Conversation analysis (CA) developed from ethnomethodology, but has become an independent research program t hat seems to have left behind t he ethnomethodology's phenomenological orientation. This article examines a gradual transition between an explicative style of conversation analysis exemplified by many of Harvey Sacks's lectures in which he explicates Singular instances of activity, and an explanatory style in which abstract models are used to account for general features of conversational organization. The latter style is represented by Sacks, Scheglojf, and Jefferson's studies of turn taking in conversation. This paper argues that despite conversation analysis's adoption of positivistic vocabulary, it retains its ethnomethodological foundations. 'Ethnomethodological foundations' are furnished by ordinary activities. Social science research tends to naturalize the products of such activities, but ethnomethodology attempts to recover their local achievement. The technical phenomenon of 'transition relevance place' is an example of a conversation-analytic concept that invites ethnomethodological respecification.
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