Conversation Analytic Approach Research Articles

Doctor Repeats of Patient Responses in Vietnamese Medical Consultations

This study examines doctor repeats of patient responses in medical interaction. These repeats lie at the third turn in a three-turn sequence: doctor question, patient response, and doctor follow-up utterance. The data were taken from 66 consultations held in the Consultation and General Practice Units of two public hospitals in Vietnam. Using a conversation-analytical approach, we reveal that doctor repeats in this specific cultural context serve to highlight the importance of the information provided by the patient for forming diagnostic hypotheses and recommending optimal treatment plans. In so doing, we also show that, in terms of function, doctor repeats differ in certain key respects from repeats in non-medical conversation.

Consultations Preliminary to Interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Rehabilitation

Before patients with chronic pain enter an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programme, a team of various healthcare professionals performs a biopsychosocial analysis of their pain problem. To enhance patients’ engagement, the problem analysis is thoroughly discussed with them in order to gain a shared understanding of the nature of their pain problem. This study explores how patients and practitioners talk through their rehabilitation team’s hypotheses regarding the psychosocial factors involved in these patients’ health situation. Nine consultations were recorded at various Dutch interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation units. The recordings were transcribed and analysed, combining an applied conversation analytic research approach with discursive psychology. Patients and practitioners are found to orient to ensuring consensus on the problem analysis as a relevant activity and tend to avoid or minimize the articulation of differences in perspectives. This study also shows that this orientation to consensus involves a delicate management of issues of accountability and blame. Findings can be used by practitioners to consider communication practices that are more likely to encourage patients to voice potential concerns regarding their rehabilitation team’s findings.

Mapping Conversation Analysis Studies in the Arab World: Applications and Implications

This scoping review investigates the applications and implications of the conversation analysis approach in the Arab world. Specifically, it examines the implementation of conversation analysis by Arab linguists in both foreign language classrooms and social interaction settings. The review identifies gaps in the relevant literature to guide future research. This scoping review is underpinned by the five-stage framework developed by Arksey and O’Malley. The findings reveal that, compared to non-Arab contexts, the literature on this topic in the Arab world is scarce, but there is a growing interest among Arab linguists. The majority of studies reviewed were conducted in college-level English classes, and there is a dearth of studies in school contexts. The studies were categorized based on themes, including the implementation of conversation analysis, context, educational level, type of methodology, and the journal. The findings from interaction in foreign language classrooms were promising, as they provided insights into how learning opportunities might be developed to facilitate teachers’ professional training. Findings related to social interaction, although limited in number, revealed important features of human interaction, such as topic shifting, ending conversations, and the functions of religious markers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the challenges in implementing conversation analysis and calls for future research on this promising approach in the Arab world.

The Comparison of Conversational Features Used by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Political Debate

Conversation analysis is used to identify the use of features in an interaction by considering the institutional settings or situation. Here, political situation is used because of the condition of controlled situation must be different. This study aimed to compare the conversational features used by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the final presidential election debate of America in 2020. This was a qualitative study using the conversational analysis approach proposed by Schegloff (1974). The data were analyzed based on the conversational features used including turn-taking strategies, adjacency pairs, and repairs. The results found there were some similarities and differences of conversational features used by both candidates. The similarities showed both speakers preferred to use most of all turn-taking strategies, types of first and second-pair parts, and repair strategies. Besides, the differences were found in the number of conversational features used. Donald Trump tent to use more features since he used more turn-taking strategy to take the turn during the debate. In sum, in political setting, people tend to take more turn to share their idea and respond the other. It affects the use of another conversational features including the frequency of using them. Furthermore, the result of comparing using three features in a political situation becomes the novelty of this research since this setting is a rare topic in conversation analysis. This result is also contributed on enriching references of future research using conversation analysis specifically in a political setting.

Discourse-Pragmatic Functions of Ya3ni in Najdi Arabic Interaction

The Arabic discourse-pragmatic feature ya3ni occurs frequently in natural interactional settings. Several studies have reported that ya3ni (lit. ‘I mean/it means’) has developed a wide range of discourse-pragmatic functions in many spoken Arabic varieties such as Egyptian Arabic (Elshimi, 1992; 1993; Marmorstein, 2016, 2021a), Gulf Arabic (Owens & Rockwood, 2008), Libyan Arabic (Gaddafi, 1990), and Syrian Arabic (Alkhalil, 2005; Habib, 2021). Although the formal and functional variability of ya3ni has been documented in the literature, ya3ni has not been studied in the context of spoken Najdi Arabic. This paper examines discourse-pragmatic uses of ya3ni in Najdi Arabic (NA) in the interactional situation and how the functional variation is constrained by its turn position. A total of 376 ya3ni tokens were extracted from a corpus of five hours of audio-recorded dyadic natural conversations with twelve native speakers of NA. Drawing on the conversation analytic approach within a variationist framework, multiple discourse-pragmatic functions of ya3ni are attested. For interpersonal meaning, speakers recruit ya3ni to introduce assessment and minimise the effect of disagreement, whereas recipients use it to check their understanding. For the textual meaning, it can be used by speakers to introduce expansion and elaboration, explain intention, change the topic, sum up, and hold the floor.

