This letter explores the intricate historical and contemporary links between large language models (LLMs) and cognitive science through the lens of information theory, statistical language models, and socioanthropological linguistic theories. The emergence of LLMs highlights the enduring significance of information‐based and statistical learning theories in understanding human communication. These theories, initially proposed in the mid‐20th century, offered a visionary framework for integrating computational science, social sciences, and humanities, which nonetheless was not fully fulfilled at that time. The subsequent development of (...) sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, especially since the 1970s, provided critical perspectives and empirical methods that both challenged and enriched this framework. This letter proposes that two pivotal concepts derived from this development, metapragmatic function and indexicality, offer a fruitful theoretical perspective for integrating the semantic, textual, and pragmatic, contextual dimensions of communication, an amalgamation that contemporary LLMs have yet to fully achieve. The author believes that contemporary cognitive science is at a crucial crossroads, where fostering interdisciplinary dialogues among computational linguistics, social linguistics and linguistic anthropology, and cognitive and social psychology is in particular imperative. Such collaboration is vital to bridge the computational, cognitive, and sociocultural aspects of human communication and human−AI interaction, especially in the era of large language and multimodal models and human‐centric Artificial Intelligence (AI). (shrink)

Previous cross-cultural research has not undertaken in situ analysis of conversational style between groups in severe political conflict. The present study is a quantitative and ethnographic study of conversational interruptions in one Israeli-Palestinian `dialogue' event which took place during the Palestinian Uprising. Findings indicate that the previously documented divergent cultural styles of the two groups underwent a process of change. Specifically, the Israeli dugri interruptive style dominated interactions between Israelis and between Israelis and Palestinians. However, fewer interruptions were found in (...) the intergroup interaction. Conversely, the Palestinian musayra style of non-interruptions was more significant in the intragroup Palestinian-Palestinian interaction than in interaction with Israelis, where Palestinian interruptions dominated. The political context of events and the erosion of the musayra style are suggested as factors that explain results. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis of the ways in which knowledge is displayed, contested and renegotiated in the 2007 French presidential debate between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Knowledge displays can be achieved through a series of ‘neutral’ resources, such as informing, explanation or comment, or through face-damaging resources, such as questioning an unknowledgeable interlocutor to prove his inferior epistemic status and boost one’s own. The article focuses on this latter type of knowledge display where a knowledgeable participant engages in (...) question–answer sequences with an unknowledgeable respondent in front of a third party. The article also undertakes an analysis of the multimodal strategies employed by the participant to discredit the opponent. The article intends to contribute to the existent literature on epistemic stance by offering a prototypical example of incongruence between the epistemic status of the questioner and the epistemic stance he adopts. (shrink)

Using data from American emergency call centers, this article focuses on the coordination, and mutual relevance, of participants’ effort to manage two forms of unit completion – sequence closing and concluding the occasion in which the project was pursued. In doing so, we specify the import of sequence organization as one method for conducting, organizing, and resolving interactional projects participants may be said to pursue, and describe a range of possible relations between project completion and occasion closure and the locations (...) from which problems come to be introduced as parties move to resolve projects and close calls. As we show, sequence and occasion closings produced in the service of projects are fateful: they inexorably demand that the participants arrive at some alignment – or make visible their failure to do so – regarding the projects pursued in it, the status of those projects, and thus who, as a consequence, the parties are for another, that is, their ‘identities’. For strangers and familiars both, the management of projects and the manner in which closing is achieved matters. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar en la historia del español dos tipos de fórmulas de saludo, entendidas como unidades discursivas propias del acto de habla expresivo que sirven para abrir el canal comunicativo de las relaciones sociales. A través de la búsqueda sistemática en textos del CORDE de hasta finales del siglo XIX, intentaremos hallar (i) los factores sociopragmáticos que desempeñan el papel más importante en cada tipo de saludo, (ii) el origen paradigmático de cada fórmula, (iii) (...) su distribución sociocultural y las preferencias discursivas e informativas, y (iv) su nivel de predominio en determinadas épocas. (shrink)

