1.2.3 Summary
We’ve seen how analytic ‘how’ questions can be put into action, by asking ‘which terms’ and ‘what effect’ (and using ‘what else could they have used’ as a way of working out those ‘how does this work’ questions).
We’ve also begun to see some commonly observed devices or features of interaction, such as extreme case formulations, contrasts, and reported speech. Seeing how they have been shown to function in other data can be helpful in analysing your own data. But there are two things we must be careful of.
• One is to see how they function here, rather than assume that (say) extreme case formulations always work in the same way.
• Second, we need to avoid doing an analysis that is ‘device-led’ or revolves around ‘device spotting’. Knowing about devices can be a resource in analysis but it’s not the whole story.