New Adventures in Language and Interaction (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

New Adventures in Language and Interaction

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&BNS) Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences.

Editor

Associate Editor

Anita Fetzer

Andreas H. Jucker

University of Würzburg

University of Zurich

Founding Editors Jacob L. Mey

Herman Parret

University of Southern Denmark

Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Jef Verschueren Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board Robyn Carston

Sachiko Ide

Deborah Schiffrin

Thorstein Fretheim

Kuniyoshi Kataoka

University of Trondheim

Aichi University

Paul Osamu Takahara

John C. Heritage

Miriam A. Locher

University College London

Japan Women’s University

University of California at Los Angeles

Universität Basel

Susan C. Herring

Indiana University

Masako K. Hiraga

St. Paul’s (Rikkyo) University

Georgetown University Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Sandra A. Thompson

Sophia S.A. Marmaridou University of Athens

University of California at Santa Barbara

Srikant Sarangi

Teun A. van Dijk

Cardiff University

Marina Sbisà

University of Trieste

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Yunxia Zhu

The University of Queensland

Volume 196 New Adventures in Language and Interaction Edited by Jürgen Streeck

New Adventures in Language and Interaction Edited by

Jürgen Streeck The University of Texas at Austin

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdamâ•›/â•›Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New adventures in language and interaction / edited by Jürgen Streeck. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 196) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Sociolinguistics. 2. Social interaction. 3. Conversation analysis. I. Streeck, Jürgen. P40.N425â•…â•… 2010 306.44--dc22 2010010772 isbn 978 90 272 5600 3 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 8814 1 (Eb)

© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents New adventures in language and interaction Jürgen Streeck Interlocutory logic: A unified framework for studying conversational interaction Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

1

9

Beyond symbols: Interaction and the enslavement principle Stephen J. Cowley

47

The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

71

Grammar: A neglected resource in interaction analysis? Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

99

Researching intercultural communication: Discourse tactics in non-egalitarian contexts Angel Lin

125

Studying interaction in order to cultivate communicative practices: Action-implicative discourse analysis Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

145

Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system: An activity analysis perspective Srikant Sarangi

167

Interacting with difficulty: The case of aphasia Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

199

Ecologies of gesture Jürgen Streeck

223



New Adventures in Language and Interaction

The neglected listener: Issues of theory and practice in transcription from video in interaction analysis Frederick Erickson €

243

Dialogical dynamics: Inside the moment of speaking John Shotter

257

Author index Subject index

273 275

New adventures in language and interaction Jürgen Streeck

The University of Texas at Austin

This book has developed from an idea by Carlo Prevignano and Paul Thibault to have a diverse group of well-known researchers who are engaged in the empirical study of language and interaction discuss the start of the art of the field. All of the contributors are either influenced by or develop their own line of inquiry in critical dialogue with conversation analysis and/or interactional sociolinguistics, as conceived by John Gumperz. This book thus complements the prior discussions with Emanuel Schegloff (Prevignano & Thibault 2003) and John Gumperz (Eerdmans, Prevignano & Thibault 2003) that these scholars have published. The resulting volume gives an impression of how diverse the field has become. While all of the contributors see their work as grounded in what we may now call the interactionist canon – G.H. Mead, the late Wittgenstein, perhaps Vygostky and Bakhtin, Bateson, maybe Garfinkel, but above all Goffman (see, for example, the contributions by Trognon and Batt, Streeck, and Shotter) – they have branched out from this shared ground in a number of different directions: – by subjecting these dominant paradigms in language and interaction research – conversation analysis (CA) and interactional sociolinguistics (IS) – to a critical review and formulating their own distinct theoretical edifice, vision, or methodology in contradistinction to them, sometimes by giving these a name that sets them off from those methodologies, e.g.€ interlocutory logic (Trognon and Batt) or action-implicative discourse analysis (Tracy and Craig); Kerbrat-Orecchioni pleads for an eclectic methodology, while Shotter articulates a philosophy of dialogical dynamics as it has emerged from his research as well as from the interplay of utterances by Vygostky and Wittgenstein that has unfolded in his work; or – by taking these methodologies, notably conversation analysis, and integrating them with separate, differently focused but philosophically compatible methodologies, such as systemic-functional linguistics as proposed by M.A.K. Halliday (Muntigl and Ventola); or



Jürgen Streeck

– by incorporating previously understudied components such as prosody (Cowley) listener action and temporal coordination (Erickson) and gesture (Streeck), and using findings from their research to revise received notions in interactionism (e.g.€ context) and introducing new ones (such as resonance) that emphasize embodied aspects of intersubjectivity in interaction. Other contributors are committed to elucidating interactional difficulties that result from impairments (Armstrong and Ferguson) and cultural conflict (Lin), or to give guidance or provide representations of dialogue for the critical reflection of practitioners in such fields of communicative practice as health-care (Sarangi), therapy (Cowley, Muntigl and Ventola, Shotter), and politics (Tracy and Craig). The adventures that await those who enter the microcosm of human interaction thus offer challenges of multiple kinds: the need to revise one’s guiding assumptions and find new bearings in a changing, interdisciplinary landscape, but also to make sense of little-known fields of practice which are also undergoing change, as well as making practitioners feel a greater need to reflect on what is going on. All of the contributions combine reflections of method with an assessment of some aspect of the state of the art and illustrate their reflections with limited presentations and analyses of cases. Specifically, Alain Trognon and Martine Batt exemplify one discernible trend in contemporary work on language and interaction, which is to seek to integrate some of the different existing strands of research as well as their conceptual foundations into a single integrated theoretical and analytic framework. Central to their endeavor are Goffman’s notion of the interaction order (Goffman 1983) and Schegloff ’s dictum that interaction (or, rather, talk in interaction) is the “natural habitat” for the deployment and development of language (Schegloff 1991). The interaction order, whose “backbone” is sequentiality, underwrites mutual understanding (intersubjectivity) via language, but traditional conceptions that deprive language use from its scaffolding by institutional orders of interaction unfailingly overestimate the contributions of linguistic structures to human understanding. Trognon and Batt propose interlocutory logic as a unified framework for studying cognition in interaction. It comprises formal procedures to (a) represent and model the sociolinguistic organization of interlocutions (i.e. dialogues consisting of social action sequences), and (b) generate hypotheses about “subjective processes at the cognitive level” and study “the conversational emergence of both declarative and procedural knowledge”. They exemplify this framework with an analysis of the talk during brief “hand-overs” between work-shifts in a paper factory. Stephen Cowley’s contribution breaks with more orthodoxies than most others. His point of departure is, like Trognon and Batt’s, “the exaggerated importance of linguistic forms” in traditional research and theory, but in his rejection of this



New adventures in language and interaction

tradition he is particularly keen on re-somaticizing language and communication and to demonstrate the “importance of patterns beyond symbols”. He contends that traditional conceptions – including conversation analysis and, to a more limited extend, Gumperz with his notion that contextualization cues steer the interpretation of situated uses of symbols – misconstrue our participation in embodied events by construing it in analogy to how we read pictures: as recognition of patterns whose meanings can be looked up in some social or mental lexicon. What Cowley offers is a dynamic model of self-organizing bodies that continuously resonate with unpredictable events and dynamic changes in co-acting bodies: a body’s “pico-level resonance” constantly responds to and, in turn, impacts another body. Cowley offers a case-analysis of dynamic prosodic processes in an Italian conversation; he models meaning-making as an embodied phenomenon, in line with a perspective that is grounded in the “bio-mechanics” and “bio-semiotics” of interaction, in light of which traditional units such as words and utterances, even interaction itself, appear as folk-constructs. Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni makes the case for methodological eclecticism, presenting ideas towards an approach that incorporates concepts from various versions of discourse analysis, pragmatics, politeness theory, speech act theory, and conversation analysis. She develops these ideas mainly through a critique of core concepts in conversation analysis. Thus, she takes issue with the notion of adjacency pair, pointing out that the acts that are connected in sequences may often be far apart (cf.€Schegloff, 2007, which also addresses this issue), emphasizing that the units that make up sequences are not turns, but actions (or speech acts), and arguing that the notion of pair betrays a CA bias toward two-party conversation. Kerbrat-Orecchioni also separates the dimensions of ordering and conditional relevance in sequence organization and proposes a reinterpretation in light of politeness theory (Brown & Levinson 1987) of various preferences structures that conversation analysts have uncovered (e.g.€the preference for agreement; Sacks 1987). She is critical of what we may call the “maxim of contextual parsimony”, advanced in particular by Schegloff (1987), according to which the situated relevance of some category of context or identity (gender, place, social class, etc.) should not be presumed as relevant unless this relevance has in fact been made apparent by the parties: many dimensions of context are assumed by the parties even if they are not made apparent in the discourse. Interaction analysis, therefore, is always interpretive, and inevitably the parties will draw upon “external” parameters of context, e.g.€their respective social backgrounds. Kerbrat-Orecchioni exemplifies her eclectic approach, which “draws on descriptive resources from different fields and puts them together”, in an analysis of a strategically misplaced greeting during a televised interchange between the French politicians Sarkozy and Le Pen in 2003.





Jürgen Streeck

Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventona take a very different turn than, for example, Cowley and Trognon and Batt: instead of reducing or questioning the relevance of grammar in the achievement of intersubjectivity in interaction, they exemplify its relevance – the relevance of grammatical choices – for the development of socialinteractional processes and interpersonal life. Their approach, which draws on Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics is compatible with recent work by conversation analysts and interactional linguists on positionally sensitive grammar, involving a type of analysis of grammatical structures and devices that pays attention to the positions within emergent turns, sequences, and activities where these structures and devices can be deployed. Both systemic-functional linguistics and conversation analysis, they point out, “insist on examining speakers’ meaning-making resources”, specifically the constructional alternatives that are available to them at a given point in an interaction and which include such choices as that between active and passive voice or action-, achievement-, and relational verbs. Aligning with the “behaviorist” view of the relationship between linguistic resources and sociocognitive behavior espoused by Ryle (1949) and Wittgenstein (1953; see Coulter 1989), they show that grammatical resources are not simply resources for making clauses, but that choosing one type of clause over another means enacting a different action, construing an experience in different ways, and offering different types of relationship.€This conception is developed through the analysis of a brief excerpt from a couple’s therapy in which the therapist successively alters the grammatical frame in terms of which the husband’s habits are construed. Angel Lin’s chapter reconciles the perspective of Gumperz’ interactional sociolinguistics with the methods and procedures of conversation analysis. She rejects Gumperz’ criticism that conversation analysis treats social groups and categories as static and refers to Sacks’ account, in one of his lectures (cf.€Sacks 1992:€288), of how groups are locally constituted through specific linguistic practices. Lin argues for the integration of micro- and macro-perspectives and draws on Giddens’ structuration theory for a concept of structuration practices and a framework that recognizes the constraining influence of social macro-structures and institutions and can guide an investigation of how these structures and institutions emerge from situated social action, interaction, and work. Lin is particularly interested in what happens in the “borderlands” of inter-group and inter-positional interaction in the context of an increasingly globalized world. Her focus is on the structuring activities that take place during inter-cultural communication in non-egalitarian encounters. Following Davies and Harré (1990), she describes how in such encounters participants position one another according to conflicting, but consistent storylines and assign each other parts in these stories. While high-status participants may seek to use their power to secure the enforcement of their storyline, participants in less powerful positions use tactics (de Certeau 1984) to counteract non-egalitarian interactional



New adventures in language and interaction

structures. Lin’s contribution illustrates the need for language and interaction research that focuses on settings and engagements in which horizontal relations of affiliation and engagement and vertical relations of power and control over linguistic and communicative norms are negotiated and contested. Karen Tracy and Robert Craig position their approach to the study of language and interaction – which they call action-implicative discourse analysis (AIDA) – in contradistinction to interactional sociolinguists and conversation analysis. They argue that all approaches always reflect and have to reckon with the traditions, concerns, and thematic regimes of their respective home disciplines: in the case of their own approach, communication studies; linguistics and anthropology in the case of interactional sociolinguistics; and sociology in the case of CA. According to Tracy and Craig, CA takes on different flavors and is less firmly bounded when it is transported into other fields. For communication scholars, Tracy and Craig suggest, the practical dimension of research has always been a main concern, reaching back to the beginnings of the rhetorical tradition in ancient Greece and Rome. Communication studies and, a fortiori, action-implicative discourse analysis, are fundamentally interested in cultivating communication, that is, in providing, on the basis of research on actual cases, guidance for improved practice. The authors illustrate this perspective with an analysis of a school-board meeting. Approaching the setting with an ethnographically grounded version of discourse analysis (cf.€Schiffrin 1994), they aim to reconstruct the “situated ideals” of different categories of participants, in order to explicate their normative standards, which can then guide the cultivation of communicative practice. Srikant Sarangi is similarly motivated by the task of professional communication analysts to guide professionals, for example in health-care, in reflections of their own communicative practice. Health-care professionals, he argues, are likely “to apply such insights about interaction selectively, in the same way they deal with theories and models of scientific and technical knowledge”. In contrast to other contributions, Sarangi does not begin with a generic, bottom-up analysis of interaction sequences and their various embeddings within specific macro-contexts and fields of social practice. Rather, he comes to his research with an understanding of current policy-induced changes in the professional roles of health-care providers and the impact that these changes have on their interactional statuses and roles as knowledge providers. To give an example, software-based expert systems play an increasing role in health-care, but while they potentially lower the status of physicians as human experts, they are also apt to empower nurses, which are enabled to perform minor surgery and dispense advice independently of physicians. Drawing upon Levinson’s study of “activity types and language” (Levinson 1979/1992), Sarangi conducts activity analysis, complemented by theme-oriented discourse-analysis, and illustrates his approach here with analytic observations of





Jürgen Streeck

an example of genetic counseling. He shows that the interaction is characterized by frequent frame-shifts (from history-taking to diagnosis, etc.), as well as by repeated patterns of rhetorical escalation and de-escalation of the risk that the medical condition poses to the patient. Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson discuss the contribution that interaction research can make to clinical research and intervention involving people with aphasia; like Muntigl and Ventona, their research brings together conversation analysis and systemic-functional linguistics. The authors point out that aphasia is usually characterized by a breakdown of lexicogrammatical order in the presence of relatively intact pragmatic skills. Microanalytic research on interactions with people affected by aphasia has shown how these are able to draw on “normal” conversational mechanisms (e.g.€ repair), but also on grammatical resources such as cleft-constructions to compensate for difficulties in making themselves understood. However, this type of research has also revealed interactional and linguistic accommodations that conversation partners of aphasics make (e.g.€in prosody) and which sometimes amount to over-accommodation and yield the risk that the speaker is perceived as talking down to the person who has the speech impediment. Armstrong and Ferguson offer a detailed discussion of both the history and the possible futures of research on language and interaction involving people with aphasia and argue that many of the communication difficulties resulting from aphasia are not categorically different from problems of miscommunication in ordinary conversations; rather, they highlight and expose the “generic” underpinnings of conversational collaboration. Jürgen Streeck revisits some core ideas in the work of G.H. Mead, Bateson, Goffman, and conversation analysis (sequentiality; the relationship between gesture and action; an ecological view of context) and shows how in a series of brief moments of workplace interaction hand-gestures are understood and function by reference not only to concurrent speech, but also in relation to their positions within turns and sequences of action, ongoing physical activities, and the material environment – the landscape or setting – at hand. He thus pleads for an ecological approach to the analysis of modalities (including language and gesture) in social interaction. He also suggests that an ecological conception of embodied and multimodal interaction will benefit from greater engagement with contemporary work on embodied cognition in phenomenological philosophy and cognitive science. Attention to the embeddedness of gesture, language, and interaction in the material world raises the issue of the historical specificity and determination of that world. Streeck concludes that, while the methodological issues of studying talk and gesture in interaction have been settled, the real challenge now is to integrate the interactionist conception of human competence into a broader conception that encompasses the encultured quality not only of the mind, but also the body,



New adventures in language and interaction

while reckoning with the historical constitution of the resources, contexts, and practices that we study. Frederick Erickson addresses the issue, first forcefully raised by Ochs (1979), that transcription methods incorporate theories of the (linguistic, interactional) realities that are meant to be represented by them, and he criticizes the conversation-analytic system devised by Gail Jefferson, which arranges turns at talk as in a playscript, for its inherent neglect of the hearer and its logocentrism. Interaction, Erickson points out, predates language. The transcripts that inform our research and theorizing should accordingly show the embeddedness of talk in interaction, which includes not only sequential phenomena (i.e. phenomena ordered by succession), but also the phenomena of mutuality that are embodied in participants’ concurrent spatial orientations to one another. Visible behaviors of co-participants may shape both what they say and how they say it while they are saying it. These, too, are absent from Jeffersonian transcripts (although they are recorded in detail in such variations as the system of gaze notation developed by Goodwin 1981). Erickson proposes and illustrates a transcription system that is derived from musical scores. It organizes the vocal and visible behaviors of all participants relative to a common time-line and displays units of time in analogy to measure in music notation. Importantly, musical notation can also record, as Erickson demonstrates in an analysis of a “collective complaint sequence” during a family mealtime conversation, the timing of instrumental acts such as those of food distribution. It thus allows the display and analysis of the temporal articulation of different strata of activities and interactions. Erickson concludes that “the time is ripe for a renewed effort toward the study of space, time, and visual phenomena in social interaction. The prospect seems promising for nonverbal and temporal aspects to receive more attention in relation to speech than in the recent past.” John Shotter’s final, visionary chapter, Dialogical dynamics: Inside the moment of speaking, replaces, as Cowley’s does, the Cartesian view of understanding as a congruence of representations with a view of intersubjectivity grounded in bodily resonance. “All communication begins in, and continues with, our living, spontaneous, expressive-responsive (gestural), bodily activities that occur in the meetings between ourselves and the others and othernesses around us.” Our intellectual lives, Shotter writes, are based in “’inner’, dialogically-structured movements, in a dialogical dynamics giving rise to unfolding movements which shift this way and that in a distinctive fashion, movements whose ‘shape’ can be ‘felt’ or ‘sensed’ but not pictured, or known at all in a propositional form”. Thought is not separate from feeling; it orchestrates heterogeneous influences and provides us with senses of how to go on in a situation. Shotter, who avows to be influenced by “specific utterances or expressions” in the writings of Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Garfinkel, and Merleau-Ponty, envisions a therapeutic form of analysis that will allow us to





Jürgen Streeck

improve our practices from within our practices. Words and ways of talking are psychological tools that enable us “to relate ourselves to our circumstances in a different way”. Therapy can engage us in Bakhtinian modes of thinking in the voices of others and teach us new ways across the totality of our shared language games. All of the contributors address themselves, implicitly or explicitly, to some of the questions that Prevignano and Thibault initially posed to them and that related to the authors’ conceptions of interaction and interaction analysis, the relative usefulness of analytic procedures, the categories of analysis, and the obstacles and future that the analysis of interaction and language currently faces. The answer is a multivocal Baktinian polylogue in which the authors act like ventriloquists and the voices of the founders of our fields resonate in concert with the submerged voices of Prevignano and Thibault. Cries of excitement continue to be heard on our adventurous journeys into the microcosm of human encounters. References Coulter, Jeff 1989. Mind in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. de Certeau, Michel 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Eerdmans, Susan L., Prevignano, Carlo L., and Thibault, Paul. J. (eds.) 2003. Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Goffman, E. 1983. “The interaction order.” American Sociological Review 48: 1–17. Levinson, S. C. 1992. “Activity types and langsuage.” In Talk at Work. Interactions in Institutional Settings. Paul Drew and John Heritage (eds.), 66–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, Elinor 1979. “Transcription as theory.” In Developmental Pragmatics, Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin (eds.), 43–72. New York: Academic Press. Prevignano, Carlo L. and Thibault, Paul J. (eds.). 2003. Discussing Conversation Analysis: The Work of Emanuel A. Schegloff. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Vol.s I and II. Edited by Gail Jefferson. Cambridge: Blackwell. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1987. “Between micro and macro: Contexts and other connections.” In The Micro-Macro Link. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Richard Münch & Neil J. Smelser (eds.), 207–233. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1991. “Conversation analysis and socially shared cognition.” In Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, Lousie Resnick, John Levine and Stephanie Behrend (eds.), 150–171. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. “Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation.” American Journal of Sociology, 975: 1295–1345. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford, UK; Cambridge: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Interlocutory logic A unified framework for studying conversational interaction Alain Trognon and Martine Batt Université Nancy

After exhibiting the historical and epistemic context of the discovery of the interaction order, the authors develop a global theory of the cognitive-affectivesocial organization of talk-in-interaction: «Interlocutory Logic». On the basis of insights provided by the pragmatics of natural languages and the theory and methods of contemporary logic, this theory deals with elementary illocutionary acts and higher-order units (turns, exchanges) of conversation with the help of methods of natural deduction and dialogical logic. The authors present a model constructed within the empirical domain of functional dialogues during «handovers» between work-shifts in a factory to demonstrate the descriptive and explicative values of «Interlocutory Logic».

Introduction The word «interaction», which according to the French dictionary Larousse de la Langue Française (1975) means «reciprocal action of two or more phenomena», did not enter French dictionaries until recently. The 1892 Dictionnaire des dictionnaires and the 1877 supplement of the 19th century French dictionary Littré both date its appearance back to 1876. However, the short history of the word has not prevented it from spreading and becoming widely used within the last century, in nearly every knowledge domain. One finds it in mathematics, and in natural sciences like physics, where all known phenomena are classified into four types of interaction, and biology, where «interaction» refers to relationships between two or more organisms that coexist within a biotope. And of course, one finds it in the human and social sciences, where, based on Goffman’s (1971) definition, it is generally understood to mean the reciprocal influence that partners exert upon their respective actions when they are in the immediate physical presence of each other.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

What are the main success and failures of studying interaction in this last domain? And what tasks are needed? Answering these two questions in a first paragraph where we will see that «accounting for interaction, and especially for verbal interaction (...) still constitutes an essential challenge for cognitive psychology (Caron 1997:€234)» (Trognon et al. 2008:€624) will bring us to propose a unified framework, namely Interlocutory Logic. We shall present this theory in a second paragraph: its goals, its formal organization, and a model which will illustrate its semantics. The corresponding domain, a real one, of this model will be a functional dialogue during a shift changeover situation. 1. Success and failures of the “interactionist paradigm” 1.1

Origins of the «interactionist paradigm»

In the human and social sciences, the first substantial work on interaction as a concept began in the 1930’s, with Bakhtin (1929) in linguistics, and Mead (1934), Vygotski (1934), and even «young» Piaget (1928, 1932) in psychology. At that time, the theses set forth by these authors were purely speculative. But they proved extremely prolific forty years later in the 1970’s, when «this subject became a more or less autonomous field of research [research that] has now reached maturity» (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1997:€1). This is when a full-fledged scientific program began to emerge, one which, according to a synthesis of the field proposed by Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1989, 1990, 1997, 1998), could be called the «interactionist paradigm». It should be noted that technological innovations had reached a level that permitted the empirical study of interaction. Indeed, at the same time as this field of research was developing, was offering increasingly sophisticated techniques for recording sound and images (tape recorders and video cameras) and reproducing observed events (digitization, and more generally artificial intelligence). With interaction having become a fully accessible entity for observation and modelling on the computer (Geniffey and Trognon 1986), research had a new scientific object at its disposal. In fact, conversational analysis was to grow out of this very setting, as Sacks noted in his famous Lectures (Sacks 1984:€26). In the thirty years that followed, the research proliferated at the intersection between sociology, psychology, linguistics, the philosophy of language, and artificial intelligence, each of these disciplines founding in interactional analysis material to fuel its research and renewing its issues.