This paper provides a provisional examination of Rod Watson ''s work and contributions to EM/CA/MCA, in part through a critique of misrepresentations of his arguments in secondary accounts of his work. The form of these misrepresentations includes adumbration and traducement of his arguments. Focusing on the reflexivity of category and sequence and turn-generated categories, we suggest that his analytic position within ethnomethodological fields is unique and remarkable, yet largely unacknowledged. We argue that a re-examination of the body of Watson ''s (...) work makes relevant explicit and appropriate acknowledgement of his contributions through his unconventional approach and his extension of prior works in novel and stimulating directions. (shrink)

This article critically examines the relations between epistemics in conversation analysis and linguistic and cognitivist conceptions of communicative interaction that emphasize information and information transfer. The epistemic program adheres to the focus on recorded instances of talk-in-interaction that is characteristic of CA, explicitly identifies its theoretical origins with ethnomethodology, and points to implications of its research for the social distribution of knowledge. However, despite such affiliations with CA and ethnomethodology, the EP is cognitivist in the way it emphasizes information exchange (...) as an underlying, extrasituational ‘driver’ in social interaction. To document how the EP draws upon cognitivist conceptions of information and knowledge, we review examples from the corpus of transcripts analyzed in key publications on epistemics. Our re-analysis casts doubt upon the way EP analysis invokes an underlying order that supposedly drives the evident sequential organization of those transcripts. (shrink)

People with early-to-mid stage dementia frequently attend groups that provide opportunities for socialising and engaging in group activities, such as quizzes. This article uses conversation analysis to investigate the interactional strategies that the staff use to initiate and keep these quizzes ‘on track’, and what they orient to as impediments and facilitators of quiz progression. Specifically, we outline how staff deal with incorrect or ‘non-answers’, and what happens when players have their own goals or ‘projects’ that do not align with (...) staff members’ orientations to the overarching activity completion. We reflect on the tensions that arise between doing interactional work to progress through the quiz, and how that goal can conflict with attending to the needs or wishes expressed by the person living with dementia, potentially resulting in threats to the ‘face’ of the quiz players. Data are taken from a corpus of 10 quizzes recorded in 4 different group settings in England. (shrink)

This study examines interactions in which students help each other with their learning during classroom instruction, forming groups in the process. From a conversation analytic perspective, helping is assumed to be a sequentially organized activity jointly accomplished by the participants. As an activity that proceeds alongside other ongoing classroom activities, helping can be conceived as part of a multiactivity that poses students with multi-faceted interactional and moral challenges. While previous research on helping in educational contexts has primarily focused on the (...) influence of helping on learning outcomes and social dynamics in helping interactions, the present study investigates how students cope with the intricacies of moral commitments inherent in helping as a concurrent activity. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, we aim to elaborate on how students’ dual involvements – i.e., their involvement in classroom activities while simultaneously providing help – manifest in the ways in which groups are constituted, maintained, and dissolved. The analyses reveal that both the compatibility of helping with the activity already in progress as well as the students’ problem definition are consequential for the sequential and bodily-spatial unfolding of the help interaction, inducing different arrangements that constitute a continuum, at each end of which there is a dominant orientation toward the shared space of helping or toward the individual/collective space. Furthermore, from a methodological perspective, our study aims to demonstrate the extent to which multimodal interaction analysis is applicable when examining naturally occurring groups, in this case, in interactive processes of helping. The study is based on a data corpus that comprises video recordings of mathematics and German lessons from two fifth-grade classrooms. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo describe una tipología de saludos y despedidas del español de México basada en datos observacionales de hablantes jóvenes del municipio de Metepec. El artículo también hace un contraste de datos observacionales y datos intuitivos referentes a los formatos de saludos y despedidas. En cuanto a la tipología, los saludos y las despedidas reportados se categorizan en tres y cuatro tipos respectivamente (saludos: hola, vocativos, la construcción interrogativa ¿Qué …?; despedidas: adiós, bye, imperativo del verbo cuidar y (...) despedidas temporales), y cada categoría cuenta con características y subcategorías particulares. La comparación entre los datos observacionales y los intuitivos en general indica que los datos observacionales no coinciden con los datos intuitivos; sin embargo, al ahondar en su contraste se identifican algunas similitudes particulares. (shrink)

