Interactional Sociolinguistics Research Articles

Playback interviews as a method for research on language ideologies: Citationality, reflexivity, and rapport in interdiscursive encounters

Abstract This contribution deals with the use of playback interviews in interactional sociolinguistics, a method wherein participants review audio or video recordings of their conversations and provide retrospective commentary. I first outline a brief history of the development of the playback method and how it was incorporated into the interactional sociolinguistic research agenda. As theoretical frameworks for playback interviews and their application to research on language ideologies remain underexplored, this article introduces three concepts from linguistic anthropology—citationality, reflexivity, and interdiscursivity—to theorize playback interviews from a semiotic perspective. Departing from these theories, playback interviews are contextualized within broader social dynamics, including participation frames, power, and rapport that are inherent in the interviewing process. Drawing on source recordings from interactions between L1 and European L2 users of Japanese in Tokyo, and playback sessions with the L2 users, I illustrate how playback interviews contribute to language-ideological inquiries, for example, perceptions of style and code-switching. The analysis showcases the method’s potential to unveil participants’ metapragmatic awareness and explore the intersection of linguistic structure, practice, and ideology. Playback interviews are positioned as a valuable tool for investigating language ideologies, offering new methodological perspectives through retrospection and reflection on communication.

Grandparents as custodians of Arabic as a heritage language in the United Kingdom

The phenomenon of three-generation households is typical in many homes across the world, though perhaps less so in North America and Western Europe. When multigeneration families share the same physical space and take part in the same activities, the dynamics of parenting, eating, how time is spent and allocated, and relationships differ from families in which only parents and their children live together. One of the main (relevant) differences is that in these multilingual families there is easy access to the learning of heritage languages and socialisation into and through them. As the article will demonstrate shortly, such ease is also accompanied by relational and relationship challenges which bear on the heritage language learning process. The article describes the language transmission efforts of three Arabic-speaking families in the United Kingdom to teach and use Arabic with their children at home. Data was collected in the form of audio-recorded interactions, family background forms and parental interviews. Interview data was analysed thematically, and interactional data was analysed from the perspective of interactional sociolinguistics. The data reveals that, in addition to parents, grandparents uniquely enhance not only the learning of Arabic but also the experience of learning it. Children have a direct opportunity to learn Arabic and its various, often rare, dialects with help from their monolingual grandparents. Relationship dynamics between parents, their own parents, their parents-in-law, and their own children appear to shape and be shaped by the explicit and implicit language beliefs and practices of family members. Grandparents seem to also contribute to children’s emotional socialisation and their future beliefs of Arabic as an authentic means by which to express emotion. This is the first study to highlight the role grandparents play in the FLP of Arabic as a heritage language.

Institutionelle Kommunikation in der digitalen Öffentlichkeit: Das kommunikative Repertoire der Polizei Hamburg auf Twitter

Abstract This paper uses the notion of communicative repertoire to investigate the language conduct of an institutional organization in a social media environment, with the Twitter (now ‘X’) account of Hamburg Police as a case in point. Theoretically drawing on interactional sociolinguistics, media linguistics and Twitter research, we view communicative repertoire as the sum of linguistic and semiotic resources that are mobilized by organizational agents to participate in a multi-faceted digital public space that comprises both the dissemination of messages to a digital audience (the account’s followers) and dialogic exchanges with self-selected members of the digital publics. The analysis is based on all tweets produced by the Hamburg Police over a period of three months, complemented by an interview with the organization’s social media team. We operationalize the communicative repertoire by means of a multi-level analytical scheme that comprises: (a) different types of linguistic and graphic resources, (b) two participation formats (initiative and responsive messages) and (c) several action types. The findings show that the language conduct of Police Hamburg is multi-faceted and shows striking stylistic differences between initiative and responsive tweets. While initiative tweets draw on pre-digital genres of Police communication (e.g. call for witnesses), responsive tweets repeatedly show accommodation towards users. Overall, the case of Hamburg Police illustrates how mediatization transforms practices of institutional communication.

