Context Of Specific Interactions Research Articles

In Search of a New Paradigm for Teaching English as an International Language

In the context of more diverse communicative practices and social relations in globalization, scholars are increasingly defining English as constituting socially constructed situational norms in specific contexts of interaction, and not a homogeneous language or even discrete varieties of English. This shift requires treating pragmatics and not grammar, social context and not cognition, as more significant in accounting for one's language competence. To address such changes in pedagogical practice, language teachers have to focus more on developing procedural knowledge (i.e., a knowledge of how, or negotiation strategies) rather than propositional knowledge (i.e., a knowledge of what, or norms and conventions of a language) in their classrooms. This article illustrates how teachers can cultivate procedural knowledge by developing language awareness, rhetorical sensitivity, and negotiation strategies among their students.

The dynamic identity construction in English as lingua franca intercultural communication: A positioning perspective

Abstract Drawing on positioning theory, this paper investigates the identity issues involved in an English as Lingua Franca (ELF) interaction in a multicultural university in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that the ELF participants' institutional roles are culturally determined, and are not fixed but vary in different phases of the discourse. This study suggests that the interlocutors move beyond language use in specific interactional context, and draw on their own histories and cultural knowledge to define and re-define the different positions of English language varieties in a broader context, so as to position their own English varieties at a privileged or advantageous position in the micro-interactional context. Despite the subtle negotiation of power relations they undertake, the ELF speakers in this study attempt to achieve alignment when a face-threatening episode occurs. It is found that ELF communication provides a context for interlocutors to see themselves through the lens of their embodied history and subjectivity and that of others, and to create new relationships and identities. The implications of the findings and future research direction are discussed.

Vital memories: Movements in and between affect, ethics and self

The focus on the practice of remembering has been highly productive for memory studies, but it creates difficulties in understanding personal commitment to particular versions of the past. Autobiographical memories of difficult and distressing past episodes – or ‘vital memories’ – require extensive and ongoing management. We describe the issues that arise when vital memories are expressed across a range of specific interactional contexts. Seven themes – autobiography, agency, forgetting, ethics, affect, space and institutional practices – are discussed. Each theme draws out a particular facet of the relationship between the content and contexts of vital memories and demonstrates that while vital memories frame problematic experiences, they remain essential for those who express them.

The Contextual Cat: Human-Animal Relations and Social Meaning in Anglo-Saxon England.

The growing popularity of relational approaches to agency amongst archaeologists has led to increased attention on the specific contexts of interaction between humans and their material worlds. Within such viewpoints, non-humans are perceived as agents in their own right and placed on an equal footing with humans, with both acting to generate social categories in past cultures. However, to date, the focus of these interpretative models has been overwhelmingly directed towards inanimate objects. Animals are generally absent from these discussions, despite their ubiquity in past societies and the frequently central roles they held within daily lives and social relations. Moreover, living animals are set apart from material culture because, like humans, they are usually aware of their environs and are capable of physically responding to them. This ability to ‘act back’ would have made human–animal interactions extremely dynamic and thus offers different conceptual challenges to archaeologists than when faced with objects. This paper demonstrates that the notion of performativity, combined with understanding of animals themselves, can help to comprehend these relations. It does so by focusing on one particular species, the domestic cat, in relation to Anglo-Saxon England. The characteristics and behaviour of these animals affected the ways in which humans perceived and interacted with them, so that just one individual cat could be categorised in a range of different ways. The classification of animals was thus just as fluid, if not more so, as that of objects and highlights the need to incorporate the former into reconstructions of the social in archaeological research.

The narrative in qualitative research in health

The marked interest of the human and social sciences in health in narrative studies has led to many forms of incorporation of these contributions in qualitative research in health. It is important to reflect on the contexts and characteristics of this incorporation. To accomplish this, we highlight the core theoretical issues involved and also situate this incorporation in the broader context of the scientific production in the human and social sciences in health. We also stress the contribution of the narrative studies for reflection upon the relations between social structure and action or between specific contexts of social interaction and broader societal contexts. This contribution can be identified in relations established through narrative between interpretation, experience and action throughout the health-disease-care process. It is argued that narratives not only organize interpretations, but can also represent a specific form of social agency. In this sense, the narrative interpretations and narrative performances can be seen as core elements in the social construction of experiences and trajectories of illness and care.

