Editorial: Language, Interaction, and Culture

Abstract

Editorial Language, Interaction, and Culture This edition of Issues in Applied Linguistics is dedicated to the proceedings of the First UCLA Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture. As ial turns increasingly toward the interdisciplinary study of language, this set of articles brings together representative work from the fields of anthropology, education, psychology, and sociology as well as applied linguistics. Utilizing diverse methodologies to investigate varied social contexts, these articles are interaction, united by their focus on the fundamental relationship between language, and culture. By publishing these proceedings we aim to continue and extend the dialogue between scholars and across disciplines that the conference engendered. As presented here, the articles reflect the conference's organization around analytic themes rather than disciplinary boundaries. The first session, Communicating Medical Troubles, is represented here by Lisa Capps' article Socializing Anxiety through Narrative: A Case Study. Capps looks at the interactional foundations of agoraphobia, which has been conventionally understood as a clinical disorder located in an individual's mind. Her study of narratives within ordinary family settings illustrates the potential for using close analyses of talk and interaction to better understand the social foundations of psychological conditions. Two additional articles comprised this session but do not appear here: Jeffrey D. Robinson's Talk and Body Deployment in Medical Interaction I: Arriving at Medical Troubles and Elizabeth Boyd's 'Can you tell me something about this little baby?': Initial Requests for Information and the Construction of Patient Histories during Medical Peer Reviews. The day's second session Negotiating Competence and Authority included articles by Stacy Burns, Wendy Fonarow, Lanita Jacobs-Huey, and Geoffrey Raymond. Burns' article Lawyers' work in the Menendez brothers' murder trial shows that in the course of effectively questioning witnesses lawyers often depart from and even violate textbook rules for courtroom interaction. Fonarow 's article Spatial Distribution and Participation in British Contemporary Musical Performance also addresses the normative regulation of interaction. Having conducted fieldwork in England, Fonarow analyzes crowd behavior at independent music performances, examining the interactive achievement of fanship. Jacobs-Huey's article Negotiating Price in an African American Beauty Salon highlights strategies used by a hairdresser and her clients to agree on a hairstyle that will accommodate both the stylist's Issues in Applied Linguistics ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 7 No. Regents of the University of California