Educational assessment and marking, in particular, give teachers considerable power over students and their future possibilities. Analysing a teachers' meeting discussing school reports in a secondary school showed that marking involves teachers' accountability to colleagues. An examination of the situated interpretations and explanations of unsatisfactory school marks also showed how various discursive devices were used for building a factual account. Confirmed expectations, extreme case formulations, introducing corroborating witnesses, the deployment of cited others, defining exceptional cases, detailed descriptions and narratives, and (...) the use of different accounts all served to emphasize the role of the students and hide the teachers from view. In addition, teachers' joint constructions had practical consequences for remedial interventions. Decisions for intervention were dependent on the accounts given. (shrink)

RESUMO De acordo com Bakhtin, o dialogismo polifônico, um princípio geral para que haja um avanço de conhecimento, é bem representado no romance literário e mais comumente em narrativas, nas quais diferentes “vozes” podem ser expressas. Assim, neste artigo analisamos narrativas baseadas em imagens e construídas por trinta crianças, entre 5 e 8 anos de idade, falantes de francês, narrativas essas produzidas antes e depois de uma conversa sobre as causas dos eventos. As análises tiveram como foco a habilidade das (...) crianças de fazer diferentes vozes serem ouvidas, particularmente as vozes dos personagens, as quais as crianças fizeram ser ouvidas não apenas por meio do discurso direto e indireto, mas também por meio de expressões dos seus estados interiores, como crenças, intenções e sentimentos. Os resultados mostram tanto um desenvolvimento da habilidade das crianças de fazer com que essas vozes sejam ouvidas em suas narrativas, quanto um papel facilitador da troca conversacional em suas expressões. Argumentamos que esses resultados dão suporte para se considerar o lugar central que o diálogo ocupa no panorama geral da abordagem bakhtiniana. (shrink)

Le dévoilement de soi occupe une part significative des interventions initiales des fils de discussions sur les plateformes numériques de soutien social. Si ce type d’intervention répond au besoin des participants de s’exprimer, de partager leurs émotions, il pose des défis aux interlocuteurs en raison de l’absence de demande explicite de soutien. L’analyse des interactions d’un forum de soutien social en ligne pour personnes atteintes d’un cancer et leurs proches (2017-2018) vise à comprendre comment ce partage d’émotions et d’expériences est (...) interprété et répondu par les pairs, évaluant le cadre interactionnel activé dans de tels contextes. Les résultats montrent que si des actes de prescriptions de comportements et d’attitudes non sollicitées sont présents dans la grande majorité des fils, ils s’articulent finement à des actes d’empathie, qui permettent d’atténuer la force intrusive du soutien. L’analyse révèle aussi comment la formulation du dévoilement de soi influence le soutien offert (empathique/prescriptif). Au final, la présentation des formes d’accomplissement du soutien en réaction au dévoilement de soi permet d’envisager des pistes d’action pour favoriser l’engagement et le bien-être psychosocial des membres de ces forums. (shrink)

This article examines the management of participation in calls to radio phone-in programmes. In the broadcast media, there are increasing occasions for interaction between `professionals' and lay members of the public, particularly within what have come to be known generically as public participation programmes. People call in to phone-in programmes for various reasons; to give opinions, to get advice, and often to ask questions. In the particular phone-ins analysed here, callers are invited to put questions to leading politicians of the (...) day about their election policies. In many institutional contexts for talk the role of questioner has been found to be a more powerful interactional position than the role of answerer. Through an analysis of the organization of the phone-in calls, this article argues that the potentially powerful discourse role of questioner is interactionally `defused' through the participatory framework of the call. The author shows how the mediated interactional structure of these calls limits the range of possible actions available to callers in their institutional position as questioners, and thus produces constraints on what callers can actually achieve in this particular context for institutional talk. (shrink)

