Everyday Talk Research Articles

Complaining and sharing personal concerns as political acts: how everyday talk about childcare and parenting on online forums increases public deliberation and civic engagement in China

ABSTRACT Based on a comparative content analysis of political talk in three popular Chinese online forums (government-run, commercial-lifestyle, and commercial-topical), this paper investigates how the private and public spheres are connected thru everyday talk about childcare concerns. Compared to the government-run (party-state) forum, the nonpolitical (lifestyle and topical) forums created open and inclusive ‘third spaces’ for citizens to engage in child welfare politics. In such spaces, the reason, rule-based deliberation was not the dominant communicative practice. Rather, political (narrative) acts of complaining and sharing personal concerns – grounded in citizens’ life experiences – were the norm, capturing and recognizing public problems in the private sphere. We argue that to understand the nature of political talk in Chinese third spaces, communicative acts that have not been considered central to deliberative reasoning, such as complaining and sharing personal concerns should be given more normative importance.

Typicality and volition as fundamental features of everyday relational communication

AbstractDrawing from communicate bond belong theory, two dimensions of routine social interactions (i.e., volition, typicality) are examined in the context of everyday talk to advance theory on relationship maintenance. Adults' (N = 127) social interactions (n = 2537) were collected using experience sampling. Testing preregistered hypotheses, multilevel modeling results suggest that in more typical interactions individuals reported more connection and well‐being and less social energy expenditure. The more volitional (i.e., engaged in by choice) the interaction, the more the connection and well‐being and the more the social energy expended. Day‐over‐day analyses (n = 793) suggest that participants maintained their relationships more easily when they had more choice in their interactions each day but a more stable routine of interaction across the week.

The ’doubleness’ of transition: Investigating classroom talk practices in literacy lessons at the end of primary school and the beginning of secondary school

The complex nature of transition has interested educators for many years. While it is acknowledged that experiences of schooling during times of transition are often challenging, very little is known about the day-to-day actions of accomplishing transition. This article examines transition-in-action by employing ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to explore transition as interactionally accomplished. Through the detailed analysis of classroom talk during literacy lessons at the end of Year 6 and the beginning of the following Year 7, an account of the unfolding nature of transition at two points is provided. In the first instance, the chapter will contribute to understandings of how transition is socially organised in Year 6 and Year 7 literacy lessons as students access interactional resources to decipher what to do next. Secondly, the practices that enable and constrain access to these interactional resources are analysed to provide insight into how students adapt to change during the broader process of transitioning from primary to secondary school. In this way, the ‘doubleness’ of transition (both from one part of the literacy lesson to another, and from one institutional year level to another) is conceptualised as constituted by the everyday talk practices and associated actions of teachers and students in classroom lessons.

Viewing deliberation: daytime television’s public pedagogy of inclusion

Televised deliberation has been celebrated for its accessibility and derided for its tendency toward spectacle. Deliberative theorists and practitioners seek ways to make deliberation more inclusive because widespread participation facilitates deliberative legitimacy. This analysis operates between these two challenges, to consider how the daytime television show The View, drawing upon the televisual logics of spectacle and intimacy, nonetheless offers a public pedagogy of deliberation that provides resources for facilitating inclusive deliberation. I argue that the show models deliberators overcoming typical barriers to deliberation, such as disagreement and discomfort, with five deliberative habits: everyday talk, civility, agreement, friendship, and humor.

Egophoricity and Perspective: A View From Spoken Swedish

From the point of view of everyday talk and especially, casual conversation, it is obvious that language use is highly perspectivized with a clear focus on the speech-act participants. This fact is supported by observations regarding the pervasiveness of egophoric pronouns and the frequent use of the modal particlesjuandvälin spoken Swedish. The paper demonstrates how egophoric pronouns, modal particles, and mental verbs are used to signal the epistemic perspective of the speech-act participants, i.e., when the knowledge and attention of the speech-act participants are at stake. These formally distinct resources show patterns of co-distribution that permit an analysis of forms in terms of how they signal shared/private access to events from the perspective of the speaker and the addressee.

Об изменениях в лексике русской лирической поэзии

The paper intends to present the general tendency of lexical change in Russian lyrical po- etry during the last two hundred years on some arbitrarily selected examples. The odes of Lomonosov were accomplished in the lofty style based on Slavonic, rhetorical, and other “poetical” devices. In Derzhavin’s ode Felica, enthusiastic and ironical elements, pathos and everyday talk are combined. In Zhukovski’s romantic poetry the objective sense of words is overshadowed by their emotive overtones. In avoiding the grandiloquent romantic lexis, Nekrasov describes the hopeless hard life of Russian peasantry with deep sympathy, and reliably reproduces the popular speech. In the cited poem of Akhmatova, the psychic drama of the heroine is expressed by a peculiar connection of words belonging to different stylistic layers. The entirely prosaic lexis and syntax of Blok’s short poem suggests the poet’s feeling about the hopeless immobility of life in a condensed metaphoric shape. Vino- kurov’s poem relates an imagined accidental meeting of former lovers after thirty years of their separating in an entirely colloquial style. Since a poem of genuine aesthetic value appears as a complex artistic work, its components mutually strengthen, supplement, or compensate each other. Thus, the increase of colloquial elements in the poetic vocabulary does not necessarily indicate a process of “depoetization”.

