Abstract
Having dedicated the main section of this part investigating how order is conceptualized in ethnomethodology (CA) and SAT, in this chapter I will compare SAT and CA in order to highlight their different theoretical perspectives and emphases in terms of their study of the order. From previous discussions, we have noted their similarities in the following aspects: (1) Both turn to the ordinary language as objects of study; (2) Both see human language communication as taking place against a certain shared background; (3) Both see speakers’ use of language as contributing to the maintenance of communicational order; and (4) Both emphasize the moral dimensions which characterize language activities. Overall, they all carried out extraordinary efforts to anchor and locate order in the most mundane (and disorderly) domains of language: speech and conversation. CA’s answer lies in members’ turn-by-turn order-building activities while SAT highlights the orderly, rule-governed nature built into speaking a language. Indeed, as an attempt to locate common grounds, leading authors in each camp have once exchanged ideas on conversation (Searle, 1992), specifically, whether conversations are subject to (constitutive) rules. From their exchanges, we can gain a better understanding of where these two schools stand concerning some subtle issues.
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Zhou, F. (2020). Comparison of Conversation Analysis and Speech Act Theory. In: Models of the Human in Twentieth-Century Linguistic Theories. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1255-1_15
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