Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis Research Articles

Is Oral Communication Apprehension Reasonable?: A Study on Sociocultural Factors Among Indonesian EFL Learners

Globally, effective oral communication skills in English as a lingua franca have become increasingly important. However, many EFL learners, including those in Indonesia, experience apprehension about oral communication in culturally diverse environments. This study explores the phenomenon of oral communication apprehension among Indonesian EFL learners, focusing on identifying the sociocultural factors that hinder them. Using a single-case design, classroom observations, learner interviews, and a teacher focus group were conducted. Purposive sampling selected three ninth-grade students from selected private junior high school in Jember, who demonstrated apprehension in oral communication, and two EFL teachers experienced in addressing students' communication apprehension. Data analysis involved Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (ECA) and thematic coding. The findings indicate that factors like interruption, overlap, self-correction, self-monitoring, and reliance on the first language (L1) during oral communication contribute to apprehension. Additionally, sociocultural factors such as learners' attitudes, parental language background, language interference, and educational challenges were identified as contributing to oral communication apprehension among EFL learners. This study sheds light on the root causes of learners' struggles, encouraging them to overcome these challenges. It also offers valuable insights for educators to implement strategies that can alleviate the sociocultural burden faced by many EFL learners, especially relevant in Indonesia's context within the expanded circle of English language learning, where cultural nuances significantly influence language acquisition experiences.

Ethnomethodological conversation analysis and the study of assemblages.

The material turn has challenged traditional social scientific and humanistic research approaches. Both individual and community are rejected as a starting point for theorizing what is going on in societies and cultures. In fact, all dichotomies are deemed suspect, and the research focus draws heavily on actual practices. The concept heterogeneous assemblage is used in at least two strands of the material turn with slightly different takes on the entangled nature of practices. These are actor-network theory, ANT (cf. STS, e.g., Callon, Latour, Law) and new materialism(s) (cf. process philosophy, e.g., Deleuze, Guattari). Both can be placed under the umbrella term sociomaterialism. In their analysis of concrete phenomena, Deleuzian assemblages tend to focus on embodied sensations (affect) that have rhizomatic threads of connection, whereas ANT's assemblages include how heterogeneous entities (actants) stabilize certain practices. With a revised understanding of how the world works (ontology), the usefulness of traditional research methods (epistemology) to study concrete phenomena has also been questioned. Margaret Wetherell has suggested that affect assemblages can be analyzed as observable social practices, giving an EMCA-based study as an illustrative example. The question is whether both new materialist intensities (cf. certain approaches in psychology) and ANT's connections to other people, places, and practices (e.g., in organization studies) could be analyzed with an EMCA approach. This paper acknowledges the existing possibilities EMCA offers to analyze heterogeneous assemblages as situated interactional and material entanglements and enlarges the repertoire by focusing on 1) how the material specifics can make the EMCA "why that now" analysis connect to larger assemblages than the local accomplishment of action, and 2) how observable orientations to phenomena outside of the situation can be treated as an assemblic activity. It will do this with 1) Goodwin's concept lamination that enlarges the strictly situation-bound contextual configuration analysis to the cultural-historical formations through the use of material tools, and with 2) mentionings that combine Membership Categorization Analysis and Cooren's interest in non-human (material) actors. In other words, the well-known sociomaterial concept material-discursive is translated into two analytical possibilities to study sociomaterial heterogeneous assemblages. An empirical study illustrates the tools in practice.

Civil inattention-On the sources of relational segregation.

The article employs ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) and experimental video analysis to scrutinize the gaze behavior of urban passersby. We operationalize Goffman's concept of civil inattention to make it an empirical research object with defined boundaries. Video analysis enabled measurement of gaze lengths to establish measures for "normal" gazes within civil inattention and to account for their breaches. We also studied the dependence of gazing behavior on the recipient's social appearance by comparing the unmarked condition, the experimenter wearing casual, indistinctive clothes, to marked conditions, the experimenter wearing either a distinct sunhat or an abaya and niqab. The breaches of civil inattention toward marked gaze recipients were 10-fold compared to unmarked recipients. Furthermore, the analysis points out the commonality of hitherto unknown micro gazes and multiple gazes. Together the findings suggest the existence of subconscious monitoring beneath the public social order, which pre-structures interaction order, and indicates that stigmatization is a source for relational segregation.

