Conversation Analytic Research Research Articles

Developing empowering health counseling measurement: Preliminary results

Objective This article describes the derivation of an instrument (Empowering Speech Practices Scale) for assessing the empowerment of dyadic counseling, the evaluation of the validity and reliability of the ESPS and the results acquired with the instrument from hospital counseling. Methods ESPS was constructed on the basis of empowerment theory and foregoing conversation analytic research. Nurses and patients assessed the same counseling session by way of parallel statements. Structure and reliability of the scale were evaluated with Cronbach alpha, percentage of agreement, factor analysis and logistic regression analysis. Results According to these preliminary results, ESPS described the realization of empowerment, directing attention to patient participation. By means of the scale, we assessed 127 counseling sessions and found evidence of the realization of empowering counseling. According to the results, nurses were the most successful in constructing a positive emotional atmosphere and in giving information. Conclusion We found evidence that nurses need to improve the active mutuality of the counseling relationship by asking for patients’ opinions and views, by facilitating the patients’ assessment of their personal health and their participation in decision-making and coming up with options for their individual treatment. Practice implications The developed scale can be utilized, in addition to assessing the quality in hospital care, for improving nursing education programs. Further study is needed to evaluate the usability of the scale and to examine its stability and validity.

Conversation and Grammar

Abstract. The last decade has seen considerable research on conversation and grammar, influenced by the conversation-analytic research of Sacks et al. (1974). Inspired by that line of research, some Korean linguists have examined conversation by adopting the assumptions and methodology of conversation analysis (CA) into discourse analysis. This study introduces basic assumptions and research topics relating to CA, and explores the possibility of adopting CA methodology into dis-course analysis in Korean linguistics. This paper first provides a brief overview of basic assumptions, methodology, and major research topics of CA and the development of conversation-analytic dis-course studies. Then it provides a brief overview of some major findings and research topics in the interaction-based studies which have dealt with conversational data in Korean linguistics in terms of: (i) turn-taking, turn-constructional units, and turn increments, (ii) interactional functions of certain clausal connectives and sentence-ending suffixes, and (iii) other interaction-based studies on such topics as repair, demonstratives, reported speech, and so on. This research discusses how interaction-based research can provide a new way of viewing language functions; it explores: (i) turn-taking and co-construction; (ii) word-order variability, turn increments, repair, and retroactive elaboration; (iii) a conversation-analytic approach to the clausal connective -nuntey, and (iv) an interactional ap-proach to the verbal affixes -ese and -nikka in conversation, among others. Overall, this paper shows what has been, and needs to be, studied regarding the relationship between conversation, social action, and grammar in conversation in Korean linguistics.

A video analysis of how physiotherapists communicate with patients about errors of performance: insights for practice and policy

Objectives To describe and elucidate skilled practices by which physiotherapists communicate with patients about problems of ongoing or recent performance of physical treatment activities; to offer a sociological perspective on this area of practice; to examine relations between actual communication practice and official (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy) recommendations; to explore problems associated with formulating standards pertaining to communication and suggest how these might be addressed. Design Video recordings of physiotherapy treatment sessions ( n = 74) were analysed using conversation analysis—an observational, inductive, social science methodology. Setting Inpatient rehabilitation units in four English hospitals. Participants Twenty-one stroke patients aged 52–86 years and 10 senior physiotherapists with 3–23 years of postqualification experience. Results and conclusions A variety of practices were identified. Managing shortcomings of performance often involves identifying and/or correcting the problem in a manner that deals sensitively with the negative connotations of physical non-competence. Characteristics of these practices include indirectness and ambiguity. As such, they do not conform to some official recommendations. However, good interactional reasons underlie the observed patterns. It is suggested that official guidance should acknowledge the complexity of communication and its measurement. Recommendations should be based upon a thorough understanding of the interactional tasks and practices entailed in physiotherapy. Recommendations should be explicitly tentative and refer to broad principles. By elucidating specific communication strategies, their consequences and the considerations that underlie them, conversation analytic research into physiotherapy communication has the potential to inform guidelines, and provide resources for developing and teaching communication skills.