E-CLASSROOM LANGUAGE: A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS OF SYNCHRONOUS INSTRUCTIONS DURING THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK

A growing body of research has documented classroom language use in traditional classrooms. However, how teachers use language in virtual classrooms remains largely under-researched. This study was carried out to fill this gap. The purpose was to examine teachers' use of classroom language in synchronous virtual classrooms and how it facilitated learning opportunities for EFL learners. Under the qualitative research framework, video recordings of online instructional activities were analyzed using a conversation analysis approach. The results show that the majority of expressions used in online synchronous instructions were quite similar to those used in traditional classrooms except for the expressions like "let me share my screen," "turn on the camera," and "I will mute everyone." The results also show that teachers' e-classroom language use provided learning opportunities for students employing recast, scaffolding, and extended wait time for students' turns. Information on teachers' classroom language use in online learning environments presented in this paper is based on limited data, and further studies involving more significant participants are recommended.

The competence in little words

AbstractL2 frameworks, such as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, describe expected linguistic abilities at different levels of L2 development. These frameworks, and the assessment rubrics they inform, only peripherally address how L2 speakersrespondto informings in interaction. Through responses interactants show their understanding of, and stance toward, a previous informing. In question-answer sequences in which a participant requests new information, the response to the answer may additionally reveal the questioning participant’s orientation to the answer in terms of its fit with the question. Responses to informings are thus a site of important interactional work. In our paper, we draw on the notion of ‘Interactional Competence’ and propose a conversation-analytic approach to assessing L2 speakers’ responses to elicited informings in German in question-answer sequences. We analyze L2 speakers’ use of tokens (e.g.,oh, okay, wirklich) in sequentially third position in dyadic, video-mediated everyday conversations with L1 speakers, as, in the turns following the third-position token, participants make visible their understanding of the token. We thereby attempt to describe how competent an L2 speaker’s use of a third-position token is. We end our paper by using our findings to make recommendations for language assessment frameworks and rubrics.

The Interactional Structure of Accounts During Small Group Discussions Among Autistic Children Receiving Special Education Support in Finland

Through a conversation analytic approach, we investigate the emergence of accounts provided by autistic children in small-group discussions. Nine Finnish children (7–10 years old) attending school with special support participated in a five-month-duration pedagogical practice purposefully designed to enhance children’s participation in groups. We analyzed videos of sharing circles where children discussed their ideas and interests. Our data show three different account structures, which created different modes of children’s participation and gradually changed how they positioned themselves in the group. Results show how accounts can create different focuses of attention; reveal children’s reflections on what is relevant to them, and how to promote the exchange of ideas within a small group. Implications for the development of educational practices are discussed.

Autistic Intelligence: Interaction, Individuality, and the Challenges of Diagnosis

Autistic Intelligence: Interaction, Individuality, and the Challenges of Diagnosis by Maynard and Turowetz (2022) addresses the importance of exploring language used in interactions during the diagnostic process of autism spectrum disorder. The authors analyze interaction in order to clarify the ambiguity in understanding autism that exists across several fields of study. Drawing on their sociological backgrounds, the authors use an ethnomethodological conversation analytic approach to show that interaction has been overlooked in the autism diagnostic process. This research makes an important contribution to existing conversation analytic and psychological literature by reframing autism spectrum disorder as a difference rather than a deficit.

Self-categorization: a resource for the management of experiential entitlement in talk about child death

Abstract In this paper, I examine self-categorization practices as resources for the interactional organization of relative experiential entitlements. Locating the study in talk about child death, an explicitly moral domain of social life, this study utilizes 18 radio-based interactions from a South African talk-radio broadcaster. Using an ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic approach, I examine affective responses to reports of child deaths, demonstrating how these practices reproduce child death as a contemporary social and moral concern. My findings demonstrate how practices of, and variations in, self-reference and self-categorization are resources for managing relative rights and obligations, thereby reproducing common-sense knowledge about parents and children in contemporary South African society. This research contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of membership categorization analysis and the social organization of experience.

