Conversation analysis for social justice

Conversation analysis (CA) is often seen as focused on the mundane and minute features of talk-in-interaction without concern for broader issues of social justice. Contrary to these preconceptions, however, CA has been exploring (in)justice, in/exclusion, and (in)equality since its inception. This article offers an overview of CA’s contributions to social justice based on a survey of 168 CA-for-social-justice studies published over the past 50 years. It provides a summary of major CA findings regarding participant orientations to (in)justice and practices for reproducing and resisting injustice in interaction. This is followed by a synthesized review of key methodological features of CA-for-social-justice studies and an illustration of how social justice issues may be explored within the CA framework. The illustration features conversations about gender (in)equality and in/exclusion video-recorded in adult second language classrooms in the U.S., and it showcases CA’s ability to illuminate tacit reproductions of injustice in institutional talk. The article concludes with a reflection on key methodological issues and pathways for future work, including in the form of multimodal, longitudinal, and reflective CA-for-social-justice research.