Conversation and Brain Damage (review)

Reviewed by: Conversation and brain damage ed. by Charles Goodwin Liang Chen Conversation and brain damage. Ed. by Charles Goodwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. x, 314. ISBN 0195129539. $65 (Hb). This volume deals with how people with brain damage communicate. The eleven chapters are arranged into four parts. Part 1: ‘General perspectives’. Charles Goodwin (3–20) presents an introduction of conversation analysis (CA) and of the rest of the book. Emanuel A. Schegloff (21–55) shows the discourse/pragmatic competence of split-brain patients through a detailed [End Page 526] analysis of video episodes of interaction between such patients and the therapist. CA research on conduct in interaction is claimed to produce promising results ‘at one of the more exciting growth points of human self-knowledge’ (47), if researchers treat people with communicative disorders as contributing participants of talk-in-interaction and integrate the study of ‘disordered talk’ with that of ‘ordinary talk by ordinary folks in ordinary (for them) settings’ (45). Part 2: ‘Making meaning together’. Ray Wilkinson, Suzanne Beeke, and Jane Maxim (59–89) examine how speakers with fluent aphasia construct turns at talk using linguistic resources (e.g. lexical items, word order, fronting of noun phrases) that they might have used premorbidly. Charles Goodwin (90–116) focuses on a severely aphasic patient’s extensive use of gesture in a single extended sequence. He shows how gesture can be used to ‘build socially meaningful action’ and questions the validity of ‘assessments of competence based purely on the ability to produce language’ (110). Anu Klippi (117–43) examines meaning construction in aphasic group interactions involving collaborative efforts of both the aphasic patients and the therapists. Participants are found to resort to different linguistic resources, gestures, and situational contexts to achieve mutual understanding. Part 3: ‘Repair’. Lisa Perkins (147–62) shows that in aphasic conversation quick repair is preferred and repair work is a socially sensitive event. The analysis of aphasic discourse ‘highlights the fundamentally collaborative nature of conversation’ and ‘provides the aphasia therapists with a tool to identify precisely how interlocutors are negotiating aphasia’ (160). Through an examination of collaborative construction of repair in conversations involving two Finnish speakers with Wernicke’s aphasia, Minna Laakso (163–88) finds that presence or lack of active coparticipation and shared knowledge directly affect the speed and success rate of repair. Jan Anward (189–210) presents a detailed comparison of two retellings of the same story by a Swedish woman with Wernicke’s aphasia. The second one is more successful than the first because the story becomes ‘tellable and meaningful in the current situation’ (208). Through an analysis of single and alternative guess sequences in aphasic conversation, Mary L. Oelschlaeger and Jack S. Damico (210–27) find that aphasic speakers and their conversational partners work together to resolve word searches. The collaborative coparticipation provides evidence for the social organization of aphasic conversations and for regarding communicative competence as interactional competence. It also reveals the need for a ‘more sociolinguistic perspective in aphasia treatment’ (223). Part 4: ‘Interaction and assessment’. Claus Heeschen and Emanuel A. Schegloff (231–82) call for a paradigm shift from a medical (cognitive-experimental) approach to a sociolinguistic (conversational-analytic) approach to aphasia. They argue that testing with aphasics and other neurologically affected subjects should involve ‘naturally occurring conduct—including (perhaps preeminently) conduct in interaction’ (269) and should consider what they can do as well as what they can not do. Gail Ramsberger and Lise Menn (283–303) also argue for a social perspective to the assessment of communicative success in aphasia. They show that CA techniques may provide ‘an objective, ecologically valid measure of therapeutic outcome’ (301). In sum, I agree with the editor that the papers in this volume might help to change ‘how people with aphasia are perceived and treated in society’, and thus go beyond their ‘theoretical contributions and therapeutic relevance’ (18). Liang Chen University of Louisiana, Lafayette Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America