Turn-taking in multilingual classroom interaction

This paper takes a conversational analysis (CA) or sequential approach to multilingualism to document and analyse classroom participation structures created by specific types of turn-taking and languaging practices. The setting was selected Grade 6 to 9 English language and English-medium content lessons in rural classrooms in the Eastern Cape. Three named language varieties are used in these classrooms, i.e., isiMpondo, isiXhosa and English. The study identified five turn-taking patterns, described their features, and analysed their functions. The research finds that (i) turn-taking types and the varieties through which they are implemented are valued differently in a classroom setting from the way they would be valued in an everyday setting, and (ii) that classroom turn-taking and language use are shaped by broader institutional factors, such as institutional goals and participants’ roles, rather than turn-by-turn sequential factors, as hypothesised by a CA approach to multilingual interaction. The paper concludes by presenting a summary of the study’s conclusions and findings and a discussion of the implications of the findings for a CA/sequential approach to bi- or multilingual talking in classroom interaction.

Fases de uma audiência preliminar no Juizado Especial Criminal Uma abordagem linguístico-interacional

This paper aims to investigate the overall structural organization of apreliminary hearing in the Special Criminal Court, a court which is responsi-ble for judging misdemeanor cases. The research is based on the theoretical-methodological approach of Conversation Analysis (Sackset al.2003 1974),focusing on studies of institutional talk-in-interaction (Drew e Heritage 1992;Roberts e Sarangi 2005; Robinson 2013), as well as combining concepts fromInteractional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1999; Gumperz, J.J. 2002). The resultsshow four phases: opening, that occurs when the conciliator takes a roll call andgreets the parties; presentation of the problem, which happens when they explainlegal concepts to laypeople; offering to file the case, when the conciliator triesto persuade the parties to file and close the case; and ending, that takes placewhen the parties sign the paper agreement

Intrasentential and Extrasentential Code-switching Among Young Bilingual Speakers in Bamako: A Conversation Analytical Perspective

The linguistic reality in Bamako, Mali, has made it commonplace that most interactions are performed in a language combining Bambara and French. The reason is certainly that Bamako, as some researchers suggest, is an ethnic and linguistic melting pot. This “hybrid” language seems to have downgraded the notion of language delimitations, hence affecting consequently the identity of each language. In other words, Bambara seems to be an excuse for escaping the successful use of French while interactions in Bambara are significantly dominated by French. It is believed that such a situation favours none of the two languages at play. Already, initial observation has made it possible to assert that the most perceptible manifestations of code-switching in this particular context are intrasentential and extrasentential. To confirm this claim, the present paper will adopt a conversation analytical approach, based on the recording of naturally occurring language.

국내 의료중국어 회화교재의 대화문 분석 및 개선 방안

Objectives This study investigates medical conversations in Chinese between doctors and patients in medical Chinese textbooks compiled in Korea from the conversation analytic perspective. Methods This study incorporates a conversation-analytic approach into the design of medical Chinese textbooks. Results The results indicate that medical Chinese textbooks do not properly present information on the conversation structures, rules, and characteristics essential to construct interactive conversations. Conclusions This study suggests that exposing learners to actual conversations is the most effective way to draw attention to the detail in real-life talk-in-interactions. By using authentic spoken language, learners can learn and practice interactional details, including turn-taking, sequences, linguistic features etc. Furthermore, it is important to apply conversation analytic research findings to enable learners to systematically understand, analyze, and communicate fluently in real medical conversations.

Delineating categories in verbal interaction

The two purposes of this paper are to define the scope of the analytical concept of category and to consider the use of categories in talk. I start by discussing different ways that the concept of category is used in fields such as linguistics and philosophy and arguing that the concept should not be limited to categories of person. I then argue that for a conversation analytic approach to discourse, what is important is that an item is treated by participants either as a category with members or as a member of a category. Next, I examine how structures of categories and category members are built by participants through their talk. Finally, I consider doing definitions as a specific activity which can be accomplished in talk through the construction of categories.

The Role of Empathy in Jordanian Medical Encounters

ABSTRACT Patients’ satisfaction with their clinical visits is a common indicator of the latter’s success. Their satisfaction is then reflected in the outcomes of the visit as satisfied patients are more likely to accept their doctor’s diagnosis, treatment suggestions, and advice, as well as trust their future arrangements. In addition, this satisfaction then provides doctors with insight into the effectiveness of empathizing with patients and in terms of dealing with them as humans rather than as an illness. Therefore, this study investigated the role of empathy in Jordanian clinical encounters. A conversation analysis approach was conducted to reveal the types and functional accomplishments of empathy. The findings reveal three types of empathy: acknowledgment, pursuit, and sharing experiences and feelings. This study also found that empathy contributes to the success of medical visits as it plays a helpful role in these medical encounters, such as motivating patients to take care of their health, allowing the doctor to claim knowledge of the patient’s problem, and allowing the sharing of strong feelings. Moreover, the empathy sequences then lead into the suggestion sequences, which are likely to improve patients’ satisfaction. These findings provide insight into the usefulness of deploying empathy in clinical visits, which can be boosted by designing training courses that aim to help raise doctors’ awareness of the value of empathy in medical encounters.