Analyzing interaction involving wheelchairs

Background: This study shows how the use of wheelchairs due to mobility impairment influences the configuration of interactional spaces and the initiation of conversation. It takes as a case in point the spatial arrangements and interactions between sports students using wheelchairs and their co-participants in a Danish sports high school. Method: Using the framework of research into ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) in atypical multimodal interaction, this study demonstrates how co-participants with and without impairments consider factors such as the position, size, design, and maneuverability of the wheelchair when they configure interactional spaces and organize conversational beginnings, and how the bodily orientation of the wheelchair user toward a specific physical environment and space is also taken into account. Furthermore, the co-participants’ conversation is adapted to fit these arrangements. The study describes features of spatial configurations that apply irrespective of the presence, type, and degree of disability in speech, language, and communication among the co-participants. The study draws on 10 hours of video recordings. Results and conclusion: The study indicates a need to investigate everyday conversation in its natural surroundings. Detailed descriptions of how co-participants draw upon available material, technological, and bodied ‘modes’ as resources may re-specify our understanding of aspects of conversations when impairments are involved.

Embodying dual actions as interpreting practice

Abstract This study demonstrates how interpreters in a Swedish video relay service (VRS) between deaf and hearing users can simultaneously accomplish two different actions, each directed to a particular user of the service. The study takes a multimodal, ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) perspective and is empirically based on a corpus of 25 recordings from authentic video calls. Our analysis shows how interpreters, through what we call dual action design, are able to: (1) offer the floor to one party while informing the other party, (2) refer to one of the participants using different forms of deictic reference for the two users of the service, and (3) request confirmation of a source statement from one party while rendering a statement to benefit the other party. The study contributes to current discussions relating to sequentiality, simultaneity, and positioning in interpreting studies and multimodal interaction research.

Paradox as an Interactional Resource: An ethnomethodological analysis into the interconnectedness of organizational paradoxes

In this paper, we demonstrate how performing and belonging paradoxes act as triggers, mitigators and amplifiers for each other in moment-by-moment interaction. We show how expressing a performing paradox as part of group practice triggers belonging tensions, particularly when there is a strong expectation towards a uniform value-base. We further demonstrate how a familiar performing paradox at the organization level is constructed to mitigate the belonging tensions through latency. This leads to an amplification dynamic where a paradox that is more socially appropriate is reinforced in order to cope with a more interactionally problematic one. Our results speak to research on the intertwined nature of paradoxical tensions and the relationship between latency and salience in working through paradox. Our study advocates for developing a more systematic approach for studying the interactional foundations of organizational paradox and offers ethnomethodological conversation analysis as one means to achieve improved understanding in this domain.

Communicating strategy in a town hall setting

This article focuses on strategy communication in an administrative housing association. It investigates top management’s attempts to facilitate dialog with employees in a town hall meeting. The purpose is to provide insights into the communicative methods employed, thereby contributing to understanding what can be considered as ‘true’ dialog, why dialog is important, and whether dialog is possible in this specific organizational context.Within the theoretical frame of change communication and strategy-as-practice, a case study of a specific town hall meeting is conducted. Based on ethnomethodological conversation analysis three key sequences from a specific town hall meeting are analyzed, and the participants’ actions are described as here-and-now moments for facilitating or hindering dialog.The study points to several communicative techniques employed by management that discourage dialog, instead of facilitating it. Moreover, the meeting is designed and performed as managers’ one-way communication of information, which limits their access to valuable information from the operational employees. In this case, the micro practices investigated are considered an impediment to organizational change and a move towards organizational silence (Tourish & Robson, 2006; Morrison and Milliken, 2000).

‘Right, already brewing there’: Arriving to the staff breakroom and beginning interaction with a co-present colleague

This study investigates beginnings of dyadic encounters between acquainted persons in a ‘semi-public’ space, namely, staff breakrooms of Finnish work communities. Drawing on video data and using ethnomethodological conversation analysis as the method, we examine the coordinated vocal-bodily exchanges that participants carry out under close mutual monitoring as they establish co-presence and initiate interaction (through greetings and registerings) while also engaging in other, situated, break-relevant activities as part of an oriented-to, established routine of beginning, and being on, a break from work. We show how participants skillfully manage their simultaneous involvements in these activities, and how the specific vocal-bodily practices by which participants open their encounters in the breakroom index their orientation to each other as ‘familiars’ and to their encounters as highly routinized, recurring and ‘expected’ (rather than as ‘special’ or ‘not-everyday’) occurrences. Data are in Finnish with English translation.

