In this chapter, I reflect on how to go about applying Conversation Analysis (hereafter CA). When applying CA, we are concerned with the management of social institutions in interaction. However, the applied nature of our work means going beyond description, using the theories, principles, and methods of CA to address or ‘solve’ professional/practical ‘problems’ with roots or bases in interaction. For example, addressing public-health challenges, such as how physicians can resist ‘pressure’ for unwarranted antibiotic prescriptions during consultations for respiratory illnesses; or solving difficult or sensitive organizational tasks, such as how best to ask callers about their backgrounds in the service of ethnic monitoring on a telephone helpline. Here, the analyst is guided by professional/practical ‘problems’ or concerns. In the absence of existing guidance, I propose six key methodological steps for applying CA. These steps characterize the different kinds of ‘backstage’ and ‘frontstage’ work that support our attempts to address such ‘problems,’ and to identify and share ‘solutions.’ Along the way I provide illustrative examples, both historical and contemporary. Finally, I highlight some of the ethical and moral dilemmas we might need to navigate in the service of such work.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the role of applied Conversation Analysis in the overarching area of dementia care for minority ethnic groups in Europe: people who often do not receive the same quality of dementia care as majority populations. Analysis of an episode from a video-recorded, interpreter-mediated dementia assessment and accounts from ethnographic interviews and informal conversations with stakeholders are used as a vehicle for discussing the role of applied CA to intervene in the problem of inequity in care for minority ethnic persons with dementia. Even when CA studies, for example on dementia, get published and researchers present numerous important implications for relevant stakeholders, the road towards actual application is often long and complex. This chapter builds on the international collaboration between CA scholars and different stakeholders conducted over a period extending for ten years, also resulting in an impact at a societal level in terms of recommendations not just within the scientific community but also at an international, political level.

Wellbeing is generally conceptualized as being essentially inner to an individual; discourse analysis would seem to have nothing to say here. In this chapter, we take the case of ageing and wellbeing as a case study for examining just what micro-analysis of interaction can offer us in terms of both understanding and researching states like wellbeing in later life. Drawing on the micro-analytic toolbox of conversation analysis, this chapter helps us see how wellbeing can be at least partly co-constructed in everyday interactions, specifically in quality interactions. The chapter examines some of the key findings of research into quality interaction among older populations in care settings and the links made to wellbeing. It then turns its attention to everyday settings in the community, still the majority experience for older people but the minority focus of interactionally orientated research studies. Discussions of such studies are interwoven with detailed analyses of naturally occurring audio-recorded interactions in a hair salon with older clients. Wellbeing, it is argued, is partly achieved through both the immediate fulfillment offered through talk – whether laughing together or telling troubles – and the positive identities that are afforded. The wider research implications are then discussed, in particular with respect to the ways in which interviews are used and the kinds of setting that need to be studied.