In this article we investigate how memory challenges are revealed and dealt with in interaction involving couples living with Major Neurocognitive Disorder (MND – former dementia). Using a set of repeated video recorded interviews with couples performed over 5 years, interactional sequences are analyzed where one or both spouses make a reference to any kind of ‘memory problems’, that is, not ‘remembering’ information. Focus is on how these instances are dealt with by the couples, with an emphasis on their responses to these challenges. This analysis is framed theoretically in terms of multimodal interaction analysis and common ground and aimed at highlighting how memory challenges in MND are manifested and managed in interaction. We found (1) that what is often called troubles with remembering or memory become manifest in responses to requests for information. (2) The couples deal actively with responding to the memory challenges. (3) The ‘memory problems’ are connected to epistemics and is about what knowledge they both expect each other to have as they share a common ground. (4) It is not necessarily the memory deficits as such that are the trouble spots in interaction involving people living with MND, rather the consequences of the fragmenting common ground. (5) Being part of a couple is not only about sharing knowledge and experiences, but also about the spouses mutually expecting each other to know and recognize this knowledge and experiences. Thus, it seems that ‘memory problems’ is in many ways less about ‘memory’ and ‘memories’, but rather about relationships and identities.

This study employs conversation analysis (CA) to examine how Chinese mothers deploy alternative questions (AQs) during interactions with their autistic children. This addresses a gap in research on the fine-grained dynamics of AQs within neurodivergent dyads in non-Western contexts. We analysed 176 AQ sequences across 21 video-recorded interactions. Findings reveal that maternal AQs facilitate interactional progressivity through structured choice-making and repair disengagement through multimodal resources and incremental formatting. Adaptive AQ designs empower children to negotiate constraints through transformative responses, topic shifts, and embodied resistance, underscoring bidirectional adaptation as central in neurodiverse communication. However, rigid AQs, marked by interactional asymmetry or mistimed turns, risk prioritising compliance over co-constructed participation, constraining opportunities for genuine engagement. Theoretically, the study reframes mutual understanding in autistic communication through the lens of CA, advocating reciprocal adaptation over unilateral conformity. Practically, it proposes flexible AQ designs attuned to autistic interactional rhythms and CA-informed caregiver training designed to enhance collaborative responsiveness.

Based on video-recordings of 62 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) encounters, this paper examines the initiation of an essential type of physical examination in TCM using multimodal conversation analysis. Focusing on the interactional patterns for initiating the pulse-taking activity, we observe a sequence made purely of embodied actions, unfolding linearly with a tripartite structure – ‘request for pulse-taking preparation, preparation enactment, and pulse palpation’. Instead of signaling a transition between medical activities as in Western medicine, the initiation of pulse-taking is often made amidst verbal interaction oriented to another medical task, featuring divergent orientations in parallel activities – a distinctive multiactivity type in TCM interaction. Meanwhile, the concurrence of verbal and embodied actions to initiate the pulse-taking activity is found only in three major interactional contingencies, indicating a selective and limited employment of coordinated verbal and nonverbal cues to initiate pulse taking. This study enriches our understanding of both under-researched multimodal interactions in medical contexts and differences in the initiation of physical examination across medical practices. It also has practical implications for improving consultation efficiency.

Despite their constrained discursive space, defendants in Chinese criminal trials often resist interrogators’ domination in pursuit of favorable judgments. This article delves into defendants’ deployment of discursive resistance strategies and strategic clusters in courtroom interaction and examines the impact of gender, education, and penalty on strategic choices. A corpus of Chinese criminal trial discourse, totaling 15,388 minutes of recordings and 3.3 million transcribed Chinese characters, was constructed for analysis. Quantitative and qualitative analysis demonstrate that defendants’ discursive practice are predominantly characterized by covert resistance strategies, supplemented by overt resistance strategies, and their strategic clusters demonstrate marked preferential patterns, generating synergistic resistance effects that optimize defensive efficacy. Additionally, gender, education and penalty significantly shape strategic choices, with the impact of penalty particularly pronounced. This study elucidates the bidirectional operation of power between dominant and subordinate parties in courtrooms, providing valuable insights particularly for research on conflict-laden institutional interactions.

A defining characteristic of discourse studies as a field is its grounding in attested data and rejection of introspective data. Researcher intuition or speculation about what discourse is like does not constitute evidence. However, the use of invented examples is not uncommon in the study of argument, a phenomenon that has received little attention. Rather than dismiss them on epistemological grounds, this paper views invented examples as a feature of the written discourse of researchers and investigates the purpose they serve as ‘voiced illustrations’. Based on an analysis of 578 voiced illustrations in 26 published argumentation research articles, the study shows that constructed voices – fictional or hypothetical voices invented by a writer or speaker – are common and explains how they are used to illustrate abstractions. This use of constructed voices in research papers bears intertextual traces of the textbook genre, a form of generic intertextuality.