Interactional practices in technology-rich L2 environments in and beyond the physical borders of the classroom

ABSTRACT The current special issue is dedicated to studies exploring social interaction in second language educational environments that feature technology. In this introduction article, we contextualize the empirical studies included here with respect to the changing role of technology in education and situate them in the research tradition of multimodal and ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (CA). We also present the individual contributions and briefly discuss how they promote a conceptualization of classrooms as pedagogically meaningful material-technological ecologies for teaching and learning actions rather than a physically delimited space.

Complaining by category: Managing social categories and action ascription in wargame interactions

This manuscript examines the reflexive relationship between social categories and actions proposed by Harvey Sacks. Using video recordings of interactions at a biannual hobbyist wargaming convention, I use ethnomethodological conversation analysis to investigate how individuals ascribe categories and actions to manage solidarity threats. Specifically, I demonstrate how members (re)characterize some action by proposing the category membership of the person seen to have done it and vice versa. Subsequently, I take up how these practices allow members to manage and mitigate threats to affiliation and solidarity. The analysis focuses on actions produced or received as indicating complainables, with their status as ‘complaints’ being a part of what members negotiate. Ultimately, I argue that this negotiation of categorization and action ascription may point to a potentially omnirelevant and transportable concern for interactants.

Trouble-talk in therapist–resident encounters

This article focuses on what can be labelled ‘trouble- talk’, and in particular how it is initiated and responded to in therapist–resident encounters. It adopts the perspective of an individual with acquired brain injury. The study is based on a video ethnography of interaction, targeted at identifying trouble-talk and its interactional consequences, and it was carried out in a Danish care home facility for residents with this kind of injury. Encounters involving a case resident, an occupational therapist, a social worker (pædagog) and participant researchers were video recorded (totaling 30 hours) during fieldwork over one year, between 2012 and 2013. The dataset has been analyzed through a combination of discourse analysis and ethnomethodological conversation analysis. The findings show that when the resident takes initiatives and/or makes criticisms, this may be heard by the occupational therapist as complaints about institutional life in general and/or as talking gibberish. Such perceived trouble-talk is responded to by the occupational therapist with misalignment and repair work. In general, trouble-talk is co-constructed; however, it is accentuated by the occupational therapist’s response, which suggests an undesired institutional ramification. In promoting awareness of the impact of impairments on interaction, I discuss how trouble-talk is emergent in the interaction itself and in what ways it can be resolved or minimized.

Language as context: A case of early literacy practices in New Zealand and Sweden

ABSTRACT Globally, there has been increasing adaptation of curricula frameworks in early childhood education, providing overarching principles of practice rather than subject specific templates for teaching and learning. While such a movement is to be commended as supporting a socio-cultural approach in meeting each child’s unique social and cultural needs, the implementation of frameworks is not straightforward (Bateman 2022). By applying an ethnomethodological approach to child–teacher interactions, this article explores how early childhood curricula frameworks in Sweden and New Zealand are implemented in everyday talk-in-interaction between children and teachers. We use an ethnomethodological (EM) approach (Garfinkel 2002) and conversation analysis (CA) (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974) approach (EMCA) to situate language as context. This approach offers a move away from the broader perspective of context being a static environmental space, to context as co-constructed by the participants through their immediate interactions (Goodwin and Duranti 1992). Contextual resources involve the concrete social situations, background cultural knowledge, language, activity and situation types, participants’ knowledge about topics talked about and about each other and their interactional biographies (Linell 2009, 17).

Collaborative Mobilizations of Interbodied Communication for Cooperative Action

AbstractDrawing on usage‐based approaches to the study of language learning—including recent research on mobility in interaction, embodied approaches to cognition and communicative action, and innovations in place‐based language learning in the wild—this article uses methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis to investigate video recordings of 3 English language learners playing an augmented reality game that advocated for environmental stewardship. The analysis focused on 1 aspect of the game, an oral report about different green technologies, which was repeated 3 times due to technical difficulties. Analysis reveals emergent interactional dynamics that included (a) the use and creative reuse of multiword expressions, and (b) aligned interbodied cooperative practices that together supported (c) the building of a discourse structure for making oral reports that were part of the game narrative. The analysis highlights the semipermeable, collaboratively produced, and emergent nature of grammar for social action. Implications for pedagogy include (a) the consideration of structured unpredictability in language task design, and (b) a (re)conceptualization of language structure and language development as both an individual and group achievement.