Parents’ Communication Work in the Management of Food Allergies

ABSTRACT The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has identified food allergies as a critical public health issue that significantly affects quality of life for patients and their families. Despite the crisis-level status of food allergies, especially in children, there are currently no curative treatments. As a result, impacted families must learn how to carry the burden of disease management. Using an expanded application of the concept of communication work, this study features data from interviews with 26 parents of food allergic children and explores how parents navigate the nuances of food allergy maintenance while negotiating and preserving valued relationships and identities through everyday talk. Results revealed that parents used communication to legitimate food allergy, balance potential face-threats with identity and relational goals, and coordinate care with spouses. Due to the lack of therapeutic treatment options, we found that parents utilize communication work, which is both demanding and effortful, as a form of disease management.

Apokaliptični diskursi o ekološkoj krizi u savremenoj medijskoj kulturi

Ecology is a very common topic in contemporary media, whether it concerns global problems, like climate change and devastation of ecosystems, or it addresses local questions of air, water, or soil pollution, waste disposal, or natural resources. As an inspiration for apocalyptic discourses, the ecological catastrophe remains in media culture, dispersing through visions of a changed future worlds, a collapse of an overpopulated and resourse-drained civilisation, devastation of natural and living worlds, pollution sickness, wars, and a growing social-economic gap. Media texts that are the subject of the research show shapes of apocalyptic scenarios in the everyday talk about ecological problems, but they also present many meanings and interpretations of these issues, especially in terms of economic and political interests that induce complex discourses about sustainable growth, that is the capability of the system to avoid collapse and control the risks it is based on. The text clearly presents several ecological topics and their different interpretations that imply a crisis of trust in institutions (a trust that they are capable of resolving ecological problems), as well as the potential of apocalyptic discourses as political and ideological means in defining the crisis and keeping it within the system.

Provocative Talk in Local American Civic Life

Many Americans are as enthusiastic about the idea of deliberative democracy as they are appalled by its actual practice, especially when it comes to local forums of civic life. In school board meetings, city council gatherings, and various public hearings across the United States, ordinary citizens have a tendency to botch, and sometimes abandon all together, the democratic ideals of reasoned debate and rational decision-making, resorting to more ordinary ways of speaking like chatter, gossip, and idle talk instead. This article explores one such example, paying special attention to the use of chatter, gossip, and idle talk for purposes of provocation, antagonism, and radical dissensus in local American civic life. Starting with a detailed qualitative case study, this essay works inductively from the specific rhetorical contours of a local public debate toward a broader philosophical perspective on the communicative practice of everyday talk, suggesting that there is always something extraordinary about ordinary civic discussion and debate.

Academic Ableism and Students with Intellectual/Development Disabilities: Rethinking Self-Advocacy as an Anti-Ableist Practice

Per laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, college students with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD) in the United States are expected to be self-advocates and speak up for needed accommodations, regardless of diagnosis or condition. Students with I/DD in particular are frequently taught the dominant view of self-advocacy as a set of skills whereby they achieve self-determination. This view undersells the degree to which self-advocacy is a rhetorical enterprise, wherein students craft their speech to achieve immediate social purposes; and it elides the political history of self-advocacy in the U.S. and its ties to the adult self-advocacy movement. In light of these considerations, I seek to understand how ableism on college campuses gives shape to particular ideas about self-advocacy. Through five student interviews, I analyze how everyday talk about self-advocacy on a university campus is constructed through ableist discourses privileging mastery, concealment of bodily difference, and autonomy. Based on this analysis, I argue that it is necessary that educators reimagine self-advocacy as a collective responsibility engaging students, faculty, administrators, and staff in creating more accessible campus cultures, rather than as a hyper-individualized, self-directed pursuit of personal goals.

