ABSTRACT This study investigates how a group of three fifth-grade students – one autistic and two non-autistic – collaboratively create a fictional story through proposals and joint decisions. The video-recorded data were collected during L1 lessons (total of 3.5 hours). The students first developed a story using a mind map, followed by collaborative writing in a shared online document. Using multimodal conversation analysis, this study examines the design features and distribution of students’ procedural and content proposals and the subsequent decision-making, with particular attention to content proposals that require greater interactional work to achieve joint decisions. The findings show that proposals often consisted solely of nominal elements. Additionally, procedural proposals were generally straightforward and readily accepted, whereas content proposals often prompted extended negotiation through supplements, counterproposals, or rejections. These disalignments were occasionally rooted in differing orientations. For example, the autistic student occasionally appeared to prioritise unconventional story elements, whereas the non-autistic students tended to favour more socially normative storytelling. Despite these differences, the group generally reached joint decisions. This study highlights collaborative storytelling as a valuable context for practicing storytelling skills, initiative-taking, and joint decision-making in inclusive educational settings.

Aim of the study Aim of the study was to examine how a woman diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) manages moments when her self is threatened during an initial couple-therapy consultation, using an interactional, multimodal perspective. Subject or material and methods We examined a video-recorded initial session with a heterosexual couple, sampled from a larger corpus of couple-therapy consultations in a medical setting. Using multimodal conversation analysis, three analysts repeatedly viewed and sequentially analyzed the interaction to identify “self-threatening sequences”, where the patient’s moral, epistemic, or relational self was challenged and then either repaired or further pursued by the participants. Results The analysis shows that self-threat is jointly produced and managed by patient, partner and therapist. The patient alternates between starkly self-pathologizing and self-defending formulations, using laughter, hesitations and embodied conduct (gaze, posture, self-touch) to regulate exposure and arousal. The partner’s categorizations and complaints variably escalate, renegotiate or close self-threatening trajectories, while the therapist’s questions and formulations selectively take up or soften different self-descriptions. Discussion Identity disturbance in BPD patients emerge here as context-dependent and interactionally accomplished rather than a fixed intrapsychic deficit. Conclusions The study illustrates how detailed analysis of couple-therapy interaction can illuminate how threats to self are produced, resisted and absorbed in real time in interaction dynamics with BPD patient, and suggests that therapists should attend not only to what is said about the self but also to who says it, in response to what, and with which embodied displays.

This study investigates feedback practices in Finnish Sign Language interpreter training, focusing on how courage (rohkeus) and confidence (varmuus) are constructed as professional ideals. These participant-derived concepts relate to self-esteem and other psychological constructs. The study examines: (1) what challenges courage and confidence are meant to address, and (2) how they are constructed through feedback. Although the importance of trusting oneself and appearing confident in interpreting is acknowledged, little is known about how these qualities are fostered through feedback interaction. The data consist of video-recorded feedback conversations from universities of applied sciences in Finland that train sign language interpreters, analyzed using multimodal conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. Findings show that courage and confidence are promoted through advice that supports both interpreting quality and professional presence. In performance-related feedback, they are framed as tools for activating existing skills, whereas presence-related feedback often involves embodied demonstrations and tactful delivery. The study identifies courage and confidence as important professional ideals in sign language interpreting and calls for further research into delivering impactful, learner-specific feedback.