Responding to xenophobic violence in South Africa: identity negotiation and language practices of Nigerian immigrants in Cape Town and Johannesburg

This study reflects on language use and identity navigation in the context of xenophobia. It specifically examines language practices by Nigerian Igbo immigrants as they relate to negotiating social and national identities, as well as motivations of the language practices and how they relate to evading xenophobic attacks. The study employs an interactional sociolinguistics framework, and drew on semi-structured interviews, ethnographic, participant observation, focus group discussions and documentation of lived experiences involving 20 participants in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The study identifies language practices such as code- (or emblematic) switching, translanguaging, language learning and innovations and adoptions employed by the immigrants to navigate social and national identities. Key themes relating to the motivations for the language practices include the need for integration, safety and livelihood. The language practices tell a story of xenophobic experiences, and of the immigrant’s response to try to evade such attacks, violence, or threats. This represents original insight into the South African context, as well as a unique contribution to knowledge in terms of how language and language use mirrors life in society.

‘Just relax and ram it in’: Dimensions of power in workplace sexual humour

Sexual humour has been observed in organisations where it is actively encouraged and in organisations where it is officially proscribed. In this paper, we use Interactional Sociolinguistics to analyse fifteen ‘live’ recordings of walkie-talkie radio conversations in a Finnish restaurant where sexual behaviour was officially proscribed. Our findings illustrate how sexual humour can function as a means of ‘bonding’ or ‘biting’ in a mixed-gender work community, with each exchange carrying distinct power implications. Theoretically, we build on Butler’s notion of ‘linguistic injury’ by proposing that the nature and extent of the ‘injury’ associated with sexual humour varies depending on the function, target, initiator and response. We develop a conceptual framework that positions sexual humour within its interactional, organisational and societal context and which illuminates the distinct power relations enacted by sexual humour involving resistance, subjugation and exclusion.

Use of Aymara in the Chile, Peru, and Bolivia Frontiers: A Micro-Sociolinguistic Analysis

The Aymara language (AL) is one of the most important languages in the central Andean region. However, there are few studies on its use from a microsociolinguistic approach. This paper aims to analyze the use of the Aymara language in six commercial speech events in a tri-border context involving Aymara speakers from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia. The conversations that happened within these events were collected through audio recordings and written records in a qualitative ethnographic intervention in the so-called three-part fair or “Feria Tripartita” (FT), a commercial event that occurs weekly in the three-border area. The analysis is based on ethnography of communication, conversational analysis, and interactional sociolinguistics. Drawing on this analytical framework, the use of the AL that is manifested there shows code-switching with Spanish, both inter- and intra-orally, along with a series of interlinguistic phenomena, such as the presence of a series of Spanish lexical bases with Aymara suffixation, and the use of unnecessary Spanish loans. Thus the FT, in spite of being an Aymara space that conforms a bilingual speaking community, is a space of influence of the Castilian language, which structurally affects the use of the AL.

Språkuppfattningar och röster i österbottniska flerspråkiga elevers stiliserade tal

Language beliefs and voices in stylized speech of Ostrobothnian multilingual pupils This qualitative study investigates stylized speech performed by multilingual pupils who use a Finland-Swedish dialect, Finnish, and standard Swedish as linguistic resources. Moreover, the aim is, by using methods from interactional sociolinguistics, to identify linguistic and paralinguistic features of their stylized speech and what kind of explicit and implicit language beliefs and voices they convey. The analysis shows that the pupils stylize the standard Swedish language as well as the Finnish language in different ways, but not their Finland-Swedish dialect. The stylizations reflect both explicitly and implicitly the pupils’ beliefs about the language policy in the classroom, as well as their attitudes towards their language resources and their experiences with them. Moreover, the stylizations reflect beliefs about a shared language register. The voices identified in connection with the stylizations are polyphonic: partly, the pupils’ voice is heard, and partly the pupils impact each other’s voices. A voice of authority is identified as is the voice of someone not belonging to the same language group. The stylizations, language beliefs, and voices are linked to the pupils’ personal experiences, the norms and expectations that apply in the interaction, and the explicit and implicit discourses about their language resources.

