Doing Feminist Conversation Analysis

In: Feminism & psychology: an international journal, Volume 10, Issue 2, p. 163-193

Abstract

This article argues for, and offers empirical demonstration of, the value of conversation analysis (CA) for feminist research. It counters three key criticisms of CA as anti-feminist: the alleged incompatibility of CA's social theory with feminism; the purported difficulty of reconciling analysts' and participants' concerns; and CA's apparent obsession with the minutiae of talk rather than socio-political reality. It demonstrates the potential of CA for advances in lesbian/feminist research through two examples: developing a feminist approach to date rape and sexual refusal; and an ongoing CA study of talk in which people 'come out' as lesbian, gay, bisexual or as having (had) same-sex sexual experiences. These examples are used to illustrate that it is precisely the features of CA criticized as anti-feminist which can be used productively in doing feminist conversation analysis.