Interlocutory logic

1.2

Fundamental theses of the interactionist paradigm

Although studies on interaction «include a heterogeneous series of investigations [...], i.e., more a ‘sphere of influence’ than a coherent and unified set of theoretical proposals» (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1989:€7, our translation), they all are based on the premise that «there is interaction». This thesis has been asserted with variable degrees of forcefulness. At one extreme, Goffman interprets it more or less methodologically in writing for example, «I am convinced that if you want to study something, you have to start by approaching it as a system of its own, at its own level [...]. It was this premise that led me in my thesis to treat interaction as a specific domain and to attempt to rescue the term ‘interaction’ from the state in which social psychology and those who claim to be its disciples had left it» (1981:€306, our translation). Conversely, Schegloff (1991) granted it a more ontological status, considering interaction to be a constituent phenomenon of human societies. Schegloff states indeed that, for species living in a society, direct interaction is the primordial scene of social life, and that for human beings, this kind of direct interaction is typically organized into «talk-in-interaction», with conversation acting as its basic structure. But in either case, the interaction «plane», «level», «stage», or even «order», as Goffman (1983) termed it, is a specific phenomenon and thereby justifies a relatively autonomous approach or grain of analysis (Quéré 1989). So, studies conducted in the interactionist paradigm have a number of common features or orientations, three of which are worthy of our attention. Although they are interdependent, we will present them separately here. The first is the focus on «natural» data, meaning data that has not been generated for the purposes of analysis as is experimental or survey data. Taking this orientation, which is a reversal of the traditional ways, interactional linguists or psychologists place priority on oral rather than written language, the dialogical to the monological, the actual productions of people during real social activities (carried out in the here and now) to the introspective accounts of the ideal speaker-listener heard by the scholarly speaker-listener (Boutet 1989; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1989; Mondada 1995). This first feature is not rooted in a «methodological stance» chosen for humanistic reasons, with the ethnomethodologist acting as a sort of worker-priest of sociology. It draws its legitimacy from the direct inscrutability of the object of observation, as Mondada so rightly stated: «Conversational data is ‘discoverable’ but not ‘imaginable’ – which makes any simulation problematic» (1995:€ 3, our translation). And as Gumperz noted: As to «regularities» of communication practice, I believe that these should ultimately be derived from or related to in-depth analyses of situated encounters in a variety of settings. Because of the way interaction works, the usual questionnaire studies are not satisfactory here (Gumperz in Prévignano and Thibaut 2002:€151).





Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

All data, whatever their nature, whatever channel they tap, for they are multimodal (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1990), exhibit this first characteristic. An interpretation, for example, is no more ineffable than a behaviour and can be grasped in the same way. Both Gumperz (1982, 2002) and Garfinkel (1967, 1996), each in his own way, offered us definitive proof of this, and in doing so, provided the groundwork for the emergence of an original method of investigation and knowledge acquisition in the human and social sciences. This method (Levinson 1983; Heritage 1990) espouses the processes and devices by means of which people give intersubjective meaning to the everyday activities they accomplish in the here and now, devices and processes which support the ever-changing, immanent, contextual anchoring of social relations (Trognon 1994). The method thus helps us discover the repertoires which – along with different types of indexicals (Levinson 2002; Thibaut 2002) like the contextualization cues discovered by Gumperz (1982, 2002) – «index» interpersonal relationships in social relations. With such methods, the human and social sciences are in a position to go beyond the traditional survey-based dichotomy between externality (e.g., sociology surveys) and immersion (e.g., ethnology surveys conducted in the field, participation surveys). The second feature, which follows from the first, involves the mixing of theoretical and epistemological references – interaction studies are multidisciplinary (Boutet 1989; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1989; Thibaut 2002) – and this is where researchers who venture into this area run the risk of stigmatization in their community of origin. Investigators like Garfinkel, the first to call himself an ethnomethodologist before ethnomethodology was instituted, have been subjected to numerous attacks and insults. The third orientation, which in some sense overarches the other two, is the desire to edify a natural science rather than a formal discipline (Goffman 1981; especially Sacks 1984) and thus to adopt an empirical rather than hypotheticodeductive approach (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1989). 1.3

Properties of the «interaction order»

The «interaction order» is the interindividual relationship that embodies social institutions through the use of language. In other words, the relationship is the basis of the interaction order: One cannot conceive of communicative interaction as an extrinsic coordination process that harmonizes the individual activities of actors as if behind their backs (see the law of supply and demand in economic individualism); nor as the influence of one speaker on another, which presupposes the heterogeneity of the interactants (see classical rhetoric); nor as the secondary coordination of projects thanks to the conscious effort required of the actors to reach a consensus [...]. In



Interlocutory logic

fact, it is the relationship that explains reciprocal expectations and not vice versa: permissible perturbations are ones that cannot be exceeded without breaking the relational couple or destroying the self-organized system it engendered. (Jacques 1988:€52–53, our translation).

1.3.1 Dual opening of the “interaction order” As the basis of the interaction order, the relationship must not be seen as a self-enclosed phenomenon. The interaction order (Trognon and Bromberg 2007) opens onto two horizons. Upwards, it opens up onto social institutions, and onto a particular institution that is specific to the human species. This prominent part of all social institutions (Searle 1995) is what Saussure (1969) called the «speaking mass», namely, natural language. On this first horizon, interactions can be seen as constituting a space where institutions are accomplished. Since the early 1970’s, ethnomethodology and conversational analysis on the one hand (see, for instance, Maynard and Zimmerman 1984; Watson and Sharrock 1990; Schegloff 1991; and so on), and Gumperzian interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982, 2002) on the other, have brilliantly illustrated this conception. Now concerning the institution of language, we need to refer to interactionist linguistics as a whole, for language is just like any other institution, and the constituents of language are just like any other institutional state. Accordingly and analogously to what happened to ethnomethodology with respect to academic sociology, very many studies conducted in interactionist linguistics have shown how the categories referred to as «Platonian» in traditional linguistics are reproduced through interaction (Trognon, Saint-Dizier and Grossen: 1999). What is more, numerous elements of language are overdetermined, partially fashioned in return by the «interaction order». As Schegloff again wrote: If the basic natural environment for sentences is in turns at talk in conversation, we should take seriously the possibility that aspects of their structure (e.g.€their grammatical structure) are to be understood as adaptations to that environment. (Schegloff 1991:€154–155)

Downward, the interaction order is the womb of the self and of the mind (Stern 2004; Trevarthen 1993, 2001, 2004). 1.3.2 Relative autonomy of the “interaction order” The interaction order nevertheless exhibits a «relative autonomy». It is «an intermediate and in many ways analytically distinct level of organization» (Gumperz in Previgano and di Luzio 2002:€8). This relative autonomy derives from the fact that the interaction order is structured. The interaction order is thus the opposite of a neutral or shapeless milieu. As Schegloff (1991) wrote, it is not an astructured medium that would simply transmit messages, knowledge, and information. The





Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

backbone of this structure is sequentiality, and this is why it has been placed at the crux of conversational analysis: «CA is concerned with the study of the sequential organization of interaction and of the reasoning that is inherently embedded within it» (Heritage 1990:€27). For example, as Schegloff (1991) wrote, conversational sequentiality [t1,€ t2,...,€ ti,€ tj,...,€ tn] quasi-automatically creates a special type of repair mechanism, which he called third position repair. Third position repair may be thought of as the last systematically provided opportunity to catch (among other problems) divergent understandings that embody breakdowns of intersubjectivity, that is, trouble in socially shared cognition of the talk and conduct in the interaction (Schegloff 1991:€158).

Schegloff does not give a detailed analysis of the third position repair mechanism. For our part, we have proposed an interlocutory analysis of it (Trognon and Brassac 1993; Trognon and Saint Dizier 1999; Trognon 2002), founded on Interlocutory Logic (cf.€ supra), which shows quite clearly how the interlocution produces the shared world or intersubjectivity evoked by Schegloff. The resulting model, named “The Conversational Mechanism of Mutual Understanding” (CM2U), bridges the gap between the speaker meaning and the meaning intersubjectively taken to be the speaker meaning (Clark 1996; Trognon 2002). So, as Schegloff (1991) wrote it, repairs, especially third position repairs, support the intersubjectivity of the participants in the interaction, i.e., «the maintenance of a world (including the developing course of the interaction itself) mutually understood by the participants as some same world» (Schegloff 1991:€ 151). The «discovery» of third position repair thus brings empirical content to the procedural solution that Garfinkel, by inventing ethnomethodology, suggested for academic sociology’s unsolvable problem, that of the acquisition, confirmation, and revision of «common» sense (Bernicot et al. 1997; Trognon 2002)€ in such a way that even if interaction were not the source of intersubjectivity, the latter being somehow innate (as believed by Trevarthen (1993, 2001, 2004; for example) or even embodied (as the discovery of mirror neurons would lead one to believe; cf.€di Pellegrino et al. 1992), it would still constitute a medium, a receptacle, a container necessary for the psychological survival of the human individual. 1.3.3 Human beings communication and the “interaction order” It is very important to emphasize along with Schegloff that the third position repair mechanism (or CM2U) has two main consequences on Human Beings’ Communication: on the individuals and on the human species. Firstly, the interaction order clearly represents an advantage for the human race in natural selection. As one of us wrote earlier (Trognon 1991:€403–404; Trognon 2003), a communication system made up solely of a language, i.e., a



Interlocutory logic

haphazardly-designed code which, besides, relies on an inferential process, is certainly not an excellent communication system. Its reliability is totally relative and its productions uncertain. It is hard to imagine, for example, how it could effectively coordinate the individual actions required to carry out a collective project. From this angle, a far more efficient communication system is the encoding-decoding system used by bees. But imagine for a moment that in this communication system, the haphazard code has attached to it a tuning subroutine that serves to perfect its operations. This would give us the most efficient communication system of all. Virtually any mishap or failure could be recovered by the tuning subroutine. Even better, the system’s representational capabilities would be superior to those of a code. Indeed, to represent a new piece of information, a code must necessarily have a new unit available, otherwise it loses the very property that makes it useful: the one-to-one correspondence between the set of elements to encode and the set of encoded elements. Consequently, it is costly to integrate new information into a code. A [natural language, tuning subroutine] system does not suffer from this type of limitation. And this is what makes language, plus the interaction order, an advantage in natural selection. As Edda Weigand writes it: It is precisely this risk of misunderstanding which makes communication so efficient since it permits us to cope with an unlimited, ever changing world (Weigand 1999:€778). Communication functions so well because it allows the risk of misunderstanding and trusts in the fact that it will be corrected by the ongoing dialogue itself (Weigand 1999:€783).

Schegloff adopted an analogous point of view when he wrote: Given that hearers have resources available for addressing problems in understanding, should they arise, the resources of natural language need not, for example, be unambiguous. They need not have invariant mappings of signs or symbols and their signifieds. They need not have a syntax that assigns only a single interpretation to a given expression. They need not be limited to literal usage, but may be used in idiomatic, metaphoric, and other non literal tropes (Schegloff 1991:€155).

In short: The kinds of language components from which it is fashioned – sounds, words, and sentences – have the character they do and are formed the way they are in part because they are designed to inhabit an environment in which the apparatus of repair is available and in which, accordingly, flexible arrangements can be permitted (Schegloff 1991:€155).

Finally, phylogenetically speaking, it would seem as if Mother Nature (borrowing Dennett’s expression 1987) invented the interaction order to make up for the





Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

imperfections of communicating with natural language. By finding a procedural solution to the undecidability of natural-language communication which overcomes that undecidability without eliminating it, the human race has created an optimal, robust, flexible, and perfectly adaptive system of communication. In any case, for the human species as a species, for one must indeed admit that human evolution has a psychological cost. In effect, it seems that «when the human species ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, it discovered that automatic signs could be turned into signals and emitted with conscious or unconscious purpose. With that discovery, of course, also came the possibility of deceit and all sorts of other possibilities» (Bateson 1956:€ 157–158; Lacan 1981:€ 47). Evolution thus demands a very peculiar kind of competence: «knowing what to do with» uncertainty, for «misunderstanding is a human condition» (Prevignano 2002:€17). It is not merely a question of what something «means». Ultimately, agreement on a specific interpretation presupposes the ability negotiate repairs and re-negotiate misunderstandings, agree on how parts of an argument cohere, follow thematic shifts and shifts in presuppositions, that is, share indexical conventions (Gumperz 2002:€18).

Fundamentally, this competence is a competence whose object is the procedural. It could be considered an important component of the «interactional competence» to which Prevignano, Thibaut, and Gumperz refer in their discussion (2002). It is even thought to be located somewhere in the frontal lobes (Bernicot and Trognon: 2002; Dubois: 2002). But regardless of where one stands on the issue of this competence, it is clear that there are human beings who have been deprived of it, be it accidentally due to a brain injury for example (Peter-Favre 2002) or otherwise as in schizophrenia and autism (Trognon 1987, 1992; Trognon and Collet 1993). And in this case,€ «it is not only that you don’t survive, you don’t learn» (Gumperz 2002:€ 19). As Prevignano (2002:€ 19) stated: «In psychiatric cases, it’s just these metapragmatic procedures that fail.» Jakobson (1955) already knew this: brain pathologies and mental illness are directly related to the communication system used by human beings. 1.4

Advocacy for extending the interactionist paradigm to individual cognition

1.4.1 Epistemological consequences of the interactionist revolution As could be expected, traditional views of cognition, which take it to be a solipsistic, acontextual psychological event, have been blemished by the success of the interactionist paradigm. In Western tradition, it is the single, embodied, minded individual who constitutes the autonomous reality. Organized aggregations – whether of persons or of activities – tend to be treated as derivative, transient, and contingent. They are something



Interlocutory logic 

to be added on, after basic understanding is anchored in individual-based reality. It has accordingly seemed appropriate in the cognitive sciences to study cognition in the splendid isolation of the individual mind or brain, and to reserve the social aspect for later supplementary consideration (Schegloff 1991:€168).

But after the interactionist breakaway had extended the pragmatic reorientation (Bernicot et al. 2002), it became clear that: Knowledge and understanding (in both the cognitive and linguistic senses) do not result from formal operations on mental representations of an objectively existing world [but] arise from the individual’s committed participation in mutually oriented patterns of behaviour that are embedded in a socially shared background of concerns, actions, and beliefs (Winograd et al. 1989:€78).

Thus, cognition is no longer defined as an abstract mental event but as a situated phenomenon (Suchman 1987) that depends on available resources, granted, but also and especially on the here and now of the situation: situated actions correspond to «the view that every course of action depends in essential ways upon its material and social circumstances» (Suchman 1987:€50). Cognition, then, is no longer just an individual event; it is also a distributed phenomenon embodied in the transactions that cognitive agents carry out with each other and with the artefacts that occupy their environments, transactions which, moreover, cannot be described as the sum of the resources utilized by the partners, but as joint, original constructions that emerge from the interactive dynamic (Hutchins 1995). As Lave (1993) also wrote, cognition is constituted by dialectic relationships between the actions of the persons in interaction, the contexts of their activity, and the activity itself. In sum, rationalism, the dominating epistemology of the human and social sciences in the 1960’s, came out deeply disrupted by the accumulation of knowledge about the «interaction order». However, the disruption is unequally distributed across the various established disciplines. It showed up clearly in sociology and even more so in linguistics, where, according to Auroux: «With the introduction of interaction into the analysis of linguistic phenomena, we are witnessing a revolution in the representation of these phenomena which is not very compatible with the type of philosophical rationalism defined by Chomskians» (1989:€ 221, our translation). For this same author again, while the philosophical interpretation of this revolution is unclear, one can surely uncover in it «the confirmation of the social conception of language [with] a shift of the transcendental sphere, which would cease being linked to solipsistic subjectivity and start to depend on a founding dialogical intersubjectivity» (Auroux 1989:€221, our translation). The collective representation of a linguistic event – given that it is no longer identical to the representation of that event in each of the interactants and hence is no longer a



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

shared representation – must, in order to be founded, also be related to what happens among the interactants. 1.4.2 And what about psychology? It is clear now that «methodological solipsism» is erroneous: Such a stance may be deeply misconceived, because our understanding of the world and of one another is posed as a problem and resolved as an achievement, in an inescapably social and interactional context – both with tools forged in the workshops of interaction and in settings in which we are answerable to our fellows. Interaction and talk-in-interaction are structured environments of action and cognition, and they shape both the constitution of the actions and utterances needing to be «cognized» and the contingencies for solving them. To bring the study of cognition explicitly into the arena of the social is to bring it home again (Schegloff 1991:€168).

«The cognitive subject is not a monad: he interacts in an ongoing way with his environment, and in particular, with other subjects» (Caron 1997:€233, our translation). «What this interaction brings into play, above all, is language» (ibidem). So, «accounting for this interaction, and notably verbal interaction, which is undoubtedly its most elaborate form, poses an essential challenge to the cognitive psychology [...] upon which it must be based»(ibidem). But psychology could benefit a great deal from the study of interaction and talk-in-interaction as “structured environments of action and cognition”, as it may lead to less speculative, more parsimonious and descriptively more adequate modes of cognition (Good 1990). If psychology is starting to acknowledge, especially in developmental psychology, that cognitions (or at least their expressions) are overdetermined by «the logic» of the interaction order. For example, «the young child’s non-conserving responses could reflect, not so much the inability to understand the effects of the transformation (i.e., failure to grasp conservation) than the inability to understand the experimenter’s intentions. The confusion is not so much conservational as it is conversational» (Light et al. 1989:€103; our translation; see also Siegal 1991). If, more generally, we are willing to agree in establishing cognitive psychology that «a reasoning experiment is more like a conversational exchange where the subject, the listener, infers certain conclusions from what the experimenter, the speaker, says» (Van der Henst 2002:€291, our translation; the italics are the author’s) and that «taking the conversational context into account allows us to distinguish that which pertains to reasoning per se from that which pertains to an interpretation» (ibid, 301; our translation), it is still too often proposed in the petitio principii mode. Indeed, studying the production of cognitions during «talk-in-interaction» on the one hand, and studying its appropriation by interactants in situ on the other – even if they could end up providing empirical answers



Interlocutory logic 

to the questions raised nearly a century ago by Mead (1934), Vygotski (1934) and even Piaget (1928) are no longer a top priority in cognitive psychology. It seems to us that the absence of a conceptual framework capable of describing the occurrence and the outcome of cognitions during talk-in-interaction does not facilitate an aggiornimento in psychology. Interlocutory logic was designed to provide some elements of such a framework. 2. Towards a unified framework for studying talk-in-interaction 2.1

What theoretical requirements should the desired theoretical apparatus satisfy?

Any theory that attempts to satisfy the requirements mentioned above must have at least two properties. Firstly, it must be able to formally describe interlocutory events. Secondly and more generally, it must be able to build a «grammar» of the types of dialogue in which we engage and their felicity conditions. The phenomenal properties that must be rendered are: – Illocutionarity: an interlocution is made up of acts of discourse. – Successiveness: an interlocution is a concatenation. – Dialogicity: the contributions to an interlocution come from several sources. – Recursiveness: the hierarchical elements are organized into different text levels. These empirical properties determine the organized set of logical methods that enable one to apply a calculus to interlocutory events, and thus to treat interlocution as a rationally accessible phenomenon. The first principle (illocutionarity) defines the alphabet of interlocutory logic. It encompasses the acts of discourse and the «relaters» of natural language, which include not only connectives, but also marks used to structure the conversation, interjections, adverbs, etc. The other principles define the empirical forms that articulate these components: for example, the principle that they succeed each other linearly and hierarchically. The logic methods chosen are not necessarily independent of each other. For example, if interlocutory logic adopts natural deduction as one of its logic methods, it is because natural deduction enables one to operationalize the principle of successiveness. But recourse to dialogical logics à la Barth and Krabbe enables one to operationalize the principle of successiveness and the principle of dialogicity at the same time, since this type of logic shows how to go from one to the other. Now if interlocutory logicians are so enthusiastic about Hintikka’s theories, it is because referring to these theories allows one to simultaneously operationalize the



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

Table 1.╇ Interlocutory Properties

Logic Methods Used

Illocutionarity (with the other constraints) Successiveness (with the other constraints) Dialogicity (with the other constraints)

General Semantics (Searle & Vanderveken, 1985; Trognon, 2002; Vanderveken, 1990) Natural Deduction (Barth & Krabbe, 1982; Gentzen, 1935)

Recursiveness (with the other constraints)

Dialogical Logics – Dialogue Proposition Evaluation Theory (Barth & Krabbe, 1982; Lorenzen, 1967) – Search and Discovery Dialogue Theory (Carlson, 1983; Hintikka, 1983) Hierarchical Conversation Structure Theories (Moeschler, 1985; Roulet et coll., 1985)

principles of dialogicity and recursiveness. More specifically, the main merit of Hintikka’s theories is having shown that the logic required to study the logical facet of natural language is precisely a theory that is dialogical in nature. By obeying the principle of dialogicity, one also obeys the principle of recursiveness. More generally, contrary to what some authors thought they could write or think, interlocutory logic is not a logic «toolbox». Table 1 presents these different constraints and how they are operationalized. 2.2

Interlocutory logic: A system that satisfies the above requirements

Two aims can be assigned to interlocutory logic. One is quite modest: describe the sociocognitive organization of interlocutions by devising a system of formal procedures that adheres as closely as possible to the «phenomenology» of interlocution. Many studies published since 1995 illustrate this first approach (Trognon 1999; Trognon and Kostuski 1999). The other aim is much more ambitious: it consists in using the above system to make hypotheses about the subjective processes that take place at the cognitive level and lead logically to the products of a conversation as they are expressed formally at the end of the descriptive phase of the analysis. Accordingly, interlocutory logic proposes an analysis of the cognitive production of a conversation, i.e., the study of the conversational emergence of both declarative and procedural knowledge. Some examples of situations where the emergence of knowledge has already been analyzed in this framework include learning to move the cursor in a word-processing tutorial (Trognon and SaintDizier 1999), learning to handle a pneumatic drill in an apprenticeship setting (Sannino et al. 2003), volume conservation tasks (Marro et al. 1999), school