Creative uses of language to invoke sex-related taboos in Churchill Raw comedy shows

Churchill Raw event facilitates creative self-expression of young comedians through the incorporation of a variety of sex-related taboo topics. Yet, the multicultural nature of the participants in the Nairobi-based event makes the communication of such topics particularly problematic, as they can also be deemed offensive. Drawing on theoretical and methodological principles from Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 2003), this article investigates how sex-related taboos are drawn into performances using euphemistic linguistic resources, such as puns, metaphors, metonymy, codeswitching and so on. As data we use 10 video recordings of comedians and 2 two-hour interviews with the key comedians. By focusing on situated uses of euphemistic language in the context of comedy in the African city of Nairobi, this article demonstrates that contrary to the general perception, young people observe sex-related taboos by using euphemistic language resources.

Face Maintenance Rituals and Communication Strategies Used in Puja Astawa’s YouTube Videos

YouTube, a video sharing platform, is famously used these days, not only due to its function as part of entertainment, but also a media of interaction. Unlike, face-to-face interaction or other computer-mediated interaction, YouTube served multi-party interaction and three levels of communication. Its uniqueness leads to questions on whether people engaged in this interaction manage maintaining their interlocutor’s face and what communication strategies are used amid this multi-party interaction considering it may involve people from different social and cultural background. This qualitative research was aimed to analyse the first level communication in YouTube videos by using interactional sociolinguistics approach in order to figure out the types of face maintenance rituals as well as the communication strategies used by the participants in YouTube videos. The data source of the study was Puja Astawa’s YouTube videos, one of the most popular content creators in Bali. In collecting the data, documentation method and note taking technique were used. The data were further analysed using the face maintenance theory proposed by Goffman and communication strategies proposed by Canale and Swain. The result of the analysis shows that presentational rituals is the main rituals used by the participants in Puja Astawa’s YouTube videos. In terms of communication strategies, there are three strategies found, namely (1) code switching, (2) repetition, (3) the use of Balinese particles. Code switching is the mostly used strategy while the use of Balinese particles is the least used strategy.

Architecture admissions interviews at the University of Cambridge: Analysis and experience

This article explores the gatekeeping practices in undergraduate Architecture admissions interviews at the University of Cambridge. Using the techniques of Interactional Sociolinguistics, we show how the interview involves two consequential modes of talk – the experiential and subjective on the one hand, and the analytic, rational and objective on the other hand – that derive from the opposed academic traditions that comprise the discipline of Architectural studies. We demonstrate that the interview requires these two modes of talk to be synthesized in specific ways, despite wide variation in how this requirement is signalled within and across the constituent phases of the interview. As such, we show that the means for demonstrating academic competence are linguistic and discursive. Finally, we discuss how the interactional requirements of Admissions interviews compare to those of job interviews.

Emojis on Board: The Communicative Functions of Emojis in Saudi Females’ WhatsApp Groups’ Interactions

This study examines the communicative functions of emojis as used by Saudi females aged between (35-55) in twenty-five female-only WhatsApp groups’ instant messages. These groups are chosen according to five different social purposes for which the group is created: sisterhood-related, close friendship-related, relatives-related, religion-related, and workplace-related. The data has been collected through screenshots of WhatsApp conversations naturally occurring between the females in these groups. The method used for checking the types of emojis and their frequencies is based on computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) of ‘coding and counting’ (Herring 2004). All the different emojis were coded and counted and then were put to qualitative analysis on theories and methods of interactional sociolinguistics (IS) such as (Gumperz 1982; Dressner and Herring 2010). Results show that emojis have been used to express various kinds of emotions such as happiness, sadness, longing for old days, etc. Furthermore, they have been used to express different communicative functions of what Gumperz (1982) refers to as ‘contextualization cues’ such as congratulation on happy occasions, agreeing on others’ comments, compliments, sharing information with others, gratitude, sending prayers, reminding the members of religious tasks, laughing, arguing, etc. The results also prove that emojis are context-dependent and are used to help users to approximate real daily face-to-face situations to others and to facilitate the different expressed emotions and communicative functions to receivers (Dressner and Herring 2010; Evans 2017).

Humour and the stretchy temporality of peer conflict in a group early childhood setting: An analysis of relational power

While research on children’s humour is growing, few investigations have focused on how children use humour in conflict interactions, and specifically in group early childhood settings. Using data extracts from a project that investigated children’s naturally occurring conflict interactions in a multi-ethnic early childhood setting, we use interactional sociolinguistics to analyse how children used humour at unexpected moments during conflict situations. The analysis probes different meanings carried in the children’s use of humour, illustrating how humour intersected with personal and relational power to resolve or defuse conflict, or to coerce compliance with existing peer relational positions. The analysis broadens understandings of the significance of humour in children’s lives in early childhood settings, and particularly in the context of conflict interactions that have a ‘stretchy temporality’ connecting interactive moves to others in the past, and to existing power positions in peer relationships.