Maintaining intersubjectivity is crucial for accomplishing coordinated social action. Although conversational repair is a recognised defence of intersubjectivity and routinely used to address ostensible sources of trouble in social interaction, it is less clear how people address more equivocal trouble. This study uses conversation analysis to examine preschool classroom interaction, focusing on practices used to identify and address such trouble. Repair is found to be a recurrent frontline practice for addressing equivocal trouble, occasioning space for further information that might enable (...) identifying a specific trouble source. Where further information is forthcoming, a range of strategies are subsequently employed to address the trouble. Where this is not possible or does not succeed, a secondary option is to progress a broader activity-in-progress. This allows for the possibility of another opportunity to identify and address the trouble. Given that misunderstandings can jeopardise interactants’ ability to mutually accomplish courses of action, these practices defend intersubjectivity against the threat of equivocal trouble. (shrink)

This paper examines some textual devices that writers may use to pre-structure the activities of their readers. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used as an 'explicating device' to explore how writers can provide reading instructions, and how these can be experienced by readers. Structuring devices like paragraphs and sections, and hypertextual elements like notes and references are investigated in detail. In this way, the paper aspires to contribute to 'an ethnomethodology of textual practices'.

The present study reports on the use of a linguistic category "interrogative," which has been traditionally associated with the act of questioning, and its use in argument talk in Japanese. Based on the observation that interrogative utterances in argument data are regularly followed by non-answers, it is argued that interrogative utterances in argument sequences may not be designed/interpreted as doing questioning. Such use of interrogatives can become an orderly practice to which participants orient themselves in social activities recognizable as arguments. (...) However, though an answer is not expected, the recipient invariably provides some form of response, or the initial speaker seeks such a response when none is provided. Thus the nature of interrogatives as a grammatical category seems to reside in the basic structural unit of social interaction [recipient-oriented action]-[response]. In general, this study is intended to show the dynamically interlocking relationship between grammar and interaction by exploring the intricate interplay between a local action for which interrogative grammar is employed, and the sequential environment and activity framework in which the action takes place. (shrink)

This study examines the situated use of rules and the social practices people deploy to correct projectable rule violations in pétanque playing activities. Drawing on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and using naturally occurring video recordings, this article investigates socially organized occasions of rule use, and more particularly how rules for turn-taking at play are reflexively established in and through interaction. The alternation of players in pétanque is dependent on and consequential for the progressivity of the game and it is a (...) practical problem for the players when a participant projects to break a rule of “who plays next”. The empirical analysis shows that formulating rules is a practice for indicating and correcting incipient violations of who plays next, which retrospectively invoke and establish the situated expectations that constitute the game as that particular game. Focusing on the anticipative corrections of projectable violations of turn-taking rules, this study revisits the concept of rules, as they are played into being, from a social and interactional perspective. We argue and demonstrate that rules are not prescriptions of game conduct, but resources that reflexively render the players’ conducts intelligible as playing the game they are engaging in. (shrink)

In this article, other-repetition after informing statements is investigated in a corpus of institutional encounters between native Norwegian clerks and non-native clients. Such repetition is used to display receipt of information. A plain repeat with falling intonation is described as a display of hearing, whereas a repeat plus a final response particle, ‘ja’, constitutes a claim of understanding. Repeats with high-tone response particles in addition display emotional stance, such as surprise or interest, and these are primarily exploited for the purposes (...) of topic organization. In the cross-linguistic context of the current encounters, the native speakers are shown to use receipts as embedded corrections of the non-native speaker’s utterances. The repeats also have certain formal features that are characteristic of the situation, such as less pronominalization and ellipsis, and this is explained as a procedure to ensure the joint construal of linguistic form. (shrink)

Meetings differ from ordinary conversation in that they have an agenda that specifies in advance the topics to be addressed during the meeting. However, the introduction of these topics needs to be locally accomplished and recognized by the participants as agenda items. This article presents some characteristic practices used for introducing agenda-based topics. It shows that they rely on the known-in-advance status of the items, and are presented by the chair as unilateral announcements. They exploit and invoke the written agenda (...) in several ways. The announcements are often short phrasal constructions, just citing the written title of the agenda point. Furthermore, a gaze down at the written document is used as a public display that the introduction is related to the agenda. In contrast to this practice of introducing agenda items, topics not specified by the agenda are introduced by suggestions and questions that present the introduction as contingent on acceptance by the co-participants. The analysis sheds light on the ways in which institutional talk-in-interaction is permeated by the formulations and logic of written documents. (shrink)

