh: ez worse it could be:.
07        (0.7)
08  Fan:  W'y'mean Ida?
09        (.)
10  Bel:  Uh yah.hh=
11  Fan:  Wud she do die:?=
12  Bel:  =Mm:hm,

Notice that Belle, the bearer of the bad news, does not actually tell it herself: it is Fanny who eventually announces the news (in question format): 'Wud she do die' (line 11). When Belle says 'I had something terrible t'tell you' (line 1) she indicates to Fanny that she has bad news, but she doesn't produce it. Belle's protracted delay (look at the long silence on line 7) in producing the 'terrible' news she has projected leads Fanny to derive - and articulate - the news herself: first, who it is about (line 8), and then what has happened to her (line 11). Belle simply has to confirm that Fanny has understood correctly (lines 10 and 12).

News of a medical diagnosis

Our second data fragment is taken from a medical interaction between a doctor at a developmental disabilities clinic and the mother of a child referred for assessment. The task facing the doctor is to deliver a (bad news) diagnosis. Here's how he does it:

01  Dr:  What do you see? as- as his (0.5) difficulty.
02       (1.2)
03  Mo:  Mainly his uhm: (1.2) the fact that he
04       doesn't understand everything. (0.6) and
05       also the fact that his speech (0.7) is very
06       hard to understand what he's saying (0.3)
07       lot[s of ti]me
08  Dr:     [ right ]
09       (0.2)
10  Dr:  Do you have any ideas wh:y it is: are you:
11       d[o yo]u?h
12  Mo:   [ No ]
13       (2.1)
14  Dr:  .h okay I (0.2) you know I think we basically
15       (.) in some ways agree with you: (0.6) .hh
16       insofar as we think that (0.3) Dan's main
17       problem (0.4) .h you know does: involve you
18       know language.
19       (0.4)
20  Mo:  Mm hmm
21       (0.3)
22  Dr:  you know both (0.2) you know his- (0.4) being
23       able to understand you know what is said to 
24       him (0.4) .h and also certainly also to be
25       able to express:: (1.3) you know his uh his
26       thoughts
27       (1.1)
28  Dr:  .hh uh:m (0.6) .hhh in general his
29       development ...

Although it is the doctor who has information about the diagnosis, he delays telling it – just as we saw Belle and Charlie do – thereby creating an opportunity for the recipient to tell the bad news herself. He explicitly asks the mother for her understanding of the child's problem (line 1) and its underlying cause (lines 10-11). And although, in this case, the mother does not actually produce the bad news herself, the doctor acts as if she had. In saying (at lines 14-15) 'we basically ... agree with you', he treats her as if she had produced the bad news he is now simply confirming. This is an institutional adaptation of the ordinary conversational action of breaking bad news – and it illustrates how patterns we use in ordinary conversation typically underpin workplace interactions. CA has discovered many conversational patterns like this (e.g. strategies for bringing a topic to a close, normative ways in which people do disagreement as opposed to agreement, and practices for holding the floor at points where another person might start to speak), and it is the cumulative set of these and many other discoveries that constitutes the ‘tool set’ we bring to the analysis of new data.