Interpersonal Discourse Research Articles

Exploring Podcast Adoption Intention via Perceived Social Norms, Interpersonal Communication, and Theory of Planned Behavior

Previous research has not linked the perspectives of social influence, interpersonal discourse, and behavioral theory to study new media diffusion. The current study integrated these perspectives by incorporating theory of planned behavior with the concepts of normative beliefs and interpersonal communication to explain podcast-adoption intention. A cross-sectional sample responded to a survey online. Results show that descriptive norm and perceived control were significant predictors of attitude; injunctive norm was a significant predictor of perceived control. Social discourse, perceived descriptive norm, and attitude had a direct effect on podcast-adoption intention; perceived control and injunctive norm had an indirect effect in contrast.

Role-playing games in arts, research and education

Abstract Games are increasingly being used as tools to broaden pedagogical options in schools and create interdisciplinary linkages. This article pays particular attention to role-playing games (RPGs), and the applications they have for arts education. RPGs can be used in art classrooms and in arts-based research and as an exciting and useful form of collaborative art-making, interpersonal discourse and reflection. This article is divided into sections describing the games and the manner in which it has been applied to arts education. Interspersed within the article are reflections from the author’s experience in a game that examines the politics of oppression called the The Tribunal, which resulted in introspection on both personal and societal issues. The article concludes that RPGs can help make both personal and communal meaning of experiences and foster the development of empathy.

Routinization of the Israeli-Arab Conflict: The Perspective of Outsiders

This study explores features of the routinization of the Israeli-Arab conflict in everyday life in Israel. Specifically, it examines how foreign students view this aspect of the culture of conflict, compared to the point of view of Israeli students born into the day-to-day reality of a society that has been engaged in an intractable conflict for decades. Findings show that foreigners perceived and identified various conflict-related routines that have been absorbed into the social and physical spaces of daily life in Israel, becoming unnoticeable to Israelis. This was the case particularly with various images and symbols of the conflict that saturate both public and private spaces, conflict-related informal norms of behavior, and the central place that the conflict occupies in private interpersonal discourse. These results are discussed in relation to the functionalities of the routinization of the conflict and its implications.

AAI predicts patients’ in-session interpersonal behavior and discourse: a “move to the level of the relation” for attachment-informed psychotherapy research

There is currently little empirical evidence regarding how patients’ attachment patterns manifest in individual psychotherapy. This study compared the in-session discourse of patients classified secure, dismissing, and preoccupied on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Rather than focusing on content or form alone, this study analyzed how patients’ discourse elicits and maintains emotional proximity with the therapist. The AAI was administered to 56 patients prior to treatment and one session for each patient was rated with the Patient Attachment Coding System (PACS) by four independent raters, blind to patients’ AAI classification. Significant differences were found in the discourse of patients with different attachment patterns. Namely, secure and preoccupied patients showed more contact-seeking behavior than dismissing patients, who avoided emotional proximity more, while preoccupied patients resisted therapists’ help more than did secure and dismissing patients. These results suggest that the different attachment patterns may have distinctive manifestations in the psychotherapy process that can be tracked by external observers.

User-Generated Brands and Social Media: Couchsurfing and Airbnb

The aim of this paper is to examine the brand identity construction of user-generated brands (UGBs), using discursive and visual analysis of UGBs’ social media material in an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of this relatively new branding phenomenon. We specifically focused on two such brands: Airbnb and Couchsurfing. Our main findings reveal the emerged themes: the access to the private sphere, the human dimension and meaningful inter-personal discourses, and authenticity. The value of our research lies in identifying the specificities of the identity construction and visual representation of UGBs. Lastly, we offer practical suggestions and ideas for future research.

Bridge over Troubled Water? Rebaptism in a Nordic Context — Reflections and Proposals

Abstract This article reflects on questions related to the issue of rebaptism within Nordic Christianity. Because infant baptism is not recognized as valid within the Pentecostal tradition, new members are asked to undergo rebaptism. Many of those coming from a Lutheran tradition, however, seem to have a “ritualized remembrance” of their infant baptism, thus indicating the ability to build bridges between now and then by being in touch with a spiritual reality across time and place, tied to an overarching interpersonal theological discourse. In moving from the Lutheran to the Pentecostal tradition, how important is the amount of water as long as compatible theological reflections are present? And conversely, to what extent can we talk about a sacramental potential in Pentecostalism? When considering such questions, the goal of expressing a “common understanding” and admitting “a mutual recognition” does not mean complete agreement in all details.