This article examines the common-sense and methodical ways in which “the citizen” is produced and enrolled as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning. Using Membership Categorization Analysis, we explicate how the categorization procedures in the Foreword of a draft regional planning policy interactionally produce the identity of “the citizen” and “civic values and obligations” in relation to geographic place and institutional categories. Furthermore, we show how positioning practices establish a relationship between authors (government) and readers (citizens) where both are (...) ascribed with the same moral values and obligations toward the region. Hence, “the citizen” as an active participant in “sustainable” regional planning is viewed as a practical accomplishment that is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the task of producing orderliness in “text-in-interaction.”. (shrink)

This article examines patients’ calls to three different GP services in the United Kingdom. Using conversation analysis, combined with coding of 447 calls, we studied the role of thank you in closing sequences, focusing on their timing and order in relation to service outcome. We show first how patients withhold thank you in orientation to an absent summary or specification of service: patients are more likely to initiate thank you if the receptionist volunteers such a summary. Second, we show there (...) is variation in how appropriately participants project the termination of calls using thank you. Finally, while thank you serves a primary role in managing the termination of calls, the timing, order and design of thank you can also display patient satisfaction. We discuss our findings in terms of service encounters more generally, including implications for larger scale analysis. (shrink)

Sexual consent is advocated around the world to reduce sexual assault. The widespread affirmative consent model emphasizes a need for unambiguous consent. In this paper, we contribute to a deeper understanding of how ambiguities in the initiations of sexual activities are routinely solved to achieve consent. Drawing on conversation analytic research on joint decision-making, and a dataset of 80 cases of sexual initiation in contemporary TV-series and movies, we investigate the interactional practices by which sexual activities are presented as consensual (...) and how consent is achieved across sequences of interaction. We found there to be social advantages of synchronous initiation, compared to sequential verbal initiations, which were associated with various social vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities could however be circumvented by two practices, each of which made use of a distinct combination of verbal and embodied resources. While ambiguities exist, our results oppose the idea of sexual consent as a practically hopeless and awkward endeavor. Instead, consent consists of joint action that is achieved through recognizable and systematic ways. (shrink)

This article investigates account episodes in Italian family dinner conversations and illustrates how sequential patterns and participation are organized in terms of preferences indexical of moral ideology and moral order. Accounts have been mostly examined as speech acts abstracted from embedding sequential environment; this article shows that different design features of the priming move in account episodes retrospectively define different aspects of a situation as problematic and prospectively activate the relevance for distinctive remedial moves. On an ideological level, narrative elicitations (...) as priming moves and accounts as remedial moves index a moral perspective that promotes moral reasoning and thus the negotiation of norms. In addition, such moves realize a practice of morality that tends to be inquisitory vs condemnatory, offering the benefit of the doubt prior to guilt allocation. In conclusion, the discursive mechanics of accountability constitutes a medium for reproduction of, and innovation in, the moral order. (shrink)

Families have a right to privacy, but we know little about how the public–private boundary is negotiated at the micro level in educational settings. Adopting ethnomethodology, the paper examines how talk about the home situation was occasioned and managed in ten parent–teacher conferences in early childhood education and care (ECEC), with a special focus on the ECEC teacher’s strategies for eliciting family information. The paper demonstrates a continuum of interactional practices which, in various degrees, make parents accountable for providing family (...) information. The analysis shows that parents both volunteer and provide the pursued information, thus actively orienting to the norm of visibility in child rearing. However, although both parties orient to questioning and fishing as business as usual, the parents’ accounts sometimes had an excusing quality or they adopted a reserved communication style, suggesting a certain ambivalence as well. The paper outlines different ways of understanding the present partnership ideal in parent–teacher teacher cooperation with implications for the negotiation of privacy. The paper also addresses training, which can contribute to staff and student reflections on the management of the public–private boundary. (shrink)