Interlocutory logic 

learning of division (Trognon, Saint-Dizier et al. 1999; Trognon 2007) and proportionality (Schwarz et al. 2008; Trognon, Batt et al. 2006), hypothetico-deductive reasoning applied to an empirical problem (Trognon and Batt 2003, 2005) and a logical problem (Batt et al. 2009; Laux et al. 2008; Trognon and Batt 2004; Trognon, Batt et al. 2007), and making diagnoses (Brixhe et al. 2000). Interlocutory logic has also been used to formalize the co-resolution of the Tower of Hanoi problem by children (Trognon et al. 2008). Past studies have already shown, then, that interlocutory logic, as a theoretical and technical system that abides by and reconstructs the phenomenal properties of interlocution, is a useful method of analysis for describing interlocutory events and uncovering their underlying processes, notably by way of a computational analysis that is as natural as possible (Trognon 1999, 2003; Trognon et al. 2008). The system of coordinate logics that constitutes interlocutory logic is suited to natural language. It is true that they form a limited class of logics because of the constraints they must satisfy, but they are nevertheless of general relevance to any discourse expressed in natural language. More fundamentally, because of the intertraductibility of model-theoretical, dialectical and derivational methods of modern logic (see for example Barth et al. 1982:€306, Theorem 29), proved along 1980’s years, interlocutory logic is able to find out strategies by which intersubjectivity passes into intrasubjectivity and vice versa. According to a psycholinguistics point of view, by virtue of Theorem 29, what an individual can cognate, a dyad (and moreover a small group) can cognate it, and often better (Trognon, Batt et al. 2007; Laughlin et al. 2006). Reciprocally, what a dyad (and moreover a small group) can cognate, an individual can cognate it. It is why a talk-in-interaction context generally favours acquisition. Moreover interlocutory logic might explain why individuals take off cognitive benefits from talk in interaction, as we have showed it in Laux et al. (2008) and Trognon, Batt et al. (2007) for individuals who resolved the Wason’s task, in Trognon et al. (2008) for children who resolved the Tour of Hanoï’s problem, and in Schwarz et al. (2008) and Trognon, Batt et al. (2006) for the acquisition of proportionality. 2.3

Conducting an analysis in interlocutory logic

An interlocutory logic analysis is conducted in two phases. First, the interlocution is assigned a formal representation using a table called an «interlocutory analysis table». This purely descriptive phase is followed by an analysis aimed at demonstrating the existence of an underlying subjective and intersubjective dynamic, whose utterances written in the interlocutory analysis table constitute potential expansion points. An interlocutory analysis table looks something like this.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

Table 2.╇ Interlocutory Analysis Table Transaction

Structure

Sequential

Conversational Illocutionary

1

2

3

Type F(p) 4

Cognitive

Token 5

C 6

The rows in the table are filled in gradually as the elementary components of the participants’ contributions to the dialogue are made. The middle column of the table (column 3) is filled in first with the component’s position in the sequence. This step is essential since it breaks the sequence down into its final elements, which it ranks by order of occurrence. It is also a preliminary task, in that sequentiality is what lays the empirical grounds for all interlocutory events, as conversational analysis specialists have so clearly demonstrated (Trognon 2002). The ordered elements are then assigned their illocutionary interpretations in columns 4 and 5 (type, for example, if it is an assertion; token, for example, if that assertion defends a point of view), and their cognitive interpretations in column 6, which is itself split into as many columns as there are participants in the conversation. The illocutionary interpretations correspond to the forces of the speech acts accomplished during a given contribution. We are indeed referring to speech act theory here, for no matter what has been said about speech acts, no one has yet been able to replace them as the minimal units of linguistic communication which best account for the fact that communication via language is fundamentally a sociocognitive event. The illocutionary force is the pragmatic function accomplished when an utterance is produced; it corresponds to what uttering the speech act amounts to doing during a conversation. Five major types of actions can be accomplished by uttering a speech act: assertive, commissive, directive, declarative, and expressive. The actions are qualified by a number of properties: the goal (and its direction of adjustment), powerfulness, mode of accomplishment, propositional content conditions, preparatory conditions, and sincerity conditions. The cognitive interpretations of the tokens located in the middle column are the propositional contents of the speech acts accomplished by the interacting partners as the conversation unfolds. Propositional content is the representation with respect to which an illocutionary force is applied in the world. Corresponding to the cognitive-representational function of a speech act, it is a proposition that represents the state of affairs targeted by the utterance, with the force being a sort of operator of that state of affairs. Here again, the illocutionary and cognitive interpretations are assigned in order of occurrence, but – and this is a very important point – via a process that is



Interlocutory logic 

both prospective and retrospective. The illocutionary interpretation «type» often corresponds to what in pragmatics is called the «utterance meaning», and the illocutionary interpretation «token» corresponds to what is called the «speaker meaning», although not totally since the speaker meaning is stabilized conversationally (cf.€infra). In regards to conversation, Clark recently wrote (see also Grice 1982): The notion ‘what the speaker means’ is replaced by ‘what the speaker is to be taken to mean’. The change is small, but radical. The idea is that speakers and addressees try to create a joint construal of what the speaker is to be taken to mean. Such a construal represents not what the speaker means per se – which can change in the very process of communicating – but what the participants mutually take the speaker as meaning, what they deem the speaker to mean (Clark 1996:€213).

In Interlocutory Logic, this process is described with the CM2U model. It consists of at least two speakers (S1 and S2), the first and second speakers, respectively) and three speech turns (T1, T2, and T3) successively distributed in the following manner: T1: S1 T2: S2 T3: S1 The mechanism is composed of the two relationships organized in the diagram below. (T1, T2) forms an interpretation relationship.€Its second element enacts S2’s interpretation of the action performed by S1 in T1. S2 thus makes this interpretation mutually obvious (Sperber and Wilson, 1986). Explaining why (T1, T2) constitutes an interpretation relationship is equivalent to explaining why T2 «inherently embodies and displays its producer’s interpretation of the prior actions in the sequence». T2 can be defined in this manner because T2 is an action that creates a state of affairs available to each interactant, and because that state of affairs appears «after» T1 and thus, according to the rules of communication (cooperation or relevance) in response to T1. In general semantics, T2 can be defined as an action reformulation

T1

interpretation

T2

evaluation

Figure 1.╇

T3



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

that fulfils the satisfaction conditions of an illocutionary interpretation of T1. More formally again, i.e., in illocutionary terms, the second turn (T2) will be interpreted as the action which, by default, satisfies (Trognon 2002) the satisfaction conditions of a certain illocutionary interpretation of the first turn (T1). ((T1, T2), T3) forms an evaluation relationship.€Given that S2’s interpretation of T1 is available to S1 in T2, he can compare it with his own interpretation and enact a ratification if the two interpretations correspond, that is to say, if S1’s interpretation of this initial utterance is equivalent to that enacted by S2 in T2. He can also reformulate T1 if the two interpretations diverge, that is to say, if S1’s interpretation of his initial utterance is not equivalent to that enacted by S2 in T2. The main consequence of ((T1, T2), T3) is the mutual knowledge of S2’s interpretation of T1. In T2, this interpretation is obvious to S1. In T3, it is obvious to S2 that the interpretation is obvious to S1. Here again, the reasoning that leads to this latter knowledge involves laws of general semantics. There are two possibilities, depending on whether T3 confirms or invalidates S2’s interpretation of T1. If it is confirmed, what S2 understood becomes the speaker meaning for the participants of the conversation. If it is invalidated, the invalidation signals a misunderstanding. But in either case, intercomprehension has progressed. The interactants’ belief, progressively acquired through this confirmatory activity, can be represented in the following manner, where B is a modal belief indicator, a and b are the speakers, and i is the illocutionary force of the initial utterance as it is elaborated during the interaction. Based on the hierarchical theory of conversations, the left side of the table represents the interlocution’s discursive organization into acts, exchanges, and moves, and via combinations of these different elements, into structures or even transactions. More technically, to analyze an interlocution fragment in interlocutory logic amounts to decomposing this fragment into a series of utterances. Each utterance is represented by an expression ф of the system: <Mi, {Mi-k},{Mi-k} ˇ Mi, RD, DG>. Mi is the conversational move accomplished by the utterance under examination. {Mi-k} is the set of all the conversational moves that precede the move Mi and from Table 3.╇ Legend: B = Belief Levels a1 b1 a2 b2

1 2 3 4 ...

a

b

BaBb(i) BbBaBb(i) BaBbBaBb(i) ...

...



Interlocutory logic 

which Mi follows. Mi can then be conceived as a conclusion that results from premises {Mi-k}. The reasoning that leads from {Mi-k} to Mi, and that is represented by the schema {Mi-k} ˇ Mi, is called, in logic, a sequent.1 Let’s specify this notion more precisely by adapting an analysis proposed by Carlson (1983).2 Suppose that A goes to the stadium to attend a pole-vaulting final between Jack and Bob. Delayed, he only arrives at the stadium once the competition has finished. When arriving A entertains the following «ideas»: If someone won it is Jack or Bob and someone has won. Moreover, he asks himself “Who has won?” Catching the sight of his friend B, he engages in the following dialogue:

1A 2B 3A 4B 5A

: Has Jack won? : No : Then Bob won : No : But then nobody won!

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

(2) is a response to (1). The rule (or rules) (RD) of dialogue (DG) allowing to derive (2) from (1) is represented by the sequent {1A} ˇ 2B. The rules that lead from the premise to the conclusion are the questioned rules of semantics exposed in the research of Hintikka (1976, 1981, etc.) of whom Carlson is a student. (3) comes from the «thoughts» entertained by A3 and from the information 2B worked out together by the logic rule of disjunctive4 dilemma. (5) is again deduced from the thoughts entertained by A and from 4B in using reductio ad absurdum. In a relatively informal manner for understanding the meaning of our approach, the previous short dialogue has just been reproduced as the product of a set of dialogue rules formulated as sequents. Some of these rules belong to (dialogical forms of) standard logic. This is the case with the disjunctive dilemma or the classic reductio ad absurdum rule which would be used to demonstrate 5A. Other rules concern, instead, the semantics and pragmatics of natural language. We call sequents of dialogue the setting of the relationship in a set of dialogical events (Trognon, Batt et al. 2006; Trognon and Batt 2007a, b; Trognon et al. 2008). This relationship is an inference composed on the one hand from a set of premises 1. “a sequent” is a pair (note Γ ˇ F) where€: – Γ is a finite set of formulas. Γ represents the hypotheses that one can use. This set is also called the sequent context – F is a formula. It is the formula that one wants to demonstrate. This formula is said to be the conclusion of the “sequent” (David, Nour and Raffali 2003:€24). 2. Even in his recent publications (1996, for example) Carlson does not refer to the logic theory of sequents. We think nevertheless that his theory calls for this extension. 3.

This is the cognitive environment of A defined by Sperber and Wilson (1986).

4. p€v q, or ~p, so q.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

given in the dialogue and, on the other hand, of events which are deduced from these premises. The rules intervening in this inference are rules of a dialogue game. For example, the dialogue sequent {1A}ˇ 2B rests on a rule belonging to the game theory of the question-response dialogue. This example shows that interlocutory logic seems to generalize the sequent notion to all the illocutory acts used in an interlocution. 2.4

An example: The interlocutory logic of a shift-changeover dialogue

The dialogue recorded here took place during a shift changeover in a production shop of a paper company (Grusenmeyer et al. 1995, 1996; Trognon et al. 1997). Shift changeovers result in specific kinds of talk-exchanges. What is peculiar to them is that the common activity is time shared; the operators contribute successively in carrying out the collective intentionality. Therefore, as the succession of operators is governed by an abstract rule, it is very difficult for each operator to estimate in real time his own contribution to the collective intentionality. The operator leaving the work station (outgoing operator) cannot directly evaluate all the effects of his actions, since it is the operator taking over (incoming operator) who is affected by them. If the outgoing and incoming operators alternate (the second succeeds the first, the first the second, and so on, as in the present dialogue), the outgoing one can only receive feedback regarding this evaluation during his next shift, when he asks his predecessor and/or the latter inform him. The information «transmitted» by the outgoing operator is therefore useful to his incoming colleague. On the one hand, it allows the latter to construct a global representation of the process. He is then likely to receive feedback on his own prior actions, thereby enabling him to evaluate the effectiveness of these actions. On the other hand, he can get to know the reasons for the action he has to undertake. This information is «transmitted» during shift changeover when the outgoing operator meets the incoming one. Useful in «normal running», this information becomes necessary and even crucial in problematic or unusual situations, such as a malfunction or an incident. The operator who was leaving work (the outgoing worker) will be called A, and the operator who was taking over for A at that same workstation (the incoming worker) will be called B. These two workers operate a machine that produces sheets of paper. A sheet of paper arrives on the partially damp machine. It is trimmed on both sides by two edgers located at the front and back of the damp part of the machine. The edgers produce two very fine sprays of water that mark off the edges of the sheet (hereafter called «pistols»). It sometimes happens that projected paper pulp accumulates in the edgers and causes tearing. The problem under debate here is how to assess (and explain) the present working of the machine.



Interlocutory logic 







A1: (...) and the pistols seem to be working well. B1: And the back one, it still lifts the sheet a little, if you noticed. A2: Well, yeah, maybe.... But I didn’t have any pulp compared to yesterday; I didn’t have any pulp, hm. B2: I had some. A3: You had some? Me, I didn’t have any, hm. B3: And I had decreased it a little more because I felt it was moving the sheet away a little and that made it uh... squirt out. A4: Oh, right, me, what I did, I reopened it, it’s the front one this morning, a tiny bit, because, well, you saw today I tore it (the outgoing worker shows the notebook, morning, right-hand side), OK, I pulled the end, uh... three times. B4: Yes A5: But the strip, it wasn’t cut. I didn’t clean the pistols hm. I didn’t even take off the pulp by hand, nothing, and there isn’t any, just a few fibers, that’s all hm. B5: Because they’re set right. A6: It’s just as good, huh? (...)

In this interlocution, we find two sequences pertaining to two different interplays of speech: (i) a declared difference of opinion (Barth et al., op.€cit.), from A1 to A3, and (ii) the cooperative resolution of the conflict, from B3 to A6. The dialogue ends with a shared solution to the problem that is understood by both interacting individuals. For each of these sequences, let us now describe the discursive architecture, the dialogical format, and finally, the reasoning in which the interlocutors engaged and what they learned from it. The entire process will then be assembled to form a model representing how a third party (e.g., an instructor) might perceive the interlocution. 2.4.1 The declared difference of opinion 2.4.1.1 Discursive architecture of the difference of opinion 2.4.1.1.1 A reports a property of the world In A1, A states a property of the world, more specifically, a property of the pistols: «and the pistols seem to be working well». A makes an assertion whose truth conditions are found in «what seems to be». In this way, A notices a state of the world and reports it. Formalized in the language of first-order predicate calculus, A1 is written: Ass A1-B((∀p)€Wp), where Ass stands for assert, A for speaker A, 1 because it is his first speaking turn, and B because B is the addressee. As we have seen



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

above, the propositional content of this assertion is formalized5 as (∀p) Wp, or more simply Wp.€Along with A’s interlocutor, B, we know that when A asserts the proposition «the pistols seem to be working well», he commits (Searle et al. 1985; Vanderveken 1988, Trognon et al. 1992) to supporting the analytic proposition that the back pistol works well and that the front pistol also works well, since there are only two pistols, one in front and one in back. This proposition is itself the conjunction of two primitive propositions: (∀p)€ Wp€ ≡€ Wpd€ ∧€ Wpf (where pf stands for front pistol and pb for back pistol, these two arguments falling under the unary predicate W). "Working well" at time tn is a state that is posterior to the state at time t', where the pistols "were not working well", i.e., they did not make the formula (∀p) Wp true, which, as we have seen, is the propositional content of A1. The thesis stated by A in A1 can thus be paraphrased by the compound statement ϕ: ϕ: (∀p)Wp€ ≡€ Wpd€ ∧€ Wpf. The implicated proposition "the pistols were not working well", which A seems to have set in the past, at time t’, can be paraphrased by the compound statement ϕ’: ϕ': (∀p) ¬Wp ≡ ¬(Wpb€∧€Wpf). To express the anteriority relationship of ϕ'with respect to ϕ, we use the predicate U, and we write: Ut’ϕ’tnϕ, which reads "event ϕ' that happened at time t' precedes event ϕ which is happening at time tn" (or "event ϕ which is happening at time tn succeeds event ϕ' that happened at time t'"). Statement ϕ is said to be valid if and only if the universal statement (∀p) Wp is true when the compound statement (Wpb ∧ Wpf) is true. Thus, if A’s listener considers assertion A1 to be true, i.e., that it corresponds to the state of the world in the utterance context tn of A1 (that the pistols are working well) then he also considers the statement (Wpb ∧ Wpf) to be true in that same utterance context, i.e., that the back pistol and the front pistol are both working well at tn. The proposition is true if each term of the conjunction is true, i.e., if the statement Wpb is true and if the statement Wpf is also true. Now let us look at the interpretation of A’s assertion in the discourse of his interlocutor, B, in B1. 2.4.1.1.2 Objection! The reaction, B1, seems to raise an objection. B points out that one of the pistols, the back one, «still lifts the sheet a little». B thus implies (Grice 1979; Sperber et al. op.€cit.) or implicitly signifies that the pistols still are not working correctly, and thus that what A asserted is false, since one of the necessary conditions of this state (working well) is still not met in the utterance context of A1 and B1, at time tn. Clearly, if a pistol lifts, it can cause paper pulp to accumulate, and that can cause a malfunction. This knowledge is shared by A and B. In B1, B assumes (sarcastically?), 5. ¬: negation; ∨: disjonction€; ∧: conjonction€; ≡€: equivalent€; ⊃, implication€; ∃: existential quantifier€; ∀: universal quantifier.



Interlocutory logic 

«if you noticed», that A also realized that the back pistol was still lifting. So B seems to be contradicting A. This contradiction is put up for discussion in the subsequent conversation. Using the same formalization (presented above), let Lpb be the propositional content expressed explicitly by B in B1 and, in the same manner, let Lpb€⊃ ¬Wpb symbolize the propositional content implicated in B1. A can only think that, for B, at least one pistol still is not working right at time tn, and from there, deduce that for B, it is false to say, for all pistols, that «the pistols seem to be working well» at time tn. B1 thus conveys the following propositions, translated into the language of first-order predicate calculus: (Lpb ⊃ ¬Wpb) ⊃ (∀p)¬Wp. Italics denote what is implicated or implied. At this point in the conversation, we do not know how A will interpret B1. Let us examine the possible inferences for A. Note, however, that the expression «the pistols aren’t working well», which will be understood as a contradiction of A1, will be taken to communicate information shared by all speakers and readers of this dialogical sequence: «¬(Wpf€∧€Wpb) or the equivalent expression (¬Wpf€∨€¬Wpb)». On a linear representation of time, this gives Figure 2. By saying «the back one still lifts the sheet a little», B gives the value true (1) at instant tn of the utterance to the proposition «the back pistol lifts» (Lpb); by uttering the adverb «still», he seems to also indicate the truth of this proposition at some instant set in the past. Without any other precise indication about what moment in the past B is referring to, the proposition «the back pistol lifts» takes on the value true (1) at all times prior to utterance time tn. Let us draw up the truth table of this proposition (Lpb) using a Prior matrix (following Gardies, 1975). Let us also put in the value false (0) that B claims to assign to the proposition «the pistols are working well» (Wp) at times tn and t’.

t’ φ’ Wpb ¬Wp ¬Wpf ∨ ¬ Wpb

tn ¬φ Wpb ¬Wp ¬Wpf ∨ ¬ Wpb

Figure 2.╇

Lpb Wp

B’s shift t’

A’s shift tn

1 0

1 0

Figure 3.╇ Representation of B’s opinion (in B1)



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

2.4.1.1.3 B’s argument and A’s interpretation of it For A, B1 is not very forceful and does not seem to be truly informative. By saying «yeah, maybe», A is apparently insinuating what B can understand: that his utterance does not convey more information than he already possessed, and that that information is not relevant to the current topic because it does not question his first assertion. A more or less accepts B’s assertion: the back pistol lifts. A adds a restriction, introduced by the conjunction «but»: «But I didn’t have any pulp compared to yesterday; I didn’t have any pulp, hm. What A says, in A2, is that it is not because the back pistol lifts that the pistols (plural) accumulate paper pulp, i.e., that it is not because the back pistol lifts that the pistols are not working well. Thus, A says that during his work shift (which corresponds to time period j), he noticed that, granted, the back pistol lifted (Lpb), maybe, but the pistols were working well (Wp) anyway. On a Prior matrix (1957), A’s discourse in A2 can be formalized as. As a comparison of the two Prior matrices shows (Figures 3 and 4), the B1-A2 pair thus constitutes the exchange that «materializes» the interlocutors’ divergence regarding B’s implied thought. Indeed, until A2, there is no debate about B’s explicit discourse but about what B implies in B1. From B2 on, the implicit will be formulated explicitly, which gives the following conversational structure (Roulet et al.,€op.€cit.)€(Figure 5). B’s shift

A’s shift tn

Lpb Wp

1 1

Figure 4.╇ Representation of A’s opinion (in A2)

E I

I

Assertion

A1: the pistols (...) working well

I

Implicitly opposed assertion

B1: the back one (...)

I

Assertion validating the explicit

A2a: well, yeah, maybe

I

I

Assertion canceling the implicated utterance heard A2b: but I didn't have any pulp Explicitly opposed assertion B2: I had some Question A3a: you had some?

I

Assertion

E

I

I

E

I I

Figure 5.╇ (E = exchange ; I = move)

A3b: me, I didn't have any



Interlocutory logic

This diagram shows that A1 generates an exchange where the interlocutors respond explicitly as well as implicitly. B1 consists of the implicit negation of A1. The explicit constituent of B1, the back pistol lifts (Lpb), is an utterance that gets validated by the dialogue in A2a. By contrast, its implicit constituent is already being debated in A2b. For A, B1 implies an assertion that does not have a truth condition in utterance context tn. For A, the implication relation suggested in B1 is false, i.e., for A, ¬(Lpb€⊃€¬Wp) is true. For A, the back pistol lifts, granted, but the pistols are not working improperly when B1 is uttered: Lpb is true, and, a minima, ¬Wpb is false (¬¬Wpb). 2.4.1.2 Dialogical format of the debate Let us describe the dialogical format of the debate that took place in the first part of the conversation. This will point out the strategy used by each of the interacting individuals as they attempted to impose their respective points of view. The format of this dialogue is described by Barth et al. (op.€cit.), and some of the dialogical rules described by these two philosophers are applied by the conversers. The difference between this debate and the conflicts of opinion presented by Barth and Krabbe is that here, it is an implicated implication relation that is being debated, so the formula under debate is not completely formulated. The dialogical analysis is presented in Table€4. 2.4.1.3 Reciprocal insemination of each partner’s propositions To analyze the thought processes carried out by the two agents during this conversation, we must apply the methods of natural deduction. We have seen that A and B share knowledge about the way the paper machine functions and about the «theoretical» implications of a potential breakdown; this mutual knowledge thus belongs to the set of conversation premises. Let us now prove that if A reasons by taking assertion B1 as a hypothesis, and if he «combines» this assumption with proposition A1 he himself uttered earlier, then he can deduce the opposite of what B implicated: even if the back pistol lifts, the pistols are working well, which we shall symbolize as Lpb€⊃€Wp.€A demonstration using this same method proves that, on the basis of assertion B2 assumed to be true and logically linked to A’s own discourse, A can legitimately conclude: the back pistol «is working well», Wpb. This gives Table€5.





Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

Table 4.╇ Dialogical Table of the Debate B

A Wp A1 A communicates an assertion to B: initial thesis

Lpb B1 B hears A’s assertion, B makes an assertion himself, and tacitly defies A about Wp; he seems to not accept Wp (doubt, disbelief, disagreement?). B1 is thus considered to be the source of the debate. B thereby becomes A’s opponent. B’s opposition of A1 has to do with the consequent of an implicated implication relation, which is written: Lpb ⊃ ¬Wp. So, Lpb⊃ ¬Wp expresses an attack of A1 via B1: B1 = aA1 ( ?)Wpb A’s response is a direct (structural) defense: apparently, for the purposes of this debate, A was inclined to accept Lpb, but was also ready to defend Wp. A’s response is a challenging declarative sentence (Barth and Krabbe, op. cit.): A2 = dA1 Wp A2 Lpb ∧ Wp A2 ¬(Lpb ⊃ ¬Wp) A2

B doesn’t question A’s moderate acceptance of Lpb ¬Wpb B2 B doesn’t withdraw his tacit challenge but rather accepts its criticism. For B, at the very least, it is Wpb that is not true, which is what B says he believes: B2 = caA2 ¬Wpb? A3a A’s counter-attack of the argument ¬Wpb: A3a = caB2. By means of this question, A invites B to respond to a sentence of the form: “How do you defend ¬Wpb?”. The interrogative sentence uttered by A functions as a counter-attack of B2. Wpd A3b For B, a verbal attack of the sentence Wp is no A does not withdraw his assertion; he seems to inlonger possible because B used up the only ar- tend to unconditionally defend Wpb. The conflict gument he had: Lpb. A’s strategy is a structural is over: A won the debate initiated by the criticism counter-attack of B1. B is unable to falsify the (B1). He used dialogical rules that are authorized conditional relation Lpb ⊃ Wpb. B1 thus consti- and strategically recommended for winning, i.e., tutes what Barth and Krabbe call an attack or systematically defend Wp against B’s criticism. critical remark of the first kind. If he wishes to A3b = dA1 pursue the discussion, B can do so, but he has lost this particular declared conflict of opinion.



Interlocutory logic 

Table 5.╇ Joint reasoning process to explain the solution to the pulp-projection problem (first part) B

A

Shared premises:

Lpb

B1

â•⁄╆Wp = Wpf ∧ Wpb ¬Wp = ¬(Wpf ∧ Wpb) ¬Wp = ¬Wpf ∨ ¬Wpb Explicit discourse

Conclusion of an accessible line of reasoning Explicit discourse ¬Wpb

Wp

A1

A’s deduction which integrates B’s discourse B1 into his own discourse: Lpb ⊃ Wp Lpb ∧ Wp A2 ¬(Lpb ⊃ ¬Wp) A2

B2 Conclusion of an accessible line of reasoning Explicit discourse

A’s deduction which integrates B’s discourse B2 into his own discourse: Wpb Wpb ∨ ¬Wpb A3a Wpb A3b

2.4.2 Solving the problem and building intersubjective knowledge 2.4.2.1 Discursive architecture 2.4.2.1.1 B’s experimentation, related in B3 Starting in B3, B explains himself. He reconstructs all of the cognitive reasoning steps he took before being able to assert, at time tn in B2, «I had some (pulp)». During the time period representing his shift (period i), at time t’’, he identified a problem, that it was squirting out  and made a diagnosis, that  it (the back pistol) was responsible for the squirting (that made it squirt out) and it was moving the sheet away a little . This is why (because) at intermediate time t’, he decreased it a little more  (the back pistol). Thus, in B3, B states what he implicated in B1, and what A indeed realized that he was implying: by saying «it lifts» he meant «it isn’t working right». He notes that even though he had adjusted the back pistol



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

(note the use of the past perfect tense in B3a), there is projected pulp.€This line of reasoning, as B tells it to his interlocutor, can be described as: B2: I had some   B3a: And I had decreased it a little,  B3b: because I felt it was moving the sheet away a little and  B3c: that made it uh... squirt out In B’s discourse, then, we find, firstly, the temporal modalities that define (i) the time period of his work shift, period i (A’s period being period j), (ii) the utterance time, tn, and (iii) the times that preceded it, t’’ and t’. Secondly, we find the temporal modalities that reconstruct the order of the search for a solution to the problem (diagnosis, hypothesis, action) expressed via different verb conjugations. To these temporal modalities, one can add a modality assigned to the predicate «lift». Indeed, B says he decreased the opening of the back pistol «a little». B’s action, which involved preventing the back pistol from lifting, was thus incomplete. So when he claims that the back pistol still lifts, A can understand that the back pistol still lifts a little even after the lifting has been decreased a little. To account for this modality, we thus assign the value 0.5 to the proposition Lpb. At utterance time tn, B seems to interpret the modality «a little» in such a way that he attributes the semantic value true to the predicate «lift» (i.e., the back pistol lifts) and in the universe situated in the past, at time t’, the value false (by decreasing it a little more, the pistol doesn’t lift). Put into a Prior matrix, B’s discourse is represented on Figure 6. 2.4.2.1.2 B becomes aware of his knowledge The conclusion to which B is thereby committed is that no matter how the back pistol is set, whether it lifts or does not lift, there is pulp (). However, at the time of the conversation, tn, B again entertains the theory that the back pistol is the cause of the malfunction, and this is what grounds his implicit theory. He will not be held accountable for the proposition to which he committed. Since there are pistols only at the front and back of the machine, B commits to the proposition that B’s shift t” t’ Lpb Wp

1 0

0.5 = 0 0

A’s shift tn 0.5 = 1 0

Figure 6.╇ Representation of B’s opinion (from B3 on)



Interlocutory logic 

the cause of the malfunction is the set€«front pistol and back pistol», irrespective of the fact that the back pistol lifts. He does not seem to be «aware» of this proposition, and it is the conversation that will make him understand the logical deduction that follows from what he does. The hypothesis that the front pistol is responsible for the problem should arise in his thoughts, but it is A who formulates it in A4A5: «(...) I reopened it, it’s the front one (...)» and if there is accumulated pulp, then it is the responsible one. At time t, which came before tn and after t’, A changed the settings of the front pistol (Lpf) and for him, there is no pulp.€This can be formalized using the anteriority predicate «U»: Ut’¬Lpf tLpf tnWp, which gives Figure 7. B can only agree with A, and in B5, he will finally be held accountable for the proposition to which he committed. It all appears as if he were becoming aware of his knowledge. The two men agree: «because they’re set right». This give Figure 8. Being prompted by a collective or joint intentionality, namely the desire to make the paper machine function properly, the workers are satisfied. It is A who expresses this in A6: «It’s just as good, huh?» 2.4.2.2 Dialogical format of the collaboration We are going to show here what discursive format the pair (A, B) used to overcome the conflict and manage to co-produce the solution upon which they agreed. The «instrument» that permitted this was a subtle dialogical interplay based on concessions by both parties. Briefly, A knew how to remain quiet before trying to make his thesis acceptable by B, and B knew how to listen. While it is his own A's shift: j

B's shift: i

t'' ¬Wp

t' Wp Lpb Lpf

¬Lpf

Changeover

t

Figure 7.╇

B’s shift t” t’ Lpb Lpf Wp

1 0 0

0.5 0 0

t

A’s shift tn

0.5 1 1

0.5 1 1

Figure 8.╇ Representation of A’s and B’s opinions (from A4 on)

tn Wp Lpb Lpf



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

discourse that threatens to make B lose face (Goffmann 1959), it is A who, through his silence, neutralizes this potential threat. After B3, A could point out to B that his utterance consisted quite simply in reinforcing the opposite thesis to the one he was claiming to defend: through his argumentation, B in fact «fuels» A’s point of view. A does not so this; he does not cross over into that territory, but sets forth an intermediate thesis that finally convinces B. This move by A constitutes a sociocognitive process, insofar as it is both formally «correct» and socially protective of the interlocutor. 2.4.2.3 Shared thoughts resulting from idea confrontation Our analysis based on natural deduction shows that as early as B3, B can understand that what he says means «it is not true that the slight lifting of the back pistol implies that the back pistol is not working properly», because the logical consequence of his argumentation is just the opposite, that the back pistol is set right when it lifts a little. B’s maneuver thus contradicts his own conception. Indeed, B seems to believe that the fact (and we shall see below, solely that fact) that the back pistol lifts the sheet a little is what is responsible for the projected pulp.€Let Lpb be the cause of ¬Wp, i.e., «Cause (Lpb, ¬Wp)». We suggest expressing this causal relation logically using an equivalency (Lpb€≡€¬Wp), in such a way that Lpb is a necessary and sufficient condition of ¬Wp.€Let (Lpb€≡€¬Wp)€⊃ ((¬Wp€ ⊃€ Lpb) ∧ (Lpb€ ⊃€ ¬Wp)), or – given that by counter-positioning (¬Wp€⊃€Lpb)€≡ (¬Lpb€⊃€Wp) – ¬Wp€≡€((¬Lpb€⊃€Wp) ∧ (Lpb€⊃€¬Wp)). The explanation proposed by B in B3 adds this last expression to his set of premises, and it adds in particular the left-hand expression of this conjunction, i.e. (¬Lpb€⊃€Wp). But with the observation he relates in B2-B3, B should realize that he is stating ¬(¬Lpb ⊃ Wp) and thus, that his set of premises is inconsistent. As for A, while he bases his reasoning on what B says, and he makes the logical connection between these statements and his earlier conclusions, he notes the same logical consequences as those that should be obvious to B. In sum, after B3, if each interlocutor were to state the implications of what he was saying and ascertaining from what was said, he would formulate the proposition that «whether the back pistol lifts or doesn’t lift, it works properly». In his relationship with «nature», B learns nothing; it is by way of his partner that he becomes able to learn. If he had expressed the result of his manipulation in a proposition, he would have produced an inconsistent discourse. Because he does not express the conclusions of his experiment, he does not produce an inconsistent discourse. However, he is committed to inconsistency because he formulates all of the elements which, logically «worked out», lead to a contradiction. It is A who expresses a new proposition: Lpf, the front pistol was reopened. This proposition, which B does not contradict, logically commits A to concluding that the



Interlocutory logic 

pistols are set right; it is B who states this. This all seems to suggest that B assumed that A4 was true, and that he incorporated it into his own thinking before saying «they’re set right». The cognitive moves in this conversation are represented in Table€6. More schematically, three moves show up in the interlocution: (i) two separate points of view are asserted in succession, (ii) the interlocutors each carry out their own lines of thinking irrespective of the other, and (iii) the interlocutors each carry out their lines of thinking by integrating certain propositions of their partner, in what one might call a subliminal manner or by formulating, in the conversational space, the conclusions they came to draw in the process. It is the (iii) process which opens the possibility for the interlocutors to converge on Wp.6 We have named it a «learning in interaction» (Trognon et al. 2003, 2006; Schwarz et al. 2008). A Learning in interaction is a process by which Table 6.╇ Joint reasoning process to explain the solution to the pulp-projection problem (second part) ¬Lpb ¬Wpb ∧ ¬Lpb Lpb ⊃ ¬Wpb (¬Lpb ⊃ Wpb)

B3a B3b B3c B3c

Explicit discourse

B’s commitment Conclusions of an accessible based on his discourse: line of reasoning (Lpb ⊃ ¬Wpb) ∧ (¬Lpb ⊃ Wpb) Wpb (Lpb ∨ ¬Lpb) ⊃ Wpb

Explicit discourse

A’s deduction which integrates B’s discourse into his own discourse: Wpb ¬Lpb ⊃ Wpb (Lpb ∨ ¬Lpb) ⊃ Wpb Lpf A4a ¬Wpf A4b (¬Lpf ⊃ ¬Wpf) ∧ A4b (¬Wpf ⊃ ¬Lpf)

B’s deduction Conclusions of an accessible A’s commitment which integrates A’s discourse line of reasoning based on his own discourse: into his own discourse: (Lpf ∧ Lpb) ⊃ Wpb (Lpf ∧ Lpb) ⊃ Wpb Wp B5 Explicit discourse Wp A6 Shared conclusion: Wp

6. We demonstrate the possibility for the intervention to converge on Wp thanks to learning in interaction formula: http://www.alainm-trognon.com.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

an interlocutor takes an inference that he/she constructed using a «thesis» of his/ her interlocutor and integrates it into his/her own set of propositions as a hypothesis. This operation, which integrates «the intersubjective into the intrasubjective» is theorized as a “discharge of assumptions” during a natural deduction process. “Discharging assumptions” during natural deduction amounts to «replacing a propositional form p€that was asserted as an assumption, by a propositional form in conditional form but asserted unconditionally» (Gochet et al. 1990:€136). More intuitively, discharging an assomption in natural deduction is «moving» a subreasoning proposition conceived on the basis of that hypothesis into the reasoning that contains it. The following natural deduction illustrates this process: Rank 1 2 3 4

Principal Reasoning p

Auxiliary Reasoning q

q⊃r

r

Derivation Rules Premise Hypothesis Assumption Discharge

In natural deduction theory, one is not concerned with the origin of the hypotheses that trigger a sub-reasoning process, for «(...) we can, at any stage of a derivation, introduce the auxiliary hypothesis of our choice, provided, of course, we begin a new sub-derivation». Our contribution to this theory therefore consists in adding to a converser’s auxiliary hypotheses certain propositions of his/her partner. 2.4.3 The cognitive layers of an interlocution On the surface, this discursive organization is only the emerging part of a deeper cognitive framework that «supports» the conversation and is distributed normally between the participants. But one can also consider this framework as a whole, from the standpoint of a third party such as an instructor, a team leader, or a participant striving to grasp the «group mind» that comes out of an interlocution. Its cognitive dimension in this case is represented as a succession of joint, interwoven activities that produce an object – the conversation – that is relatively independent of the individual activity of the agents. Conclusion It has been fifteen years that Jean Caron, a French psycholinguist, feared that the success of the interactionist paradigm might lead to a regression in linguistics. He



Interlocutory logic 

wrote: “In the name of the «linguistics of talk», we could lose sight of language. (...) The skeleton in a living body cannot be seen; and of course, the flesh is so much more interesting! But if we take the skeleton away, only a shapeless, limp mass remains. Won’t taking away language, its structures and its constraints, have us practicing a spineless linguistics?” (Caron, 1989a: 138, our translation). Twenty years later, we can reassure him. The «interaction order» did not invade the «institution order» nor the «language order». Granted, the language institution is partly immersed in the interaction order (see Figure 9), so the formal structures of language are available to interactions, which select the ones that suit the ever-changing state of the interaction. This explains why a sentence is sometimes recognized on the basis of syntax and sometimes on the basis of semantics, depending on the requirements of the situation (Caron, 1989b). But it is only partially that the formal structures of language depend upon the interaction order, regardless of Thibaut’s statement that «the notion of a ‘language system’ does not refer to some reified entity ‘out there’ which exists independently of the social meaning-making practices of a given social group and which has an independent causal status» (2002:€136). Besides, neither Garfinkel and the conversational analysts on one side, nor Gumperz and interactionist sociolinguists on the other, ever claimed to have discovered new social categories: it is their embodiment in social relations that interests these authors. Moreover, Gumperz’s definition of communicative practices, in line with Saussure’s, assumes that language is a system (Gumperz in Prevignano and Thibaut, 2002:€149). Social Institution

The transition from “the intersubjective to the intrasubjective”

x x x x x x

Speaking Mass

Interaction (the “Interaction Order” = communicative practices (Gumperz)) Persons in interaction

Figure 9.╇ The system of interaction



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt

Lewis wrote in 1972: “I distinguish two topics: first, the description of possible languages or grammars as abstract semantic systems whereby symbols are associated with aspects of the world; and second, the description of the psychological and sociological facts whereby a particular one of these abstract semantic systems is the one used by a person or population. Only confusion comes of mixing these two topics” (Lewis, 1972:€170). In the end, then, after thirty years of existence, the interactionist paradigm will have recognized this distinction, on inventing an intermediate area between the two terms of the dichotomy. And it is what Bakhtin want in 1929 (Gardin, 1989; Thibaut, 2002). But there are many unresolved difficulties. The main ones are epistemological. Firstly, what sort of object is the “interaction”, and in particular “interlocution”? Here, more than a taxonomy, we need a sort of generative theory of interlocution, even rough, capable of generating dialogue types from ordinary conversation, in much the same way as a generative grammar produces sentence types from a core sentence (Trognon and Bromberg, 2007; Trognon et al. in press.). With such a theory, one could work under a thesis now acknowledged both in conversational analysis (see Heritage, 1990) and in the cognitive psycholinguistics of dialogue (see Clark, 1996), in fact, shared by all researchers in the domain, which stipulates that ordinary conversation is the matrix of all other forms of conversation. Secondly, how to combine formal and observational researches on “interaction” (Searle: 1992 vs Duncan, Fiske et al.: 1985). Concerning this second sort of researches what becomes of statistical proofs when it comes to demonstrating structures? For instance, non-preferential actions are not always correlated with the discourse pauses, delays, and repetitions assumed to indicate – both to the interactants and to the analyst – that those actions are not the preferred ones. Does this mean that it is invalid to establish a correspondence€between them? The answer is no, if we agree with Schegloff (1993) that the informal quantification used in conversational analysis and statistical quantification are two fundamentally different enterprises, that the latter cannot be substituted for the analysis of isolated cases and groups of sequences, and that, in sum, statistical quantification is not an educated form of informal quantification. Conversely, it is not because we recognize the merits of informal quantification that statistical tools should be avoided. But what is true is that the ambivalence (exhibited by Sacks, 1987, for example) and sometimes even casualness of certain researchers with respect to statistical quantification (Duncan, Fiske et al.: 1985) does not help in conducting a discussion that deserves, following Gumperz’s (2002) example, an unbiased, dispassionate approach. Finally, there is still much ground to cover to explore the «interaction order».



Interlocutory logic 

References Auroux, Sylvain. 1989. ‘‘L’interaction et les limites du rationalisme.’’ Buscila 221–232. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1929. [V. N. Volochinov]. Le marxisme et la philosophie du langage. Essai d’application de la méthode sociologique en linguistique. Paris: Minuit. Barth, Else M. and Krabbe, Erik C. W. 1982. From axiom to dialogue. Berlin, N. Y.: Walter de Gruyter. Bateson, Gregory. 1956. “The message ‘This is Play’.’’ In Group Processes: Transactions of the Second Conference, Bertram H. Schaffner (ed.), 145–242. New York: Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. Batt, Martine and Trognon, Alain. 2009. “Ergonomie cognitive d’un conseil génétique pour le test présymptomatique de maladie de Huntington.’’ Psychologie du Travail et des Organisations, 15 (1): 21–41. Bernicot, Josie and Trognon, Alain. 1997. “Dimensions de la conversation.’’ In Conversation, interaction et fonctionnement cognitif, Josie Bernicot, Alain Trognon and J Caron-Pargue (eds.), 15–41. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Bernicot, Josie and Trognon, Alain. 2002. “Le tournant pragmatique en psychologie.’’ In La pragmatique en psychologie, Josie Bernicot, Alain Trognon, Michel Musiol and Michèle Guidetti (eds.), 13–32. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Boutet, Jeanne. 1989. “Construction sociale du sens et interaction.” Buscila 196–204. Brixhe, Daniel, Saint-Dizier, Valérie and Trognon, Alain. 2000. “Résolution interlocutoire d’un diagnostic. Etudes d’explications dans un corpus de dialogues finalisés.’’ Psychologie de l’interaction 9–10: 211–237. Carlson, Lauri.1983. Dialogue games. An approach to discourse Analysis. Dordrecht: Reidel. Caron, Jean.1989a. In “interventions à la table ronde.” Buscila 139. Caron, Jean. 1989b. “Que peut apporter la psycho-linguistique expérimentale à l’analyse de l’interaction?” Buscila 76–94. Caron, Jean. 1997. “Psychologie cognitive et interactions conversationnelles.” In Conversation, interaction et fonctionnement cognitif, Joise Bernicot, Alain Trognon and Josiane Caron-Pargue (eds), 221–238. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. David, René, Nour, Karim and Raffalli, Christophe. 2001. Introduction à la logique. Paris: Dunod. Dennett, Daniel C. 1987. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Di Pellegrino, L., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, V., Gallese and G. Rizzolatti. 1992. “Understanding motor events: a Neurophysiological study.” Experimental Brain Research 91: 176–180. Doise, Wilhem, Mugny, Gabriel and Perret-Clermont, Anne Nelly. 1975. “Social interaction and the development of cognitive operations.” European Journal of Social Psychology 5: 367–383. Dubois, Bruno. 2002. “Lobe frontal et régulation du comportement.” In La pragmatique en psychologie, Josie Bernicot, Alain Trognon, Michel Musiol and Michèle Guidetti (eds.), 269–279. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Duncan, Starkey D., Fiske, Donald W., Denny, Rita, Kanki, Barbara G., and Mokros, Hartmut B. 1985. Interaction structure and strategy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gardies, Jean Louis. 1975. La logique du temps. Paris: PUF. Gardin, Bernard. 1989. “L’interaction en sociolinguistique.” Buscila 143–146. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt Garfinkel, Harold. 1990. “The Curious Seriousness of Professional Sociology.’’ In Les formes de la conversation, Bernard Conein, Michel de Fornel and Louis Quéré (eds.), 1, 145–161. Paris: CNET. Garfinkel, Harold 1996. “Ethnomethodology’s program.” Social Psychology Quaterly 59(1): 5–21. Geniffey, Yves and Trognon, Alain. 1986. “La chasse aux étoiles, sur les formalismes statistiques en psycholinguistique.” In Pratiques des sciences sociales, 67–73. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Gentzen, Gerhard. 1935. “Untersuchungen über das logische Schliessen”. Mathematische Zeitschrift 39: 176–210 and 405–431. Gochet, Paul and Gribomont, Paul. 1990. Logique. Méthodes pour l’informatique fondamentale. Paris: Hermès. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. NY: Doubleday. Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Harper and Row. Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. University of Pensylvania Press. Goffman, Erving. 1983. “The interaction order.” American Sociological Review 48: 1–17. Good, David. 1990. “Repair and cooperation in conversation.’’ In Computers and conversation, Paul Luff, David, M. Frolich, Michel G. Gilbert (eds), 133–150. New York: Academic Press. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1979. “Logique et conversation.” Communications, 30, 57–72. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1982. “Meaning Revisited.’’ In Mutual Knowledge, N. V. Smith (ed), 223–243. New York: Academic Press. Grusenmeyer, Corinne and Trognon, Alain. 1995. “L’analyse interactive des échanges verbaux en situation de travail coopératif: L’exemple de la relève de poste.” Connexions 65 (1): 43–62. Grusenmeyer, Corinne and Trognon, Alain. 1996. “Structures of natural reasoning within functional dialogues.” Pragmatics and cognition 4 (2) 305–346. Gumperz, John. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John. J. 2002. “Response essay.” In Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz, Susan, L. Eerdmans, Carlo, L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 105–125. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Heritage, John. 1990. “Interactional Accountability: A Conversation Analytic Perspective.” In Les formes de la conversation, Bernard Conein, Michel de Fornel and Louis Quéré (eds.), 1, 23–49. Paris: CNET. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1976. The semantics of questions and the questions of semantics. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company. Hintikka, Jaakko and Kulas, Jack. 1983. The game of language. Studies in Game Theoretical Semantics and its applications. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Hutchins, Edwin. 1995. Cognition in the wild. Cambridge CA: Bradford Books, MIT Press. Jacques, Francis. 1988. “Trois stratégies conversationnelles: conversation, négociation, dialogue.” In Echanges sur la conversation, Jacques Cosnier, Nadine Gelas and Catherine KerbratOrecchioni (eds.), 45–68. Paris: Editions du CNRS. Jakobson, Roman. 1955. Aphasia as a linguistic problem. In On expressive language, Heinz Werner (ed.), Worcester: Clark University Press. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1989a. “L’approche interactionnelle en linguistique.” Buscila 7–25. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine.1989b. L’implicite. Paris: Armand Colin. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine.1990. Les interaction verbales, Tome 1. Paris: Armand Colin. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1997. “A multilevel approach in the study of talk-in-interaction.” Pragmatics 7 (1): 1–20.



