The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM): A Method for Training Communication Skills as an Alternative to Simulated Role-play

This an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Research on Language and Social Interaction on 06-08-2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/08351813.2014.925663.The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) is an approach to training, based on conversation analytic evidence about the problems and roadblocks that can occur in institutional interaction. Traditional training often relies on role-play, but that differs systematically from the actual events it is meant to mimic and prepare for. In contrast, CARM uses animated audio- and video-recordings of real-time, actual encounters. CARM provides a unique framework for discussing and evaluating, in slow motion, actual talk as people do their jobs. It also provides an evidence base for making decisions about effective practice and communication policy in organizations. This article describes CARM's distinctive practices and its impact on professional development across different organizations. Data are in British English

The (In)Authenticity of Simulated Talk: Comparing Role-Played and Actual Interaction and the Implications for Communication Training

This article was published in the journal, Research on Language and Social Interaction [Taylor & Francis (Routledge)] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2013.780341How authentic is simulated, or role-played, interaction, of the kind produced in communication training contexts? The article addresses this question by comparing actual and role-played police investigative interviews. Both types of interviews were recorded by the police: real ones to fulfill British legal requirements and training ones to maximize the authenticity of the training experience. Interview openings were examined using conversation analysis. Officers must adhere to Police and Criminal Evidence Act (2008) guidelines, turning them into spoken actions. The analyses revealed that while, in gross terms, officers in real and simulated interviews opened interviews by formulating the same actions (e.g., identifying copresent parties), differences were observable in their design and organization. In simulations, actions were more elaborate or exaggerated; that is, they were made interactionally visible and “assessable.” Furthermore, some actions were only present in simulations. Implications for the efficacy of role-play methods for training and assessing communication are discussed

Persuasive Conduct: Alignment and Resistance in Prospecting “Cold” Calls

Social psychology has theorized the cognitive processes underlying persuasion, without considering its interactional infrastructure – the discursive actions through which persuasion is accomplished interactionally. Our paper aims to fill this gap, by using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis to examine 153 ‘cold’ calls, in which salespeople seek to secure meetings with prospective clients. We identify two sets of communicative practices that comprise persuasive conduct: (1) pre-expanding the meeting request with accounts that secure prospects’ alignment to this course of action without disclosing its end-result and (2) minimizing the imposition of the meeting to reduce the prospect’s opportunities for refusal. We conclude that persuasive conduct consists in managing the recipiency of the meeting requests by promoting alignment and hampering resistance. Overall, this paper contributes to the wider discursive psychological project of ‘respecifying’ psychological phenomena like attitudes, memory, and emotion from the realm of social cognition to the realm of social interaction

Offers of assistance in politician–constituent interaction

This paper was accepted in the journal Discourse Studies [© Sage] and the definitive version is available at http:dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445615602376How do politicians engage with and offer to assist their constituents; the people who vote them into power? We address the question by analyzing a corpus of 80 interactions recorded at the office of a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom, and comprising telephone calls between constituents and the MP’s clerical ‘caseworkers’ as well as face to face encounters with MPs in their fortnightly ‘surgeries’. The data were transcribed, then analysed using conversation analysis, focusing on the design and placement of offers of assistance. We identified three types of offers within a longer ‘offering’ sequence: 1) ‘proposal offers’, which typically appear first in any offering sequence, in which politicians and caseworkers make proposals to help their constituents using formats that request permission to do so, or check that the constituent does indeed want help (e.g., “do you want me to”; “we could…”); 2) ‘announcement offers’, which appear second, and indicate that something has been decided and confirm the intention to act (e.g., “I will do X”), and 3) ‘request offers’, which appear third, and take for form “let me do X”. Request offers indicate that the offer is available but cannot be completed until the current conversation is closed; they also appear in environments in which the constituent reissues their problems and appears dissatisfied with the offers so far. The paper contributes to what we know about making offers in institutional settings, as well as shedding the first empirical light on the workings of the constituency office: the site of engagement between everyday members of the public and their elected representatives

The Uses of Stance in Media Production: Embodied Sociolinguistics and Beyond

While many conversation analysts, and scholars in related fields, have used video-recordings to study interaction, this study is one of a small but growing number that investigates video-recordings of the joint activities of media professionals working with, and on, video. It examines practices of media production that are, in their involvement with the visual and verbal qualities of video, both beyond talk and deeply shaped by talk. The article draws upon video recordings of the making of a feature-length documentary. In particular, it analyses a complex course of action where an editing team are reviewing their interview of the subject of the documentary, their footage is being intercut with existing reality TV footage of that same interviewee. The central contributions that the article makes are, firstly, to the sociolinguistics of mediatisation, through the identification of the workplace concerns of the members of the editing team, secondly showing how editing is accomplished, moment-by-moment, through the use of particular forms of embodied action and, finally, how the media themselves feature in the ordering of action. While this is professional work it sheds light on the video-mediated practices in contemporary culture, especially those found in social media where video makers carefully consider their editing of the perspective toward themselves and others

Broadcasting the royal role: Constructing culturally situated identities in the Princess Diana Panorama interview.

We examine cr itic ally the two traditions of work that have informed discursive approaches to identity : social constructionism and conversation analysis . Within both strands, identity is theorized as a � exible phenomenon that is situated in conversations. But although constructionists locate identity within the social, such work remains at a theoretical and rather abstract level and often fails to interrogate the discursive practices through which identity is constituted. Conver sely, this attention to the occasioning of identity in everyday talk is precisely the focus of the second, conver sation analy tic strand of work. Whereas constructionis ts attend to the wider cultural positioning of identities , conver sation analysts resist commenting upon the social signi� cance of what is constructed in interaction. Conversation analy sis is therefore limited by its restricted notion of culture in the study of the situated social self. Despite the apparent con� ict between these approaches , we suggest that a synthes is of the two provides a comprehensive framework for analysing identity . Drawing upon the BBC Panorama interview between Martin Bashir and Princess Diana, we explore how culturally situated identities are located in this conversational context. We conclude that analysts must not only attend to the micro-level organization of identities but also engage in a wider unde rstanding of the cultural framework within which they are located

Discursive approaches

In this chapter, we introduce a method of qualitative analysis that focuses on exploring and explicating language in use. The discourse analytic approach we discuss has developed within psychology over the past fifteen years and is called 'discursive psychology' (DP) (cf. Edwards and Potter, 1992). We aim to provide a basic understanding of DP: its origins and foundations, its theory and approach to language, its questions and topics of investigation, its methods of data collection and analysis and, for the current purposes, its utility for clinical and health psychologists. To this end, our illustrations of the approach are drawn from a range of clinical and health contexts of interaction