This article offers an anthropological perspective on autism, a condition at once neurological and social, which complements existing psychological accounts of the disorder, expanding the scope of inquiry from the interpersonal domain, in which autism has been predominantly examined, to the socio-cultural one. Persons with autism need to be viewed not only as individuals in relation to other individuals, but as members of social groups and communities who act, displaying both social competencies and difficulties, in relation to socially and culturally (...) ordered expectations of behavior. The article articulates a socio-cultural approach to perspective-taking in autism in three social domains: participating in conversational turn-taking and sequences; formulating situational scenarios; and interpreting socio-cultural meanings of indexical forms and behavior. Providing ethnographic data on the everyday lives of high-functioning children with autism and Asperger syndrome, the article outlines a cline of competence across the three domains, from most success in conversational turn-taking to least in inferring indexical meanings. Implications of these abilities and limitations are considered for theoretical approaches to society and culture, illuminating how members of social groups are at once shaped by, and are agents of, social life and cultural understanding. (shrink)

This study examines interactional sequences in which students make assertions about topic-relevant matters in classroom interactions. Using a Conversation Analytical approach, I show how the students’ knowledge claims lead to negotiations of sequential and epistemic rights to make such claims. Through these negotiations, the students upgrade their epistemic stance by repeating or backing their claims with accounts and providing evidence of them. The teachers’ acceptance or rejection of the students’ initiatives displays an orientation to the sequential and topical relevance of (...) the information provided by the students. This study contributes to a better understanding of student initiatives in the classroom, a topic that until now has received scarce attention. Additionally, it contributes knowledge about the negotiation of epistemic authority in relation to assertions and their responses, which may have more general implications for the study of talk-in-interaction. (shrink)

This study draws upon naturalistic ethnographic data to expand current understandings regarding the socio-communicative capabilities and challenges of children with autism spectrum disorders in mid-childhood. Affording a view of the children’s spontaneous interactions within naturally occurring family and community settings, the study explores a range of discursive resources utilized by the children to accomplish socially reciprocal positive politeness practices in tandem with others. Emphasizing contextualized deployment of politeness forms in interaction, the practice-based conception developed here construes positive politeness as a (...) discursive process encompassing both socio-cultural and interpersonal knowledge/skills; and contributes to a perspective in which social and communicative realms are conceptualized as integrated domains of functioning. (shrink)

This article presents a study of the discourse characteristics of interaction within a virtual community. The data are from the text-based chat forum of an online community of learners and teachers of English. The forum is the meeting place for community members, and is an international site of language use with participants from a range of linguistic backgrounds. Within this context, some pertinent themes are investigated which relate to a relatively recent form of discourse, synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication. The discussion (...) centres on the interplay between the technological attributes of the medium and the linguistic, discourse and sociocultural conditions within which the participants interact. How do these elements combine to shape the discourse? This question is addressed with reference to the cohesive feature of conversational floor. Because there is a lack of coordination of turn transfer in SCMC interaction, conversational floor emerges as an organizing principle in preference to models of conversation based on turn taking. (shrink)

What is the relation between words and action? How does a person decide, based on what someone is saying, what would be an appropriate response? We argue that every move combines independent semiotic features, to be interpreted under an assumption that social behavior is goal directed; responding to actions is not equivalent to describing them; and describing actions invokes rights and duties for which people are explicitly accountable. We conclude that interaction does not involve a ‘binning’ procedure in which the (...) stream of conduct is sorted into discrete action types. Our argument is grounded in data from recordings of talk-in-interaction. (shrink)

While courtroom examinations are often recognized as a distinct speech-exchange system, little is known about how participants do an examination beyond its unique turn-taking system. This article attempts to shed some light on this issue by studying the question design during the direct examination in an American criminal court case using Conversation Analysis. It shows that attorneys use different question forms compared to casual conversation: declaratives are far less prevalent and questions are often designed as requests for action. In addition, (...) attorneys make use of forms that are not found in other types of interaction, such as the tag correct. The way in which attorneys design their questions additionally shows that the rules of the courtroom have procedural consequences for how the interaction is done. But these rules have to be enacted, and it is in their violation that participants bring about categories such as leading questions. (shrink)