Abstract While group dynamics have been widely studied in student interaction in EFL education, little is known about how it operates among teachers. Likewise, transpositioning, with its “trans-prefix” reconceptualizing positioning as a processual and iterative activity across linguistic, spatial, and relational dimensions, remains underutilized for examining teacher professional interaction. This study therefore investigates how transpositioning shapes group dynamics in teacher collaborative curriculum development. Drawing on a longitudinal dataset of four video-recorded meetings among six EFL teachers at a Chinese university, this study employs Multimodal Conversation Analysis (MCA) within an ethnographically informed approach to trace moment-by-moment interactional practices and their evolution over time. Findings reveal that transpositioning primarily occurs across three interrelated dimensions (i.e., spatial, role and epistemic). These fluid shifts foster distributed leadership, collective sense-making and emotional safety, portraying collaborative curriculum development as a multimodal, relational, and epistemically negotiated practice within real-time discourse. The longitudinal MCA enhances analytic depth by linking micro-interactional shifts to broader developmental trajectories, illustrating how collaborative practices evolve and reconfigure over time. In sum, the study extends transpositioning theory into the context of peer-level professional collaboration across a longer interactional trajectories, evidencing the “trans-prefix” as capturing the dynamic, boundary-transcending nature of interaction beyond traditional positioning theory.

This study employs multimodal conversation analysis to examine the precursors of resistance displays during Reminiscence Therapy (RT) sessions, the format of the resistance exhibited by Chinese older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and the ways it was managed by caregivers. It is found that older adults with MCI display resistance through behaviors like initiating repair, denying question premises, changing topics, refusing overtly, being silent, laughing, and giving minimal responses. Non-verbal cues such as gestures, head movements, averted gaze, and facial expressions are also employed to convey their resistance. In response, caregivers employ various facilitative practices to counter this resistance. Resistance occurs when the assumptions embedded in the caregiver’s question conflict with what the older adults have access to, or the question may infringe on the older adult’s epistemic rights. Our findings also highlight the dynamic and collaborative construction of power through negotiation of resistance and facilitation from epistemic perspective. These insights offer valuable guidance for enhancing the effectiveness of RT and fostering a more collaborative relationship between participants during RT sessions.

ABSTRACT Research in computer-assisted-language-learning has shown that digital game-based learning can enhance L2 students’ motivation, improve students’ L2 proficiency, and alleviate L2 anxiety. However, few qualitative studies have conducted fine-grained analyses to examine how teachers strategically integrate online games as pedagogical tools to facilitate learning and sustain students’ motivation in content and language learning. Adopting a translanguaging lens, this study investigates empirical data from two distinct multilingual classroom settings: an English-Medium-Instruction Mathematics classroom and a Chinese-as-an-Additional-Language classroom. The paper explores how the creation of a digital gamified translanguaging space in these contexts can foster student motivation and reduce students’ anxiety in learning both subject matter and target languages. Methodologically, the study employs Multimodal Conversation Analysis to examine classroom interactions, triangulated with video-stimulated recall interviews with teachers and students that were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The paper introduces the notion of a digital gamified translanguaging space, emphasising how digital games create opportunities for teachers and students to fully leverage their linguistic repertoires while cultivating an engaging learning environment. It is argued that such a space enables teachers to deliver content and language instruction, promote active participation, sustain students’ motivation and alleviate students’ anxiety in learning new disciplinary and linguistic knowledge.

This paper examines how a friendship group of four boys in a bilingual Spanish-English preschool classroom explore and exploit heterogeneous resources and social voices from community, family, school and media contexts in pretend play. Data are from a video-ethnography conducted at their preschool in California serving Mexican heritage families. Drawing on the frameworks of heteroglossia and language scaling, and multimodal conversation analysis, the analysis demonstrates how the children “scale up” Spanish at their preschool, which, though bilingual, is preparing children for English-only public school education. They do so through enacting powerful male social roles (Compadre, Pápi, Fruit Ninja gamers) while playing with linguistic boundaries through diverse linguistic practices. Through their stylistic performances, the children create peer solidarity, belonging, and hierarchy, as well as socialize heteroglossic practices for the peer group.