Hillary Clinton’s laughter in media interviews

Laughter in dialogue has been researched under the aegis of many different disciplines. The present approach is psycholinguistic, but with some reliance on recent research in phonetics and conversation analysis (CA). A corpus of laughter from four TV and two radio interviews of Hillary Clinton was analyzed by means of the PRAAT software (www.praat.org) for acoustic measurements. All the interviews had taken place in the several weeks immediately following the publication of her memoirs Living history (2003). The results showed that her laughter was concentrated mostly during the speech of the interviewers rather than during her own speech, and in the TV rather than in the radio interviews. The most frequent topic of her laughter concerned her own presidential candidacy rather than the historical contents of her book. The strong punctuation effect (Provine 1993, 2000), i.e., the claim that laughter occurs only during the pauses after phrases and sentences, was not confirmed; instead laughter occurred most frequently as a sort of back channeling on the part of the auditor. Contrary to the claim of Clayman and Heritage (2002) that media interviewers maintain a professional neutralism, interviewers in this corpus manifested their personal perspectives by laughing. These findings are discussed in light of current empirical research and in terms of a theory of perspectivity that conceptualizes laughter both in general and more specifically in media interviews as a nonverbal expression of personal perspective.

CA for SLA: Arguments from the Chinese Language Classroom

When the seminal article on the organization of turn‐taking by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) was published 30 years ago, I started learning English as a foreign language. In addition to being a learner of the English language for many years, I was also trained in the traditions of Conversation Analysis (CA) and linguistic anthropology (particularly Language Socialization) in graduate school. For the present article, my objective is to explore the uses and nonuses of CA for language learning, particularly for Chinese language learning. In what follows, I take the perspective of a conversation analyst as well as that of a second language (L2) learner.This article is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses the kinds of contributions CA can make to research on L2 learning and teaching. I propose that the basic science produced by CA research can be fruitfully applied to L2 learning and instruction and to oral language assessment. I further suggest that CA studies of classroom interaction provide richly textured descriptions of language learning contexts such as expert‐novice relations and participants' identity construction. The second section considers what CA does not do, or is not designed to do for Second Language Acquisition (SLA). I submit that, unlike language socialization research, CA does not address introspective, unobservable matters that may be important to language learning. Furthermore, unlike ethnomethodology, CA is not designed to document learning (i.e., change in behavior) over a considerable period of time. The final section concludes on a hermeneutical note: I argue that CA studies of SLA provide a part of the picture of L2 learning and teaching, a part that, crucially, compels us to reconsider the whole.

Zones of Interactional Transition in ESL Classes

This article uses conversation analysis (CA) to describe the structural properties of zones of interactional transition (ZITs) or talk that occurs at the boundaries of different classroom (and perhaps other institutionally oriented) speech exchange systems. Two types of ZIT are analyzed in detail. Counter question sequences (Markee, 1995) are interactions in which teachers, in order to regain control of the classroom agenda, insert counter question turns between the question and answer turns of question‐answer‐comment sequences initiated by learners. Tactical fronting talk involves ambiguous or misleading claims made by learners to the teacher concerning precisely who is having trouble understanding problematic language. ZITs are loci of potential trouble, whose explication is of interest to both CA and second language acquisition researchers, and also to teachers and teacher trainers.

Resources for Conversation Analysis Research in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition

Language LearningVolume 54, Issue S1 p. 271-272 Resources for Conversation Analysis Research in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition Paul Seedhouse, Paul SeedhouseSearch for more papers by this author Paul Seedhouse, Paul SeedhouseSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 September 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2004.00276.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume54, IssueS12004 MarchPages 271-272 RelatedInformation

Anthropologism, naturalism, and the pragmatic study of language

This paper is a critical assessment of Wittgenstein's anthropological perspective and Quine's naturalistic perspective as solutions to the problem of semantic indeterminacy. The three stages of my argument try to establish the following points: (1) that Wittgenstein and Quine offer two substantially different philosophical models of language learning and cognitive development; (2) that unlike Quine's naturalism, Wittgenstein's anthropologism is not committed to semantic skepticism; and (3) that Wittgenstein's anthropological perspective is a more promising approach to pragmatics because it avoids the pitfalls of intellectualism and the philosophical strictures of empiricism and behaviorism. The central conclusion of the argument is the thesis of contextual determinacy, according to which meanings are only radically indeterminate in the abstract but become contextually determinate in specific conversational settings and interactions. I offer further support for this thesis in a discussion of recent ethnomethodological research in conversation analysis.

