Conversation analysis · Relationship science
A record of what researchers have found in the talk that follows a disagreement.
Affterwords summarises published work on repair, apology and conflict talk. Each piece names the researchers, states the sample and the design, and reports where the evidence has been challenged.
The publication takes its method from conversation analysis, a field that studies recordings of ordinary talk and transcribes them in fine detail. That tradition treats a pause of six tenths of a second as data. The notation below is the standard set of symbols used to write it down, introduced by Gail Jefferson and still in general use.
- (0.6)
- A silence, timed in tenths of a second.
- [
- The point at which one turn begins to overlap another.
- =
- Latching: no gap at all between two turns.
- wo:rd
- A sound stretched by the speaker.
- °word°
- Spoken more quietly than the surrounding talk.
- .hh
- An audible in-breath.
The record
Three pieces are published. Each one covers a body of research and the arguments against it.
- 01 · Conversation analysis Repair in ordinary conversation Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks described a system by which speakers correct trouble in talk. A later cross-language study asked whether that system holds outside English, and a long-running argument inside the field asks whether it can be counted at all.
- 02 · Methods Prediction and replication in marital conflict research Laboratory studies of couples in disagreement reported high accuracy in forecasting later separation. Heyman and Slep showed what happens to those accuracy figures when the models meet a sample they were not built on.
- 03 · Social psychology What apology research measures Lewicki, Polin and Lount broke apologies into six components and asked participants to rate them. The design supports a specific conclusion, and rather less than the coverage of it suggested.
Editorial standards
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- Stated limits. Sample size, sample type and study design are reported next to the finding, not buried at the end.
- Disputed evidence stays disputed. Where a study has been challenged in the peer-reviewed literature, the challenge appears in the same piece, in the same paragraph where possible.
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Questions received
- What does Affterwords publish?
- Summaries of peer-reviewed research on conversation, conflict talk, repair and apology, written for readers outside the field. Each summary names its sources and reports the criticism of them.
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Correspondence
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