Interlocutory logic  Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1998. “La notion d’interaction en linguistique: Origines, apports, bilan.” Langue Française 117: 51–67. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 2005. Le discours en interaction. Paris: Armand Colin. Lacan, Jacques. 1981. Le séminaire III, les psychoses. Paris: Seuil. Laughlin, Patrick. R., Hatch, Ervin C., Silver, Jonathan S., Boh, Lee. 2006. “Groups perform better than the best individuals on letters-to-numbers problems: Effect of group size.” J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 90(4): 644–651. Laux, Jennifer, Trognon, Alain and Batt, Martine. 2008. “Une approche expérimentale et micro génétique de la tâche de sélection de Wason réalisée par des dyades pratiquant un dialogue coopératif.” Psychologie Française 53: 375–397. Lave, Jean. 1993. Cognition in practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, Stephen C. 2002. “Contextualizing “contextualization cues.” In Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz, Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 31–39. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Lewis, David, K. 1972. “General Semantics” In Semantics of Natural Language, Donald Davidson and Gilbert H. Harman (eds.), 169–218. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publ. Co. Light, Paul and Perret-Clermont, Anne-Nelly. 1989. “Social context effects in learning and testing.” In Cognition and social worlds, John A. Sloboda (eds.), 99–112. Oxford: Oxford Science Publications, University Press. Lorenzen, Peter. 1967. Métamathématique. Paris: Gauthiers-Villars. Marro-Clément, Pascale, Trognon, Alain and Perret-Clermont, Anne-Nelly. 1999. “Processus interlocutoires dans une tâche de conservation des liquides”. In Apprendre dans l’interaction, Michel Gilly, Jean Paul Roux and Alain Trognon (eds.), 163–180. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Maynard, Douglas. W. and Zimmerman, Don H. 1984. “Topical Talk, ritual and the Social Organization of Relationships.” Social Psychology Quaterly 47: 301–316. Mead, Georg, H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moeschler, Jacques. 1985. Argumentation et conversation. Eléments pour une analyse pragmatique du discours. Paris: Hatier. Mondada, Lorenza. 1995. “Introduction: pour une approche des formes linguistiques dans les dynamiques interactionnelles.” In Formes linguistiques et dynamiques interactionnelles, Lorenza Mondada (ed.). Cahiers de l’ILSL 7: 1–18. Peter-Favre, Claire. 2002. “Discours et conversation chez les traumatisés cranio-cérébraux”. In La pragmatique en psychologie, Josie Bernicot, Alain Trognon, Michel Musiol and Michèle Guidetti (eds.), 281–304. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Piaget, Jean. 1928/1976. “Logique génétique et sociologie.” In Les sciences sociales avant et après, Giovani Busino (ed.), 44–80. Genève: Droz. Piaget, Jean. 1932. Le jugement moral chez l’enfant. Paris: Alcan. Prevignano, Carlo L. 2002. “On Gumperz and the minims of interaction.” In Language and Interaction: Susan, L. Eerdmans, Carlo, L. Prevignano, Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 63–77. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Prevignano, Carlo L. and di Luzio, Aldo. 2002. “A discussion with John J. Gumperz.” In Language and Interaction: Susan, L. Eerdmans, Carlo, L. Prevignano, and Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 7–29. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt Prevignano, Carlo L. and Thibaut, Paul J. 2002. “Continuing the discussion with John J. Gumperz.” In Language and Interaction: Susan, L. Eerdmans, Carlo, L. Prevignano, and Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 149–161. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Prior, Arthur Norman. 1957. Time and Modality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Quéré, Louis. 1989. ““La vie sociale est une scène” (Goffman revu et corrigé par Garfinkel).” In Le parler frais d’Erving Goffman, 47–82. Paris: Minuit. Roulet, Eddy, Auchlin, Antoine, Moeschler, Jacques, Rubattel, Christian and Schelling, M. 1985. L’articulation du discours en français contemporain. Berne: Peter Lang. Sacks, Harvey 1984. “Notes on Methodology.” In John Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage (eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, 21–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, Harvey. 1987. “On the Preferences of Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversation.” In Talk and Social Organization, Graham Button and John R. Lee (eds.), 54–69. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sannino, Annalisa, Trognon, Alain and Dessagne, Lara. 2003. “A model for analyzing knowledge content and processes of learning a trade within alternance vocational training.” In Between school and work: new perspectives on transfer and boundary-crossing, Terrtu TuomiGroh and Yrjö Engeström (eds.), 271–289. Amsterdam: Pergamon. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1969. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. 1991. “Conversation Analysis and Socially Shared Cognition.” In Perspectives on socially shared cognition, Lauren B. Resnick, John M. Levine and Stephanie D. Teasley (eds.), 150–170. Washington: American Psychological Association, DC. Schegloff, Emmanuel A. 1993. “To Searle on Conversation: a note in return.” In On Searle on Conversation, Herman Parret and Jeff Verschueren (eds.), 113–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Schwarz, Baruch, Perret-Clermont, Anne Nelly, Trognon, Alain and Marro, Pascale. 2008. “Emergent learning in successive activities: Learning in interaction in a laboratory context.” Pragmatics and Cognition 16(1): 57–87. Searle, John R. 1990. “Collective intentionality and action.” In Intentions in Communications, Philip R. Cohen, Jerry Morgan and Martha E. Pollack (eds.), 401–415. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Searle, John R. 1992. “Conversation.” In (On) Searle on Conversation, Herman Parret and Jeff Verschueren (eds.), 7–30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press. Searle, John R. and Vanderveken, Daniel. 1985. Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siegal, Michael. 1991. “A clash of conversational worlds: interpreting cognitive development through communication.” In Perspectives on socially shared cognition, Lauren B. Resnick, John M. Levine and Stephanie D. Teasley (eds), 23–41. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Sperber, Dan and Wilson, Deirdre.1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Basil: Blackwell. Stern, Daniel N. 2004. Un système de motivation primaire et fondamental. Psychiatrie Française 25 (1): 8–20. Suchman, Lucy. 1987. Plans and situated actions: The problems of human-machine communication. New-York: Cambridge University Press. Thibaut, Paul. J. 2002. “Contextualization and social meaning-making practices.” In Language and Interaction: Susan, L. Eerdmans, Carlo, L. Prevignano, Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 41–61. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.



Interlocutory logic  Thibaut, Paul. J. 2002. “Body dynamics, social meaning-making, and scale heterogeneity. Reconsidering contextualization cues and language as mixed-mode semiosis.” In Language and Interaction: Susan, L. Eerdmans, Carlo, L. Prevignano, and Paul J. Thibault (eds.), 149–161. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Trevarthen, Colwyn. 1993. “The self born in intersubjectivity: an infant commumnicating.” In The Perceived self: ecological and interpersonal sources of self-knowledge, Ulric Neisser (ed.), 121–173. New York: Cambridge University Press. Trevarthen, Colwyn. 2001. “Intrinsic motives for companionship in understanding: Their origin, development and significance for infant mental health.” International Journal of Infant Mental Health 22 (1–2): 95–131. Trevarthen, Colwyn. 2004. “Learning about ourselves, from children: why a growing human brain needs interesting companions.” Research and Clinical Centre for Child Development, Annual Report 2002–2003, 9–44. Hokkaido University: Graduate School of Education. Trognon, Alain. 1987. “Débrayages conversationnels.” DRLAV 36–37: 105–122. Trognon, Alain 1991a. “Fonctions de la conversation.” In Le dialogue, George Maurand (ed.), 375–408. Toulouse: C.A.L.S. Trognon, Alain. 1991b. “L’interaction en général: sujets, groupes, cognitions, représentations sociales.” Connexions 57: 9–27. Trognon, Alain. 1992. “L’approche pragmatique en psychopathologie cognitive.” Psychologie Française 37 (3/4): 191–203. Trognon, Alain. 1994. “Sur la théorie de la construction interactive du quotidien.” In La construction interactive du quotidien, Alain Trognon, Ulrich Dausendschon-Gay, Ulrich Krafft, Christiane Riboni (eds.), 7–52. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Trognon, Alain. 1998. “Interactional Pragmatics of hypnotic Induction.” Pragmatics 8(2): 255–270. Trognon, Alain. 1999. “Eléments d’analyse interlocutoire.” In Apprendre dans l’interaction, Michel Gilly, Jean Paul Roux and Alain Trognon (eds.), 69–94. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy; Aix-En-Provence: Publications de l’université de Provence. Trognon, Alain. 2002. “Speech Acts and the Logic of Mutual Understanding.” In Essays in Speech Acts Theory, Daniel Vanderveken Susumo Kubo (eds), 121–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins and sons. Trognon, Alain. 2003. “La logique interlocutoire. Un programme pour l’étude empirique des jeux de dialogue.” Questions de Communication 4: 411–425. Trognon, Alain. 2007. “€L’antilogicisme de Gérard Vergnaud.€” In Activités humaines et conceptualisation: Questions à Gérard Vergnaud, Maryvon Merri (eds.), 195–204. Toulouse: PUM. Trognon, Alain and Batt, Martine. 2003. “Comment représenter le passage de l’Intersubjectif à l’Intrasubjectif? Essai de Logique Interlocutoire.” L’Orientation Scolaire et Professionnelle 32 (3): 399–436. Trognon, Alain and Batt, Martine. 2004. “Logique interlocutoire d’un biais de raisonnement dans un jeu de dialogue.” In Psychologie Sociale de la Communication, Marcel Bromberg and Alain Trognon (eds.), 135–156. Paris: Dunod. Trognon, Alain and Batt, Martine. 2007a. “Comment conduire l’examen d’un fragment d’interlocution au moyen de la logique interlocutoire?” In Enseigner dans l’interaction, Antonietta Specogna (ed.), 13–33. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Trognon, Alain and Batt, Martine. 2007b. “Quelles méthodes logiques pour l’étude de l’interaction en psychologie?” In Interactions communicatives et psychologie, Claude Chabrol and Isabelle Orly-Louis (eds.), 53–65. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle.



Alain Trognon and Martine Batt Trognon, Alain and Batt, Martine. In press. “Discharging assumptions: a symbolism to construe learning in interaction.” In Logic and dialogue, J. Caelen, D. Vanderveken and D. Vernant (eds). Netherlands, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Trognon, Alain, Batt, Martine and Laux, Jennifer. 2007. “Psychologie Sociale et raisonnement.” In Psychologies du Raisonnement, Sandrine Rossi and Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst (eds.), 139–168. Bruxelles: De Boeck. Trognon, Alain, Batt, Martine, Schwartz, Baruch, Perret-Clermont, Anne Nelly and Marro, Pascale. 2006. “Logique interlocutoire de la résolution d’un problème d’arithmétique élémentaire au sein d’une dyade.” Psychologie Française 51 (2):€171–187. Trognon, Alain, Batt, Martine and Saint Dizier, Valérie. In press. “Dialogue games of argumentation.” In Dialogue’s logical properties, Alain Trognon, Martine Batt, Jean Caelen and Denis Vernant. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Trognon, Alain and Brassac, Christian. 1993. “L’enchaînement conversationnel.” Cahiers de linguistique française 13: 76–108. Trognon, Alain and Bromberg, Marcel. 2007. “L’interaction sociale.” In Psychologie sociale et ressources humaines, Alain Trognon et Marcel Bromberg (eds.), 63–94. Paris: PUF. Trognon, Alain and Collet, Véronique. 1993. “L’autisme et les mystères de l’intentionnalité.” Revue internationale de psychopathologie 10: 225–257. Trognon, Alain and Grusenmeyer, Corinne. 1997. “To resolve a technical problem through conversation.” In Discourse, Tools and Reasoning: essays on Situated Cognition, Lauren B. Resnick, Rogé Säljö, Clotilde Pontecorvo and Barbara Burge (eds), 87–110. New York: Springer. Trognon, Alain and Kostulski, Katia. 1999. “Eléments d’une théorie socio-cognitive de l’interaction conversationnelle.” Psychologie Française 44 (4): 307–318. Trognon, Alain and Saint-Dizier, Valérie. 1999. “L’organisation conversationnelle des malentendus: le cas d’un dialogue tutoriel.” Journal of Pragmatics 31: 787–815. Trognon, Alain, Saint-Dizier, Valérie and Grossen, Michèle. 1999. “Résolution conjointe d’un problème arithmétique.” In Apprendre dans l’interaction, Michel Gilly, Jean Paul Roux and Alain Trognon (eds.), 121–141. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy; Aix-En-Provence: Publications de l’université de Provence. Trognon, Alain, Sorsana, Christine, Batt, Martine and Longin, Dominique. 2008. “Peer interaction and problem solving. One example of a logical-discursive analysis of a process of joint decision making.” European Journal of Developmental Psychology 5 (5): 623–643. Van der Henst, Jean-Baptiste. 2002. “Contexte et raisonnement.” In Le raisonnement humain Guy Politzer (ed.), 271–305. Paris: Hermès. Vanderveken, Daniel. 1990. Meaning and Speech Acts (1): Principles of Language Use (2): Formal Semantics of Success and satisfaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vanderveken, Daniel. 1988. Les actes de discours. Bruxelles: Mardaga. Vygotski, Lev S. 1934. Myshlenie i rech’: Psikhologicheskie issledovaniya. Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Sotsial’no-Ekonomicheskoe Isdatel’stvo. Watson, Rod and Sharrock, Wesley W. 1990. “Conversational Actions and Organizational Actions.” In Les formes de la conversation, Bernard Conein, Michel de Fornel and Louis Quéré (eds.), vol 2, 21–35. Paris: CNET. Weigand, Edda. 1999. “Misunderstanding: the standard case.” Journal of Pragmatics 31 (6): 787–815. Winograd, Terry and Florès Fernando. 1986. Understanding Computers and Cognition. Norwood (N.J.) Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Beyond symbols Interaction and the enslavement principle Stephen J. Cowley

University of Hertfordshire, UK and University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Humans often contextualize without using cues. While Gumperz showed that analysis is not sufficient to explain interaction, his view of what lay beyond symbols was based in cognitive internalism. Opposing this, prosody can be shown to contribute directly to conversational sense-making. Humans use selforganizing dynamics in ways that resemble what happens in gas-lasers. Voices attract each other and, at times, set off laser like synergies. Using these effects, we modulate our actions in situation-transcending events that give sense to the dynamics. Conversation is distributed cognition during which prosodic sensemaking links the world with brains and bodies. Far from being based in wordforms, interaction and language are dynamical first and symbolic afterwards.

1. Beyond symbols The linguistic turn of the 20th century produced, among other things, the computational theory of mind and social constructionism. Breaking with post-Saussurian assumptions, this paper presents another perspective. Rejecting models where language systems are separated from their use, weight is given to conversing. By linking the work of Gumperz (1982), Maturana (1978), Hutchins (1995), Love (2004; 2007) and others, 20th century tradition is shown to exaggerate the importance of linguistic forms. This appears, above all, in the curious opposition of externalism to mentalism. Instead of acknowledging that conversations are foundational to minded behaviour, theorists retreated into two camps. On the one hand, externalists tended to identify what can be known with symbolic patterns or discourse; on the other, cognitive internalists reified symbols by appeal to information processing. Historically, of course, Saussure’s (1916) vision of synchronic linguistics can be used to legitimize both sets of views. By opposing system (langue) to use (parole), he gave us a picture of a cognitive world where context reduces to no more than the perceived external setting. Having separated people from the



Stephen J. Cowley

world, agency is ascribed to language. Bizarrely, brains and/or bodies are regarded as producing and processing social activity (including language). Theorists who appeal to programmed brains thus make the same error as those who reduce people to rule-followers. On both sides, language and interaction are separated from the full-bodied activity which shapes the experience of human subjects. One great merit of Gumperz’s opus (e.g. 1982; 2003) was that he showed that making sense of language depends on events that lie beyond symbols. While adopting the cognitive internalism of the mid-twentieth century, he saw the “semantic importance of context” (2003: 9). Accordingly, his work took on a practical relevance that is all too rare in the language sciences. This arose in focusing or miscommunication which, in his terms, exploited contextualization cues. While these constructs are discussed below, the move establishes two de facto principles: – Recognition of interindividual communication – The importance of vocal patterns beyond symbols Gumperz’s models are less convincing than his practices. Thus, Levinson notes lack of theoretical cleanliness (2003: 32), Prevignano doubts that interpretations often coincide (2003:17) and Thibault (2003a) stresses that indexicality is all pervasive. Rather than contrast the ‘symbolic’ with the ‘indexical’, the paper offers an alternative to contextual semantics. Denying that interaction is an ‘analytical prime’ (Gumperz, 2003: 106), conversing or first-order language is traced to how people control dynamics. Invoking Haken’s (1993) enslavement principle, parallels and contrasts are drawn between gas lasers and conversation. In stressing realtime contextualizing, humans are shown to orient to patterns in a pico-scale: we not only use phonological regularities but also voice dynamics that operate in time domains around the threshold of consciousness (200–300msec). While drawing on something like the enslavement principle, we monitor the sound of speaking to set up counter-effects. For this reason interaction analysis needs to be supplemented by other modes of investigation. Language and interaction can be rethought as distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995; Clark, 1997; Wheeler, 2004; Cowley & Spurrett, 2003; Cowley, 2007d, 2009b). Using circular causation, we hear social norms that enable us to think as we engage in interaction. 2. Bewitched by von Neumann machines The spell of von Neumann machines led to a 50 year fixation with symbols and representations. At the end of the 20th century, indeed, many assumed that both language and interaction depend on inferencing that links text with context. It was widely touted that, whatever else we do, symbolic forms lie at the heart of human



Beyond symbols 

interaction. Regardless of whether internal or external, symbols become the je ne sais quoi that link putative language-systems, the words actually spoken, and ‘context’. With Grice (1987), Austin (1962) Searle (1969) and others utterances are supposed to function because of illocutionary force. Indeed, even Gumperz treats human communication as ‘intentional’ and ‘based on inferences’ (2003:11). Conversational events are taken to depend, in the first instance, on symbol processing. Gumperz’s work has been criticized for reliance on information theoretic models (Levinson, 2003: 33). Regarding indexical signs as modifying symbols masks the full-bodied nature of semiosis. Appeal to pure contextualizing cues is mistaken, Thibault argues (2003a), because all interaction is indexical. Given its situated nature, it is unlikely that cues can ‘add’ to symbolic output. Further while robots use such architectures, these differ from what is found in nature. As Clark (1997) argues, intelligent behaviour by animals and people is not controlled by the central processes of physical symbol systems. Unlike von Neumann machines, brains do not reduce ‘content’ to physical analogues of linguistic forms. While ‘Cartesian materialism’ (Dennett, 1991) has many philosophical problems,1 this paper uses dynamic observations to challenge both symbolic models and contextual semantics. Symbol processing is too slow to explain many human reactions. Human interaction is fast because, as in Tetris (Blair & Cowley, 2003), we rely on embodied coupling. As in playing the computer game (Kirsh & Maglio, 1994) events cannot be clarified by appeal to algorithmic models. For that same reason, interaction analysis needs to be supplemented by other kinds of investigation. While some view discourse as programmed, conversation analysts picture talk in terms of sequential events. Word-forms are treated as constituting social action based on rule-following. Rather than view people as living subjects, they become agents whose subjectivity is (largely) illusory. Eschewing appeal to programs, such theories posit choice making based on conformity to social rules. Although internalists and externalists appeal to inferences and norms respectively, both groups reduce conversations to sequences of units. Real-time dynamics are systematically excluded from account on purely methodological grounds. It is as if social action were managed by a computer in the sky. This effect depends on: – treating transcriptions as formalizations of ‘data’; – emphasising recurrent patterns; 1. Attacking the ghost in the machine Ryle (1949) pointed out the error of confusing brains with minds. To invoke a central processing mechanism is metaphorical because brains are distributed self-organizing systems that integrate events with different evolutionary and developmental histories (Deacon, 1997). Computationally, central processing is too rigid for simulating adaptive behaviour (Clark, 1997). In addition, many deny ‘psychological reality’ to language and belief (e.g. Matthews, 1979; Linell, 1979; Harris, 1981; Dennett, 1987).



Stephen J. Cowley

– analysing discourse in terms of determinate units; – using methods that pick out program-like regularities In line with representationalism, events reduces to talk-in-interaction. All context becomes local. As Linell (2009) argues, no room is left for either trans-situational regularities or how we use dialogue to transcend current circumstances. Taking language-processing (whatever that is) for granted, talk is desomatized. By focusing on patterns, analysts overlook circumstances, experience, bodies and relationships. First, singularities are removed by analysis into word-forms. Then, using transcripts (or, recordings) some detail is restored in invoking features determinate units: interaction consists in sequential arrangements of word-forms. In illustration I sketch an event that is later discussed in detail. Echoing Gumperz, transcription uses semi-standard spellings and signs represented on typewriter keys (viz. #, = and […]). English version 1.B

y’know when we’re starting # haha the tenth of October 2.P of next year 3.B of no of this year but 4.P. yeah but that’ll be 5.B [mm well] 6.P almost next year 7.B [well yeah] 8.B oh he’s got no time he says 9.P [in Oct]ober 10.B the beginning of October before the beginning

Italian original 1.B 2.P 3.B 4.P 5.B 6.P 7.B. 8.B 9.P 10.B

sai quando iniziamo noi # haha il dieci ottobre di un altr’anno di no di quest’anno ma si` ma passa tutto= [be’ mm] l’anno praticamente [be` si`] ah non c’e` tempo dice [a ot]tobre i prima di ottobre prima dei primi

Transcriptions prompt us to compare sense-making with reading. An analyst can view text-in-interaction as if it resulted from a program.2 The approach generates explanada such as sharing bad experience or recognizing complaints. By focusing on ‘members’, it can seem that, in principle, interaction can be understood by analysis. Disagreeing, Cowley (1993) shows the value of spectrographic display for investigating what people do. Close attention to voice dynamics can be used in understanding the singularity of events. This is based on linking routines with interindividual sensitivities (as described below). Thus, on the basis of tens of listenings, he shows that, in 3, Brunella displays 2. The analyst claims to draw on shared knowledge to reconstruct the presuppositions that, in context, give rise to a determinate illocutionary act.



Beyond symbols

that she has heard Patrizia make a faux pas (in 2). In 4–6, Patrizia tries to rectify this and, in 9, makes up for her error. How can this be explained? For a context semanticist, the gaffe, recognition, and making-up can only depend on social or mental programs. In what follows, distributed cognition is used to sketch an alternative. 3. Complexity in social behaviour Contextual semantics uses transcripts to bring our parallels between embodied events and acts of reading. Conversation is made to resemble a product of social knowledge and/or inner programs. In using ‘contextualization cues’ to save this view, Gumperz stresses indexical events. Turning to inner mechanisms, he looks beyond symbols without recognizing the power of vocal and visible dynamics. Instead, he posits that presuppositions encode social experience. Challenging this, mental life can be examined ‘out in the open’. Transcription traces full-bodied activity which, in Lemke’s (2000) terms, exploits diverse space-time scales. Unless humans actually depend on formal units, transcriptions do not record linguistic output. Rather, they privilege the words actually spoken over the continuous fluctuations of prosodic and non-vocal activity. While moving towards recognition of full-bodied interaction, Gumperz made non-symbolic dynamics subordinate to symbols. Elsewhere, Cowley (2006) emphasizes that appeal to recurrent patterns sets up theoretical issues that include the following: – Brains are not mere symbol processors – Neither minds nor machines depend entirely on encoding/decoding – Cognitive powers evolved to use physical features of the world – Adaptive, flexible behaviour – and language– integrates activities that crisscross between body and world Whatever their neural basis, conversations are part of social behaviour. Interaction is situated and embodied because, as Harris (1995, 1998) sees, we integrate activities in real-time. As we do so, feeling, acting bodies orient to norms that evoke thoughts. By using local dynamics, we can the current situation. This is possible because, while having a routine aspect, utterance-activity arises as bodies concert (Spurrett and Cowley, 2004) As we co-ordinate, we hear and sense what happens. As a result, vocal and other movements “self-organize into patterned behaviour” (Thibault, 2003b: 137). We use anticipative dynamics (see, Christensen, 2000; Cowley, 2004) to influence what people feel, act and say.





Stephen J. Cowley

4. Interaction is dynamical Text-context theorists focus on pairings and sequences of utterance-sized units. Given their methodological concerns, they tend to reduce sense-making to the use of (putative) conversational units. On a dynamical view, this is like the armchair philosopher’s error of describing physics exclusively around everyday middlesized dry objects. Instead of pursuing the lay-person’s perspective, interactionanalysis focuses on how talk can be described. It thus obscures how singular events contribute to human lives. This is inevitable as analysis relies on a metalanguage that maps symbolic types onto repeatable contexts. Explanations of social life thus model of how ‘minds’, not living beings, deal with language.3 In biology, living systems use dynamics in flexible adaptive behaviour. Whereas simple systems may use separable time-frames (e.g. immediate stimuli and evolutionary dispositions), animals exploit both proximate and ultimate causation (Tinbergen, 1952; Hinde, 1987). As they become more complex, they use (or create) multiply framed temporal organization (Lemke, 2000). While bacteria draw on two time-frames, even invertebrates link evolution and development with learning-based experience. Animals rely on brains and bodies that evolved in using the world as a cognitive resource (Clark, 1997). Bees, for example, learn about the colour of flowers (Cowley, 2004). When rats are in a maze, objects become landmarks in future action. Robots, as Matarić (1997) shows, can also use landmarks to control movement. Finally, in Tetris, human experts use what Kirsh and Maglio (1994) call epistemic action. In fitting pieces into a pattern, the screen serves as a cognitive resource. Instead of imagining rotations, players carry out micro-movements whereby ‘useless’ moves set them up for what comes next. They draw on skills, experience and the setting to transcend current circumstances or, in other terms, off-load information in ways likely to serve mid-term goals. Similar strategies are required in performing long division and assembling jig-saw puzzles where, instead of thinking, strategic action couples with real-time perception. Building on Blair and Cowley (2003), talk is traced to real-time events. As Clark (1997) suggests, humans make the world smart so that we can act dumb in peace. How can speaking persons serve each other as cognitive resources? While analysis can track use of regular patterns, it cannot show how acoustic events affect feeling, thinking and acting. To understand the sense we ascribe to talk, contextual semantics can be supplemented with pico-scale investigation (Cowley, 2007c; 3. Recognising that lay views are essential to language, it is often erroneously thought that theory must be based on these views. With Dennett (1987), this is like arguing that since behaviour can be described from an intentional stance, it must be explained intentionally. In fact, he argues the contrary: accounts from physical and design stances are necessary even if, ultimately, they must specify how we come to believe in the abstracta posited from the intentional stance.



Beyond symbols 

2009a). In such models the sequential dimension of conversation is treated as resulting from how events are integrated across time-scales. What is routine (or situated) is thus connected with trans-situational or situation-transcending aspects. Utterance-activity can be scrutinised from afar, verbally, and with respect to resonating bodies. Before pursuing this, a dynamical system is used to show how, without thinking, self-organized systems generate complexity. 5. The enslavement principle and the dynamics of gas lasers Physicists are impressed when systems show design that gives rise to ‘higher-level’ organization. Such events depend, not on push-pull causality, but on how systems self-organize. When circular causation (Haken, 1993) applies, coupling implements the ‘enslavement principle’. This occurs, for example, in gas lasers. In simple cases, these consist in a sealed tube containing a light emitting gas. To precipitate a laser effect, an electric current of a certain voltage is passed through the tube. The light remains disorganized until, at a certain threshold, gas molecules self-organize as a laser-beam. Strikingly, this appears instantaneous. Indeed, while possible to calculate the threshold at which circular causation arises, the underlying microprocesses rely on neither the chemistry of the gas nor the electric charge. Thanks to the current, high-level interaction between molecules prompts competition and, remarkably, this leads to self-organization. The enslavement principle ensures that, even in principle, outcomes are unpredictable. This is typical of self-organizing systems which depend on principles more complex than rhythmic entrainment. Next, therefore, I use the model in thinking about the real-time coupling of human voices. While finding similar patterns of attraction, it is stressed that people monitor the results to co-ordinate in ways that give talk much of its singularity. 6. Enslavement and interaction: Parallels and contrasts The enslavement principle presupposes a physicist’s perspective. Interaction can be shown to feature similar processes when one views cultural circumstances as a locus for self-organizing. The necessary condition for enslavement is thus affective-cognitive activity between living human subjects. Like an electric current, the flow of pico-scale events prompts each body to set off self-organizing activity that evokes kinds of resonance. Movements, and especially vocalizations, resemble gas molecules in that minute fluctuations of speaking (and moving) are interpenetrated by what another person says and does. True to the enslavement principle, change arises when, acting jointly, voices and bodies attract each other. By analogy,



Stephen J. Cowley

extrinsic motivation generates higher-level organization. Each party orients to salient effects that arise as speaking is co-ordinated. By analogy to the laser-beam, orienting to a joint outcome can set off change in the quality of vocal events People anticipate and, by so doing, prompt response. Not only does otherorientation shape dynamic coupling but, of course, it elicits verbal response. As in Gumperz’s (1982) classic case, ‘gravy’ can sound neutral or unfriendly (Cowley, 2006; 2009). In an instant, vocal and visible dynamics produce laser-like effects. Word-forms are inseparable from co-ordinated pico-scale activity. Conversing is thus both dynamic and symbolic. Drawing on something like the enslavement principle, sound-patterns can resonate with memories. Unlike gas-lasers, however, we can monitor the results and, by so doing, act to modulate each other’s actions. Thus, living subjects use resonances to integrate speaking with emergent, repressed and modified verbal activity. As sounding, moving bodies, we link how things feel, experience and ‘what is actually said’. Talk yokes verbal patterns to dynamics based in, above all, emotional affiliation, jarring, and conflict. Since aspects of talk are laser like, salient patterns can spark adroit response or, indeed, discomfort. As Gumperz saw, communicational effects arise from a flow of events whose dynamics are, at once, affective, cultural and prosodic. To pursue the laser analogy, I return to events that intrigued me a decade ago. During the events shown in transcription, Patrizia and Brunella show exquisite sensitivity to voice dynamics. In pursuing this, my primary concern is with how prosodic patterns shape co-action. They rely on how the words are spoken in enacting a singular event that serves in maintaining their friendship. 7. Patrizia and Brunella’s dynamics A transcript can show how interpersonal relationships play out in time. It hints at how, in the pico-scale, brains jointly control coupled microdynamics. In the talk described, Brunella is seeking empathy from Patrizia. This is done because, as close friends, she is likely to understand the difficulties with getting builders. Such empathy, however, does not depend on social routine. In these circumstances, in fact, she “inadvertently indicates that she is not paying close attention to what she is hearing” (Cowley, 1993: 146). This is a social gaffe: it is unacceptable to misinterpret ‘the 10th of October’ (il dieci ottobre). Since Brunella show signs (sic) of hearing her misconduct, her friend tries to cover up. Seconds later (in 9), Patrizia reiterates Brunella’s ‘in October’ (a ottobre). By doing so appropriately, Patrizia ‘makes good’. For convenience, key utterances are printed in italics.



Beyond symbols 

English version 1.B 2.P 3.B 4.P. 5.B 6.P 7.B 8.B 9.P 10.B

y’know when we’re starting # haha the tenth of October of next year of no of this year but yeah but that’ll be [mm well] almost next year [well yeah] oh he’s got no time he says [in Oct]ober the beginning of October before the beginning

Italian original 1.B 2.P 3.B 4.P 5.B 6.P 7.B. 8.B 9.P 10.B

sai quando iniziamo noi # haha il dieci ottobre di un altr’anno di no di quest’anno ma si` ma passa tutto= [be’ mm] l’anno praticamente [be` si`] ah non c’e` tempo dice [a ot]tobre i primi di ottobre prima dei primi

Before turning to acoustic evidence, the transcript can be used to justify this ascription. It needs to be demonstrated, first, that saying di un altr’anno (of next year) is a faux pas. Second, it needs to be shown that social equilibrium is restored by Patrizia’s a ottobre (in October). This matters because, often, saying ‘of next year’ would be a sensible response to ‘ha ha the tenth of October’. Accordingly, I consider why, in these circumstances, it inappropriately ‘goes beyond the situation’. It is a social gaffe which, as things turn out, is put right by a blatant interruption (9) that restores social equilibrium. Spoken on a fall-rise tone di un altr’anno (of next year) looks unexceptional. It might be said, for example, at the end of the year or, indeed, where normal to wait five months for builders.4 This talk, however, occurs in May and Patrizia knows the local builders. She thus fails to show adequate understanding or, indeed, to give her friend support. The problem, then, is not one of inference. Rather, saying ‘in October next year’ is not licensed by Brunella’s (unmarked) tone. Just as one would expect in Italian and other languages (including English) Brunella’s fall-rise anticipates an empathetic echo. However, rather than repeating what her friend has said, she offers:

4. Any such interpretation would be false. First for biographical reasons (Patrizia has heard talk about building in the village – a major topic of conversation – all her life.) Second, even if she forgets it is May, her wording shows that she sees the new year as far away (she says not ‘dell’anno prossimo’ but ‘di un altr’anno’). Third, if the mistake were based on such ‘reasons’, her gaffe would not be social.



Stephen J. Cowley

Di —

un’ —

altr’ a n n o —

✓

Patrizia speaks as if five months would be a short wait; she replies as if Brunella’s tone suggested a longer delay. While transcription shows no outward sign of hurt (‘no di quest’anno ma’), she hears the faux pas. In terms of the next utterance proof of CA, Brunella’s ‘no of this year but’ displays that she expected something different (especially, the final ‘but’). Then, Patrizia responds by offering a lame explanation of her error. Waiting from May to October is, she implies, ‘like’ waiting 17 months (in 4 and 6). This cover up is meant as a socially acceptable way of justifying sloppy response. As such, it shows that Patrizia is monitoring the events. With ‘yes, but practically the whole year passes’, however, she gets into more trouble. She implies not only that the wait must feel long but, by so doing, shows that she knows it is about a year away. By neither covering up her ignorance nor making a joke, she shows that she ‘got the wrong end of the stick’.5 It is this, indeed, which is lame. In treating the wait as if it were more than 3 times as long, she violates social norms. She breaks the rule that, with friends, you ‘listen’. Thus, in 2, Patrizia is guilty of lack of due attention.6 While such analysis clarifies what happens, it gives no insight into how effects are achieved. Another mode of investigation is needed if we are to understand how, in a few hundred milliseconds, a gaffe becomes salient, prompts a lame utterance, and changes the flow of the talk. First, however, I sketch how the disruption is overcome and equilibrium restored. When Brunella is 4 syllables into her story, Patrizia interrupts with ‘a ottobre?’ How can use of known information be “verbally and prosodically right” (Cowley, 1993: 147)? Why does Patrizia use a fall-rise to repeat the fact and thus make up for her previous gaffe? aâ•… o t╇ t o b╇ r╇ e —

First, in the lived present, three seconds is not long enough for reasoning based on the words that are actually spoken. The parties depend on intricate voice dynamics 5. Since it is May the period is actually 17 months. Neither party notices this (and, in 1993, nor did I- in spite of having listened to the tape tens of times). 6. During conversations, people who do listen (in a normative sense) break the social rules. Patrizia establishes that, in this sense, she is not guilty (She only misinterpreted what was said).



Beyond symbols 

that are much too rapid to rely on presuppositions. Not only are these beyond symbols but, as argued elsewhere (Cowley, 2006), the vocalizations act directly. While humans can be compared to turn-taking, inference-using symbol processors, we are also self-conscious affective beings. We orient to each other as we integrate bodily dynamics with manifest beliefs. Social life happens as we draw on affectively charged ‘words’: we use pico-scale sound patterns: – Persons use real-time sounding as they engage in co-action. – Each picks up on subtleties in the other’s utterance-activity. – Co-action is not simply entrained; persons are sensitive to affect and motives as well as pico-scale events. To capture the function of real-time dynamics, acoustic events can be repeatedly frozen (see Cowley, 1993, 1994, 1998; in press). Pico-scale investigation shows the delicacy with which, together, we link action and perception. Sound patterns shape what, given repeated listening, an observer hears ‘in’ the words actually spoken. As dynamic resources, vocalizations can regulate co-temporal activity. Events consist, in part, of utterance-activity like that of 8–9 where Patrizia and Brunella couple their talk. Not only is this a laser-like effect but its audible result makes up for the gaffe. The women talk within a narrow pitch-range, mesh their timing, and echo the pitch cadence of concurrent syllables (tempo and a ottobre). Prosodic closeness enables the women to use pitch-matching which, while often noted (e.g. Brazil et al., 1980; Gumperz, 1982), has many crucial functions (Cowley, 1998). Below, this is illustrated with measures of fundamental frequency (on voiced segments) shown iconically. (Fundamental frequency is in Hz and bold segments represent overlap).7 8. B╛╛ah non╛╛c’e` tem po╛╛dice 225

— 190

—

—

9. P ╇╇ 202

—

207

210

a╇ o t╅ t o b╇ r e 185

190

—

160

210

The observations show parallels between one person’s perceiving and the other’s acting. As if based on circular causation, the voice dynamics show: 7. All measures were made on a Kay DSP Sona-graph 5500. In relation to fundamental frequency, attention was given to vowels (and some voiced consonants) and, especially local pitch peaks, troughs and moments of onset and offset. Given the settings of the machine, measures are likely to be accurate within a range of approximately 4.5 Hz. For details, see Cowley (1993; 1998).



Stephen J. Cowley

– Convergence in the pitch range of the voices; – By timing ‘a ot’(tobre) to coincide with Brunella’s (te)‘mpo’, Patrizia allows ‘dice’ to be spoken during the silence of a geminate (o)tt(obre); – Brunella responds, auditorily, by saying ‘dice’ in little more than a whisper; – The pitch cadence on ‘a ot’ mirrors the rising cadence of ‘tem’ (Patrizia’s rises over 0.6 ST, her friend’s falls over the same distance); – The initial F0 measure on Patrizia’s pre-head (202 Hz) is within 5Hz of the end point of Brunella’s tonic (207Hz); – The final pitch of Patrizia’s tail is within 5 Hz of the initial measure on Brunella’s rise (190Hz). Pico-scale coupling is characteristic of intimate talk (Cowley, 1994; 1995; 1998; 2009). In conversations in Italian families, its complexity is comparable with that of verbal patterns (Cowley, 1993). While challenging sequential models of interaction (Cowley, 1998), it is striking that such events are often described colloquially. While on the edge of awareness (Cowley, 2007c), this laser-like coupling is salient. Thus, Patrizia speaks as if the information has ‘just sunk in’. Did we not hear the synergy, we would not understand the ‘sinking’ metaphor.8 Rather as bodies resonate, judgement uses dynamics. As if detecting a laser-beam, the women use picoscale fluctuations to give life to their speech. The closeness of the coupling of the second pair of utterances is usefully contrasted with the event of three seconds earlier. In her faux pas too, Patrizia showed empathetic surprise. On that occasion, however, her speech did not mesh closely with Brunella’s. Rather, it had ‘a hollow ring’. 1. B. il die ci╇ ot╇ t o╇ bre 270

302 — — — 215 â•… — ╅╇╛╛╛

— ✓ 320

280

2. P. di un’ altr’ a n n o 355 220

—

— — 160

✓

205

These utterances show contrast in both pitch-range and other musical features. This arises as, launching into her story Brunella emanates tension while using falsetto to make demands of empathetic display. With respect to 9, Patrizia shows a pitch range (+10 Hz) far from Brunella’s expansion (+80 Hz). Equally, the ‘hollow ring’ depends on looser timing and lack of overlap. In contrast with events three seconds later, Patrizia is unresponsive to her friend’s voice. The events, however, are neither neutral speech nor, indeed, ‘noise’. Far from being rule-governed or prosodically determined, the gaffe is – in one sense – a reasonable response. In this 8.

In parallel to Wittgenstein’s (1958) remarks on colour, the phrase makes no use of inner samples.



Beyond symbols 

informal talk, Brunella’s voice dynamics prompt a mistaken ‘conclusion’. Misinterpreting its literal sense, she picks up on the exaggerated display. Technically, however, this is a social gaffe where a party does not ‘listen’. Patrizia’s speech of 9 synergizes Brunella’s by showing that, in one sense, she was listening. In real-time, a socially significant pattern emerges as the friends engage affectively. While aspects of speaking are laser-like, living subjects can also regulate co-action. While partly entrained, each prompts the other to modulate how they act and feel. Within relationships, appropriate emotions, attitudes and motives animate utterance-activity: – Variations in sounding help persons achieve specifiable goals – Unexpected activity can dam the behavioural flow Patrizia is less laser-like when (in 4, 6 and 9) she senses something is wrong. As a person, she attempts to make up for her gaffe by using verbal response. Hearing 2 as striking a false note thus contributes to the coupling of 8 with 9. Indeed, Brunella’s perturbance shows in how she lowers her tone, drops into Patrizia’s pitch range and makes it easy for her friend to ‘make up’.9 Adjusting to this, Patrizia integrates prosody with syllabic and verbal patterns. Relying on sensitivity to pico-scale events, both parties prod and probe by bring out empathetic and conflictual patterns. Brunella is thrown off track by how the sound is integrated with the wording ‘di un altr’anno’. Although showing no disturbance, the unexpected ‘content’ slows the flow of Brunella’s speech in ‘polite’ underturns of 5 and 7. Not only are these uncharacteristic of intimate talk but, strikingly, they seem to be a common spur to attentive listening. Like gas lasers, human voices use mutual attraction to produce vocal synergies while coupling in pico time scales.10 Since such events can occur in +/- 200msec, they must depend on action-perception cycles (see Preston & de Waal, 2002). Yet, outcomes are not ‘triggered’: the parties re-establish relationships by using affective experience. Elsewhere, Cowley (2007c; 2009) suggests that its basis is biosemiotic. We hear laser-like effects that arise as voices to act as mutual attractors. Not only does this strike observers, but it shapes interactional experience. Humans feel how others orient to pitch levels, cadences, rhythmicality, rapidity, tempo and voicequality (see Cowley, 1993). We monitor how members of relationships or groups weigh our words. Humans use sounding and moving (e.g. Auer, 1992; Cowley, 2004) to gauge ‘what this is like’ and, thus, form attitudes and person-impressions. 9. In 1993, I failed to notice that, in compensating for the gaffe, Brunella adjusts to make things easier for Patrizia. While in line with circular causation presented, this challenges my earlier Wittgenstein-inspired emphasis on reacting-responding bodies. 10. It takes about 200msec. to speak a stressed syllable. The argument parallels Kirsh and Maglio’s (1994) demonstration that Tetris playing is better served by epistemic action than (inner) mental life.

 Stephen J. Cowley

As confirmed by both the example and experience, moreover, this can influence what is said. Especially if talk is spontaneous, vocal coupling prompts feelings and ‘ideas’. Such mechanisms are most powerful, of course, where people know each other well and are unconcerned with specific tasks or ideas. While talk is accomplished by co-ordinating bodies it is also experienced by living human subjects. 8. Rethinking text-context relations Emphasising the biomechanics of interaction is consistent with what Hutchins (1995) calls (culturally) distributed cognition. While some cognitive and communicative events depend on output from ‘internal’ processes, much depends on causal loops between bodies and the world. As in other species (Cowley, 1997), human meaning-making is dynamic and embodied: real-time vocalizing is integrated with non-vocal expression. More uniquely, humans co-ordinate against a background of salient events that share cultural and normative worlds. Accordingly, indexical activity can function without (verbal) interpretation. Even if, at times, participants sense how joint activity is heard, much is beyond conscious control. Events are embodied even if, with different degrees of skill, analysts also ascribe sense to how utterances (and their wordings) are heard to sound. Next, therefore, I contrast this view of dynamics with models of semantic context. Until the 1990s, brains were often seen as symbol-processing systems. This view faded with parallel-processing (Rumelhart et al. 1986; Clark, 1997), discovery that brains meet the needs of bodies (Edelman, 1992; Deacon, 1997; Johnston, 2004) and recognition that human cognition is encultured (Hutchins, 1995). In parallel, intelligent action was examined independently of representations (Brooks, 1991; Matarić, 1997) and traced to perception/action loops. In support, functionalist thinking was enriched by use of Vygotsky (1962; 1978), Wittgenstein (1958), Merleau-Ponty (1968), Gibson (1967; 1979), Maturana (1978) and others. As shown in Dennett (1987; 1991; 1995), Hutchins (1995) and Clark (1997), cognition draws on causal chains that link bodies and world. Whereas we exploit ‘cognition in the wild’, representational models describe “a sociocultural system from which the human actor has been removed” (Hutchins, 1995: 63). This echoes in, say, integrational linguistics (Harris, 1981; 1995; 1998), Harré and Gillet’s (1992) discursive psychology, and Bickhard’s (1995) rejection of cognitivism. More recently, a growing group has come to emphasise the distributed nature of human language (see, Cowley, 2007; Cowley, 2009). On this view, real-time activity resembles, not output from von Neumann machines, but how we use an environment to co-ordinate with robots. Given how investigation clarifies intelligent activity, dynamical approaches (e.g. van Gelder, 1998) can be used to challenge the view that brains are von Neumannesque structures



Beyond symbols 

(Dennett, 1991) that use symbolic representations (Clark, 1997). Program-like models explain little unless they map onto neurobehavioural processes. Going beyond appeal to entrainment, for example, Christensen and Hooker (2000) show that bumble-bees, leopards and humans use brains in anticipative modelling. Expectation-based systems influence utterance-activity in mother-infant interactions (Cowley, 2004). Far from relying on ‘language use’, conversing uses space, time and bodies. For Hodges (2007), these anticipatory dynamics realize values. On externalist models, by contrast, the focus typically falls on sequences that allow interaction to be modeled in terms of rules. Thus, it is often supposed that just as text constitutes context, context shapes text (e.g. Goodwin & Duranti, 1992). On the distributed view, while using cultural constructs (e.g. texts and social norms), language is grounded in full-bodied activity. From this perspective, Gestalt analogies are limited. Words can act as foreground as ‘indexicals’ reconfigure as we experience pico-scale events. While shaping some inferences, decision-making often uses salient dynamics. The Gumperz model invokes presuppositions rather than how bodies shape interaction. In talk, action-perception cycles integrate information across sensory modalities. To explain this, Cartesian models are replaced by appeal to dynamic coupling. Vocal patterning reduces neither what is meant nor computed but is, above and beyond this, a matter of using speaking bodies as cognitive resources. Just as in other animals, human interaction is based in full-bodied coupling. In Linell’s (2009) terms, talk uses other-orientation to enact events while, at the same time, permitting generalizations that transcend the situation. 9. The distributed view Much can be meant without being internally processed. Acts, thoughts and feelings can be correctly ascribed by making judgements about circumstances. In illustration, consider an example from Hutchins: One evening a marine commander on board the Palau, Major Rock, telephoned the Charthouse. Quartermaster Smith answered the phone. Major Rock asked Smith what phase the moon would be that night. Smith asked Chief Richards who was sitting nearby. Richards immediately replied, “Gibbous waning”. Smith relayed the answer to Rock. Rock apparently did not understand the answer and he and Smith talked past each other for several conversational turns. Finally, Smith put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Chief, he says it’s got to be one of, ‘new’, ‘first’, ‘full’, and ‘last’.” Chief Richards said, “It’s last.” Smith told Rock and Rock hung up…. After Smith hung up the phone, Chief Richards said: “Rock is a great big guy with a brain about this big (making a circle with the tip of his index finger touching the first joint of his thumb). He must never have taken an amphib



Stephen J. Cowley

mission onto a beach at night. He might get by with a crescent moon, but on a gibbous moon he’ll be dead. (Hutchins, 1995; 230–231).

Events depend neither on what Richards (or Smith) meant by ‘gibbous waning’ nor how Rock inwardly understood ‘it’s last’. Rather, they show Rock’s poor use of the words actually spoken. Given limited vocabulary and naval experience he fails to integrate what he needs to know with hearing ‘gibbous waning’. As shown by the gaffe described, human interaction often features such failings. Yet, as Richards remarks, familiarity with the moon can, at times, make the difference between killing and being killed. As we co-act we use publicly available routines to link with past experience while anticipating what may happen. Though interaction is situated, we use experience in projecting possible outcomes. While analysis highlights the words that are actually spoken, much depends on pico-scale events. Thus Patrizia and Brunella integrate these with verbal patterns to show exquisite sensitivity to each other’s feelings. As they do so, they shape each other’s thinking and the flow of events. In historical time, we have developed a meshwork of constructs, artifacts and modes of action (Love, 2004). People hear linguistic forms in the flow of talk. In utterance-activity, of course, we also draw on ‘words’.11 Patrizia and Brunella connect what they hear, see, say and feel with current expectations. Like the naval officers, the women monitor available information by attending to more than is actually said. By hearing her gaffe, Patrizia uses the sound of her speaking as a prompt to make good. In (9), she synergises affectively mediated dynamics with Brunella’s story telling. Just as for the officers, events originating in one brain influence the other person. We move beyond the current situation. While this may be reducible to information (in Shannon’s probabilistic sense), we also draw on text-based inferences, affect and past experience. On a distributed view, much ‘thinking’ is co-action elicited by barely noted sound patterns. 10. Contextualizing and the enslavement principle Gumperz might applaud a situation-transcending view of interaction and see the above as examples of contextualizing.12 Stricto sensu, however, Patrizia and Brunella use patterns that emerge and spread. While metaphorically, these are ‘cues’, they need no shared meanings, presuppositions, or inner intentions. From a distributed 11. In Love’s (2004) terms, conversing is first-order language that can be heard in terms of second-order cultural constructs (including ‘words’). 12. In an influential definition this is: “speakers’ and listeners’ use of verbal and nonverbal signs to relate what is said at any one time and in any one place to knowledge acquired through past experience, in order to retrieve the presuppositions they must rely on to maintain conversational involvement and assess what is intended” (Gumperz, 1992: 231).



Beyond symbols 

perspective, vocal synergies prompt lay judgements. Brain-side events are inseparable from affect and, connecting people in time, set off social events. While some expression has an internal basis, many ‘intentional’ properties are extrinsically derived. In hearing “gibbous waning” anything that Richards and Smith ‘mean’ matters less than Rock’s failure to grasp the expression. In similar vein, instead of agonizing over the ‘meaning’ of the dynamics of 2 and 9, what matters is how the talk is integrated. There is a disjunction between human sense-making and what interaction analysis sdescribe. This is because, while analysis demands a shared metalanguage, human experience is body-based. As a result, we use dynamics in making judgements and ascriptions of meaning. Indeed, once we consider how pico-scale events self-organize, we can rethink how Brunella and Patrizia synergise affect, social practice and their relationship. Contextualization uses utteranceactivity that orients to both this now and what, on average, is likely to bring future benefit (see, Cowley, 2004). Conversing is flexible behaviour that occurs alongside explicit intentions and inferences. During utterance-activity, moreover, contextualizing can often make direct use of what is felt, done, and thought. Given trust in phonetic intuitions and nose for social meaning, Gumperz rejected text-context duality. He avoided reading transcriptions as evidence of program-like units and, therefore, over-inflating symbols. Using an ear trained to structural analysis, he identified interactional constituents by means of careful listening. In line with classic cognitive science, he assumed that these functioned ‘between the ears’. As a cognitive internalist, he treated the cues as ‘real’ and assimilated them to sui generis models of language. Emphasizing the primacy of interaction, he separated languages from the speech of determinate communities. By extension, sense-making is activity and, for Gumperz, it is mistaken to think that “meaning resides in language” (2003:121). While rejecting his view of cues, the distributed view uses this insight by tracing meaning-making to prosodic synergies. Talk is co-constructed as feelings, presuppositions and inferences spread. Pico-scale events also permit complex ascriptions. Given this post hoc quality, we can use voice dynamics to predict and, indeed, shape events. Expanding on work like that of Malinowski (1927), Abercrombie (1967) and Bolinger (1986), Gumperz shows that language-in-time cannot be reduced to folk constructs. As complex social behaviour, utterance-activity is based in human biomechanics.13 Since contextualizing integrates activity between persons, there is no a priori limit on its functions. Above all, while synergetics shape interindividual aspects of 13. Malinowski (1927) saw that primitive language must be grounded in action. Abercrombie (1967) recognised that what is now called ‘prosody’ must inevitably deal with what he called ‘voice dynamics’: Bolinger (1986) saw that the forms and cues of prosodic analysis are no more that cultivated versions of ‘wild’ ways of using the voice.



Stephen J. Cowley

talk, interaction also uses symbolic and probabilistic processes. The distributed view thus rejects appeal to a priori language ‘systems’. Rather, meaning-making is traced to human capacities for co-ordination. Continuous, embodied utteranceactivity prompts us to re-member experience as circular causation sets off judgements. Given the slow pace of experience, we can (partly) transcend our own biomechanics. While mistaken to trace interaction to the units of lay analysis – words, utterances and intentions– talking demands belief in such fictions. In developmental time, contextualizing must prompt a baby to believe in rules and units (see, Cowley et al. 2004; Spurrett & Cowley, 2004). In learning to converse, symbols must be grounded into brains, normative activity and first-person experience. As children come to hear words, they take a language stance (Cowley, 2007a; in press): they begin to hear vocalizations as verbal patterns. Saussure’s error, therefore, lay in reifying a mere ‘point of view’. By emphasizing forms, he reduced language to models of system and use. For many linguists, therefore, people are agents who link texts to contexts (and vice versa). By contrast, on a distributed view, people are inseparable from language: human agency arises as bodies act together in a cultural world. 11. Interaction & language revisited To treat interaction as an ‘analytical prime’ is to reduce persons to ‘users’ of wordbased input-output. As Thibault (2003a) suggests, social formations should thus be seen as neither logically nor ontogenetically prior. While interaction plainly predates human ontogenesis, the vicissitudes of human activity depend on talking bodies. Developing this argument, I claim that interaction and its (putative) components – words, minds, intentional states etc.– are valuable folk constructs. They rely on social norms favored, amongst other things, by a tendency to believe in their reality. Human bodies use the self-organizing powers of brains to discover biomechanical ways of orienting to social abstracta. Challenging the primacy of interaction, ‘construing experience’ is partly embodied. This, of course, is consistent with Gumperz’s view that ‘meaning’ pertains to persons and, for this reason, little explanatory power accrues to theories that posit a priori systems. Equally, while transcription has descriptive value, analysis cannot ‘explain’ human sense-making. In the investigation reported here, Patrizia and Brunella show that conversing draws on how we perceive vocal modulation. In development, of course, such contextualizing is primary. Even if interaction is historically prior, experience and laser-like synergies influence talk. As the friends show, self-organizing bodies use affect that, moments later, shapes what happens. Ontogenetically, such co-ordination



Beyond symbols 

grounds language (Cowley et al. 2004; Cowley, 2007a). Indeed, without perceiving and monitoring affect, there can be no attention sharing and, as a consequence, babies would lack the perceptual skills used to hear utterances in a verbal aspect. In adults, reciprocal monitoring allows talk to proceed without need for either Thibault’s (2000) downward causation or Gumperz’s (2003) contextual semantics. Internal and external motive systems co-develop as we orient to a shared cognitive world. Without thinking, Patrizia commits and makes up for a social gaffe while, without words, Brunella accepts an unspoken apology. In rejecting the primacy of social formations, weight falls on human resonance. It is only by emphasizing the causal loops of affective expression that we can move beyond post-Saussurian symbols. In tracing pico-scale coupling, realtime events are shown to be constituted by dynamic information that sets off effects. During interaction, the epistemic functions of affective activity are sufficient to prompt (explicit) ‘thoughts’. In lay terms, attitudes spark ‘what to say next’ and, for an analyst, suggest construals of events. More technically, we rely on full-bodied events that animate what we do together. Rather than view interaction in terms of formal units, we turn to how, using a pico-scale, bodies use a world of social norms to display manifest beliefs. Experience with bodily prompts and probes gives us neuro-behavioural resources based in affect, expectations in human relationships. While we can describe contextualization ‘cues’ (and conventional gestures), social events are also directly embodied. Given shared history, affective patterns often render redundant any appeal to cues and conventions. Presenting lay analysis as invoking abstracta runs against post-Saussurian emphasis on linguistic (or semiotic) autonomy. Instead of ascribing independent reality to language, interaction is traced to real-time dynamics. Far from being based in word-forms, language bottoms out in pico-scale co-ordination. While material processes (Thibault, 2003b) are synergetic, active subjects manage events in larger scales. Monitoring word-forms and ‘talking without thinking’ shape relationships. What the friends show is important but limited. First, something like the enslavement principle allows verbal functions to be integrated with affect. Second, an analyst can use third person ascriptions based on how the sound of voices is integrated with wordings. However, such processes are marginal in erudite talk. Patrizia and Brunella show only that talk can proceed without inner thoughts, presuppositions, and inferences. In close relationships, movements and vocalizations often ‘direct’ activity. Drawing on a shared past, events are assessed and managed under dual control. In humans too, much depends on bodily resonance. As social vertebrates (Cowley, 1997), we often contextualize without cues.



Stephen J. Cowley

References Abercrombie, David. 1967. Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Auer, Peter and di Luzio. Aldo (eds.). 1994. The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Austin, John. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon. Bickhard, Mark H., 1995. “Intrinsic constraints on language: grammar and hermeneutics”. Journal of Pragmatics, 23, 541–554. Blair, Grant and Cowley, Stephen J. 2003. “Language in iterating activity: Microcognition remembered”. Alternation, 10(1): 132–162. Bolinger, Dwight. 1986. Intonation and its Parts: Melody in Spoken English. Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA. Brazil, David, Coulthard, Malcolm and Johns, Tim. 1982. Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching. London: Longmans. Brooks, Rodney A. 1991. “Intelligence without representation”. Artificial Intelligence. 47: 139–159. Christensen, Wayne D. and Hooker, Cliff. 2000. “An interactivist-constructivist approach to intelligence: self-directed anticipative learning”. Philosophical Psychology, 13(1): 5–45. Clark, Andy. 1997. Being there: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. Condon, William S. 1979. An analysis of behavioural organization. In Nonverbal Communication: Readings with Commentary, Shirley Weitz, (ed.) 149–167. New York: Oxford University Press. (Originally published, 1976, Sign Language Studies, 13: 285–316). Cowley, Stephen J. 1993. The Place of Prosody in Italian Conversations. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge. Cowley, Stephen J. 1994. “The role of rhythm in conversations: A behavioural perspective”. Language and Communication, 14: 353–376. Cowley, Stephen J. 1997. “Conversation, co-ordination and vertebrate communication”. Semiotica, 115 (1): 27–52. Cowley, Stephen J. 1998. “Of turn-taking, timing and conversations”. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27 (5): 541–571. Cowley, Stephen J. 2004. “Contextualizing bodies: Human infants and distributed cognition”. Language Sciences, 26 (6): 565–591 Cowley, Stephen J. 2006. “Language and biosemiosis: A necessary unity?” Semiotica, 162: 417–444. Cowley, Stephen J. 2007a. “How human infants deal with symbol grounding”. Interaction Studies, 8(1): 81–104. Cowley, Stephen J. 2007b. Distributed language: biomechanics, functions and the origins of talk. In The Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication, Caroline Lyon, Chrystopher Nehaniv, and Angelo Cangelosi (eds.) 105–127. London: Springer Verlag. Cowley, Stephen J. 2007c. The codes of language: turtles all the way up? In The Codes of Life, Marcello Barbieri (ed.) 319–345. Berlin: Springer. Cowley, Stephen J. 2007d. Cognitive dynamics and distributed language. Language Sciences, 29 (5): 575–583. Cowley, Stephen J. 2009a. “Language flow: Opening the subject”. Cognitive Semiotics, 4: 64–92.. Cowley, Stephen J. 2009b. “Distributed language and dynamics”. Pragmatics & Cognition, 17/3: 495–507. Cowley, Stephen J. In press. “Taking a language stance”. To appear, Ecological Psychology, 2010.



Beyond symbols  Cowley, Stephen J. and Spurrett, David. 2003. “Putting apes, (body and language) together again”. Language Sciences, 25: 289–318. Cowley, Stephen .J. Moodley, Sheshni and Fiori-Cowley, Agnese, 2004. “Grounding signs of culture: primary intersubjectivity in social semiosis”. Mind, Culture and Activity, 11/2: 109–132. Deacon, Terrence. 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Human Brain. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dennett Daniel. 1987. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Dennett, Daniel. 1991a. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little Brown and Co. Dennett, Daniel. 1991b. “Real patterns”. Journal of Philosophy, 88, 27â•‚51. Dennett, Daniel. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Duranti, Allesandro and Goodwin, Chris (eds.). 1992. Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edelman, Gerald M. 1992. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Eerdmans, Susan, Prevignano, Carlo and Thibault, Paul (eds.). 2003. Language and Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gibson, James J. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin. Gibson, James J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin. Giles, Howard, Coupland, Justine and Coupland, Nikolas (eds.). 1991. Contexts of Accommodation: Developments in Applied Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, Charles and Duranti, Allesandro. 1992. Rethinking context: an introduction. In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Allesandro. Duranti, A. and Charles Goodwin, (eds.) 1–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grice, Paul. 1987. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J. 1992. Contextualization and understanding. In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Allesandro Duranti, and Chris Goodwin, (eds.) 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J. 2003. Response essay. In Language and Interaction, Susan Eerdmans, Carlo Prevignano, and Paul Thibault, (eds.) 105–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Haken, Hermann. 1993. Are synergistic systems (including brains) machines? In The Machine as Metaphor and Tool. Hermann Haken, Anders Karlqvist and Uno Svevin (eds.) 123–138. London: Springer-Verlag. Harré, Rom and Gillett, Grant. 1994. The Discursive Mind. Los Angeles: Sage. Harris, Roy. 1981. The Language Myth. London: Duckworth. Harris, Roy. 1995. Language, Signs and Communication. London: Routledge. Harris, Roy. 1998. An Introduction to Integrational Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon. Hatfield, Elaine, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson (eds.) 1994. Emotional Contagion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hinde, Robert. 1987. Individuals, Relationships, Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press. Hodges, Bert. 2007. “Good prospects: Ecological and social perspectives on conforming, creating and caring in conversation”. Language Sciences, 29 (5): 584–604. Hutchins, Edwin. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Johnston, Mark. 2004. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.



Stephen J. Cowley Kirsh, David and Maglio, Paul. 1994. “On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action”. Cognitive Science 18, 513–549. Lemke, Jay. 2000. “Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems”. Mind, Culture and Activity 7 (4), 273–290. Levinson, Stephen. 2003. Contextualizing ‘contextualization cues’. In Language and Interaction, Susan Eerdmans, Carlo Prevignano, and Paul Thibault, (eds.) 31–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Linell, Per. 1979. Psychological Reality in Phonology. A Theoretical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linell, Per. 2009. Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically. Charlotte NC: Information Age Publishing. Love, Nigel. 2004. “Cognition and the language myth”. Language Sciences 26, 525–544. Love, Nigel 2007. “Is language a digital code?” Language Sciences, 29 (5), 690–709. Malinowski, Bronisław. 1927. The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In The Meaning of Meaning, Charles K. Ogden and Ivor A. Richards (eds.) 296–236. London: Kegan Paul, Tench, Trubner and Co Ltd. Matarić, Maja. 1997. “Behavior-based control: Examples from navigation, learning and group behaviour”. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 9(2–3): 323–336. Matthews, Peter H. 1979. Generative Grammar and Linguistic Competence. London: Routledge. Maturana, Humberto R. 1978. Biology of language: The epistemology of reality. In Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought: Essays in Honor of Eric Lenneberg, George A. Miller, and Elizabeth Lenneberg. (eds.), 27–63. New York: Academic Press. Merlau-Ponty, Maurice. 1995. The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Originally published (1945) as Phénoménologie de la Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Paris: Gallimard. Preston, Stephanie and de Waal, Frans. 2002. Empathy and its proximal bases. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25: 1–72. Prevignano, Carlo and di Luzio, Aldo. 2003. A discussion with John Gumperz. In Language and Interaction Susan Eerdmans, Carlo Prevignano, and Paul Thibault (eds.) 7–30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rumelhart, David E. Smolensky, Paul, McClelland, James L. and Hinton, Geoffrey E. 1986. Schemata and sequential thought processes in PDP models. In Parallel distributed processing: explorations in the microstructure of cognition, Vol. 2. Psychological and biological models, David E. Rumelhart, and James L. McClelland (eds.) 7–57. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de Linguistique Générale. [English translation by R. Harris. London: Duckworth, 1983.] Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spurrett, David and Cowley, Stephen J. 2004. “How to do things without words”. Language Sciences, 26(5): 443–466. Thibault, Paul J. 2000. “The dialogical integration of the brain in social semiosis: Edelman and the case for downward causation”. Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(4): 291–311. Thibault, Paul J. 2003. Contextualization and social meaning-making practices. In Language and Interaction, Susan Eerdmans, Carlo Prevignano, and Paul Thibault (eds.) 41–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.



Beyond symbols  Thibault, Paul J. 2003. Body dynamics, social meaning-making, and scale heterogeneity: reconsidering contextualization cues as mixed-mode semiosis. In Language and Interaction, Susan Eerdmans, Carlo Prevignano, and Paul Thibault (eds.) 127–147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tinbergen, Niko. 1952. “Derived activities: Their causation, biological significance, origin and emancipation during evolution”. Quarterly Review of Biology, 27: 1–32. Trevarthen, Colwyn. 1998. The concept and foundations of infant intersubjectivity. In Intersubjective Communication in Early Ontogeny, Stein Bråten. (ed.) 15–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Gelder, Timothy J. 1998. “The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21: 1–14. Vygotsky, Lev S. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of the Higher Psychological Processes. (Edited by Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner and Ellen Souberman). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, Lev S. 1986. Thought and language. (Alex Kozulin, Trans. and Ed.). MIT Press: Cambridge MA. Wheeler, Mike. 2004. “Is language the ultimate artifact?” Language Sciences, 26 (6): 693–715. Wittgenstein, Ludwig W. 1958. Philosophical Investigations (2nd edition). Oxford: Blackwell.

The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni Université Lumière Lyon€2

This paper advocates an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction analysis, not only because adopting a single point of view on such a complex object is too restrictive, but also because it is impossible to account for fundamental aspects of the ways it operates without having recourse to notions coming from different theoretical paradigms. For this we shall consider first the question of units (particularly speech acts and adjacency pairs) then the question of “preference organization”, a notion which can be dealt with more adequately by resorting to face-work considerations. This investigation will lead us to revisit two problems which are central to discourse analysis (whether in interaction or not): what place is to be allocated to context in description and what the analyst’s interpretation consists in.

1. Introduction In the wake of Levinson (1983:€286–294), Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis are usually opposed, due to their different “styles of analysis”. However, if we consider that any discipline is defined essentially by its object of investigation rather than by its particular approach, then we have to admit that analyzing conversations is part of discourse analysis, since conversations are a specific kind of discourse. It follows that Discourse-in-Interaction Analysis would appear to be the best way of labelling the field of research in which I am engaged,1 which consists of examining different aspects of various kinds of discourse produced in an interactive context, that is co-produced by different participants involved at the same time in a linguistic exchange. “Interactional linguistics” or “verbal interaction analysis”

1. See Le discours en interaction (2005), where the different principles exposed here are developed and illustrated.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

would also be suitable terms here as they refer to the study of different types of interactions (reciprocal action systems) performed by mainly linguistic means.2 The boundaries of this field are fuzzy, for discourses can display different degrees of interactivity: an informal conversation is clearly more interactive than a lecture, a television debate more interactive than the news, etc. (certain types of oral discourse are therefore barely interactive, whereas certain types of written discourse such as Internet Relay Chats are, to some extent, interactive). This kind of investigation requires natural data, which are highly complex. In order to account for this complexity in a satisfactory way, it seems preferable to put together one’s own comprehensive toolbox. Mine includes, besides classical linguistic tools, borrowings from different trends in “discourse analysis” (especially the so-called Birmingham and Geneva schools), pragmatics (Ducrot, Grice, speech act theory), and, of course, interactional linguistics (conversation analysis – henceforth CA – and also Gumperz, Goffman, Brown and Levinson’s linguistic politeness theory, etc.). In other words, this kind of approach is founded on methodological eclecticism (that is the controlled use of tools coming from different paradigms). As this term sometimes carries a pejorative connotation, it is worth noting that it has been employed in a positive way by authors as different as Aston (1988:€13); Wetherel (1998:€388); Vicher and Sankoff (1989), who speak of “methodological hybridization”; Eggins and Slade (1997:€273); House (2000:€146), who advocates “an eclectic model comprehensive and powerful enough to handle diverse cases of misunderstandings”; Gumperz (see Eerdmans, Prevignano and Thibault 2003:€32, 50, 71); or Heritage (1995:€397): Many CA insights and observations are profoundly compatible with the viewpoints developed in connection with, for example, Gricean implicature or politeness theory.

