Bilmes1996a

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Bilmes1996a
BibType ARTICLE
Key Bilmes1996a
Author(s) Jack Bilmes
Title Problems and resources in analyzing Northern Thai conversation for English language readers
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Thai, Culture, Context
Publisher
Year 1996
Language
City
Month
Journal Journal of Pragmatics
Volume 26
Number 2
Pages 171–188
URL Link
DOI 10.1016/0378-2166(96)00011-2
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Transcript materials from a Northern Thai negotiation are used to illustrate the problems and possibilities involved in doing microanalysis of verbal interaction for readers who are unfamiliar with the language being analyzed. Two central questions are (1) can conversation analytic techniques be usefully applied to exotic languages, and (2) can the results of such analysis be presented in an unbiased and comprehensible manner? It is found that it is possible to do reasonably fine-grained and revealing analyses using conversation analytic techniques. However, the problems of presentation are significant in principle and practice. A further issue: working with exotic materials tends to intensify the analyst's concern with the relation between talk and ethnographic/cultural context. The Northern Thai materials are used to clarify certain issues of context that have arisen in the conversation analytic literature.

Notes