RESEARCH AREAS

In the sections below, we list just a few of our publications over the past five years, to illustrate the range and breadth of our research in such areas as medical interaction, multimodality, phonetics, social action, human-AI interaction, conversation analytic methods, and languages besides English.

Medical communication

Researchers at CASLC use conversation analysis to examine healthcare interactions across diverse settings – in primary care, psychological therapy, midwifery and neonatology, neurology, and nurse-doctor interactions during hospital rounds and many more – revealing how moment-by-moment exchanges shape clinical outcomes and patient experiences. Much of this research is applied and has been motivated by and conducted in collaboration with medical professionals.

Shaw, C., Connabeer, K., Drew, P., Gallagher, K., Aladangady, N. & Marlow, N. (2019) Initiating end-of-life decisions with parents of infants receiving neonatal intensive care. Patient Education and Counselling.

Toerien, M. (2021). When do patients exercise their right to refuse treatment? A conversation analytic study of decision-making trajectories in UK neurology outpatient consultations. Social Science & Medicine, 290, 114278.

Drew, P., Irvine, A., Barkham, M., Faija, C., Gellatly, J., Ardern, K., Armitage, J. C., Brooks, H., Rushton, K., Welsh, C., Bower, P., & Bee, P. (2021). Telephone delivery of psychological interventions: Balancing protocol with patient-centred care. Social Science & Medicine, 277, 113818.

Toerien, M. (2023). When neurologists solicit patients’ treatment preferences: The relevance of talk as action for understanding why shared decision-making is so limited in practice. In Keel, Sara (ed.), Medical and Healthcare Interactions. Routledge.

Jackson, C., Weatherall, A., & Land, V. (2025). Pain displays in childbirth: How first-stage contractions are interactionally managed in midwife-led births. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 58(1), 50-68.

Jackson, C. (2025). Risk assessment as routine: A conversation analysis of midwives’ risk surveillance practices in midwife-led care during labour. Patient Education and Counseling, 140, Article 109279. Advance online publication.

Phonetics of talk-in-interaction

Our work investigates sounds beyond words – laughter, clicks, swallowing, and other non-lexical vocalizations – showing how these subtle phonetic resources systematically contribute to managing turns, stance, and social actions in conversation.

Ogden, R. (2020). Audibly Not Saying Something with Clicks. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(1), 66–89.

Keevallik, L., & Ogden, R. (2020). Sounds on the margins of language, at the heart of interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(1), 1–18.

Ogden, R. (2021). Swallowing in Conversation. Frontiers in Communication, 6.

Ogden, R., Cantarutti, M. N., & Trouvain, J. (2025). Phonetic features in the interactional management of laughter. Interactional Linguistics.

Szczepek Reed, B.B., & Cantarutti, M. (2024). Turn Continuation in yeah/no Responding Turns:Glottalization and Vowel Linking as Contrastive Sound Patterns. In: Selting, M. & Barth-Weingarten, D., (Eds.) New Perspectives in Interactional Linguistic Research. John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 73-102.

Multimodality and embodiment

Multimodal research examines how participants coordinate talk, gaze, gesture, and phonetic detail as integrated resources in interaction – from everyday conversation to specialized settings like musical instruction and performance.

Kendrick, K. H. (2021). The ‘Other’ side of recruitment: Methods of assistance in social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 178, 68–82.

Peng, X, Zhang, W. & Drew, P. (2021). ’Sharing the experience’ in enactments in storytelling. Journal of Pragmatics, 183, 32–52.

Reed, D. J., & Wooffitt, R. (2021). Embodiment, relationality and epistemics: observations from Alexander Technique training in music master classes. Sociology, 55(6), 1080-1099.

Kendrick, K. H., Holler, J., Levinson, Stephen C. (2023). Turn-taking in human face-to-face interaction is multimodal: gaze direction and manual gestures aid the coordination of turn transitions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378, 20210473.

Reed, D. J. (2024). Understanding performance responses: Instructional transitions in musical masterclasses. Discourse Studies.

Neyra, R., Butler, M., Munch Nicolaisen, E., Sbertoli-Nielsen, P., Tam, C.L., Fox, B.A. & Raymond, C.W. (2024). A multimodal approach to grammatical aspect: Embedded depictions and their aspectual characteristics as interactional resources. Interactional Linguistics 4(2), 225-256.

Languages and cultures

In addition to research in specific areas, we also conduct research across a diverse range of languages, working both independently and in collaboration with international partners to examine how interactional practices are organized in different cultures.

Yu, G., Wu, Y., & Drew, P. (2019). Couples bickering: Disaffiliation and discord in Chinese conversation. Discourse Studies, 21(4), 458–480.

Gan, Y., Greiffenhagen, C., Kendrick, K. H. (2023). Sequence Facilitation: Grandparents Engineering Parent–Child Interactions in Video Calls. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 56:1, 65-88.

Yu, G., Wu, Y., Drew, P., & Raymond, C. (2023). The DIG Mandarin Conversations (DMC) corpus. Chinese Language and Discourse.

Finnish

Kurhila, S., Lehtimaja, I., & Drew, P. (2020). Correcting medical decisions: A study in nurses’ patient advocacy in (Finnish) hospital ward rounds. Sociology of Health & Illness, 42(7), 1709–1726.

Italian

Margutti, P, Galatolo, R., Simone, M. & Drew, P. (2024). Proposing surgery at the prosthetic clinic: managing patient resistance. Patient Education & Counseling, 129: 108385.

Swiss French

Sterie, A.-C., Merminod, G., Truchard, E. R., Jox, R. J., & Drew, P. (2025). Equivocation in patients’ decisional preference about life-sustaining treatments. Patient Education and Counseling, 140, 109265.

Social action

Studies in this area explore how people construct turns at talk to perform actions like offers, requests, and accusations, revealing the systematic methods through which these actions combine into sequences that accomplish social life.

Kendrick, K. H., Brown, P., Dingemanse, M., Floyd, S., Gipper, S., Hayano, K., Hoey, E., Hoymann, G., Manrique, E., Rossi, G., & Levinson, S. C. (2020). Sequence organization: A universal infrastructure for social action. Journal of Pragmatics, 168, 119-138.

Drew, P., Hakulinen, A., Heinemann, T., Niemi, J., & Rossi, G. (2021). Hendiadys in naturally occurring interactions: A cross-linguistic study of double verb constructions. Journal of Pragmatics, 182, 322–347.

Drew, P. (2022). The Micro-Politics of Social Actions. In A. Deppermann & M. Haugh (Eds.), Action Ascription in Interaction (pp. 57–80). Cambridge University Press.

Yang, Z., Jackson, C., & Toerien, M. (2022). Is Solicitation of Problem Presentations Always Normative? How Chinese Patients Get to Present Their Reasons for Medical Visits. Health Communication, 38(11), 2470–2480.

Kendrick, K.H. & Drew, P. (in press). Addressee Points in Conflictual Interactions: A Reductionist Analysis of Action. Research in Language and Social Interaction.

Reed, D. J., Young, J. A. and Wooffitt, R. (2023). Walking with Gail: the local achievement of interactional rhythm and synchrony through footwork. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 7 (1).

Methods in conversation analysis

Researchers at CASLC have published guides and handbooks that explain how to do conversation analysis – its principles, techniques, and practical applications – providing essential resources for both students learning the approach and researchers advancing the field.

Irvine, A., Drew, P., Bower, P., Brooks, H., Gellatly, J., Armitage, C. J., Barkham, M., McMillan, D., & Bee, P. (2020). Are there interactional differences between telephone and face-to-face psychological therapy? A systematic review of comparative studies. Journal of Affective Disorders, 265, 120–131.

Shaw, C., Connabeer, K., Drew, P., Gallagher, K., Aladangady, N., & Marlow, N. (2023). End-of-Life Decision Making Between Doctors and Parents in NICU: The Development and Assessment of a Conversation Analysis Coding Framework. Health Communication, 38(10), 2188–2197.

Drew, P., Ostermann, A. C., & Raymond, C. W. (2024). Conversation Analysis as a Comparative Methodology. In J. D. Robinson, R. Clift, K. H. Kendrick, & C. W. Raymond (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Methods in Conversation Analysis (pp. 386–418). Cambridge University Press.

Kendrick, K. H. (2024). System-oriented analysis: Moving from singular practices to organizations of practice. In J. D. Robinson, R. Clift, K. H. Kendrick, & C. W. Raymond (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Methods in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge University Press.

Ogden, R. (2024). Listening to Talk-in-Interaction: Ways of Observing Speech. In J. D. Robinson, R. Clift, K. H. Kendrick, & C. W. Raymond (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Methods in Conversation Analysis (pp. 672–699). Cambridge University Press.

Toerien, M. (2024). Methodological Considerations When Using Conversation Analysis to Investigate Institutional Interaction. In C. W. Raymond, J. D. Robinson, K. H. Kendrick, & R. Clift (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Methods in Conversation Analysis (pp. 809–840). Cambridge University Press.

Social robotics and artificial intelligence

Work in this area investigates how people interact with autonomous systems and AI technologies, examining everything from human-robot encounters to the role of AI narratives in shaping technological development and research practices.

Chubb, J., Reed, D. & Cowling, P. (2024). Expert views about missing AI narratives: is there an AI story crisis?. AI & Soc 39, 1107–1126.

Chubb, J. A., & Reed, D. J. (2022). Speeding up to keep up: exploring the use of AI in the research process. AI and Society, 37, 1439-1457.

Reed, D. J., Camara, F., & Wang, T. (2025). Social Interaction with Autonomous Art: Combining Social Analysis and Computer Vision. In 17th International Conference on Social Robotics + AI (ICSR+AI 2025)

Legal interactions

Our work on legal interaction uses conversation analysis to examine how participants in police interrogations and courtroom trials orient to the specific interactional requirements and constraints of these encounters.

Ferraz, F. de Almeda and Drew, P. (2020). The fabric of law-in-action: ‘formulating’ the suspect’s account during police interviews in England. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law. 27, 1:35-58.

Chen, Y., May, A. & Drew, P. (2026) The defendant’s dilemma: being cooperative without compromising their defence. Discourse Studies, 28(2) April 2026.

Ferraz, F. de Almeda and Drew, P. (in press). CA in forensic linguistics and legal discourse. In Greer, T. & Burdelski, M. (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Routledge, London.

Page updated

Report abuse