Leadership in Hong Kong

Although gender is an important issue in many Asian countries where women often face serious discriminatory practices, this topic is notoriously under-researched from a socio-linguistic perspective. We aim to address this issue by conducting an in-depth case study of leadership and gender in Hong Kong. Drawing on more than 30 hours of authentic workplace discourse and a sample of representative emails, we explore how a successful female leader does leadership and how she enacts her gender identity in ways that reflect and respond to the overall masculine culture of her workplace and the socio-cultural context of Hong Kong. Our findings illustrate that in addition to considering the socio-cultural context, workplace culture and the norms of communities of practice, the specific interactional context is also of crucial importance for an understanding of how leadership and gender are performed. We conclude that in contrast to general perceptions, gender is indeed an issue in the professional domain in Hong Kong, and is reflected not only in leadership discourse but also in the gendered and often discriminatory practices that are still prevalent in many workplaces.

BEYOND THE BROADCAST INTERVIEW

Based on a mixed-method approach, this article aims at exploring the specialized forms of interviewing that are used as resources in television broadcast news production. Interviews are analysed as functionally specialized forms of interaction (cf. Heritage, 1985) with various functions in different phases of the news production. We assume that interviews are organized and carried out as communicative activities oriented towards specific tasks, identities and contexts of interaction. In contrast to established definitions of the archetypical on-air news interview, we argue that broadcast interviewing is only partially produced for an “overhearing audience” (Heritage, 1985). Taking into account the entire process of producing and presenting news, journalism harbours a multitude of interviewing practices and activities which remain invisible if only the taped and transcribed broadcast talk is analysed. Our study clearly indicates that news interviews contain more diversified and hybrid activities of communication than have been described in previous research.

Reflexive Practice as Ethics and Political Position

The following article deals with the ethical implications of reflexive practice in an ethnographic study of heroin use in a neighbourhood of the city of Barcelona (Spain). The fieldwork was carried out during a period of historically high prevalence of heroin use (1994—5) and the analysis was extended to the year 2000. Various situations experienced during the fieldwork were analysed, and the `positions' of the ethnographer or author of the text were explored in two ways: (1) based on intersubjective components of the informant-ethnographer relationship (social categories, emotions, decision making, authority, etc.); and (2) based on the tension of `enunciative positions' (of the discourse) within the text. Among the results I can highlight are: (1) building awareness of the `enunciative positions' shown in the text; (2) the possible transformations of the subjects involved that is, of the informants, the ethnographer and the readers, and the multiple subjectivities that emerge and stand out in the specific contexts of interaction, and (3) the ethical implications of these positions.

Teachers' Talk in Preschools During Circle Time: The Case of Revoicing

This study focused on a specific feature of preschool teacher talk, revoicing (a situation in which the teacher repeats, fully or partially, what the child said in the immediately preceding turn), within a specific interactional context, circle time, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the type of language mediation that occurs in this learning event. Data included recordings of 20 circle-time sessions with children from two age groups: preschool children (mean age of 47.4 months) and kindergarten children (mean age of 68.7 months). This age range enabled us to explore whether the use of revoicing reflects teacher attentiveness to the level of the children's developing linguistic and conversational skills. Revoicing was manifested in two forms, exact and reformulated, and was found woven into the teachers' talk throughout the interaction with both younger and older children, regardless of the topic or pedagogical aims of the session. Although revoicing served various pedagogical needs, it functioned mainly as a marker of acknowledgment, serving as a type of “filler” to sustain group involvement, and did not open a new slot for the children to join the discussion. This pedagogical action was more frequent with the younger children. The findings of the study should be viewed in light of the consensus that preschool teacher talk plays a significant role in supporting the development of children's language and of their conversational and literacy skills. Therefore, teacher awareness of the pedagogical goals that may be accomplished by their conversational moves, and their effect on the nature of interaction, is important in establishing an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of their practice.

Dirty work designations: How police officers account for their use of coercive force

The concept of ‘dirty work’ has much potential to offer insights into processes related to the construction of organizational identities and work-group cultures. In this article, I use a social constructionist framework, to argue that ‘dirty workers’ perform their identities in two conceptually distinct contexts: ‘front regions’ and ‘back regions’ (Goffman, 1959), each producing its own subjective challenges. I use a critical discourse analysis to explore how, within the research interview setting, police officers deal with the moral dilemma of their use of coercive authority. I argue that what is designated as ‘dirty’ within any specific role differs according to the perspective of the observer, revealing the boundaries and landscape of different moral and social orders and how these overlap and compete. It is further argued that, within specific interactional contexts, occupational identity comprises a site of contestation for these different moral and social orders. The utility of the dirty work concept is explored in relation to its ability to illuminate the dynamics of ideological reproduction and transformation.

