Applied Conversation Analysis Research Articles

第32回研究大会ワークショップ : 日本語教育に生かす会話分析の可能性-日常的なやりとりに注目して-

第32回研究大会ワークショップ : 日本語教育に生かす会話分析の可能性-日常的なやりとりに注目して-

Examining Jurors: Applying Conversation Analysis to Voir Dire in Capital Cases, a First Look

Scholarship about racial disparities in jury selection is extensive, but the data about how parties examine potential jurors in actual trials is limited. This study of jury selection for 792 potential jurors across twelve randomly selected North Carolina capital cases uses conversation analysis to examine the process that produces decisions about who serves on juries. To examine how race influences conversations in voir dire, we adapted the Roter Interaction Analysis System, a widely used framework for understanding the dynamics of patient–clinician communication during clinical encounters, to the legal setting for the first time. This method allows us to document the conversational dynamics of actual questioning of potential jurors that precedes the decision to seat or strike a juror, or to excuse her for cause. Our preliminary analysis of this uniquely rich archival data suggests ways in which the discourse of jury selection varies by race, and provides the foundation for future work looking at the ways in which the evaluation of fitness for jury service itself is skewed and contributes to racial disparities in jury selection.

Representing ordinary people: experiential interview fragments in CCTV News

AbstractThe television news interview has been widely studied in the field of Conversation Analysis. Few researchers, however, have paid attention to the interview fragments that often occur in news bulletin programs. This article applies Conversation Analysis and the notion of recontextualization to the analysis of experiential interview fragments deployed in CCTV News. It is shown that this type of fragments enjoys a relatively fixed sequence structure: introduction–fragment, where the fragment consists of (question+) answer turns. The introduction may be designed to raise a question, offer background information or summarize key points. The fragment itself, unlike a complete interview, is often selected and designed to achieve particular communicative purposes. In CCTV News, for example, the fragments tend to be employed to represent ordinary people’s experience, beneficiary identity and positive image, among others.

Collaborative participation in aphasic conversation before and after intensive language-action therapy

ABSTRACTThis study applies conversation analysis to compare everyday conversation samples between a person with aphasia (PWA) and a familiar communication partner (CP) before and after intensive language-action therapy (ILAT). Our analysis concentrated on collaborative repair sequences with the assumption that impairment-focused therapy would translate into a change in the nature of trouble sources, which engender collaborative repair action typical of aphasic conversation. The most frequent repair initiation technique used by the CP was candidate understandings. The function of candidate understandings changed from addressing specific trouble sources pre-ILAT to concluding longer stretches of the PWA’s talk post-ILAT. Alongside with these findings, we documented a clinically significant increase in the Western Aphasia Battery’s aphasia quotient post-ILAT. Our results suggest that instead of mere frequency count of conversational behaviours, examining the type and function of repair actions might provide insight into therapy-related changes in conversation following impairment-focused therapy.

SORRIA: VOCÊ ESTÁ SENDO FILMADO. A ESPETACULARIZAÇÃO DA PRÁTICA POLICIAL E O TRABALHO DE LIMPEZA MORAL

A espetacularização da vida cotidiana tornou-se mais democrática com o acesso às tecnologias de imagem oferecidas pelo telefone celular. Nessa esteira, estão os vídeos produzidos por cidadãos que registram a ação policial em comunidades em processo de pacificação. À luz de uma abordagem da Análise da Conversa Aplicada (ANTAKI, 2011) e dos estudos sobre multimodalidade (GOODWIN, 2010), analisamos, para este trabalho, um vídeo, postado na internet, que registra a cena de condução de um suspeito à delegacia, logo após uma ação de abordagem. Considerando-se que os policiais estão cientes da gravação e conscientes de que a imagem de policial está sob constante suspeição (MUNIZ, 1998), pretende-se investigar como os policiais vão gerenciar a interação física e virtual para realizar um trabalho de limpeza moral (MACHADO DA SILVA, 2008) que possa reparar seu estigma. Como mostra a análise realizada, a mediação tecnológica favorece a disputa dos policiais pela direção/edição do espetáculo, através de mecanismos como inclusão de informações não captadas pelo cinegrafista e explicitação das normas que orientam suas ações, especialmente no que diz respeito ao uso da força. Através de um trabalho de limpeza moral, os policiais buscam (re) construir a imagem de profissionais que agem de acordo com os preceitos da ética policial-militar, como o exercício de suas funções com probidade e justiça.

Infants’ pain cries: Natural resources for co-creating a proto-interaction order

This study applies conversation analysis to an infant/caregiver activity, “getting vaccinated.” Here, an infant’s natural reactions (crying) to pain (inoculations) appear to function as inchoate social devices aiding the co-creation of an emerging proto-social interaction order. I argue and demonstrate that the infant’s cries comprise its (biological, as opposed to psychological) devices that contribute to the proto-interaction order, when systematically responded to by caregivers, and thus (inadvertently) employed as interactional resources. The caregivers’ responses to the crying demonstrate that the participants’ actions, including the infant’s, constitute resources for creating a proto-social-interaction order from the interacting normative and biological rule systems. Finally, since conversation analysis has not traditionally been applied to infant/caregiver interaction, I contrast relevant conversation analyses to developmental psychological studies.

