Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born American sociologist, social psychologist, and writer, considered by some "the most influential American sociologist of the twentieth century".
Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields. CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media, and focus on multimodal and nonverbal activity in interaction, including gaze, body movement and gesture. As a consequence, the term conversation analysis has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of interactions. CA and ethnomethodology are sometimes considered one field and referred to as EMCA.
Ethnomethodology is the study of how social order is produced in and through processes of social interaction. It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches. In its most radical form, it poses a challenge to the social sciences as a whole. Its early investigations led to the founding of conversation analysis, which has found its own place as an accepted discipline within the academy. According to Psathas, it is possible to distinguish five major approaches within the ethnomethodological family of disciplines.
In the fields of sociology and social psychology, a breaching experiment is an experiment that seeks to examine people's reactions to violations of commonly accepted social rules or norms. Breaching experiments are most commonly associated with ethnomethodology, and in particular the work of Harold Garfinkel. Breaching experiments involve the conscious exhibition of "unexpected" behavior/violation of social norms, an observation of the types of social reactions such behavioral violations engender, and an analysis of the social structure that makes these social reactions possible. The idea of studying the violation of social norms and the accompanying reactions has bridged across social science disciplines, and is today used in both sociology and psychology.
Harvey Sacks was an American sociologist influenced by the ethnomethodology tradition. He pioneered extremely detailed studies of the way people use language in everyday life. Despite his early death in a car crash and the fact that he did not publish widely, he founded the discipline of conversation analysis. His work has had significant influence on fields such as linguistics, discourse analysis, and discursive psychology.
Discursive psychology (DP) is a form of discourse analysis that focuses on psychological themes in talk, text, and images.
Jonathan Potter is Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University and one of the originators of discursive psychology.
Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event.
Harold Garfinkel was an American sociologist and ethnomethodologist, who taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. Having developed and established ethnomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociology, he is probably best known for Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), a collection of articles. Selections from unpublished materials were later published in two volumes: Seeing Sociologically and Ethnomethodology's Program. Moreover, during his time at University of Newark, which became Rutgers University, he enrolled in Theory of Accounts, a course that covered accounting and bookkeeping procedures. Where from this class "even in setting up an accounting sheet, he was theorizing the various categories into which the numbers would be placed" which furthered his understanding of accountability.
Michael Mann FBA is a British emeritus professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the University of Cambridge. Mann holds dual British and United States citizenships.
Microsociology is one of the main levels of analysis of sociology, concerning the nature of everyday human social interactions and agency on a small scale: face to face. Microsociology is based on subjective interpretative analysis rather than statistical or empirical observation, and shares close association with the philosophy of phenomenology. Methods include symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology; ethnomethodology in particular has led to many academic sub-divisions and studies such as micro-linguistical research and other related aspects of human social behaviour. Macrosociology, by contrast, concerns the social structure and broader systems.
Max Atkinson is a British academic and author. He has worked with a number of politicians and business leaders and is known for his research on speech writing and presentation skills in the fields of political speeches, courtroom language and conversation.
Aaron Victor Cicourel, was an American sociologist. A Professor of sociology who spent much of his career at the University of California, San Diego, he specialized in sociolinguistics, medical communication, decision-making, and child socialization. He was intellectually influenced greatly by Alfred Schutz, Erving Goffman, and Harold Garfinkel.
Michael E. Lynch, is an emeritus professor at the department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. His works are particularly concerned with ethnomethodological approaches in science studies. Much of his research has addressed the role of visual representation in scientific practice.
Ethogenics is an interdisciplinary social scientific approach that attempts to understand the systems of belief or means through which individuals attach significance to their actions and form their identities by linking these to the larger structure of rules (norms) and cultural resources in society. For Rom Harré, the founder of ethogenics, it represents a radical innovation in traditional psychology, even a completely "new psychology" that should take its place..
David Richard Gibson is an American sociologist and associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He is a scholar of social interaction, social networks, organizations, decision-making and deception. In a review article, Eviatar Zerubavel described him "as one of sociology's leading conversational analysts". His publication Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis won the 2013 Melvin Pollner Prize for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis.
Susan "Sue" Speer C.Psychol, FHEA is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester.
Martyn Hammersley is a British sociologist whose main publications cover social research methodology and philosophical issues in the social sciences.
Charles Goodwin was a UCLA distinguished research professor of communication and key member of UCLA’s Center for Language, Interaction and Culture. Goodwin contributed ground-breaking theory and research on social interaction and opened new pathways for research on eye gaze, storytelling, turn-taking and action.
Anne Warfield Rawls is an American sociologist, social theorist and ethnomethodologist. She is Professor of Sociology at Bentley University, Professor for Interaction, Work and Information at the University of Siegen, Germany and Director of the Harold Garfinkel Archive, Newburyport, MA. Rawls has been teaching courses on social theory, social interaction, ethnomethodology and systemic racism for over forty years. She has also written extensively on Émile Durkheim and Harold Garfinkel, explaining their argument that equality is needed to ground practices in democratic publics, and showing how inequality interferes with the cooperation and reflexivity necessary to successfully engage in complex practices.