Stories “matter”: Storytelling as community learning within a whole systems approach to recovery

We humans, perhaps especially those of us who identify as narrative therapists and systemic practitioners, tell stories all the time, in our everyday talk with family and friends, in dialogue with colleagues, in creative endeavour, in our practices, in talking about our practices, in research contexts and beyond. It is an important part of how we make sense of ourselves and our cultural contexts. Storytelling can also be conceptualised as a resource for transformation and as a mechanism for systems thinking to create “social change” (David Stroh 2015). This paper offers an overview of a project that highlights the transformative quality of storytelling in systemic, community practices. Stories, storytellers and witnesses are framed as active agents. In particular this paper reviews a newly developed model of community learning through storytelling in Bridgend, South Wales, where the author is based. In creating a “learning community” around people and places in this community- particularly those adversely impacted by the recent pandemic- the paper draws on storytelling practices (Dodd 2019; Heinemeyer 2019; Salter and Newkirk 2019); community learning (Senge 1994; Wenger 1998) and narrative practices (White and Epston 1990; White 1995, 2005, 2006; Denborough 2006, 2008, 2014 for example) to show a holistic model for social action. This is set within the context of beginning to remodel social life during and after the first wave of COVID 19 pandemic.

Exploration of the Personal Memmorate of a Local Myth Based on Oral Genre Analysis

The conversational genres are part of and performed in everyday life, the culture of everyday talk, and the type of discourses embedded in ongoing social processes. Studying the communication and performance of ordinary people is essential to understand the discourses and to hear the unheard voices in our society. These are individual narratives usually composed orally by the tellers based on real incidents and personal experiences. Myths are important to be studied out to analyze discursive changes and locate personal experiences within the society. The importance of this local myth as an oral genre can be illustrated by analyzing their presence, practices, and functions within the community. For example, this local myth provides a useful narrative of cultural norms, changes in living conditions, and the world view of the local inhabitants. This paper is written following the personal memmorate analysis and it is analyzed based on oral genre analysis. It is explored that local people perceive this myth in their daily experiences and it guides their action.

The Virtues of Everyday Talk: The Enduring Significance of John Milton’s Theory of Expressive Liberties

The system of free expression John Milton defends in Areopagitica, a pamphlet against prior restraint in publishing, is often characterized as merely a proto-liberal, truth-based marketplace of ideas theory. But this represents a misunderstanding of Milton’s views on the freedoms of conscience, speech, and the press. The tendency in political theory, philosophy, and law to reduce the “free speech Milton” to Areopagitica, and the reduction of that essay to several soundbites, has meant sidelining both the significant exceptions to expressive liberties that Milton calls for and also the role of the social in his theory. This incomplete characterization has enabled Milton’s misuse in First Amendment discourse and jurisprudence, where he is made to support hierarchical approaches to free speech that privilege public political speech and are therefore ill-equipped to address the full range of communicative experiences. More comprehensive readings of Milton, however, reveal both certain limits to free expression, and also deep consideration for a wide range of speech acts. By reading Milton’s theory of expressive liberties in light of the justifications he provides for those freedoms—i.e., virtue-building and Truth-seeking—this essay provides a fuller account of his views. What emerges is a distinctly Miltonian, virtue-driven “political theory of everyday talk” that locates value in even the most ordinary communicative acts. This theory—embracing both verbal and nonverbal expression—not only complements existing political theories of the everyday but can also help illuminate contemporary free speech concerns, many of which stem from the libertarian approach to expressive liberties that Milton (inadvertently) helped inspire.

Measuring semantic relatedness between words using related synsets in African Wordnet

Words should not be treated as if all they do is fulfil roles; they can also have relationships. In our everyday talk, we normally give the meanings of words in terms of their relationships. The approach for measuring semantic relatedness between words is determined by means of a set of words that are closely related to them, and these are normally referred to as the set of determiner words. This article examines the measures of semantic relatedness to which words are associated by means of the variety of types of semantic relationships – such as synonymy, hyponymy, function and association. This relationship is considered within the context of African Wordnet (AWN), which provides South African indigenous languages with a platform to access a machine-readable lexical database organised by meaning. This article argues that computing semantic relatedness using African Wordnet could be helpful in developing an understanding of the meaning of related words for use in different African languages.

Hypothetical questions in everyday Italian conversations.

Simulation is an important cognitive resource involved in many mental processes. In this paper, we focus our attention on hypothetical questions (HQs) which are “communicative tools” used by speakers to encourage the activation of that resource, i.e., to invite their interlocutors to imagine a hypothetical scenario and to answer one or more related questions. While their functions have been broadly investigated in institutional settings, little has been written about such questions regarding everyday talk, and no work has been conducted specifically on the Italian language. This paper aims to fill this gap by analysing the linguistic designs, the epistemic stances conveyed, and the pragmatic functions accomplished by a set of HQs taken from a corpus of ordinary Italian conversations. The analysis reveals that the linguistic design of HQs is complex, in the sense that they can be made up of different types of hypothetical and interrogative components; the epistemic stances conveyed are numerous, in the sense that their hypothetical and interrogative components can come from different epistemic positions; and unlike HQs used in institutional settings, their pragmatic functions are multiple, ranging from finding out the interlocutor's opinion, communicating rhetorically the questioners’ point of view, asking for advice, asking for permission, making proposals.