Information, understanding and the benign order of everyday life in genetic counselling

Genetic counselling as a medical encounter is characterised by the centrality of the provision of information. Much of the counselling session is filled by information delivery about the symptoms, the prognosis and the transmission of the disease, the risks involved and the possibilities for genetic testing. The present paper is a study of how information is delivered in actual genetic counselling sessions. The data consist of 10 video-recorded sessions from a genetics clinic in Finland, and the methodology is based on conversation analysis. The paper focuses on the doctor's talk in a specific interactional context, the slot after a candidate understanding by a client. The analysis shows that the doctors have two basic orientations: they work towards securing correct understanding and they display being attuned to what the information means to the clients, particularly to whether it is positive or negative to them. The latter orientation is related to what has been called 'the benign order of everyday life' (Maynard 2003). The findings in the paper offer a possibility for a discussion about the principles and practices of genetic counselling.

Negotiating Maternity Leave Expectations: Perceived Tensions between Ethics of Justice and Care

Academic and popular materials designate maternity leave as a period of transition and role negotiation in which women and other organizational members, particularly their bosses, might interact differently from times in which there are no employment breaks. Because maternity leave is a socially constructed process within specific interactional contexts, women’s discourse can reveal ways they shape their expectations about treatment during pregnancies/leaves. Their discourse displays how they perceive, make sense of, and negotiate their experiences with others. In this study, women who had maternity leaves indicated that their treatment often differed so greatly fromexpectations that they were unable to communicate and negotiate with their bosses. Viewed from ethics of justice and care, these boss-subordinate exchanges were not simply instances of miscommunication but possibly tensions produced by conceptualizing and enacting justice and care stances. Feminist ethics provides a way to reframe ethical stan...

The art(fulness) of open-ended interviewing: some considerations on analysing interviews

Considerable analytic attention has focused on interviewees’ talk as ‘accounts’, or ‘versions’, rather than as direct reports of attitudes or perceptions. However, despite recognition of the ‘co-construction of accounts’, little analytic attention has been given to the interviewer as central in the production of the talk. With this attention, we are left with an analysis of some decontextualized-features-of-talk (or discourse/identities/narrative/repertoires/rhetoric). By contrast, this article argues that interviews are inherently social encounters, dependent on the local interactional contingencies in which the speakers draw from, and co-construct, broader social norms. Through a close reading of one published paper and extracts from an interview, I document how interviewees and interviewers work to construct themselves as certain types-of-people in relation to the topic of the interview and reflexively the interview itself. I then show how a prescription from some interview methods texts document an ideal about interview practices. The analysis of the interview extracts shows this ideal-in-practice (cf. Hester and Francis, 1994). I argue that whatever ideals are practised, no single practice will gain ‘better data’ than the other practices. The ‘data’ obtained are highly dependent on and emerge from the specific local interactional context which is produced in and through the talk (and concomitant identity work) of the interviewee and interviewer. An awareness of this local context of data production is central to analysing interview data whatever analytic stance is taken when analysing the data.

Los guaraníes después de la expulsión de los jesuitas: dinámicas políticas y transacciones simbólicas

This article describes and analyzes the evolution of Hispano-Guarani relations in the area of the Guarani missions, from the Jesuit expulsion of 1768 until 1810, concentrating on the power relations and strategies on both sides. Analytical attention is centred on the changes and continuities in ethnic identifications, using the «Jesuit-Guarani model» as a reference point, as well as on the diverse political and symbolic «transactions» which went on between the Guarani and the Spaniards (both civilian and religious) in specific contexts of interaction, bearing in mind connections and conflicts both between and within these groups. Throughout, these relations will be dealt with as complex and dynamic systems of socio-political, economic and symbolic practices.

