A method in search of a problem: Conversation analysis, psychological science, and impact

In this talk, Professor Elizabeth Stokoe from The London School of Economics and Political Science will explore the power of conversation analysis to reveal ethical, moral, and sometimes problematic communication practices that have personal, legal, and societal consequences for those involved. As largely (but not exclusively) qualitative researchers, conversation analysts work with datasets of audio- and video-recorded social interaction ‘in the wild’; that is, conversations that are not simulated, role-played, or experimentally produced. Our research focuses on how different words, phrases, and grammar – as well as non-lexical features like ums, uhs, in-breaths and overlaps and embodied resources like gesture- all combine to shape what happens next in a conversation. While conversation analysis is sometimes regarded as the soggiest of ‘soft’ qualitative research, she will show that it not only challenges common communication myths (e.g., about body language or gender differences) but can reveal fundamental problems with research data across the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ spectrum. She considers all of this in the context of the downstream impact of research in conversation analysis in diverse sectors from government to conversational technologies.

About the speaker

Elizabeth Stokoe is Academic Director of Impact at The London School of Economics and Political Science where she is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. She conducts conversation analytic research to understand how talk works – from first dates to medical communication and from sales encounters to crisis negotiation. She has worked as an industry fellow at technology companies Typeform and at Deployed.

In addition to academic publishing, she is passionate about science communication, and has given talks at TED, Google, Microsoft, and The Royal Institution, and performed at Latitude and Cheltenham Science Festivals. Her books include Talk: The Science of Conversation (Little, Brown, 2018), Crisis Talk (Routledge, 2022, co-authored with Rein Ove Sikveland and Heidi Kevoe-Feldman), and Categories in Social Interaction (Routledge, 2025, co-authored with Kevin Whitehead and Geoffrey Raymond). Her research and biography were featured on BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific. During the Covid-19 pandemic she participated in a behavioural science sub-group of the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and is a member of Independent SAGE behaviour group. She is a Wired Innovation Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the British Psychological Society.