Metaphors and morality: Are digital media epistemologically compatible with moral socialization?

Abstract Recent neurological research supports a media ecology approach to suggest an epistemological incompatibility between digital and mobile media and moral and ethical socialization. The digital transformation of social and interpersonal discourse may cause succeeding generations of digital natives to develop an inability to conceptualize, contemplate and subsequently act on moral concepts and ethical principles. Media ecology, as defined by Neil Postman (1970), examines how media influence perception, understanding and value, and their impact on our survival. These issues are at the heart of morality and ethics. Neurological research has shown the brain’s plasticity allows use of media technology to alter how we think as well as the anatomy of the brain itself. A comparison of the epistemological requirements of moral socialization and the epistemological characteristics of media indicates that digital media may be particularly ineffective in communicating essential moral concepts. Implications for future research and the associated responsibility of educators and media practitioners are discussed.

Expression of cause, evidence, justify and motivation rhetorical relations by causal hypotactic clauses in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper aims at investigating the expression of cause, evidence, justify and motivation rhetorical relations by means of causal hypotactic clauses in formal oral discourse (university lectures and interviews with academic researchers) in Brazilian Portuguese. The investigation is based on Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), a theory of text organization which describes the implicit relations that arise from the combination of parts of texts. The identification of these relations was based on a parameter from Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG): layers of representational and interpersonal levels. From interpersonal level, layers move and discourse act were used. From representational level, layers propositional content and states of affairs were employed. Non-volitional cause relations are established by clauses conveying states of affairs, volitional cause relation is established by clauses conveying propositional contents. Justify relation and evidence relation are established by clauses conveying discourse acts (in evidence relation an instance of what was stated in the nucleus portion is provided in the satellite portion). Finally, motivation relation is established by clauses conveying a motivation subsidiary discourse act.

Discourse markers and politeness in a digital forum in Spanish

This study aims to conduct a pragmalinguistic analysis of the use of interpersonal discourse markers (DMs) to regulate politeness in a Spanish language digital forum. The study is based on the premise that relation-oriented particles are imported from oral conversation into the forum's written exchanges and that these particles maintain their prototypical interpersonal functions while coexisting with prototypical monological DMs. The focus is on these interactive particles, and DMs such as hombre, ¿no?, bueno, and mira are singled out, with special attention paid to their role in the management of polite relations. The results show that these DMs are frequently used and fulfil various types of dialogical functions (to structure dialogical exchanges, to involve the addressee, to express deontic modality, to express evidentiality, etc.). Some regular patterns that contribute to rapport management are identified (illocutive force modulation, dialogical rituals, negotiation of agreement/disagreement, regulation of assertiveness). If these patterns are interpreted in terms of mitigation/intensification, focalisation/defocalisation, agreement/disagreement and distance/closeness, they are part of the pragmalinguistic manifestations of polite verbal behaviour. Our conclusions highlight that the technological factors and participation framework of the forum create medium-specific DM patterns that help to meet the participants’ behavioural expectations and face concerns in online debating.

Constructing the (m)other

This qualitative study explored the ways in which mothers of children with Down syndrome interpreted their experiences of motherhood. The narratives of 19 mothers were analyzed. The findings indicate that their identities as mothers were negotiated in the context of the sociocultural meaning of disability and dominant narratives on motherhood. In institutional and interpersonal discourses, they became positioned as other. Their narratives shed light on their resistance to otherness, their contextualized understanding of mothering a child with Down syndrome, and the ways in which they negotiated access to the constructed category of normative motherhood. The study suggests that a conceptual shift is needed in understanding the familial experience of raising a child with Down syndrome. Moving away from assumptions of negative outcomes for these families, professionals need to acknowledge the embeddedness of their experiences in sociocultural beliefs and practices that devalue children with disabilities.

