The Routledge Handbook of Conversation Analysis

This handbook offers a detailed overview of how everyday interaction shapes social life—from classrooms and hospitals to courtrooms, homes, and online spaces. It introduces the key principles and practices of Conversation Analysis, which examines how people coordinate actions through talk, gesture, and other embodied and material resources.

The Routledge Handbook of Conversation Analysis offers a detailed overview of how everyday interaction shapes social life—from classrooms and hospitals to courtrooms, homes, and online settings. This volume introduces the key principles and practices of conversation analysis (CA), a framework for examining how people coordinate actions through talk, gesture, and other embodied and material resources. With contributions from over 60 scholars across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and beyond, the Handbook explores how interaction operates across languages, cultures, and institutions. The chapters examine how people build relationships, manage social roles, and navigate complex environments through moment-by-moment communication. In addition to established research areas, the contributors highlight growing areas of research such as multilingual interaction, neurodivergent communication, and human-AI encounters. They likewise show how CA is applied across fields including second language learning, law, healthcare, and technology design. Each chapter provides a clear entry point into a particular area of study, along with suggestions for further exploration. This comprehensive Handbook will appeal not only to CA specialists but also to researchers and students in applied linguistics, education, communication studies, anthropology, and human-computer interaction.