Eye-tracking Recordings as Data in EMCA Studies

The article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the potential of using eye-tracking recordings in ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) by exploring to what extent and under what circumstances such recordings may be useful for EMCA studies of multimodal social interaction. For this purpose, it analyzes examples of social conduct recorded by one video camera and one set of eye-tracking glasses. The article concludes that while eye-tracking recordings may, in some specific cases, provide new analytic possibilities for studying social action, they are by no means indispensable for EMCA research in multimodal social interaction, and making use of mobile eye-tracking equipment and recordings may compromise the data as well as the analytic procedure.

“BOOM, so it will be like an attack” Demonstrating in a dance class through verbal, sound and body imagery

The present study investigates how the teacher in a show dance class demonstrates choreography to a group of learners (dancers) using imagery as a teaching strategy. The overall aim is to explore the pedagogical task of demonstrating with the help of imagery and to understand how different multimodal resources create prerequisites for learning. The data consist of ethnographic fieldwork and video recordings from a show dance practice. The participants are a teacher and a group of non-professional learners aged between 16 and 24 years. The analysis is based on the framework of ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA). The analysis shows that the use of imagery is common, and that verbal language is a resource that co-occurs with both sound and body in these demonstrations. These multimodal resources interplay in a complex way, and the different resources used by the teacher cooperate to create meaning for the dancers. None of the different types of imagery – verbal, sound or body –seem to fully function unless they are used together with at least one other resource. Further, the analysis shows that the use of imagery as a teaching strategy is emergent in interaction and not predetermined.

Changing practices for connected discourse: Starting and developing topics in conversation

This paper investigates the actions and practices for connected discourse in English conversation. Three university students met weekly for 94 weeks to practice speaking and were video recorded. Each participant made a 10 min presentation about a topic of interest and then the three participants had a conversation. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA), we examined how participants moved from an orientation to one type of speech exchange system (the monologic presentation) to another (the ‘conversation’) and specifically, the actions and practices for getting the conversation started. We show how an orientation to an interview type of speech exchange system changes to something more conversation-like over the course of the 94 weeks and how changes in particular actions are concomitant with changes in turn allocation, turn construction, and turn taking practices. The findings provide further evidence for the co-constructed nature of language. Implications for understanding change or learning as a group enterprise are also considered.

Respecifying the information sheet

This paper considers how information sheets are used as a resource for joint attention and decision-making in a situated service encounter. The optician shop is a perspicuous setting for addressing decision-making as an interactional accomplishment informed by information sheets, because they are routinely used and made relevant by sellers. The paper builds on ethnomethodological multimodal conversation analysis and a large corpus of more than 700 hours of video recordings from eleven different Danish optician shops. Based on one single analysis from this corpus, the paper shows how the sheet is used cooperatively and oriented to in situ as a shared resource in the process of selling/buying glasses. A key finding is that the information sheet is not just a resource for the seller but a shared resource for established joint attention and decision-making. More generally, the paper contributes to studies of service and sales encounters by highlighting the importance of inscribed objects to decision-making processes in social interaction.

Body Part Highlighting: Exploring two types of embodied practices in two sub-types of showing sequences in video-mediated consultations

Consultations in healthcare settings involve an initial phase of “history-taking”, during which the healthcare professional examines the client for symptoms by asking questions, making the client show symptoms on his or her own body, and performing bodily examinations. But how can bodily symptoms be identified when the interaction is video-mediated and sensory access is limited? One key resource here is “body showings”. However, research suggests that video-mediated teleconsultations reduce body showings due to both technical difficulties and sensory obstruction. In this paper, we provide a contrary case that shows two types of practices employed for successful history-taking through body-part showings. Based on an analysis of an “evocative showing sequence” (Licoppe, 2017), we present two types of gestural highlighting practices, via two types of showing sub-sequences: 1) “mimicable body part highlighting”, which occurs in a sequence of “adapting-body-to-frame”; and 2) “direct body part highlighting”, which occurs in a sequence of “adapting-frame-to-body”. The paper uses a single case to discuss how gestures work in a video-mediated context and how sensory judgements are not just a property of the healthcare professional, but are distributed to clients who are able to creatively adapt to situated contingencies in order to accomplish common understanding about the symptoms. The data consist of video-recorded, video-mediated physiotherapy consultations in Denmark, analysed using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA). The paper contributes to EMCA research on mediated interaction and embodied, gestural and sensorial practices.

