Formulation

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Formulation
Author(s):	Salla Kurhila (University of Helsinki, Finland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0426-3660) & Daniel Radice (University of Helsinki, Finland)
To cite:	Kurhila, Salla, & Radice, Daniel. (2023). Formulation. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI:

A formulation is a turn-in-talk in which a conversation participant describes or summarises preceding talk and/or draws out its implications. The term ‘formulation’ has been used in both a narrower and a broader sense:

(i) In the narrower sense, a formulation is a turn-in-talk in which a conversation participant summarises the immediately preceding talk of another person (formulations of gist) and/or draws out implications from it (formulations of upshot). This definition originates in the work of Heritage and Watson (1979), who identify three basic features of formulations: deletion, selection and transformation.

Formulations make relevant agreement or disagreement in next position, and often also elaboration (Peräkylä 2019). They are often treated as projecting agreement, although the exaggerating formulations identified by Weiste and Peräkylä (2013) seem designed to project disagreement.

The formulation of gist reproduced below illustrates the above features:

(Heritage & Watson 1979: 132)

((From a face-to-face interview with the "Slimmer of the Year"))

30  S:    You have a shell that for so long protects you but sometimes
31        things creep through the shell and then you become really aware of
31        how awful you feel. I never ever felt my age or looked my age I
32        was always older-people took me for older. And when I was at
33        college I think I looked a matronly fifty. And I was completely
34        alone one weekend and I got to this stage where I almost jumped in
35        the river. I just felt life wasn't worth it any more - it hadn't
36        anything to offer and if this was living I had had enough
37  I: -> You really were prepared to commit suicide because you were a big
38     -> fatty
39  S:    Yes, because I - I just didn't see anything in life that I had to
40        look forward to...

In their formulation at line 37, the interviewer (I) deletes most of the interviewee’s narrative, selecting the point at which they contemplated suicide. They transform S’s utterance primarily by making explicit things alluded to in S’s turn: "commit suicide" instead of "almost jumped in the river" and "I had had enough", and "big fatty" instead of "a shell" and "I looked a matronly fifty". S then agrees immediately and seamlessly continues their narrative.

Formulations in the narrower sense have been studied extensively in psychotherapy and similar institutional settings, where their prevalence has been found to relate to how they are used to do more than just check understanding. In the therapy context, three mains uses of formulations have been identified and analysed: interpreting the client's talk psychologically, managing the progress of the session, and history-taking for use in later therapeutic work (Antaki 2008).

(ii) The broader sense of the term follows from the original definition by Sacks and Garfinkel (1970), in which a formulation may refer to any kind of summary or description of either the whole preceding conversation or any part of it, and may also include a speaker's formulation of their own preceding talk. This use of the term is less common in current research (Antaki 2008) and, when referring to a speaker's own talk, the term ‘self-formulation’ is often used (Herijgers & Charldorp 2020).

Additional Related Entries:

• Candidate understanding
• Social action
• B-event statement

Cited References:

Antaki, C. (2008). Formulations in psychotherapy. In A. Peräkylä, C. Antaki, S. Vehviläinen, & I. Leudar (Eds.), Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy (pp. 26–42). Cambridge University Press.   

Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H. (1970). On Formal Structures of Practical Actions. In J.C. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakian (Eds.) Theoretical Sociology, (pp. 337–366). Appleton-Century-Crofts.  

Herijgers, M., & van Charldorp, T. (2021). Communicating information packages in institutional face-to-face consultations. Discourse Studies, 23(1), 3–27.

Heritage, J., & Watson, R. (1979). Formulations as Conversational Objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, (pp. 123-162). Irvington Press.

Peräkylä, A.  (2019). Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy: Identifying Transformative Sequences, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 52(3), 257–280

Weiste, E. & Peräkylä, A. (2013). A comparative conversation analytic study of formulations in psychoanalysis and cognitive psychotherapy. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46(4), 299–321

Additional References:

Heritage, J. C., & Watson, D. R. (1980). Aspects of the properties of formulations in natural conversations: Some instances analysed. Semiotica, 30(3–4), 245–262.

Bolden, G. B. (2010). ‘Articulating the unsaid’ via and-prefaced formulations of others’ talk. Discourse Studies, 12(1), 5–32.

Koivisto, A, & Voutilainen, L. (2016) Responding to What Is Left Implicit: Psychotherapists’ Formulations and Understanding Checks After Clients’ Turn-Final Että (‘That/So’). Research on Language and Social Interaction, 49(3), 238–257.