Applying conversation analysis methods to online talk: A literature review

While researchers have used conversation analysis (CA) methods to understand online talk since the 1990s, to date there has been no systematic review of these studies to better understand this methodological development. This article presents a comprehensive literature review of 89 peer-reviewed journal articles reporting findings of empirical studies using CA to understand social interaction online. In this review, we describe who is conducting this type of research, the contexts in which CA has been used to make sense of text-based online talk, and where such studies are being published. We also identify the “fundamental” conversational structures researchers are drawing upon in making sense of online talk as social interaction. Findings show that studies are using CA to understand “mundane” conversational contexts, as well as institutional talk from educational, counseling and workplace settings. The number of such studies are increasing and are being conducted by an international network of researchers across a variety of disciplines. The data is most often described as synchronous or asynchronous, with a slow increase in attention to social media data. Publication outlets are mostly language-based and/methodological journals. Analysis revealed four main aims: (1) comparing online and face-to-face talk, (2) understanding how coherence is maintained, (3) understanding how participants deal with trouble, and (4) understanding how social actions are accomplished asynchronously. This review contributes to the overall understanding of the methodological development of CA, offering useful insights for those interested in using it to understand social interaction as it occurs online.

Interventionist applied conversation analysis

Pragmatic language competence plays a central role in how aviation flight crews perform crew resource management (CRM); this competence significantly affects aviation safety. This paper contributes to existing literature on interventionist applications of conversation analysis (CA) by defining and evaluating a novel collaborative transcription and repair based learning (CTRBL) method for aviation CRM learning. CTRBL was evaluated using a quantitative quasi-­experimental repeated-measure design with 42 novice, university pilots. Results support that CTRBL is an effective, low-resource CRM learning method that will benefit from exploratory applications and further study in pragmatics, aviation, and other sociotechnical domains. The views in this article were the result of independent research of the authors. Views herein do not necessarily represent the views of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) or the United States.

Face-work in teacher-in-role: Acting at the interface between artistry and pedagogy

Abstract The teacher-in-role (TIR) strategy is used in process drama to strengthen the dramatic experience and promote learning among the participants. In this study, one TIR construct is examined through the lens of Erving Goffman’s concept of facework in order to deepen the understanding of the subtle and vulnerable processes of interaction in process drama. TIR is considered to be an interactive construct in which both artistry and pedagogy are embodied. Face-work is applied in the fictive context of process drama to uncover the interactional potential for learning and creating drama. In addition, the teacher’s reflections on his or her actions as they relate to face-work in process drama are explored. The data of this case study are analysed using applied conversation analysis (CA) and thematic narrative analysis. According to the findings, face-work seems to provide an explicit frame for understanding the interactional procedures and moves in the artistic-pedagogic construct of TIR.

Facebook first post telling

In recent years Facebook (FB) has received increasing attention from scholars of different disciplines including ethnomethodology, sociology, education and communication. Despite the interest in FB, very few studies have investigated FB from a linguistic perspective. Moreover, none of these studies has applied Conversation Analysis (CA) to analyse FB status updates. This paper argues that, by adopting a CA-informed approach, status updates can be examined as tellings. In addition, it also claims that tellings can have five different formats: textual messages only, combinations of textual messages with either photos or hyperlinks, photos only or hyperlinks only.

An interdisciplinary approach to the genesis of the narratives in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame

The genesis of Endgame is a complicated one as no other play of Samuel Beckett testifies to such a long search for a form in which he could present his work adequately. While the overall movement of Endgame is in the general direction of reduction and distillation, the dramatic lines become clearer in each subsequent version. In order to analyse these dramatic lines, the stories told by the characters in the play serve as an interesting starting point. Because these stories are constructed in a dialogical manner, the application of Conversational Analysis is interesting as it examines narratives from a linguistic perspective by looking at the purpose of these stories and the way something is said. This linguistic approach to the stories can be extended to the drafts of the play to examine the interactional mechanisms of the turn-taking in theatrical dialogues. As a case study the paper analyses the story about the Old Questions told by the characters Hamm and Clov, and aims to demonstrate the significance of applying Conversation Analysis not only to the stories in a theatrical work, but also to the genesis of the stories themselves.

Does deliberate metaphor theory have a future?

In recent years Facebook (FB) has received increasing attention from scholars of different disciplines including ethnomethodology, sociology, education and communication. Despite the interest in FB, very few studies have investigated FB from a linguistic perspective. Moreover, none of these studies has applied Conversation Analysis (CA) to analyse FB status updates. This paper argues that, by adopting a CA-informed approach, status updates can be examined as tellings. In addition, it also claims that tellings can have five different formats: textual messages only, combinations of textual messages with either photos or hyperlinks, photos only or hyperlinks only.

Disciplined Improvisation: Characteristics of Inquiry in Mindfulness-Based Teaching.

Evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is rapidly growing as interest in this field expands. By contrast, there are few empirical analyses of the pedagogy of MBSR and MBCT. Development of the evidence base concerning the teaching of MBCT or MBSR would support the integrity of the approach in the context of rapid expansion. This paper describes an applied conversation analysis (CA) of the characteristics of inquiry in the MBSR and MBCT teaching process. Audio-recordings of three 8-week MBCT and MBSR classes, with 24, 12, and 6 participants, were transcribed and systematically examined. The study focused on the teacher-led interactive inquiry which takes place in each session after a guided meditation practice. The study describes and analyzes three practices within the inquiry process that can be identified in sequences of talk: turn-taking talk involving questions and reformulations; the development of participant skills in a particular way of describing experience; and talk that constructs intersubjective connection and affiliation within the group. CA enables fine-grained analysis of the interactional work of mindfulness-based inquiry. Inquiry is a process of disciplined improvisation which is both highly specific to the conditions of the moment it took place in and uses repeated and recognizable patterns of interaction.

The Mediation Window: Regulation of Argumentation and Affect in Custody Mediation

High-conflict custody mediation requires working with both the emotional and the factual aspects of the conflict, while balancing unequal power relations between parents. Applying conversation analysis methods to a case of “treatment as usual” high-conflict mediation, this study offers an analysis of the process of establishing a balance point—the mediation window—where both emotional and practical concerns can be discussed efficiently. Communication patterns in the selected case are compared to an extract of the remaining corpus from which it is drawn, consisting of 38 high-conflict mediation cases. Findings are discussed with respect to the practice and ideology of custody mediation, particularly concerning empowerment, self-determination, and mediator control.

Enhancing research-led interpreter education: an exploratory study in Applied Conversation Analysis

In recent years, conversation analysts have developed a growing interest in the Applied branch of Conversation Analysis (CA). Authors such as Antaki, Heritage and Richards and Seedhouse have explored the practical applications of CA in institutional contexts, to shed light on their dynamics and to suggest improvements in the services provided. On the other hand, over the past two decades, interactionally oriented methodologies have been successfully applied to the study of interpreter-mediated interaction. Nevertheless, the potential of CA for interpreter training has not been fully explored, especially with regard to the impact of multimodal semiotic resources (gaze, gesture, posture) on triadic communication. This paper illustrates the results of an exploratory study in Applied CA conducted within a postgraduate interpreting module at an Italian university. Four different extracts of interpreter-mediated encounters, video-recorded in real-life settings, were submitted to the students in order to test their reactions, guide them in analysis and raise their awareness of the problems and challenges posed by real-life scenarios. Through the triangulation of findings from recorded classroom discussion and questionnaires, the present paper discusses the implications of using CA in interpreter education.

The interactional use of eye-gaze in children with autism spectrum disorders

The well-known impairments in the social use of eye-gaze by children with autism have been chiefly explored through experimental methods. The present study aims to contribute to the naturalistic analysis of social eye-gaze by applying Conversation Analysis to video recordings of three Finnish children with a diagnosis of autism, each interacting with familiar others in ordinary settings (total 6 hours). The analysis identifies two interactional environments where some children with autism show eye-gaze related competence with respect to gazing at their co-participants: these are when the child carries out an initiating action or a responsive action. We discuss how this qualitative analysis of interactional structure could be extended using quantitative methods and eye-tracking technology in order to develop a better understanding of the disorder. Keywords: Autism; eye-gaze; conversation analysis; social interaction; interactional competence

Co-construction of turns at talk

The present study applies conversation analysis in order to describe the form and function of co-constructed turns in conversations involving one or more persons who stutter. Co-constructed turns are turns at talk that are produced by more than one speaker in such a way that the turn is initiated by one speaker and completed by another. Examples in the data are classified according to an existing taxonomy distinguishing between slot fillers, extensions and completions. All these types are found in our data, albeit to different extents. External as well as internal reasons for this distributional variation are discussed. The main aim of the study is to illustrate the need for qualitative, context-sensitive approaches to research on verbal interaction in the field of fluency disorders and to focus on some clinical implications of such research findings.

Asking to Speak to Another: A Skill for Soliciting Survey Participation

This article is in the vein of applied conversation analysis, dealing with a problem of declining participation rates for survey interviews. When calling a household to request participation in a survey, interviewers may ask for a preselected “sample person.” We first explore how interviewers design this request in a more or less presumptive way, depending on how and when they identify themselves. Secondly, we analyze different linguistic structures that embody degrees of entitlement. Thirdly, we examine greeting items for their degree of ceremoniousness and in terms of what work they do when not part of an explicit greeting sequence. We examine other features of asking to speak to another as well, including “please” and references to the sample person. Our strategy for analyzing survey interview data is to explore the design of “switchboard” requests in ordinary telephone calls. We relate our analysis to previous research that addresses whether the detailed practices for asking to speak to another matter for obtaining consent to do an interview. We draw implications for obtaining participation in the survey interview and other kinds of phone call solicitations. Data are in American English.

Book review: Charles Antaki (ed.), Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk (Palgrave Advances in Linguistics)

Book review: Charles Antaki (ed.), <i>Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk (Palgrave Advances in Linguistics)</i>

Book review: Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk

Book review: Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk