Serious or non-serious?

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pentti Haddington
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Item ◽  
Sociocultural Values

By drawing on methods used in conversation analysis and interactional linguistics this article discusses the interplay between grammar and social interaction. It investigates a reduplicate linguistic item in Finnish called the ‘joke-joke’ structure. It is shown that the structure is used in interactional sequences in which some prior turn can be understood to be ambiguous in meaning and to have been produced either seriously or non-seriously. Speakers use the ‘joke-joke’ structure, as a kind of metacomment, to shift from an implied serious stance to a non-serious position. In essence, they use the structure to recontextualize and make the prior position ambiguous retroactively. It can thus be considered as a specific form of repair. The structure predominantly occurs in teasing and overstatements. The use of the structure can be seen to reflect the participants’ mutual understanding of sociocultural values. The use of the reduplicate structure can also be seen to be functionally motivated: it can be produced quickly and it iconically intensifies the meaning of ‘joking’. The findings here also support previous findings that reduplicates are frequently used to display emotional states. Finally, this article shows that meanings and understandings frequently emerge and are negotiated in social interaction.

scholarly journals An investigation into gender specifics of communicants’ pitch attunement in natural English conversation

XLinguae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Malvina A. Demina
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Communication Accommodation ◽  
Communication Accommodation Theory ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Natural Conversation ◽  
Male Talk ◽  
Accommodation Theory

The present empirical research takes place within the framework of Communication Accommodation Theory, bringing to the fore the prosodic organization of this speech phenomenon. This paper presents some research findings concerning the melodic component of prosodic accommodation in natural conversation. In this study, prosodic accommodation is viewed from the perspectives of interactional linguistics and conversation analysis with special regard to the phonopragmatic approach. The paper provides the author’s observations about melodic manifestations of speakers’ intentions and presuppositions, as well as the prosodic realization of communicative dominance in natural conversation. The focus on gender specifics of speech accommodation is communicatively justified since, according to the findings, women and men have gender-related markers of prosodic alignment and employ different melodic strategies in naturally occurring social interaction. Female conversing demonstrates numerous units of recipiency (neutral or affiliating) prosodically designed so as to fit in continuous talk and not to break its coherence. Male talk, on the contrary, may contain instances of melodic divergence and competition for communicative dominance in conversation.

Wissenskommunikation multimodal: Wie Museumsbesucher sich über eine Museumsvitrine verständigen

Fachsprache ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 122-144
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Kesselheim
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Knowledge Communication

In the present paper I will study conversations in front of museum showcases as a specific form of knowledge communication. After presenting my understanding of the concepts“knowledge communication” and “knowledge”, which are informed by conversation analysis, I will explore two characteristic aspects of the ‘showcase conversations’ by means of a number of detailed analyses of short extracts of these conversations. First, I will show how knowledge is interactively produced and made publicly visible, and second, how people use the complex multimodal environment of the showcase as a basis for their knowledge construction, and how they manage to ‘tie together’ different semiotic “modes” which are visible and readable in display cases. The analyses of this paper are based on a corpus collected in a paleontological museum. The conversations have been recorded in a kind of ‘field experiment’: Probands have been asked to watch a showcase together and to summarize its content. While doing so they were filmed.

Walking through the city soundscape: an audio-visual analysis of sensory experience for people with psychosis

2022 ◽  
pp. 147035722110526
Author(s):  
Sara Merlino ◽  
Lorenza Mondada ◽  
Ola Söderström
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Noisy Environments ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This article discusses how an aspect of urban environments – sound and noise – is experienced by people walking in the city; it particularly focuses on atypical populations such as people diagnosed with psychosis, who are reported to be particularly sensitive to noisy environments. Through an analysis of video-recordings of naturalistic activities in an urban context and of video-elicitations based on these recordings, the study details the way participants orient to sound and noise in naturalistic settings, and how sound and noise are reported and reexperienced during interviews. By bringing together urban context, psychosis and social interaction, this study shows that, thanks to video recordings and conversation analysis, it is possible to analyse in detail the multimodal organization of action (talk, gesture, gaze, walking bodies) and of the sensory experience(s) of aural factors, as well as the way this organization is affected by the ecology of the situation.

Restrictiveness, exclusivity, adversativity, and mirativity

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Fang Wang ◽  
Mei-Chi Tsai ◽  
Wayne Schams ◽  
Chi-Ming Yang
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
English Only ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Turn Taking

Mandarin Chinese zhishi (similar to English ‘only’), comprised of the adverb zhi and the copula shi, can act as an adverb (ADV) or a discourse marker (DM). This study analyzes the role of zhishi in spoken discourse, based on the methodological and theoretical principles of interactional linguistics and conversation analysis. The corpus used in this study consists of three sets of data: 1) naturally-occurring daily conversations; 2) radio/TV interviews; and 3) TV panel discussions on current political affairs. As a whole, this study reveals that the notions of restrictiveness, exclusivity, and adversativity are closely associated with ADV zhishi and DM zhishi. In addition, the present data show that since zhishi is often used to express a ‘less than expected’ feeling, it can be used to indicate mirativity (i.e. language indicating that an utterance conveys the speaker’s surprise). The data also show that the distribution of zhishi as an adverb or discourse marker depends on turn taking systems and speech situations in spoken discourse. Specifically, the ADV zhishi tends to occur in radio/TV interviews and TV panel news discussions, while the DM zhishi occurs more often in casual conversations.

scholarly journals Perspectives to management language games and social interaction in self-managing organizations

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Tuomas Korhonen ◽  
Teija Ahopelto ◽  
Teemu Laine ◽  
Johanna Ruusuvuori ◽  
Sanni Tiitinen
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
General Management ◽  
Pragmatic Constructivism ◽  
Language And Social Interaction ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Interesting Area

This essay identifies a theoretically interesting area, i.e. language and social interaction in self-managing organizations. By building upon earlier work in Wittgensteinian language games, we show that despite some existing research on management language games (inside and outside pragmatic constructivism), not much is known about language games in self-managing organizations. The essay brings together ideas concerning language games in general management and pragmatic constructivism, making a novel contribution in the area. Furthermore, we present an ethnomethodological perspective on analysing language and social interaction: conversation analysis (CA). We suggest that CA could be utilized to analyse social interaction within self-managing organizations in more detail, showing how the specific institutional characteristics of this type of organization are talked into being in this particular context. Several further research questions are proposed for future studies in management language games and language and social interaction.

WIR im interaktionalen Gebrauch: Zur Verwendung des Pronomens der 1. Person Plural in der institutionellen Kommunikation – am Beispiel onkologischer Aufklärungsgespräche

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-334
Author(s):  
Susanne Günthner
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Plural Pronoun ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
The Way

Abstract This empirically oriented article focuses on uses of the pronoun “wir” (‘we’) in medical interaction – more precisely, in oncological consultations. After a brief presentation of major research on the 1st person plural pronoun in German, I will – based on methods of Interactional Linguistics – analyze interactional uses of this deictic pronoun in institutional doctor-patient conversations. This article aims at contributing to research of how grammar is used in response to local interactional needs within social interaction (Auer/Pfänder 2011). As the data show, participants in these institutional settings make use of various types of “wir” – beyond the prototypical forms of usage (a) “self and person addressed”; (b) “self and person or persons spoken of” and (c) “self, person or persons addressed, and person or persons spoken of” (Boas 1911: 39). These “alternative”, non-prototypical uses of “wir”, which partly override the “residual semanticity” (Silverstein 1976: 47), are found to be related to the way in which they are embedded within the particular “social field” (Hanks 2005: 18). Thus, the indexical anchoring of “wir” proves to be rather flexible and responsive to interactional contingencies.

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