‘Had They Been Polite and Civilized, None of This Would Have Happened’: Discourses of Race and Racism in Multicultural Lima

In 2006, the Peruvian government passed a law that made racial discrimination a crime punishable by incarceration. This law, part of a multicultural reform in Peru, can be seen as an effective recognition of the reality of racism in Peruvian society. Such recognition, however, contrasts with official depictions of Peru as a country without racism, and of Peruvians as people who deny the existence of racism in their society. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted in Lima, this note explores everyday discourses on this issue. The findings show that Limeños recognize racism as a societal problem, but they adhere to a restrictive definition of racism and use rhetorical strategies that allow them to portray themselves as not racist. Their expressions of distaste for people of color demonstrate that racism persists in interpersonal discourses because of deeply embedded ideas about the inferiority of blacks and Indians.

Holistic Medicine Not “Torture”: Performing Acupuncture in Galway, Ireland

This article examines how the aesthetic design of clinics and interactive discourse and rituals construct the social reality of acupuncture sessions as a form of holistic medical therapy. Verbal and nonverbal interactions create an appealing medical environment but also help prevent the emergence of undesired counter-realities (e.g., pain, biomedical intervention). Based on observations of acupuncture sessions conducted in Galway, Ireland, I illustrate how ambiance and aesthetic elements of clinics create a complex medico-cultural environment that balances oppositional associations (Western/non-Western, exoticism/convention, medical alterity/medical professionalism). Patients interviewed continually referred to acupuncture as a natural and non-invasive form of medical treatment. This suggests that interpersonal discourse and aesthetic design play key roles in how patients define acupuncture treatment, and that these ephemeral agents may also influence how patients come to define efficacy.

Communication, discourses and interculturality

Communication is generally realised through social action in the form of interpersonal discourse. Social action can make implicit and/or explicit claims about the various associated, and perhaps co...

Group composition and its effect on female and male problem-solving in science education

Background: Cooperative learning may help students elaborate upon problem information through interpersonal discourse, and this may provoke a higher level of thinking. Interaction stimulates students to put forward and order their thoughts, and to understand the ideas or questions of their peer learner. However, partner gender is an important variable in cooperative learning. Previous research indicates that female students profit less than male students from mixed-gender cooperative learning in physics, especially where problem-solving is involved. Female and male students have different communication styles. For example, male students tend to give their opinions and explanations directly, while females tend to avoid presenting their opinion and are more likely to initiate cooperative problem-solving by asking questions. Purpose: The main aim of this study was to ascertain whether partner gender influences female students' learning to solve science problems and the role female communication style plays in the cooperative learning process. Sample: A total of 62 high schools students (31 female, 31 male) from three schools in the Netherlands participated in the study. Students were selected from three physics classes in grade 10, with a mean age of 15.6. Students came from various family backgrounds. Design and methods: An experiment was carried out to test the effect of group composition on female and male students' cooperative problem-solving in science. The students were randomly assigned to dyads and three research conditions: 15 mixed-gender pairs (MG); eight female–female pairs (FF) and eight male–male pairs (MM). Students were given training in how to solve a problem as a team, and how to complete the answer sheet. All students solved the same problems in four 50-minute sessions. In each session, students were asked to solve three new and moderately structured problems working together. Each dyad had a university student as an observer. The observer's task was to log the students' time on task and to document the interactions between the students. The observers did not interfere with the communication between the students during problem-solving. Results: Analyses of pre- and post-test performance revealed that female students in the MG condition did not learn to solve physics problems as well as male partners or as female students in all-female dyads. Analyses of interactive behaviours showed that female students in the MG condition devoted less time to actively seeking solutions and spent more time asking questions than their male partners. Conclusions: Difference in solution-seeking behaviour could explain an important part of the difference in problem-solving performance between the female and male students in this study. Female students in the all-female dyads did not differ in interactive behaviour or post-test performance from males. They had a more balanced interactive style than females in the mixed-gender dyads. Suggestions for further research are discussed. It would be interesting to examine if the findings of this study carried over to areas in which females are traditionally more comfortable, such as biology.