ABSTRACT A growing body of literature highlights the benefits of translanguaging pedagogy in multilingual classrooms. However, its implementation in Chinese‐as‐a‐medium‐of‐instruction (CMI) contexts and its impact on student motivation to learn this language remain underexplored. This study examines how translanguaging was enacted in a short‐term CMI summer program in the United States to support and motivate novice‐level students learning Chinese, incorporating perspectives from both the teacher and students. Using multimodal conversation analysis, I analyzed classroom interactions and triangulated findings with ethnographic data, including field notes and transcripts from one‐on‐one interviews with the teacher and eight students. Guided by the teacher's own metaphor of “1 + 1 = 2,” which she used to describe learning as the integration of students’ prior knowledge with new content, the findings demonstrate that translanguaging serves as a mediator in enhancing motivation, building confidence, and making learning and writing Chinese characters more accessible and engaging. Intentional instructional design, such as backward design, connected classroom learning to real‐world applications, culminating in a community performance that provided students with a clear sense of purpose. This study underscores the potential of translanguaging pedagogy as a bridge between students’ prior knowledge and new learning, developing motivation, confidence, and an appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity, particularly in the context of learning Chinese. Pedagogical recommendations are provided for implementing these strategies in academic settings to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes.

This study uses Bakhtin’s dialogical approach to heteroglossia for examining the diverse linguistic practices and norms multilingual (Swedish-Kurdish-Turkish-Arabic) children exploit in performing identities and negotiating relationships in social media environments. The study combines ethnography with multimodal conversation analysis, examining multilingual boys’ (i) chat-communication and (ii) co-present interactions around the screen. The analysis demonstrates how the boys use a hybrid mixture of (i) textspeak (abbreviations, typos, emoticons), blended with (ii) urban youth style, (ii) heritage language forms, and (iii) monolingual standard orthography for achieving status and peer group sociality. At other moments group members enact voices of adult authority staging corrective practices around Swedish orthography and online rules for proper language use to display expertise and elicit laughter. The findings highlight multilingual children’s playful juxtaposition of diverse voices, styles and ways of speaking/writing indexical of normative tensions between (i) diversity and heteroglossic forms and (ii) standardization and monolingual norms , for negotiating belonging in transcultural peer cultures.

Abstract A key goal in world language education is decentering learners' assumptions about cultures. However, many teaching models, including virtual exchange (VE), equate culture with nation‐states and promote target‐language‐only policies, which can reinforce stereotypes and limit culture exploration for beginners. The study investigates the transformative learning (TL) impact of a critical VE that connected learners from two novice Mandarin courses in the United States with individuals from diverse Chinese communities. Participants engaged in hometown conversations using full linguistic repertoires and a multimodal map. Data from 16 participants—including surveys, journals, meetings, digital stories, and interviews with 5 focal participants—were analyzed. Findings revealed key TL outcome of critical assessment of assumptions. Multimodal conversation analysis of meeting episodes showed that learners strategically drew on a wide range of linguistic and multimodal resources for meaning negotiation, interaction management, and co‐construction of local culture knowledge. Translanguaging served as both a scaffold and a decolonizing act, fostering equitable transcultural learning. A pedagogical model is proposed, highlighting multiperspective dialogues, guided reflections, and translanguaging.

Abstract This article explores how laughter is used in hybrid meetings to negotiate the shared meeting space between local and remote participants. We compare two datasets from organizations that use Microsoft Teams for either video-mediated interaction or audio-only interaction. By drawing on multimodal conversation analysis, we show how meeting participants initiate laughter either at or with the remote participant, thus subtly moving between multiple interactional spaces and shaping the participation framework of the meeting. By making the remote participant’s behavior or lack thereof (i.e. silence) noticeable and laughable, the participants collectively work to re-establish the shared meeting space. The study thus contributes to the discussion of the implications of visibility (or lack thereof) in hybrid audio-only and video-mediated meetings.

