About this Research Topic

Background

The relations between Conversation Analysis (CA), sociology, and social theory are complex, often ambiguous, and have sometimes been rather fraught. While there might be some relatively high level of agreement amongst their practitioners on what CA is, what it does, and what it is meant to achieve, that is not so much the case for the more open and broad terrains of sociology and social theory. Moreover, each of the domains in question has changed in orientation, composition, and academic location since CA first came into existence in the late 1960s. While initially a child of sociology, as CA has matured and extended its substantive and methodological reach, it has become a large intellectual domain in its own right, with inputs from, and relevance for, a host of other disciplines, notably linguistics, anthropology, and psychology. It is now no longer at all clear how CA relates to sociology and social theory, what each side currently does, or what it could bring to the other in the future.

The Research Topic "Conversation Analysis and Sociological Theory" aims at reflecting upon such matters. It seeks to facilitate a productive dialogue between empirical research on interactional practices and different strands of social and sociological theorizing. Specific themes/questions include, but are not limited to:

- How could power, institutions, culture, intersecting identities, and other interaction-exogeneous features of context be taken to bear on the analysis of social interaction?
- What is the relevance of automatic behaviors and basic human needs for the unfolding of social interaction?
- What are the social and sociological consequences of conceiving conversational turn-exchanges as dynamic systems vs. rituals?
- How could recent developments in sociological theorizing inform the development of new analytic tools for empirical social interaction research?

Researchers in social and sociological theory whose work is rooted in empirical conversation and interaction analysis are invited to advance the frontiers of knowledge on such matters, critiquing and re-evaluating older positions, and elaborating new perspectives on core questions about the nature of human interaction.

Keywords: sociological theory, culture, institutions, rituals, dynamic systems, conversation analysis

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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