Doing Feminist Conversation Analysis

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.