Developmental issues in second language conversation

This article contributes to the discussion of how second language learning can be studied in a conversation analytic framework. Conversation analysis (CA) as a field has demonstrated how meticulous analysis can shed light on how talk-in-interaction works. In recent years CA has been applied to a number of areas of inquiry, including interactions in second languages. So far, CA researchers have mainly studied second language use, while a systematic approach of how to study the process of second language learning still needs to be developed. To this end, we propose methodological procedures for the study of second language learning by bringing together two frameworks: CA and the theory of situated learning. As an empirical basis, this entails a systematic gathering of longitudinal data consisting of naturally occurring interactions, and analytic procedures managing the longitudinal character of the data,in particular the issue of interactants’ change in conduct over time.

Building bilingual oppositions: Code-switching in children's disputes

This study examines bilingual children's code-switching practices as they occur in multiparty play activities in an English school in Sweden. By focusing on the endogenous organization of play events, the study contributes to our understanding of bilingualism as both resource for and result of children's social conduct. The central questions are: what is the role of bilingual practices in children's mundane reflexive production of social order, and, specifically, what sort of interactional work may be accomplished through code-switching? Interpretive analyses of naturally occurring play episodes were conducted, broadly along the lines of interaction and conversation analytic research. The empirical data comprise over 20 hours of audio- and video-recorded play, taking place during recess. The analyses draw upon previous work on language alternation, which focuses on members' procedures for accomplishing locally meaningful interaction in bilingual conversation (Auer, 1984; Gumperz, 1982). The results are reported in four empirical studies, highlighting the following features: The children did not make use of a specialized play language. Rather, both English and Swedish were commonly spoken during recess activities. Further, the children's choice of language was locally sensitive and guided by a general preference for same language talk. In light of this preference, the linguistic contrast arising with code-switching served to contextualize children's actions. More specifically, the empirical studies demonstrate (i) how code-switching may be used to facilitate children's entry into ongoing play; (ii) how it may serve to bring about a shift in conversational footing; (iii) to highlight the oppositional nature of certain actions within dispute exchanges, and finally, (iv) to enhance, in certain sequential locations, children's competitive bids for the conversational floor. The present approach diverges from the monolingual perspective traditionally adopted in research on bilingualism, as well as the commonplace conceptualization of bilingualism as, above all, an aspect of the individual mind. Instead, bilingualism is viewed as a set of contingent practices within joint activities in play. Thus, the present study highlights the socially distributed nature of bilingualism, managed and accomplished within interactional exchanges.

Using Conversation Analysis to Track Gender Ideologies in Social Interaction: toward a Feminist Analysis of a Japanese Phone-in Consultation TV Program

In this article, we engage in the recent debate concerning the utility of conversation analysis (CA) for feminist purposes. Using analysis of a Japanese phone-in consultation TV program, we take the position that CA has much to contribute to the feminist critique of Japanese society. Combining two strands of CA research, Hutchby's reconsideration of power as an interactional achievement and membership category analysis (MCA), we show in the analysis that CA makes it possible not only to point out places in the interaction where participants orient to gender, but also to track how the sequential structure of the interaction is used to invoke and reinforce ideological beliefs about women. Following the analysis, we discuss four ways that our analysis may be used to further feminism in Japan.

Making a clearing: Qualitative research in anglophone Canadian psychology.