Linguistic politeness and face‐work in computer‐mediated communication, Part 1: A theoretical framework

AbstractOur daily social interaction is anchored in interpersonal discourse; accordingly, the phenomenon of linguistic politeness is prevalent in daily social interaction. Such linguistic behavior underscores the fact that linguistic politeness is a critical component of human communication. Speech participants utilize linguistic politeness to avoid and reduce social friction and enhance each other's face, or public self‐image, during social interaction. It is face‐work that underlies the interpersonal function of language use and encompasses all verbal and nonverbal realizations that bring forth one's positive social value, namely, face. Face‐work is founded in and built into dynamic social relations; these social and cultural relations and context directly affect the enactment of face‐work. Analysis and a subsequent understanding of sociointerpersonal communication are critical to the fostering of successful interaction and collaboration. Linguistic politeness theory is well positioned to provide a framework for an analysis of social interaction and interpersonal variables among discourse participants inasmuch as it is applicable not only to face‐to‐face social interactions but also to those interactions undertaken through online communication.

The role of maltreatment experience in children's understanding of the antecedents of emotion

The ability to understand the causes and likely triggers of emotions has important consequences for children's adaptation to their social environment. Yet, little is currently known about the processes that contribute to the development of emotion understanding. To assess how well children understood the antecedents of emotional reactions in others, we presented children with a variety of emotional situations that varied in outcome and equivocality. Children were told the emotional outcome and asked to rate whether a situation was a likely cause of such an outcome. We tested the effects of maltreatment experience on children's ability to map emotions to their eliciting events and their understanding of emotion–situation pairings. The present data suggest that typically developing children are able to distinguish between common elicitors of negative and positive events. In contrast, children who develop within maltreating contexts, where emotions are extreme and inconsistent, interpret positive, equivocal, and negative events as being equally plausible causes of sadness and anger. This difference in maltreated children's reasoning about emotions suggests a critical role of experience in aiding children's mastery of the structure of interpersonal discourse.

Don DeLillo (review)

Reviewed by: Don DeLillo Chris Porter Harold Bloom , ed. Don DeLillo. Bloom's Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003. 182 pp. The "Postmodern" label clings to Don DeLillo because he describes our society so tellingly, whether it be a chemical spill that endangers a town, an assassination plot, or the most famous home run in baseball history. Harold Bloom's collection of previously published essays incorporated in this installment of Bloom's Modern Critical Views, Don DeLillo (2003), evaluates DeLillo in the light of postmodernism, and finds DeLillo more complex than just a "postmodern author." These essays serve to remind us that although the world that DeLillo witnesses is postmodern, this does not mean that the author has to treat it in a postmodern way. Harold Bloom sets the tone for this collection with the proclamations found in his short, concise Introduction. Bloom claims for DeLillo a spot in the list of great writers of our time, specifically citing Underworld as his masterpiece. Additionally, Bloom asserts that DeLillo, contrary to popular opinion, is not a postmodern author but a High Romantic, owing more to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman than to that quintessential postmodern, Thomas Pynchon. This tension provides a theme observable in the essays. Robert Nadeau's opens the collection with "Don DeLillo's Search for Walden Pond," focusing on the game quality evident in DeLillo's novel about football, End Zone. Despite the cleverness of game systems used as metaphors [End Page 366] for life, DeLillo recognizes that they ultimately fail to enclose the complexity that is reality; someone is always stepping outside the game. Bruce Bawer, examining White Noise in "Don DeLillo's America," sees DeLillo as a jargon juggler not interested in the human. "His characters are little more than authorial mouthpieces, all but interchangeable with one another" (27). Bawer's will not be the only article critical of DeLillo. Gregory Salyer, conversely, finds White Noise "the best articulation of the American mythos in the late twentieth century" (34). In "The Romantic Metaphysics of Don DeLillo," Paul Maltby defines DeLillo as a Romantic because of an acknowledgement of a spiritual tone to life. Concentrating on the "visionary moments" in The Names, White Noise, and Libra, Maltby celebrates the anti-postmodern wonder and mystery that DeLillo foregrounds. These moments act in DeLillo as an "affirmation that the near-global culture of late capitalism cannot exhaust the possibilities of human experience" (65). David Cowart helps the reader remember why DeLillo has been labeled "postmodern": he works with postmodern moments, much like Pynchon. "More than any other contemporary writer, DeLillo understands the extent to which images . . . determine what passes for reality in the American mind" (72). For all of the emphasis on language and communication as themes in DeLillo's fiction, Christian Moraru confirms that reading is also a "master motif" (90). Reading is linked to consumption, and Moraru examines several works to remind us that DeLillo's characters often lack the skill at interpreting required reading. Lou Caton and Dana Phillips continue the theme of the Romantic in the postmodern world. Caton uses three episodes in White Noise to highlight the "romantic collisions" with our world, the elevation of the human above the role of "isolated, socially constructed, economic units" (112). Phillips reads White Noise as a postmodern pastoral, with the traditional pastoral conflicts replaced, re-interpreted. Processed food can represent nature, with the supermarket becoming the new site for Arcadia, ultimately changing our view of "the wilderness." Tony Tanner's outlook on Underworld asserts DeLillo's achievement in helping to shape the way we think. DeLillo has said that "the news" is the new narrative of our world, replacing novels or interpersonal discourse, and news is what molds Underworld. Finally, Jeoffrey Bull uses Mao II to examine the postmodern idea of the political novel, finding DeLillo's rewriting an affirmation for this type of novel. The essays in this text are grouped well and represent a wide range of scholarship. Scholars find in DeLillo a wealth of material with which to interpret his work while at the same time differing on how that work might be read. Faced with these evaluations of DeLillo, one finds it...