How to Practice Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method

HOWARD E. BOOK, M.D., D.PSYCH.: How to Practice Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy: Conflictual Relationship Method. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1997, 181 pp., $39.95, ISBN 1-55798-46-54. Dr. Book is psychoanalytically oriented. Seeing the increasing demands for psychotherapy from clients and for cost containment from third-party payers, he turned to investigating the brief psychodynamic psychotherapies and adopted the wellknown time-limited approach developed by Luborsky, identified as The Conflictual Relationship Method, that seems to bring not only symptom relief but some significant characterological change as well. This work by Book serves as fine introduction to this mode of doing brief psychotherapy, as Luborsky himself recognizes in the Foreword. Book helped establish Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Training Program at the University of Toronto. He is Coordinator of Brief Psychotherapy Training for psychiatry residents and Director of the Post-Graduate Training Program in brief psychodynamic psychotherapy at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto. He has private practice where he does brief and long-term psychotherapy and supervises therapists. His dedication and skill as teacher are evident in his structuring of this book, which he correctly describes as a user-friendly, readable, clinically focused presentation of this method. In an Introduction and Part I, he uses clinical vignettes to sketch out the strengths and weaknesses of brief approaches, the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the selection of suitable patients, the particular countertransference issues that emerge, and the use of supportive and expressive techniques derived from all dynamic therapies that are applied in particular blend tailored to this mode of treatment. Following Luborsky, he demonstrates techniques that help guide patients into portraying their symptoms and distress within the context of specific interactions or relationship they have had with others. He demonstrates how therapists can scan for overarching within these episodes and then bundle them together, while using an experience near attentiveness rather than psychodynamic oriented one, to discover that the themes often share fundamental Core Conflictual Relationship Theme that defines precisely the circumscribed area of maladaptive interpersonal functioning that is most problematic for each patient and on which then the time-limited therapy can most fruitfully focus. Part II is detailed case study of Book's evaluation, 16 treatment visits, and follow-up interview of woman client who had severe problems by being excessively compliant. He provides essential details of the client's and of his own communications. He comments on why he said what he said and how he concludes that what he said was successful or not. Laying himself out quite openly, he demonstrates his confidence and enthusiasm for this method and in the success of this particular treatment course. And indeed the patient felt she had been helped. psychoanalytic ear of some readers may find that things are overall bit too pat and wrapped up so neatly that the full range of complex processes embedded within the interactions between him and his client are not fully captured. Shortcuts can be treacherous. Yet, this material is instructive just because of this. For the work demands of each reader to probe on his or her own for what is really going on between these two. For example Book proposed the time-limited therapy contract in dialogue that went as follows (pp. …

A comparison of two alternative models of powerful speech: The impact of power and gender upon the use of threats

Several researchers have proposed that power, rather than gender, accounts for women using more powerless language than men. The present study examined the specific interaction context of bargaining and compared power with gender as potential predictors of the use of threats, one particular form of powerful language. Grounded in an interactional/social exchange view of power as dependence in social transactions, this study represented a marked departure from past studies of gender‐based language. The results largely supported power rather than gender as the best predictor of the use of powerful language in an interactional context involving bargaining.

CLASSROOM CONTEXTUAL DRAWINGS AS PREDICTORS OF PUPILS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Summary.-75 fourth grade children (29 boys, 46 girls) were asked to draw themselves in separate reading and math contexrs. Heights of drawing of self were significantly different for high and low achievers. Context and size of self-portrait in children's drawings are discussed as potential predictors of pupils' academic achievement. Children's art has a continuing fascination for researchers attempting to measure unobtrusively children's abilities and perceptions. Craddick has indicated in numerous studies that measurement of self-portraits can give insight into an individual's feelings and attitudes (3, 4, 6, 7, 8). Recent research further supports measurement of self-portrait as an alternative to holistic analysis. Analysis of children's drawings of psychologically salient contexts (pupil-teacher interactions) has indicated that children who exhibit a positive feeling about school draw themselves taller within a prescribed context than students who dislike school (1, 2). The use of context allows the researcher to focus on the exact aspects of school (or any other environment) to which the child may be reacting. Context provides a framework which is directly related to the child's creation of a product. The current investigation was designed to determine if interpretive procedures similar to those in the Craddick and Brooks studies could be applied to specific contexts of pupils' interaction with subject matter rather than a specific teacher. If American children who like school draw themselves as large, it was assumed that high achievers in reading and mathematics might also draw themselves larger than low achievers in each subject. METHOD The subjects were drawn from two schools located in a metropolitan area of the Southwest United States. They represented a lower-middle class economic distribution. The subjects were chosen at random from the fourth grade classes in each school. There were 75 subjects who ranged in age from 8 to 10 yr.; 29 were boys and 46 girls. Both schools had departmentalized reading and mathematics programs. All levels of ability were included in the random selection of subjects. The subjects were given one sheet of 12-in. X 14-in. manilla paper for each of the two contexts. The subjects also had six crayons (red, brown, blue, yellow, green, and black). These materials were used to respond to the following two requests: Draw a