Special Issue Canadian pioneers rid their homestead lands of bush and rock, creating clearings fit for farming. Similarly, a clearing is being established in Canadian psychology. The term refers to a wide variety of methods other than the positivistic ones favoured in most psychological enquiry. These methods include empirical phenomenology (Giorgi, 1970), grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), discourse analysis (e.g., Potter & Wetherell, 1987), conversation analysis (Labov & Fanshell, 1977), narrative analysis (e.g., Polkinghorne, 1995), and action research (e.g., Reason & Bradbury, 2001), among others. These methods challenge the objectivism prized in conventional enquiry. Most researchers attempt to control for the subjectivity of self and other through procedures such as random sampling, the control-group experiment and the use of objective questionnaires, with all procedures eventuating in quantified results that are analyzed statistically. Qualitative researchers are sceptical of this objectivism. We maintain that it keeps distant the complexities and nuances of what it means to be human, both in terms of those being researched and those doing the research. Thus, given that people use language more than any other form of symbolization to understand themselves and others, we prefer to stay within that mode in our enquiries and analyses. Moreover, we try to take into account our own subjectivity as researchers and positively value making it, as we understand it, available to our readers. Also, we study people and our products intensively more than extensively, which limits the number of people we can study, in turn limiting the generalizations that can be made of our understandings. More fundamentally, although some of us subscribe to a realist epistemology as a way of maintaining links with convention, most of us identify either totally or in part with relativist epistemology and accept the uncertainty that goes with it. The upshot is that qualitative research occupies a middle ground between the sciences and the humanities, which goes against established research practice in psychology and most related social and health science disciplines. At present, qualitative research in Canadian psychology is beginning to take root in some universities and research organizations. Most of the contributions to this Special Issue reflect this development in Anglophone Canadian psychology, while one of them looks at the rise in English-language publications of qualitative research worldwide. There are six articles in all. Leading off is Janet Stoppard who narrates her turn to qualitative research, which led to the development of a course in it that has been adopted by her university's graduate program in psychology. Along the way she addresses the epistemological and methodological principles involved in qualitative research from a discourse analytic standpoint, which helps to frame the ensuing contributions. The next article by Michael Kral, Kate Burkhardt, and Sean Kidd provides examples of the conduct of qualitative research, mainly of an action research kind. They give interesting accounts of work with street youth in Toronto and Vancouver, Inuit prison inmates, and Inuit people concerned about the epidemic of suicides in the Nunavut territory of Canada. The three case studies compellingly demonstrate how such participatory action research is made integral to the lives of those to whom it is addressed. The third article by Kimberly Watson, Althea Monteiro, and myself gives the returns from a study of the rise of qualitative research in psychology and related disciplines in the English-speaking world during the 20th century. …

Missing assessments: Lay and professional orientations in medical interviews

This study extends conversation analytic research by Frankel and colleagues on the occurrence (or nonoccurrence) of assessments in physician–patient interviews. As assessments are regularly offered after hearing news or information just asked for in everyday talk (often displaying alignment and as liation for the news bearer), and as reportings commonly occur in both mundane and medical interaction, the post-question–answer slot (after newsworthy answers) was identified as one interactional environment to investigate. Analysis revealed that lay and professional orientations do not mesh. At these points, assessments are absent, unlike in everyday talk. Instead, physicians offer (a) no response, or (b) an acknowledgment token. Patients subsequently exhibit, through pausing and withholding speaking, that they expect a different type of response from physicians. Hence, gaps occur when assessments might be due (from a mundane perspective), marking them as missing. After these gaps, the participants react differently. Physicians disattend the lack of assessments, instead continuing with ‘business at usual’. Patients display an orientation to the absence, using various strategies ‘unsuccessfully’. Implications are discussed in relationship to as liation and social support, important in the delivery of health care. Several explanations for absent assessments in medical interviews are also explored.

