Conversation Analysis and Language/Literacy Teacher Identity Construction in Interviews

Abstract

Ethnomethodology (EM) is an approach through which researchers consider the meaning making behind everyday activities. Related to EM, Conversation Analysis (CA) uses specific transcription conventions to examine social interaction in talk. Through an EM-informed CA approach, this chapter applies CA conventions to interviews with novice language/literacy teachers. Their verbal efforts to construct teacher identities that focused on social justice-oriented education serve as the context through which we examine methodological concepts such as turn-taking, voice inflection, and narrative constructions in relation to CA.