Open Access

Arnulf Deppermann, Alexandra Gubina

• This paper deals with one object of coding that is particularly troublesome, the coding of actions. We argue that action-coding within the framework of Conversation Analysis (CA) necessarily leads to problems due to an inherent tension between criteria for good coding schemes and the properties of action in social interaction. While coding schemes require clear definitions of codes, their mutual exclusivity, irreversibility, comprehensiveness and stable coding units, action ascription is characterized by indexicality, multi-layeredness, potentially different understandings of producer vs. recipients, temporality, malleability of units and situatedness. Drawing on several studies involving action-coding, we discuss five recurrent problems of action-coding, which arise from properties of social interaction: the level of abstraction of the action-categorization, multiple and ambiguous actions, actions that do not receive uptake, crossover cases, and problems of data-segmentation. We explain the nature of the problems, present data-examples, and discuss possible solutions. Data are in German.