CLIC Affiliated Labs (Year-Round)
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 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 (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 2026 Courses
Asian 200 Research Methods in East Asian Linguistics
Instructor: Professor Hongyin Tao, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Days/Times: 2:00pm-3:15pm Rolfe Hall Room 3120
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.
CM125 Talk and Social Institutions
Instructor: Professor Tanya Stivers, Department of Sociology
Days/Times: Tuesday and Thursday 2-3:15pm
Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour. Practices of communication and social interaction in number of major institutional sites in contemporary society. Setting varies but may include emergency services, police and courts, medicine, news interviews, and political oratory.
Sociology 289 Practicum in Conversation Analysis: Data Analysis
Instructor: Professor Giovanni Rossi, Department of 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.
ASIAN 100 Methods in Asian Linguistics
Instructor: Professor Hongyin Tao, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Days/Times: 11:00am-12:15pm Bunche Hall Room 3178
Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Research methodologies for dealing with Asian languages, with emphases on bibliographical, data, and professional resources, issues in analyzing and presenting language examples, explaining language phenomena beyond what is observed, cross-linguistic comparisons, oral presentation skills, and writing reports in organized ways. P/NP or letter grading.
Winter 2027 Courses
Sociology 124A/244A Conversation Structures I
Instructor: Professor Steven E. Clayman, Department of Sociology
Days/Times: TBD
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.
Sociology 289 Practicum in Conversation Analysis: Data Analysis
Instructor: Professor Tanya Stivers, Department of 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.
Spring 2027 Courses
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.
Sociology 244B: Conversational Structures / Conversation Analysis II
Instructor: Professor Giovanni Rossi, Department of Sociology
Days/Times: TBD
Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Requisite: course C244A. Continuation of introduction to some structures basic to organization of conversational interaction: organization of repair, and practices of word selection and reference to persons, places, time, and action. S/U or letter grading.