Turns-at-talk are fundamental units of participation in talk-in-interaction, and turn-constructional-units are the basic building blocks for turns. Possible completion of a TCU is, in principle, the possible completion of the turn, but multi-unit turns are not uncommon, and participants have practices for constructing multi-unit turns and for recognizing them in the course of their production. This article offers an account of one practice usable by speakers and recipients to convey and recognize the designed completion of a multi-TCU turn and/or a (...) multi-turn sequence in which ‘answering’ is being done: returning to, or ‘re-using’, a word or phrase from the start of the turn or sequence, whether articulated by same or different speaker, whether used to refer to same or different referents. This practice is one of the resources by which the overall structural organization of an interactional unit and its local realization are mutually realized. (shrink)

Performance appraisal interviews are carried out on the basis of known-in-advance written materials such as preparation forms and interview guides. This article demonstrates how participants manage interviews by following a question–answer–response format fit to address interview guide entries one at a time. Two recurring supervisor responses to employees’ talk about problems in work are investigated: positive prediction and advice. It is suggested that these responses serve to establish supervisor authority and deter participants from discussing issues raised in employee answers and (...) thus go against norms emanating from literature on management communication. Results obtained in interviews are put down in writing along the way and subsequently summarized in documents to be signed by both participants, that is, employee and supervisor. The article demonstrates how participants use positive prediction and advice to coordinate talk-in-interaction with handling written materials and note taking, as well as formulating conclusions suitable for writing. The analyses shed light on how talk in an institutional context becomes a middle-medium, that is, a bridge between writings, and how this process is accomplished in turn-taking procedures. (shrink)

The article begins with an effort to clarify and differentiate a variety of terms used by analysts in dealing with mentions of persons in conversation and other forms of talk-in-interaction — such terms as person-reference, identifying, describing, categorizing, and the like. This effort leads to the observation that `reference to persons' and `membership categorization' are quite distinct sets of practices, with most reference to persons not being done by membership categories, and most uses of membership categorization devices being in the (...) service of actions other than referring. Two interactional sequences whose analysis turns on a connection to talk earlier in the occasion are then examined; first, to establish what is going on interactionally without respect to the mentioning of persons, and then as exercises in examining the various ways person-reference and membership categorization can figure in a stretch of interaction. (shrink)

The material interrelations between bodies and objects are a wide, worthwhile and absorbing field, which has not been sufficiently examined yet. Focusing on such interrelations within air travel, this article contributes to the exploration of this field. It delineates that such interrelations do not simply happen, but that they have to be accomplished continuously by different participants with a certain risk to fail at many points. Within mobilities, such processes of interrelating occur under the specific circumstances of a moving vehicle. (...) Based on empirical data from an ethnographic study on air travel, the paper is concerned with the ongoing dynamics of body-object-interrelations. Based on this analysis, it suggests emphasizing the continuous modification that material assemblages built of people and objects undergo even when “only” staying immobile during a flight. Passengers do not simply enter and exit a vehicle staying identical with themselves. Rather, they are continuously adapting to a material infrastructure that shapes and adjusts their corporeal needs and capacities, including their senses. (shrink)

BackgroundHealth decisions occur in a context with omnipresent social influences. Information concerning what other patients decide may present certain interventions as more desirable than others.ObjectivesTo explore how physicians refer to what other people decide in conversations about the relevancy of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation or do-not-attempt-resuscitation orders.MethodsWe recorded forty-three physician–patient admission interviews taking place in a hospital in French-speaking Switzerland, during which CPR is discussed. Data was analysed with conversation analysis.ResultsReference to what other people decide in regards to CPR is used five (...) times, through reported speech. The reference is generic, and employed as a resource to deal with trouble encountered with the patient’s preference, either because it is absent or potentially incompatible with the medical recommendation. In our data, it is a way for physicians to present decisional paths and to steer towards the relevancy of DNAR orders. By calling out to a sense of membership, it builds towards the patient embracing norms that are associated with a desirable or relevant social group.ConclusionsIntroducing DNAR decisions in terms of what other people opt for is a way for physicians to bring up the eventuality of allowing natural death in a less overt way. Formulating treatment choices in terms of what other people do has implications in terms of supporting autonomous and informed decision making, since it nudges patients towards conformity with what is presented as the most preferable choice on the basis of social norms. (shrink)