Framing and related concepts in interactional sociolinguistics

This essay provides an overview of the study of framing in discourse as conducated in the field of interactional sociolinguistics. We review key theorizing on frames and related concepts such as footing, positioning, and speech activity that provides the foundation for this research. We note two basic understandings of frame in our field: interactive frames relate to situational definitions of what is going on in an interaction; knowledge schemas account for participants’ expectations regarding people, objects, and so on. We give examples of how interactional sociolinguists have applied framing to illuminate moment-by-moment constructions of meanings, identities, and relationships across a range of contexts, as well as the role of knowledge and memory in these processes. With examples from studies of cross-cultural communication, everyday conversations among family and friends, and interaction in medical and digital discourse contexts, we emphasize how frames are transformed and laminated (or layered). While social movements have not been a central focus of interactional sociolinguistics research, we note that concern for social justice has been of foundational concern from the inception of this field, and note a number of studies that have demonstrated how micro-level moments of social activism and change are discursively constructed. These studies attest to the relevance of interactional sociolinguistic analysis of framing to researchers interested in social movements.

Through the Lens of Discourse Analysis: Transformational Leadership as a Leverage Point for Promoting Educational Sustainability

This exploratory qualitative study sought to understand the role of transformational leadership in promoting educational sustainability (ES) through examining three classroom critical incidents. For this undertaking, the study employed a quadratic method integrating four theories: Ethnomethodology (particularly indexicality and contextualization), Flanders’ Interaction Analysis Categories (FIAC), Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS), and Transformational Leadership (TL). Two of the three incidents took place during face-to-face classes, while the third transpired online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyses of teachers’ TL and communication strategies were administered, and each respective event was unfolded, explored, and evaluated qualitatively through a bidirectional model designed by the researchers. Data were collected and the study revealed that teachers demonstrated varied levels of TL based on their perceptions of incidents, the awareness of their professional roles as leaders, and the linguistic choices they made. In addition, analyzing the results of teachers’ discourses, TL was demonstrated to be a leverage point for promoting educational sustainability. Proven to be an effective tool, the bidirectional model can be advocated by policy makers to help teachers assume their roles as leaders, and even to qualify them as leaders.

Humour and teasing in gay Taiwanese men’s mediatised interaction on an LGBTQ-oriented YouTube entertainment variety show

This study illustrates and discusses how young gay Taiwanese men interact with straight and nonstraight people through humour and teasing on an LGBTQ-oriented YouTube entertainment variety show in Taiwan. The analytical framework of the study is informed by multimodal discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics. Four strategies used to create humour are identified: performing wúlítóu ‘nonsense’, using quadrisyllabic (non)formulaic expressions, using gender subversion and using indirect insults (towards close female friends). The analysis suggests that all four strategies rely on indexical disjuncture and are used by young gay Taiwanese men not only to create humour, but also as a means of voicing themselves through online media in an environment where they still face many obstacles. The study argues that, as a discursive strategy, indexical disjuncture is at the very heart of Taiwanese camp.

A Discourse Study on Handover Communication Among Care Providers in a Residential Care Home for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities

ABSTRACT Abundant research has focused on handovers among nurses and/or doctors in hospitals; far less is known about handovers among care providers in non-clinical contexts, such as care homes for the elderly or the disabled. Focusing on handovers in a residential care home for persons with intellectual disabilities (RCHID), this study argues that handover communication in non-clinical settings is equally important. Ineffective handovers can lead to the deterioration of the residents’ health conditions, chaotic situations and even injuries to both care providers and care recipients. Staff in RCHIDs rely heavily on handover communication to obtain information about the residents’ needs and to offer appropriate care services. Combining discourse analysis with interactional sociolinguistics, this study analyzes written and spoken discourses involved in handover communication among care providers in a typical RCHID in Hong Kong to investigate what and how communicative functions were achieved through the participants’ language use. The data were collected by convenience sampling, including handwritten notes and handover recordings of twelve sessions. Then a group interview of seven care providers was conducted to obtain supplementary data. Findings suggest that handover communication includes informational and interpersonal functions. While information delivery is the main purpose, care providers also establish relationships with one another through small talk about care home residents. The results suggest potential drawbacks of the handovers, including illegible notes, inconsistent information collection, and low interactivity. This study proposes a model that elucidates the correlation between discourse, handover communication and healthcare services, and suggests strategies to enhance such communication.