Preparing students for the 21st century: Alternative (re)writings in contemporary feminist thought

As communication studies enters the 21st century, feminism continues to inform our theory and practice. Aldoory and Toth (2001) observe that communication scholars expanded our understanding of history, methodology, epistemology, identity, media representations, political economy, interpersonal discourse, rhetoric, workplace communication, pedagogy and new technologies by adopting feminist perspectives. Despite these gains, many scholars note that feminism in academia is dominated by white women, and often allows little space for non-white (e.g., Flores, 1996; hooks, 1984; Minh-Ha, 1991) and younger voices in the feminist movement (e.g., Baumgardner & Richards, 2000; Findlen, 1995). Given these critiques, educators must seek to adopt texts that emphasize alternative voices in the feminist movement. As feminism becomes more visible to students, greater numbers of young women resist the label of “feminist” (Cooks, 2001), specifically in educational contexts (Luke & Gore, 1992). The purpose of this review is to introduce three new books that can assist educators with these discussions in the classroom. Each text would be appropriate for use in an undergraduate course, and all provide multiple avenues for discussing the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Sara Weir and Constance Faulkner’s anthology, Voice of a New Generation: A Feminist Anthology, provides readers with narrative expressions of young feminists on a variety of intersecting social issues. Weir and Faulkner note that their primary

The discourse marker nu: Israeli Hebrew impatience in interaction

This study investigates the nonlexical item nu, borrowed into Hebrew from European languages, particularly Yiddish and Russian. The corpus examined consists of audio-recordings of thirty casual conversations between friends and family members, Nu was found to be the second-most prevalent interpersonal discourse marker (Maschler 1994a) in this database. The tokens of nu in the corpus function (i) to hasten a nonverbal action, (ii) to urge further development within a topic, (iii) to grant permission to perform an action, or (iv) as a keying discourse marker providing a joking/provoking tone. The relationships among these functions are explored by reference to three continua constraining the use of nu: (1) 'sequentiality', (2) 'key', and (3) 'metalanguage', Finally, nu is discussed in relation to the often positive perception of impatience in Israeli culture.

Modular Perspectives on Bilingualism

The following review of the research traces the current discussion on models of bilingualism to the contributions of L. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria. The attempt to differentiate among the different components of language ability in child development has from the beginning sparked sharp debate. Bilingualism, as an object of study, offers researchers a privileged viewpoint on the questions in dispute: the distinction between interpersonal conversational discourse and literacy-related academic discourse, the relationship between the development of linguistic knowledge of two languages and general cognitive development, and aspects of development that are universal and those aspects of child bilingual development that show wide variation. The article proposes that a modular approach to studying the different aspects of bilingual development promises to chart a course toward finding a broader common ground around research findings and interpretations that currently appear to be irreconcilable.