Review Essay: Conversation Analysis Versus Other Approaches to Discourse

Abstract

This review discusses a recent book by Robin WOOFFITT in which conversation analysis (CA) is confronted with some other analytic approaches to "discourse." The author uses the term discourse analysis in a rather specific way, as a label for an analytic tradition that has become prominent in (social) psychology in the UK. Two other traditions, critical discourse analysis and Foucauldian discourse analysis are also discussed later in the book. The major criticism raised in the review is that the book’s usefulness is limited by its restriction to approaches currently en vogue in Britain and its selective treatment of CA. In an Epilogue the issues raised in the book are discussed in a wider perspective. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs060239