Opiskelijoiden oma-aloitteiset selityspyynnöt ja niiden käsittely - neuvottelua luokkahuoneen episteemisistä oikeuksista ja velvollisuuksista

Tutkimus käsittelee opiskelijoiden selityspyyntöjä sekä pyyntöjen yhteydessä esitettyjä selontekoja. Tutkimuksessa vertaillaan selityssekvenssejä kolmesta eri oppimiskontekstista, joista kaksi on yliopistokursseja ja yksi yläkoulun luokkahuonetilanne. Tutkimuksen metodi on etnometodologinen keskustelunanalyysi. Analyysin perustana on selityssekvenssi, joka esitetään toiminnallisena ja tiedollisena kokonaisuutena. Aineistossa selityspyyntöä käsitellään pääosin odotuksenmukaisena ja oikeutettuna toimintana ainakin silloin, kun pyyntö palvelee senhetkistä kokonaistoimintaa ja toiminnan päämäärää. Fokuksessa ovat selityspyynnöt, joiden muotoiluun liittyy perusteluja ja täsmennyksiä tai joita joko pyytäjä tai pyynnön vastaanottaja käsittelevät epäodotuksenmukaisina suhteessa vuorovaikutustilanteen normiodotuksiin. Tutkimuksen keskeisin tulos on, että selityspyyntöihin liittyvät selonteot kertovat osallistujien tarpeesta neuvotella selityspyyntöihin ja selitystoimintaan liittyvästä episteemisestä ja moraalisesta ulottuvuudesta. Osallistujat osoittavat selityspyyntöihin liittyvillä selonteoilla, että selityspyynnöille ja selityksille tarvitaan kontekstikohtainen legitimiteetti, joka tukee selityspyynnön onnistumista tai joissain tapauksissa sanktioi pyynnön.

Kielenvaihto monikielisissä kokouksissa - osallistujien kielitaito ja vuorovaikutuksen sujuva eteneminen

Yhä useammilla suomalaisilla työpaikoilla puhutaan kotimaisten kielten lisäksi myös muita kieliä, esimerkiksi englantia tai maahanmuuttajakieliä. Uusi kielitilanne johtaa vuorovaikutuksen haasteisiin, sillä kaikki työntekijät eivät välttämättä osaa hyvin kaikkia työkieliä. Tässä artikkelissa esittelemme tapoja, joilla työntekijät hyödyntävät työympäristön monikielisyyttä varmistaakseen mahdollisimman tehokkaasti etenevän vuorovaikutuksen. Tarkemman kiinnostuksen kohteena ovat kohdat, joissa vaihdetaan puhuttavaa kieltä. Aineistonamme on videoituja työkokouksia suomalaisesta kulttuurialan järjestöstä. Kokousten yleisimmät kielet ovat suomi ja venäjä. Metodinamme on etnometodologinen keskusteluntutkimus, eli tarkastelemme kielenvaihtoja vuorovaikutuksen mikrotason käytänteinä. Lähestymme monikielisen työvuorovaikutuksen käytänteitä sellaisten kielenvaihtojen kautta, jotka liittyvät vuorovaikutuksen etenemisen ongelmakohtiin. Tarkastelemme ensinnäkin sitä, missä tilanteissa ja miten osallistujat vaihtavat itselleen vahvempaan kieleen, ja toisaalta sitä, mitkä tekijät saavat heidät vaihtamaan vastaanottajalle vahvempaan kieleen. Tarkastelemamme kielenvaihdot liittyvät ongelmiin joko puheen tuottamisessa, ymmärtämisessä tai aktiivisessa vastaanottajuuden osoittamisessa. Vaihtamalla kieltä joustavasti tilanteen vaatimusten mukaan – ja toisinaan vastoin eksplisiittisiä sopimuksia käytettävästä kielestä – osallistujat varmistavat, että kokousvuorovaikutus etenee ja kaikilla kokouksen osanottajilla on mahdollisuus osallistua vuorovaikutukseen mahdollisimman täysipainoisesti.