Courses & Labs | Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture

CLIC Affiliated Labs (Year-Round)

Conversation Analysis Working Group

Conversation Analysis Working Group (CAWG)

Faculty Coordinator: Professor Steven Clayman, Department of Sociology

Days/Times: Thursday 5:00-6:30 PM (meetings not held every week)

Location: Haines Hall (see website)

This group is run by faculty in the Sociology Department, and is facilitated by student coordinators. In 2022-2023 the faculty lead is Professor Steven Clayman, and the student assistants are Lor Martin and Brianna McKenna. In order to receive announcements of upcoming events, please email lor [at] ucla [dot] edu or brmckenna [at] ucla [dot] edu.

The CA Working Group continues to foster the growing community of conversation analytic scholars through a facilitation of scholarly exchange between faculty and graduate students within the Department. Our primary goal is to establish and strengthen ties between graduate students and faculty working in our field within the Department of Sociology. At present the CA faculty have a range of courses and data analysis seminars detailing the substance and methodology of conversation analysis. The working group is distinctive in providing a forum in which students can try out ideas for potential publications, showcase their own data sets, and test run relatively developed papers for conferences and symposia. Correspondingly, the working group provides students and faculty with an opportunity to witness and provide critical feedback on works in progress by faculty and other scholars.

Co-Operative Action Lab

Faculty Organizer: Professor Marjorie H. Goodwin, Department of Anthropology

Days/Times: Wednesdays 10:00-12:00 PM • Fall 2023 schedule

Location: Zoom

Website: https://colab.anthro.ucla.edu/

Lab participants will present work in progress related to the theme of collaborative action. Work will be informed by Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, Linguistic Anthropology, Symbolic Interaction, and Ethnography in its broadest sense. We will promote a spirit of collaborative work in which we can not only strive to improve our individual research projects, but seek to work on group projects that integrate our perspectives from diverse fields (Anthropology, Applied Linguistics, Sociology, Education, Cognitive Science, etc.). We will also post our own recent work as well as articles that lab members want to share with the group. Check webpage for details on presentations and start dates each term.

Please contact Professor Goodwin at mgoodwin@anthro.ucla.edu with questions and schedule information.

Communicative Mind Lab

Communicative Mind Laboratory

Faculty Organizer: Professor Rick Dale, Department of Communication

Days/Times: Varies

Location: Rolfe Hall

The Communicative Mind Laboratory (Co-Mind) in the Department of Communication at UCLA conducts research on the cognitive science of communication. Our focus is on dynamics—how communication and cognition are coordinated in time. The lab’s research involves a diversity of methods, including corpus and large-scale data analysis, behavioral experimentation, and computational modeling. We are located in Rolfe Hall.

For information about lab’s activities and events, please visit https://co-mind.org.

Anthropology Discourse Lab

Anthropology Discourse Lab (ANTHRO 254)

This lab provides opportunities for students and faculty to share their ongoing research and to present original work-in-progress such as conference papers or thesis or dissertation work, and to receive productive commentary. The lab also provides a professionalization series for all graduate students — from proposal writing, to fieldwork method discussion, to the last years of writing the dissertation and applying for jobs. This lab can be taken for course credit by or can be attended on an informal basis. In order to receive announcements of upcoming labs meetings, you can join the listserv by emailing discourselab [at] lists [dot] ucla [dot] edu

Fall 2025 Courses

ASIAN 200 Research Methods in East Asian Linguistics

Asian 200 Research Methods in East Asian Linguistics

Instructor: Professor Hongyin Tao, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures

Days/Times: 3:30pm-4:45pm Royce Hall 162; 3:30pm-4:45pm Rolfe Hall 3115

Seminar, three hours. Research methodologies for East Asian languages, with emphasis on compiling bibliographic data and using professional resources for research. Examination of issues in analyzing language examples, theoretical implications of linguistic data, and applications of functional linguistics in order to explain language phenomena. S/U or letter grading.

SOCIOL 124A/244A: Conversational Structures I

Sociology 124A/244A Conversation Structures I

Instructor: Professor Steven E. Clayman, Department of Sociology

Days/Times: Tuesday and Thursday 11-12:15pm, Tuesdays 4-5:50pm

Conversational interaction is a primary arena for language use. The course has two primary aims: (1) to provide a state-of-the-art survey of what is known about the fundamental organization of human interaction with an emphasis on ordinary conversation, and (2) to introduce conversation analytic methods and develop your skills for analyzing naturally-occurring interactional episodes.

SOCIOL 289 Practicum in Conversation Analysis: Data Analysis

COMM 126 Evolution of Interpersonal Communication

Communication 126 Evolution of Interpersonal Communication

Instructor: Professor Greg Bryant, Department of Communication

Days/Times: Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:45PM

Lecture, four hours. Examination of current issues in interpersonal communication from perspectives of evolutionary psychology and biology. Topics include coevolution of signaler and receiver adaptations, nonverbal communication, courtship behavior, miscommunication between sexes, implied language use, and deception. Letter grading.

Winter 2026 Courses

SOCIOL 244B Conversational Structures II

Sociology 244B Conversational Structures II

Instructor: Professor Giovanni Rossi

Days/Times: TBD

Conversational Structures II (244B) is the second part of the Conversation Analysis methods sequence, building on and complementing the first part (124A/244A). The second part is offered as a graduate course only. Some units delve deeper into topics covered in the first part, including fundamental orders of interaction (e.g., adjacency pairs, action formation, epistemics) and basic types of action (e.g., questions, requests, offers). Other units address new topics, or topics that were just introduced in the first part, including other orders of interaction (e.g. reference, conversational repair), types of action (e.g., assessments, thanking), and aspects of meaningful conduct beyond words (e.g., prosody, visible behavior).

SOCIOL 289 Practicum in Conversation Analysis: Data Analysis

SOCIOL 19 Fiat Lux Seminar: Body Language in Conversation

Instructor: Professor Giovanni Rossi

Days/Times: TBD

Popular culture is filled with anecdotes about the ways in which body language reveals our intentions, gives off feelings, or says more than words. But what do we really know about how the body talks? How do we study this empirically? In this seminar, we approach body language from the perspective of social interaction. We examine people’s use of eye gaze, facial expression, head movement, hand gesture, and body posture. We ask how the meaning of what we say is intertwined with what our body does; how a pointing gesture or an eyebrow movement alone can accomplish recognizable actions; and how visible behavior contributes to the organization of social interaction. Activities include the analysis of video data.

Spring 2026 Courses

SOCIOL 289 Practicum in Conversation Analysis: Data Analysis

Sociology 289 Practicum in Conversation Analysis: Data Analysis

Instructor: Professor Steven Clayman, Sociology

Days/Times: Thursdays 3:30-5:00pm.

This course requires completion of courses SOCIOL 244A and SOCIOL 244B. Visiting researchers might be exempted from this requirement. Please email the course instructor for more information.

SOCIOL 244C Conversational Structures III