The Naturally-Occuring Chat Machine

The Naturally-Occuring Chat Machine

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Introduction: Nonnative Discourse

Introduction: Nonnative Discourse D a v i d Olsher University of California, L o s Angeles ...understanding how nonnative speaking participants make their way in interaction needs to start with what is generally the case in the talk and other conduct in interaction... —Schegloff, 2000, p. 234 This special issue of ial on nonnative discourse includes new conversation analytic research as well as an interview o f Emanuel Schegloff addressing theo­ retical and methodological considerations in using conversation analysis to study nonnative discourse. Conversation analysis ( C A ) is an ethnomethodological branch of sociology which views the micro-interactional practices o f naturally occurring talk-in-interaction as fundamental social structures that are susceptible, via recording and transcription, to detailed empirical analysis. Though C A has been a part of the interdisciplinary community of applied linguistics for many years, only in recent years has a body of C A research on nonnative discourse begun to emerge. A s will be discussed below, there has also been growing discussion of the ways that C A may be used to critique or contribute to various areas o f applied linguistics. The articles in this issue focus on the sequential organization and turn-taking practices in nonnative discourse. The term nonnative discourse is used here to refer to talk and interaction in which one or more participants are not native speakers o f the language being used. Nonnative discourse includes a diversity of languages spoken, linguistic and cul­ tural backgrounds o f participants, configurations of speakers, and social and cul­ tural contexts of interaction. The scope of what may be considered as nonnative discourse is reflected in the articles in this issue, which include native-nonnative speaker ( N S - N N S ) interaction—a kind of intercultural communication—as well as nonnative-nonnative speaker ( N N S - N N S ) interaction— which may also be con­ sidered lingua franca talk. The articles include analysis of English as well as Japanese discourse, foreign language as well as second language contexts, and casual conversation as well as talk in an institutional context. One domain of nonnative discourse that has been the focus o f substantial research is teacher-fronted classroom interaction, building on the work o f Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and Mehan (1979, 1985), among others. A s a practical choice for this special issue, teacher-fronted classroom discourse was excluded from the scope of research considered in order to provide a forum for research on nonnative speaker interaction in a range of other contexts, including casual conversation as Issues in Applied Linguistics © 2000, Regents of the University of California ISSN 1050-4273 Vol. 11 No. 1,5-16

Precision Timing in Novice-to-Novice L2 Conversations

That next speakers in talk-in-interaction are capable of precisely timing their entry into the conversational flow is now taken as a given in conversation analytic research. However, the classic studies establishing this fact were based on the analysis of talk between proficient language users, that is, individuals traditionally referred to as "native" speakers. The question then arises as to whether novice-level second language (L2) speakers are similarly capable of precision timing. This paper examines instances of "no-gap" speaker transition, so-called "normal overlap" at transition relevant places, and cases of "turn recycles" in non-pedagogic, casual talk between novice-level Japanese speakers of English (NNS-NNS talk). The primary finding is that novice L2 users can and regularly do start "on time." The paper also explores the possibility that certain inter-turn gaps in the novice L2 data studied here are interactionally occasioned by disfluencies or insufficiencies in prior speaker's turn.

A Child's Say in Parent—Teacher Talk at the Pre-School: Doing Conversation Analytic Research in Early Childhood Settings

In this article the authors analyse how one child actively participates in a particular occasion of home—pre-school communication conducted in a pre-school setting. A conversation analytic perspective is adopted to analyse the three-way parent—teacher—child conversation. This instance shows how a child becomes a speaker in the talk rather than being only a topic of talk between adults. The analysis provides an understanding of how the participants collaboratively construct and produce ‘the competent pre-school child’ and ‘the competent conversational member’ in, and through, their talk. It also examines how the teacher's version of social order is challenged by the child in the conversation. In addition, by proceeding from a distinctly different theoretical perspective, that of conversation analysis, it is possible to show how qualitative research can provide new understandings of an important dimension of early childhood practice.

Teacher Assessments

Summary This discourse and conversation analytic research examined audio‐recordings of conversations between EPs and teachers during routine meetings. Several patterns were detected. It was found that teachers produced a large number of assessment statements largely concerned with the construction of abnormality. EPs tended to respond to these statements in ways which preserved their neutrality, by using acknowledgement tokens, requests for clarification and formulations. The meaning of these patterns is discussed and some ideas for future research suggested.