This article presents an applied discussion of the possibility of integrating conversation analysis (CA) methodology into that of machine learning. The aim is to improve the detection of that which resembles disengagement in the interaction between a robot and a human. We offer a novel analytical assemblage at the heart of the two disciplines, and namely on the level of the annotation schemes provided by conversation analysis transcription methods. First, we demonstrate that the need for a stable structure in establishing (...) an interaction scenario and in designing robot behaviours does not prevent the emergence of ordinariness or creativity among the participants engaged in this interaction. Secondly, based on an actual case, we emphasize the possibility of systematicness in CA transcription to support the choice (a) of the categories targeted by prediction methods and defined by the annotation scheme, and (b) of the verbal and non-verbal features used to create prediction models. (shrink)

This article presents an applied discussion of the possibility of integrating conversation analysis (CA) methodology into that of machine learning. The aim is to improve the detection of that which resembles disengagement in the interaction between a robot and a human. We offer a novel analytical assemblage at the heart of the two disciplines, and namely on the level of the annotation schemes provided by conversation analysis transcription methods. First, we demonstrate that the need for a stable structure in establishing (...) an interaction scenario and in designing robot behaviours does not prevent the emergence of ordinariness or creativity among the participants engaged in this interaction. Secondly, based on an actual case, we emphasize the possibility of systematicness in CA transcription to support the choice (a) of the categories targeted by prediction methods and defined by the annotation scheme, and (b) of the verbal and non-verbal features used to create prediction models. (shrink)

Les interpellations entre personnages sont fréquentes dans les comédies comme dans les tragédies latines. De manière générale, comme il s’agit d’un corpus théâtral, les termes d’adresse servent à indiquer au public qui sont les personnages en scène et quels sont les rapports qui les unissent. Suivant le genre littéraire considéré, l’interpellation a cependant une fonction différente. Dans la comédie, les appellatifs contribuent à faire avancer l’action, en agissant sur l’interlocuteur de différentes manières : dès le début de l’interaction, ils permettent (...) d’indiquer clairement et économiquement à l’interlocuteur quelle est la place que le locuteur revendique sur l’axe vertical. Stratégiquement, les appellatifs peuvent en outre servir à compenser un FTA ou à soutenir un FFA. Enfin, ils ont une fonction phatique de renforcement du lien communicationnel : ils permettent à la fois de soutenir l’attention de l’autre, mais aussi de l’accueillir dans le dialogue en le reconnaissant. Le niveau de langue peu soutenu de ce genre littéraire fait par ailleurs la part belle aux interpellations les moins marquées, comme le nom propre, ou le pronom de la deuxième personne. Les personnages tragiques à l’inverse n’ont pas à faire progresser une action qui est écrite d’avance. C’est en effet un mythe au déroulement inéluctable qui est représenté sur scène. Quand les personnages s’interpellent les uns les autres, ils le font dans des termes solennels, à l’aide d’un titre ou d’un terme qui indique la fonction de l’interlocuteur, ou à travers des périphrases qui le situent dans son histoire familiale. (shrink)

This article describes an adjacency-pair organized course of action in the institutional context of customers calling an electronics repair facility to request the status of equipment they have previously sent in for repair. Relative to the majority of adjacency-pair sequences described in previous research, this course of action is rare in that it is essentially composed of three turns, including status solicitation, status response, and acceptance/rejection of status response. After defending this finding, we situate and discuss its significance relative to (...) prior research – in both ordinary and institutional contexts – on adjacency-pair sequence organization, including implications for sequence-based relevance rules, such as preference organization. Finally, we outline a possible general explanation for why some initiating actions set in motion essentially three-turn courses of action, and offer a candidate example in ordinary conversation. (shrink)