Unpacking Everyday Critical Pedagogy: Languaging Critique and Dialogue

This article explores how critical pedagogy unfolds in the everyday interactions between teachers and students. Specifically, Freirean constructs of critique and dialogue were explored in two key literacy events drawn from an ethnographically informed case study of one fourth-grade classroom. The events were first examined from an ethnographic perspective to understand how sociopolitical issue(s) were being critiqued (or avoided). These events were then analyzed again through microanalytic discourse analysis to explore how teachers and students jointly accomplished dialogue and critique through proposing and taking up of particular stances toward text(s). By juxtaposing these two analytic lenses, the researchers argue for an understanding of critical pedagogy, particularly the tenets of critique and dialogue, as interactionally co-constructed in the continually evolving, everyday talk between teachers and students. This article closes by considering the implications of this work for classroom-based literacy research that examines critical pedagogy.

User-Generated Nationalism: Interactions With Religion, Race, and Partisanship in Everyday Talk Online

This article examines how the nationalist imagination structures cyberspace from the bottom up, or what I call “user-generated nationalism.” It also looks at the interplay between nationalism and other, non-spatial modes of social identification. My analysis of a month of tweets indicates that religious, racialized, and partisan identities are quite pronounced online, but they also tend to be conflated with nationalism. I argue that nationalism is not simply banal itself: because of its fixity in place and political correctness, it is used to lend legitimacy to and “banalize” other identities. This dynamic is key to understanding the explosion of right-wing populism around the “world of nations” — especially the success of populist leaders in normalizing religious, racialized, and partisan identifications — and the central role being played by digital media in this process.

User-generated nationalism: interactions with religion, race, and partisanship in everyday talk online

ABSTRACT This article examines how the nationalist imagination structures cyberspace from the bottom up, or what I call user-generated nationalism. It also looks at the interplay between nationalism and other, non-spatial modes of social identification. My analysis of a month of tweets indicates that religious, racialized, and partisan identities are quite pronounced online, but they also tend to be conflated with nationalism. I argue that nationalism is not simply banal itself: because of its fixity in place and political correctness, it is used to lend legitimacy to and ‘banalize’ other identities. This dynamic is key to understanding the explosion of right-wing populism around the ‘world of nations’ – especially the success of populist leaders in normalizing religious, racialized, and partisan identifications – and the central role being played by digital media in this process.

From the Living Room to the Meeting Hall? Citizens’ Political Talk in the Deliberative System

ABSTRACT Focusing on ordinary people’s political talk the paper contributes to the study of deliberative democracy from a systemic perspective. By examining citizens’ everyday communication, it focuses on an object that is rarely studied from a deliberative perspective, but crucial for the deliberative system’s democratic character. By investigating the couplings between different arenas of political talk between citizens, ranging from informal private, semi-public and public conversations to formalized discussions at public events, it provides evidence on the appropriateness of the systemic conception of deliberative democracy. Analyzing data from two high-quality face-to-face surveys by means of structural equation modeling the paper demonstrates how these venues are connected to one another. The linkages between these discursive spheres create opportunities for bottom-up information flows from informal everyday conversations into formalized public discussions. To some extent, informal conversations also empower citizens for participation in these more demanding organized discussion events. Informal political conversations between strangers, a type of political talk largely neglected by extant research, emerge as a crucial nexus that funnels the motivational and capacity-building influence of everyday political talk within people’s social networks into active participation in formalized public discussions.

Deliberation and Discussion in Classical Athens*

Deliberative democracy has often been associated with classical Athens, yet how far and where such activity appeared in the classical Athenian political system is open to question. This article explores the character of the deliberation and/or discussion that took place in five Athenian political arenas: courts, assembly, council, local assemblies, and street. It finds that in democratic Athens, discussion and deliberation (in the core Greek sense of “coming to a decision”) were inversely related. The most decisive arenas (assembly, courts) were the least discursive, in the sense of being least marked by the exchange of reasons admired by many contemporary theorists, while the most discursive arenas (street, perhaps local assemblies, perhaps council) were the least decisive. This finding makes sense. Mass democracy relies ultimately on the vote, not on back-and-forth discussion. Yet does not follow that discussion was unimportant to Athenian democracy. Indeed, it seems very likely (though impossible to prove or to disprove) that the decision-making powers of ordinary citizens in the assembly and courts prompted increased discussion of political issues outside those bodies, and that such “everyday talk” affected votes.