Chatbots and other conversational agents based on speech recognition and processing technologies have been gaining ground in the field of language education. Although previous research has shown that automatic recognition of second language (L2) speech is difficult, little attention has been paid to how L2 teachers and learners interact with such technology when used as an interactional participant in classroom settings. Addressing this gap, this article provides a qualitative analysis of interactional practices of unplanned and situated pronunciation instruction as a teacher and 10- to 13-year-old young learners of L2 English complete robot-assisted language learning (RALL) activities in a primary school English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context in Finland. Drawing on 14 hours of video recordings, we use multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to analyse extended repair sequences that involve interactional problems related to word recognition by a social robot. Through a sequential analysis of selected data extracts, we show how the teacher and learners correct these problems by establishing a corrective focus for providing instruction on and modifying learners’ word-level pronunciation, such as the quality of individual sounds or word stress. From the teacher’s perspective, this consists of drawing learners’ attention to pronunciation details by highlighting sounds in learners’ talk and the robot’s talk, using embodied conduct, and modelling a target-like word pronunciation. Our findings shed light on the interactional organisation of RALL activities and some of the real-life consequences of limitations in speech recognition technologies for L2 teaching and learning interactions with conversational agents. The work conducted by the teacher to convert interactional troubles into meaningful learning opportunities suggests that human agency is needed to optimally guide and mediate language learning interactions with conversational agents based on artificial intelligence (AI) and automatic speech recognition (ASR), as these agents are less capable of showing the kind of interactional and instructional adaptation that is part of human–human interaction.

The study examines young children’s peer group interactions characterized by creative language use. We operationalize the concept of everyday poetics to explore the forms, heteroglossic resources, and the social and aesthetic purposes of children’s peer encounters. The data consists of video ethnography conduced in a bilingual Swedish-English preschool for children aged 1–5 in Sweden. Using multimodal conversation analysis, the study shows that e veryday poetics involved young bilinguals engaging in aesthetic, exploratory talk through sound and meaning associations, category explorations, and cross-speaker sound and word play in both institutional languages. Children’s language play served multiple purposes beyond the social relationality of the peer group. Children employed heteroglossia in aesthetic performances and language teaching, which became integral parts of social episodes that began as language play. The study argues that analytical attention to aesthetic and playful features of everyday interaction can contribute to our deeper understanding of human sociality.

This paper explores bilingual peer interaction during classroom activity transitions —defined as unstructured temporal and spatial configurations between scheduled lessons or other activities. Drawing on audiovisual recordings from a first-grade (Grade 1) “English-only” classroom in Japan, the study employs multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to examine how children mobilize two languages (Japanese and English) along with a range of multimodal resources to engage in (i) improvised performances and (ii) imaginary play with objects. The analysis shows that these transitional moments serve as a vehicle through which children perform heteroglossia and create a “translanguaging space.” In doing so, they display their bilingual competence, challenge the “English-only” language policy, reproduce and transform the classroom’s moral order, and socialize peers—thereby constituting the bilingual peer group. Data are in Japanese and English.

This study aims to investigate how pedagogical translanguaging in language education constructs a translanguaging space to mediate and reduce extraneous cognitive load in EFL classrooms. Using a descriptive qualitative design, classroom observations and video-stimulated recall interviews were conducted with Indonesian university students. Data were analyzed through Multimodal Conversation Analysis combined with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results show that teacher-led pedagogical translanguaging connects multiple languages, addresses linguistic insecurity, and incorporates multimodal resources. These practices reduce cognitive load because they allow students to process new information by using their full linguistic repertoire, lowering stress and enhancing engagement. Constructing a translanguaging space fosters an inclusive environment, enabling students to participate more actively, retain content better, and develop metalinguistic awareness. The findings support the integration of pedagogical translanguaging into EFL teaching as a means to promote equity, linguistic diversity, and quality education, in alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 4.