Interactional sociolinguistics as a multi-pronged approach to office hour rapport management

This study proposes a multi-pronged approach for examining office hour (OH) rapport management. Using an interactional sociolinguistic lens, I investigate how an international teaching assistant (ITA) managed rapport in the face of misunderstanding and schema mismatch during an OH consultation. Data were collected through classroom observations, OH video-recording, an exit survey, and follow-up interviews with participants to facilitate triangulation. Utilizing frame analysis and contextualization cues, I analyzed the strategies the ITA used to maintain and strengthen rapport with his international student. I show that a multi-method approach illuminates how participants’ mismatch in schemas was displayed to one another at the interactional level, which led to rapport challenge and misunderstanding. I argue that using multiple methods is beneficial in revealing the intercultural nature of OH meetings where small “c” culture (i.e., institutional culture) was negotiated. While previous research predominantly focused on face management, this study complexifies our understanding of rapport by highlighting the importance of managing (a) interactional goals and (b) rights and obligations, two under-researched bases of rapport.

What does translanguaging-for-equity really involve? An interactional analysis of a 9th grade English class

Abstract While much research on translanguaging is in bilingual and heritage language classrooms, it is under-researched in K-12 English-medium education. To better understand translanguaging in this context, this study applied interactional sociolinguistics, including analytical categories adapted from Conversation-for-Learning (Kasper and Kim, 2015; Kim, 2019), to a ninth grade English class in Honolulu with students from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The study examined interactional sequences as students did literary analysis of novels and poetry over 13 weeks. These sequences involved appropriation of others’ lexical phrases, collaborative word searches, miscommunication repair, and knowledge checks. Translanguaging, when it occurred, indicated joint meaning-making across linguistic asymmetries, and was not only a means of thinking aloud using an integrated language repertoire, but a form of helping peers as students signaled to each other to adopt language, teach them something, or work through a problem together, creating opportunities to learn. These findings suggest that equity hinges not only on allowing students to learn using their whole linguistic repertoires but on social and ethical dispositions made apparent through interactional analyses.

Mixed Speech Styles in Two Single-Gendered Occupational Groups: Identities in Interaction

This paper qualitatively examines mixed speech styles within the context of two single-gendered white-collar Lithuania-based workplaces situated in Vilnius: an IT company and a company producing cosmetics (COSM). In Lithuanian contexts, mixed speech styles could be broadly defined as a flow of speech consisting of linguistic resources from languages other than Lithuanian (mainly English and Russian) incorporated into otherwise Lithuanian talk. The paper focuses on situated usage of mixed speech styles employed in talk at work. It aims to see how the linguistic enactment of mixed speech styles varies according to the working team and how such variation may influence the construction of participants’ complex identities. The research is based on naturally occurring recorded speech, and the method applied could be determined as ethnographically informed Interactional Sociolinguistics. The analysis shows that the two single-gendered communities of practice examined do not draw on the same non-native linguistic resources and that such dissimilar speaker choices and identity work can be predetermined by an intricate interplay of social and situational factors.

Migration, media, and the emergence of pidgin‐ and creole‐based informal epicentres

The paper makes a case for regarding Nigerian Pidgin (Naijá) and Jamaican Creole (Patois) as informal linguistic epicentres in the global English Language Complex. This requires a few modifications to current definitions of linguistic epicentres but leads to a sociolinguistically realistic and more comprehensive account of the profound influence that Jamaica and Nigeria have had on the development of Englishes in their regions and in the world at large. In the absence of large corpora, qualitative methods from linguistic ethnography and interactional sociolinguistics were used for the study of possible epicentral effects of Naijá and Patois. They allow access to speakers’ language attitudes and language ideologies, a shaping factor of epicentral influences that generally deserves more attention in future research.