Perseverative storytelling in autism as an interactional phenomenon

Background: Topic perseveration is often considered to be an autistic trait observable in more verbally able individuals with autism. However, the phenomenon has been subject to little empirical research. The aim of the present article is to explore the organization of perseverative talk within the context of autistic storytellings. Method: A conversation analytic approach offers insights into the ways in which two adults with autism initiate, develop, and pursue storytellings in naturally occurring interactions. Moreover, the co-participants’ management of the apparently perseverative autistic talk is brought into focus. Results: The findings show that the two storytellings investigated here are successfully launched and initiated with a subtle sensitivity to the local environments of the ongoing interaction. Furthermore, the adults with autism develop and pursue their tellings with an orientation to the co-participants’ display of structural support of the storytelling activity (alignment). However, the autistic tellers pursue their stories despite recipients’ display of disinterest in their projects (disaffiliation). In both cases, story closure is initiated by the recipients, who treat the tellings as sequentially non-implicative actions. Discussion/conclusion: The findings propose that perseverative storytellings are locally and collaboratively managed social activities, developed on a turn-by-turn basis in natural interaction. The study argues that recipients’ feedback, both mid-telling and post-telling, contributes to the perseverative character of the tellings. This interpersonal approach to perseveration suggests that the most common intrapersonal conceptualizations of the phenomenon need to be refined to some extent.

Temporal procedures of mutual alignment and synchronization in collaborative meaning-making activities in a dance rehearsal

Synchrony is a members' interactional solution for dealing with multiple relevant interactional tasks simultaneously when working on two or more separate, perceptual, and equally relevant projects, e. g., when dancing while pointing out a feature of the ongoing dance. This paper focuses on moments in which participants engage in joint meaning-making to identify, negotiate, and implement displayed multimodal gestalts of the choreography. Three temporal procedures of mutual alignment and synchronization were identified through a conversation analytical approach in combination with marker-less motion tracking movement analysis of a dance rehearsal: delays, accelerations, and accentuations. The analyses revealed that synchrony requires constant coordination in order to establish, maintain, and dissolve alignment between participants and their multimodal resources.

Protocol: a qualitative linguistic framework for analysing empathic and empowering communications in classical person-centered therapeutic interactions

ABSTRACT Empathy and empowerment are crucial person-centered therapeutic processes that are interrelated and co-constructed in discourse by therapist-client dyads. Recently, research recommendations have been made for linguistic analyses of therapeutic processes. The interrelatedness of processes has often been overlooked when these recommendations have been progressed. Research so far has also tended to favor therapist discourse instead of focusing on the co-construction of processes. The publication of protocols enables researchers and therapists to access information about emerging research. Protocol publication can reduce dissemination bias and promotes credibility and trustworthiness of qualitative methodologies. The proposed development and application of a linguistic framework for analyzing empathic and empowering communications by therapist-client dyads in person-centered therapy is described in this protocol. The present status of the study is given, including why and how hybrid linguistic features identified in discourse analysis, pragmatics, and conversation analytic approaches are included. Information about the therapeutic transcripts used as data for framework development is also given for illustrative purposes. The anticipated theoretical and methodological contributions of this research are summarized. Suggested applications of the research outcomes for practice are also described, including their usefulness for trainee person-centered therapists, or for person-centered therapists or researchers who are interested in linguistic methodologies.

Divergence in uncertainty: the Korean non-committal suffix -(u)lkel

Abstract This study explores the Korean final suffix -(u)lkel in the context of stance-taking within the framework of stance triangle and the notion of emergent stance. Using data from one hundred 30-minute telephone calls and 15 video recorded conversations totaling 270 min, this study examines the non-committal epistemic function of -(u)lkel from a conversation analytic approach and demonstrates how speakers mobilize this suffix as a divergent alignment stance marker when confronted with a conflicting, yet unclear understanding of information associated with a stance object. Moreover, the high intonational boundary tone associated with -(u)lkel cedes the floor to the recipient where a negotiation of the conflicting information offers an opportunity for a readjustment of positions towards either a converging-diverging alignment or disalignment (i.e., speakers’ abandonment of a shared stance object). As such, this study shows that a grammatical suffix such as -(u)lkel is not simply deployed to mark propositional information but is also utilized as an interactional resource that enables dialogic speech activities such as co-construction of stance.