ABSTRACTThis study examines how second language (L2) teacher educators provide feedback on student teachers' (STs) microteaching performances. Although conversation analysis (CA) research has extensively analyzed classroom interaction, there has been limited focus on how CA‐specialized teacher educators shape STs' classroom interactional competence through feedback practices. Specifically, as researchers and teacher educators, we lack sufficient understanding of how teacher educators guide STs in managing classroom interaction, respond to their contributions, and support them in refining their pedagogical talk. Drawing on multimodal CA, this study explores typical feedback patterns of two teacher educators in CA‐informed L2 teacher education courses in Japan and Korea. The findings reveal how instructors construct specific teaching action as “reflect‐able” by retrospectively referring to the STs' prior interactional event and providing positive and negative feedback. This “action” focused feedback is often facilitated by the instructors' use of notes and other situated objects, creating opportunities for STs to engage in self‐reflection and refine their teaching practices based on detailed, practice‐based feedback. This study contributes to CA research on classroom interaction and feedback in general, and on L2 teacher education specifically, by illustrating how teacher educators use feedback to create a space for STs' reflection on their effective classroom interaction and teaching.

Abstract This study uses multimodal conversation analysis to explore “re-occasionings” in multilingual interaction recorded at a cooking school in Okinawa, Japan. We first examine the initial occurrence of a phrase that is treated as learnable by the recipients. We then consider how successive (re)orientations to shared interactional history with this phrase shape the trajectory of the activity across a period of 15 minutes. L1 contributions make the learners’ online (mis)understandings amenable to repair and occasion other formulations as requiring clarification. By embedding learnables within complex multimodal gestalts, the instructor provides the learners with further opportunities to hear the target phrase and understand it beyond its base definition. The learners display their evolving understanding of the learnables, which contributes to their socialization in terms of language use, cooking proficiency, and familiarity with the classroom pedagogical approach.

ABSTRACTIn task‐based language learning, learners have to deal with the challenge of moving the task and the talk concurrently forward. In doing so, they develop sets of task‐relevant, interactional, and multimodal resources. In this study we use multimodal longitudinal conversation analysis to investigate one learner's L2 interactional competence development in video‐mediated task‐based interactions in English as a foreign language. We present how the L2 learner appropriates an interactional resource from the co‐participant's talk, uses the resource in her own turns, and eventually transfers it to new contexts. The findings bring new insights into the affordances of task‐based interactions for learners' L2 development.

Abstract This study examines how an applied linguistics graduate course instructor socializes students into academic concepts and norms in a graduate TESOL class in the U.S. through (trans)bordering, a semiotic process in which individuals create, negotiate, and contest boundaries that define acceptable academic practices, identities, and modes of communication. While translanguaging as a political act seeks to deconstruct linguistic borders, this article argues that bordering remains necessary for individuals to make sense of the world. This multimodal conversation analysis (CA) study draws data from a larger linguistic ethnography examining international students’ communicative practices in a U.S. university. Findings reveal that spatiality, the dynamic use of physical and imagined space to shape communication and meaning-making, is crucial in (trans)bordering. By examining how a graduate course instructor leverages existing and imagined space with other semiotic resources, we learn that (trans)bordering functions as a holistic process that socializes students into academic concepts and norms and provides a flexible framework that instructors use to mediate understanding of academic discourse.

Abstract Teachers are increasingly being recognized as active agents whose in situ pedagogical decisions are socially manifested. Relatedly, teacher education cycles, including collaborative pedagogical design work and reflective conversations on the pedagogical outcomes of design decisions, gained momentum in preservice language teacher education to explore the affordances of these decisions for teacher learning in talk-in-interaction across multiple pedagogical events. Using multimodal conversation analysis, this study describes how transnational groups of preservice language teachers, within the scope of a Virtual Exchange project, reflect on their experiences of teacher education activities such as collaborative task design, teacher educator feedback, and critically analyzing the implementation of their designs by actual L2 learners. A close examination of the video-mediated interactions of preservice teachers (PSTs) shows that small-group reflective conversations create opportunities to identify the interactional practices and teacher education activities that lead to claims of teacher learning. We present a collection of cases that include the PSTs’ claims of teacher learning (e.g. I learned X) as a learning-relevant discursive construction and retrospectively trace the moments of claimed teacher learning across earlier teacher education events.