Thinking out loud

I am writing this in the hope that I will finally get some clarity on the essay I should be writing right now. Sometimes I forget how hard the thinking part of the essay is. I am (not quite) writing an essay on feminism and conversation analysis. Conversation Analysis (CA) is a methodology for the analysis of naturally occurring conversations which are recorded and then transcribed in incredible detail which tries to include as much of the interaction as possible (i.e pauses, inhalations, exhalations, rise in pitch, lowering of pitch, that sort of thing.). The context of the conversations are not as important as the interaction itself as conversation analysts are looking for the ways in which people show they are experts at social interactions; taking turns speaking, 'repairing' words they don't judge to be quite right, etc. We don't necessarily know that we're doing it but there's pretty good evidence to show we really are experts at interaction sub-consciously abiding by these rules of interaction and it is through transcribing in such an extensive way than conversation analysts uncover these.

So anyway, I was first interest in the topic because of the way that feminism is concerned with both the macro - the social conditions in which women are oppressed in patriarchal society's and the micro - the personal experiences of women and so Conversation Analysis is focused upon the micro - the minute details of everyday conversations and in a less obvious way the macro - the unspoken rules that govern our interactions. Plus I also think that maybe feminism would benefit from a bit more of a focus on the micro side of things - how we interact in our everyday lives. The other thing that really appealed to me about Conversation Analysis is that it really privileges the participants (the people participating in the conversations) orientations. Conversation Analysts only study that which the participants have analysed, if it's not in their conversation, if they haven't given it meaning then the analyst can't study it. This really appealed to me because as a newbie researcher I felt really weird imposing my own thoughts, perspectives and agenda on the people who participated in my interviews.

As I have read more and more and thought more and more about this subject everything seems to come back to this focus participant orientations, both feminism and CA think it's really important to respect and privilege participants but only Conversation analysts seem to take this all the way through to analysis (although some people criticize them for using specialist language in the research and choosing what is important to the participants).There's also the problem of feminist politics, how can researchers orient to feminist politics? And is CA's emphasis on the minute details at the expense of broader political realities ? But then as Conversation Analysts (and feminist ones) have said if it matters to the participants which CA shows it does, then it should matter to the analyst.

Hmm. I don't know if I have got any further along in my thinking. I am really worried about spreading this out to 6,000 words and I'm worried it will be a disjointed mess. But there's no time for worrying, just for doing.