The purpose of this article is to present the case for an eclectic approach towards discourse-in-interaction. I will begin by reviewing some general principles on which such an approach is based. 2. Principles Looking at my materials, these long collections of talk, and trying to get an abstract rule that would generate, not the particular things that are said, but let’s say the sequences […]. (Sacks 1992, Vol.€I: 49; emphasis added)

2. “Interaction” refers first and foremost to a process (that is a series of actions and reactions) and secondly, by metonymy, to the very event in which this process occurs.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

The way of working outlined here by Sacks is not unfamiliar to linguists: the constant toing and froing between the observation of materials and the search for underlying abstract rules. However, what is new compared to the usual practices of linguists (especially considering the time when Sacks delivers his first lectures) is the nature of these materials and the relationship to data that he recommends. 2.1

The data

Any generalization should be the result of scrupulous and detailed analysis of “actual episodes of interactions of one sort or another”. The data must be plentiful (“long collections of talk”) and for the most part, naturally occurring.3 2.2

The rules

The goal of analysis is to go beyond the description of particular occurrences in order to extract regularities and to discover reproducible phenomena (such is the condition of any scientific undertaking). The very first of Sacks’ Lectures is called “Rules of conversational sequences”, and the most famous article in conversational literature is entitled “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation” (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974). The constant use of the terms “rules” and “regularities”, “procedures”, “methods”, “norms”, “conventions”, “routines”, “organizing principles”, “order/orderly”, etc., appears to be a real leitmotiv in this literature. Indeed, the objective is primarily to do away with the idea that conversations are chaotic (and therefore unsuitable for scientific investigation) and to prove the existence of some kind of order in the midst of this chaos, this “apparent disorderliness of natural speech” (Goodwin 1981:€55). Contrary to popular belief, ordinary talk is “systematically and strongly organized”. Consequently the analyst’s task is to bring to light this kind of organization which is both strong and flexible (“structured sets of alternative courses or directions which the talk and the interaction can take”, Schegloff 1986:€114). Moreover, conversational rules can be considered as procedures, as they are directed towards practical use. Lastly, most conversational rules deal with sequential organization: order prevails in interactions, in every sense of the word.

3. Sacks does use made-up examples from time to time, however; and for some phenomena, it can be interesting to take advantage of literary examples.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

2.3

The question of units We need some rules of sequencing, and then some objects that will be handled by the rules of sequencing. (Sacks 1992, Vol. I: 95).

We will now look at these objects which are handled by the rules of sequencing, that is “the embarrassing question of units” (Goffman 1981:€22) – they are in fact very diverse in nature, including strictly linguistic units (phonemes, words, different types of grammatical units) but also pragmatic, discursive and conversational units. On a “superficial” level, conversations and other types of verbal interactions present themselves as a succession of “turns” made up of “turn-constructional units”. We will not go back over these units here as they have been deeply investigated in conversation analysis, but rather prefer to make some comments about two types of units which, in our opinion, are of a totally different nature and belong to another level of analysis, namely adjacency pairs and speech acts. 2.4

Adjacency pairs

The adjacency pair (henceforth AP) is widely accepted as being the prototypical smallest unit of sequential organization, yet it poses many theoretical and descriptive problems. First, the minimal units are not always “in pairs”, nor “adjacent”, as we can see considering the most common examples dealt with in the literature: greetings only come in pairs in two-party conversations;4 questions often initiate a ternary sequence as the answer should generally be followed by an acknowledgment; and invitations frequently open an extended sequence. Moreover, these types of sequences often contain more complex configurations (insertion sequences, embedded and side-sequences, interlocking organizations, etc.), and this greatly limits the adjacency property, despite the “preference for contiguity” principle (Sacks 1987). All these structural particularities lead us to the conclusion that adjacency pairs are only one specific type of inclusive units, generally labelled “sequences” in CA where the meaning of this term is never made fully explicit. Another problem with APs is knowing what they are made up of. Sacks talks about “utterances”, but “turn” is also often employed in the literature. However, it should be made clear that pair parts are not turns, primarily because their boundaries do not always coincide: pair parts are simply “housed” inside turns (“you have a turn and in it a first pair part”, Sacks 1987:€56). Above all, turns are units which “pertain to the surface structure of conversation” (Roulet 1992:€92), whereas pair parts are units of a pragmatic nature: they correspond to “actions” that 4. Incidentally, the importance given to this notion of “pair” is an index of the primacy given to a dyadic conception of talk-in-interaction (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2004a).



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

“epiphenomena” such as turns serve to convey (Selting 2000:€511). APs are made up of speech acts, or more precisely of segments revolving around a “head act” which may be accompanied by one or more “subordinate acts”. These monological units which form minimal dialogical units are called moves in discourse analysis (or by Goffman) and the dialogical units they form are labelled exchanges or interchanges (the term is ambiguous, but its technical definition is relatively clear: any set of moves depending on one and the same initiative move). These kinds of organization have been well described for example by Sinclair and Coulthard or the Geneva school, whose objective is to show how a conversation is built by combining units of different hierarchical “ranks”.5 They raise a certain number of issues (where one exchange begins and another one ends, the occurrence of “Janus elements” which are oriented both towards the previous and the next move, etc.), but the important thing is to recognize that moves and exchanges pertain to another level of analysis than the turn.6 Take this example of an interaction in a bakery as a brief illustration of the sequential organization of these pragmatic units:

1 B madame bonjour/ 2 Cl bonjour (.) je voudrais une baguette s’il vous plaît 3 B bien cuite [ou 4 Cl [bien cuite oui 5 B (tendant la baguette) alors voilà (.) et avec ça/ 6 Cl ça sera tout merci […]



1 B good morning madam/ 2 C good morning (.) I’d like a baguette please 3 B well-done [or 4 C [yes well-done 5 B (giving the baguette) here you are then (.) anything else/ 6 C that’s all thanks […]

The excerpt is made up of six turns, five exchanges and ten moves. The first exchange stretches over T1 and T2: it is an exchange of greetings (“good morning/good morning”) which is primarily built on lexical material. However, T1 also works as a question, due to the rising intonation which means “What would you like?” (two speech acts are amalgamated here in one segment because of its multimodality). This initiative move opens up a second exchange which is interwoven with the first: 5.

See Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1990: chap.€4 on the “hierarchical functional” model.

6. As Schegloff reminds us too (1992a: 124): “Although it is true that the organization of turntaking and the organization of sequences (or speech acts) are not independant […], they are largely distinct and only partially intersecting”.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

question-answer exchange, with the answer coming in T2, after the reactive greeting. As for T2: on the one hand, the assertion “I’d like a baguette please” assumes a request value, by virtue of the illocutionary derivation rule “any assertion of some need, addressed to someone who can satisfy this need, must be interpreted conventionally as an indirect request to satisfy this need” –€it should be noted that some contextual elements should be incorporated into the formulation of pragmatic rules: in the commercial context, the assertion is addressed to somebody who not only can but must satisfy the customer’s need (unless the requested product is not available), the indirect speech act is all the more obvious here. On the other hand, this “requesting answer” is not clear enough for the baker (problem of applying the Gricean “maxim of quantity”), who therefore asks the customer for more detail by introducing in T3 an embedded question-answer type exchange. Once B has obtained the necessary detail, she can go ahead and fulfill the request, as evidenced in T5 where the reactive move is made up of a head act which is, in fact, a non-verbal action (accompanied by an utterance to be considered as a subordinate act: “here you are then”). The end of T5 initiates a new question-answer type exchange (the answer is delivered in T6). Hence, this sequence consists of the following exchanges:





(1) E1 (T1€-€T2’s first segment): greetings; (2) E2 (T1€-€T2’s second segment): question-answer; amalgamation of E1 and E2’s initiative moves, the reactive moves being distinct and delivered successively in the same turn; (3) E3 (T3€-€T4): question (request for details) followed by answer; E3 is embedded in E4; (4) E4 (T2’s second segment and T4€-€T5’s first segment): request-request fulfilled; the request is grafted onto the answer and delivered in two parts (“I’d like a baguette please” and “well-done”); (5) E5 (T5’s second segment€-€T6): question-answer (the answer is accompanied by a subordinate act of thanks).

Such a banal example as this shows the limits of the notion of “adjacency pair”: the boundaries of exchanges coincide only exceptionally with the boundaries of turns, insofar as one same turn can be made up of several moves which are either successive, or amalgamated by virtue of indirect speech acts, and sometimes, of multimodality. 2.5

Speech acts

The trickiest problem with the notion of the adjacency pair is this: if two adjacent turns can sometimes be considered as forming an AP, but at other times not, which



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

criteria should be used to decide whether or not one is dealing with an AP? It is based on the feeling that both items have a “conditional relevance” relationship (“given the first, the second is expectable”, Schegloff 1972:€363). But what is this feeling based on? To answer this question we have to turn to the notion of the speech act. Despite what is often said following a famous controversy,7 it is not obvious that CA and speech act theory are incompatible. On the contrary even, CA constantly refers to an implicit theory of speech acts with its persistent use of notions like “question”, “request”, “greeting”, “offer”, “complaint”, etc., to which we can add more interactive kinds of pragmatic units such as “challenging”, “repairing”, etc. These units are usually referred to as “actions” in CA, but as they are very specific actions realized by verbal8 means, it would seem that the expression “speech acts” is more appropriate –€ the use of this term does not imply the adoption of all Austin’s, Searle’s or Venderveken’s theoretical postulates: today the notion of speech act has come into the public domain; it is part of the basic vocabulary for those dealing with discourse, in interaction or not. However we label this class of object, the questions, requests or greetings are defined by the “job” they do (something very similar to Searle’s illocutionary force) which dictates their sequential properties (if a question is generally followed by an answer, surely it is because its purpose, by definition, is to obtain some sort of information, supposed to be unknown to the person asking the question). “Sequences” are not interpretable on the sole basis of their sequentiality (the fact that an utterance immediately follows a question is neither necessary nor sufficient to say that it is the answer to the question);9 and the application of conditional relevance and sequential implicativeness principles rests above all on the content of the utterances, which creates some specific expectations about the nature of what follows. Without going back over the criticism of speech act theory, I would say that in my opinion, it does not fundamentally challenge this theory. We could also show that Schegloff ’s relevant analysis of “For whom” or “Do you know who’s going to that meeting?” (1984 and 1988) does not in any way contradict standard speech acts theory.10 But there is no doubt that work carried out in the framework of CA has helped to make this theory more operative by examining how speech acts really function in an interactive context, the role of the utterance’s position in the sequence for determining its pragmatic value, how this value can be negotiated by 7.

See Searle et al.€(eds.) 1992.

8. On the fundamental difference between verbal and non verbal actions, see Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2004b. 9. As Mey says (1994:€241): “The mere fact of utterances following each other is no guarantee of coherence”. 10. See for example Cooren 2004.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

the participants, and also the possible transformations a speech act can undergo throughout the exchange; for example, how a greeting question such as “how are you?” can progressively become a real question (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2001:€118–120), or how an offer can be turned into an order, as in the “stubborn old man and the herring” sequence examined by Sacks (1992, Vol. II: 327–331). Sacks’ analysis brilliantly shows the successive transformations that the speech act undergoes (somewhat like the music of Steve Reich, where the theme changes so surreptitiously that the listener suddenly finds himself in the middle of a new motif with no idea as to when exactly the change took place); it shows also that this metamorphosis is already potentially contained in the offer’s very first utterance. This kind of analysis has greatly refined the description of speech acts, but it is founded upon Austin and Searle’s theory.11 2.6

The sequential organization of interaction

2.6.1 Preference organization According to the grammar of speech acts, an initiative act accomplished by A will open up a paradigm of possible reactive acts to be accomplished by B. However, all these reactions are not equally probable, some are “preferred” and others are “dispreferred”, not only in context, but already at the level of the system. This “preference organization” is based firstly on considerations of frequency: the “preferred” reaction is the reaction which is chosen “ordinarily” in a paradigm of alternative forms, which also best conforms to the participants’ normative expectations and which has correlatively fewer interactional effects. However, the observation that the preferred reactions are generally expressed in a more immediate and economical fashion12 has led to formal considerations being given precedence over notions of frequency. Unfortunately these two criteria do not always coincide, which makes it possible, according to Lerner (1996), to find such strange things as dispreferred sequences within a preferred format or vice-versa. Similarly, when analyzing compliment responses Pomerantz notes that “actual performances are often discrepant from ideal or preferred performances” and that “a large proportion of compliment responses deviate from the model response of accepting compliments” (1978:€ 80–81). However, one could also reach the conclusion that this “ideal” and this “model” should be questioned and thought about differently, calling on politeness theory (seen in terms of face-work). This theory, which is the 11. In other terms, I don’t think that “a gap between the theory [of SA] and the reality of discourse” exists (Streeck 1980:€133). 12. See for example the different articles in the book edited by Atkinson and Heritage, 1984: Part II.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

result of a kind of hybridization between Goffman and Searle’s work (as it looks at speech acts from the point of view of the effects they can have on participants’ faces) was drawn up by Brown and Levinson (1978 and 1987), and several modifications of it have been suggested.13 Whichever version of this model we choose to adopt can render the description of discourse-in-interaction considerable service. In particular, it helps to make the problem of preference organization clearer, as Lerner notes (1996:€304): It has been widely observed […] that matters of face, on the one hand, and preference organization in conversational interaction, on the other, are intimately connected.

If we accept that preference is “intimately connected to matters of face”, we can understand why the preferred sequence is often the most costly one. As face-work generally involves some overcost in utterance formulation (which is compensated for by the benefit obtained regarding the interpersonal relationship), it is not surprising that in many cases, a relatively costly solution is chosen, for instance after a compliment (request for confirmation, downgraded agreement, softened disagreement, etc.), or following an offer: if a brutal refusal is “less preferred” than immediate agreement, a certain preference for temporary refusal has also been noted, which brings about a more or less developed cyclical exchange, made up of repetitions and refusals of the offer before its final acceptance (Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2005:€220–226). For both offers and compliments, the elaborate nature of the sequence is due to the fact that they are particularly complex acts as far as face-work is concerned. They comprise both a “threatening” and “flattering” component for the recipient’s face, so that he finds himself in a “double bind” situation which can only be resolved by relatively sophisticated strategies. Pomerantz says that sequences are subject to multiple and sometimes contradictory constraints. It should be added that these constraints do not all belong to the same level of analysis. First, the reactive move should comply with the semantic-pragmatic rules of coherence which depend on the nature of the initiative move (as well as on the utterance’s specific content). Moreover, sequencing is subject to additional types of constraints: these are ritualistic face-work constraints, which may come into conflict with one another€– in the case of a compliment: the general principle of preference for agreement (which is “flattering” for the face) orients towards a positive reaction, but the principles of protecting one’s own territory, and of self-praise avoidance (“modesty rule”), join together to favour a 13. Personally I have suggested introducing the notion of Face Flattering Act (FFA) into the model, alongside the notion of “Face Threatening Act” (FTA) –€ in a similar way others talk about “face enhancing acts” or “face boosting acts” –, as politeness consists not only of softening up threatening acts (negative politeness) but also of producing valorizing acts (positive politeness). See Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1992 and 2005€: chap.€3.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

negative reaction. It is a double bind situation, therefore, and the only exit is via compromise, delay or avoidance strategies: the complexity of this exchange with regard to the face-work system can explain why responses to compliments can often be seen as excessively fussy and affected.14 On the contrary, if after most assertions agreement is preferred to disagreement (that is the least expensive reaction rather than the most expensive one), it is because agreement is more satisfactory for face: whatever the initiative act, the preferred reaction (that is the most expected and frequent one) is not the least expensive one but the one which best satisfies mutual face preservation. 2.7

Dialogical interpretation principle

The principle of preference organization operates on the side of the production of discourse by participants. If we now look at interpretation mechanisms (which concern both participants and analyst alike), we meet another principle which is sometimes labelled the “dialogical interpretation principle” and can be summarised like this: given that utterances are often pragmatically ambiguous (as speech act markers are as polysemous as lexical items), how can we interpret them? The answer: by observing the T2 reaction to the problematic turn T1, which will “publicly demonstrate” how T1 has been understood, that is the real meaning of T1. This idea has been largely developed in conversational literature,15 for example by Heritage comparing these two adjacency pairs (1984:€255): (1) (2)

A: Why don’t you come and see me sometimes B: I’m sorry. I’ve been terribly tied up lately A: Why don’t you come and see me sometimes B: I would like to

A’s utterance is pragmatically ambiguous: it could correspond to several different “actions”. However, B’s sequence will give us the key to its meaning: in (1) it is a complaint, as B responds with an excuse, and in (2) it is an invitation as B’s reaction is to accept it.

14. Regarding the different possible reactions to a compliment, see Pomerantz 1978 for English and Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1994: chap.€5 for French€; and on how to apply the “double bind” notion to description of interactions, Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1992:€279–289 and 1994:€273–275. 15. This question is at the centre of the debate between Schegloff and Wetherell in Discourse & Society, 8(2), 1997 and 9(3), 1998.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

A first objection to this “sequential analysis” as it is dealt with in CA arises immediately: perhaps B misunderstood A’s utterance. However, if that is the case, in the third turn A will rectify B’s mistaken interpretation.16 This means that: – A knows how B interpreted his turn T1 thanks to the reaction T2 provided by B; – B knows if his interpretation is correct or not thanks to A’s response (third turn). At the same time, the meaning of the whole exchange is made available to the analyst thanks to what is also called the “theorem of mutually recognizable actions” (Heritage) or the “intersubjective construction of meaning principle” (Schegloff). Unfortunately, things are not always so simple. Let us look now at Sacks’ well known example (1992, Vol. I: 689):17 A: Can you fix this needle? B: I’m busy. A: I just wanted to know if you can fix it. In the third turn A claims than the first one had to be interpreted as a mere question and not as a request (as B did), but he is more likely committing here a kind of denial of the indirect value of his previous utterance (for face saving reasons, the request having failed he pretends he has not intended such a speech act). This example shows that it is not always the case that the third turn “publicly demonstrates” the real meaning to be accorded to the first turn. We cannot say either that the second turn necessarily shows the meaning that B accords to the first turn. Let us look again at the case of compliment responses: One of the most frequent in French consists of treating the compliment as a question about the nature or origin of the praised item (“I love your perfume – Kenzo”; “These cups are great! – I got them in Brittany”, etc.), even in cases where there is nothing to suggest that this treatment corresponds to the compliment payer’s intention. Here, Marandin (1987:€86) maintains that the compliment “does not occur in the interlocution”, which is more than debatable: following our linguistic conventions, the utterance “These cups are great” cannot not be considered analytically as a compliment, even if it is not treated as such, and the recipient prefers to “avoid” it. Certainly, no one is fooled by the avoidance strategy: the author of the compliment suspects that his compliment has been recognized (no need to repair with something like “It was a compliment, not a question!”), and the recipient suspects that the author suspects that his compliment has been recognized. This is a sort of routinized misunderstanding, which is accepted easily by both participants as it is most suitable to the mutual preservation of their faces. 16. On “third position repair”, see Schegloff 1987. 17. In this example A is supposed to be a very young child, but similar cases of denial could also be found from adult speakers.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

So it is a little simplistic to assimilate “signification of X produced by A” to “interpretation of X made by B”, and “interpretation of X by B” to “interactional treatment of X by B”. Besides, this treatment, that is B’s reaction, must itself be interpreted by the analyst. This can be just as problematic, as reactive moves are often formally less characteristic than initiative moves (compliments are easier to identify than compliment responses, questions are easier to identify than answers, etc.). The following turn may help the analyst with his interpretation, but it is unrealistic to expect the participants to do the work for him: Although the value of sequential analysis in getting at the participants’ understandings of the talk has been stressed in this section, it should not be concluded that the way in which a speaker responds to a prior utterance can, in every case, be treated as criterial in determining how the utterance should be viewed analytically. (Atkinson and Heritage 1984:€11)

2.8

The role of sequential placement

All linguists admit that the location of an item in the syntagmatic chain determines in part its meaning. However the relative importance accorded to the conventional meaning (pre-existing) and to the location (occasional) varies according to authors and theories. As for the role of sequential placement of an utterance for determining its value, all depends on the type of utterance we are dealing with: if it is true that we identify an “answer” because it comes after a question (and also because of its semantic content),18 then we must accept that questions present specific formal characteristics. Consider as well the often mentioned example of greetings: Sacks (1992, Vol. I: 94) states that “we need to distinguish between a ‘greeting item’ and a ‘greeting place’”, and quite rightly adds that “if some other item occurs in a greeting place it’s not a greeting”. More questionable is his assertion that “if a greeting item occurs elsewhere it’s not a greeting”: a “Good morning!” occurring in the middle of a conversation will be a greeting as well (a “misplaced” greeting), which proves the robustness of the intrinsic meaning of most linguistic items. The effects of these misplacements can be very diverse: polemical (an example of which we will see shortly), playful, or even pathological (as we find in the “absurd” dialogues in Ionesco’s or Tardieu’s plays), or metaphorical as in the example

18. Cf. Levinson (1983:€193): “Answerhood is a complex property composed of sequential location and topical coherence across two utterances amongst other things; significantly there is no proposed illocutionary force of answering.”



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

of an exchange “between two adults after making love” quoted by Streeck (1980:€145):

A: Hi! (smiling) B: Hi! (smiling)

Although “misplaced” to some extent, “Hi!” retains the value of a greeting. Given that this speech act is submitted, as Searle put it, to the preparatory condition “the speaker must have just encountered the hearer”, the mere utterance of this greeting means that the speakers are acting as though they are meeting again after being separated (far from challenging the existence of this condition of felicity, Streeck’s example proves its existence, which is responsible for the effect of this little game between the two lovers). The temptation to overestimate the role of placement can be easily understood: it is because this property has an “objective” nature –€ whether Y follows X or whether T2 comes after T1 is “obvious”, and this obviousness is the same for both participating members in the interaction and for the analyst. Unfortunately, however, sequentiality does not provide the key to meaning... The problem is that the term “sequentiality” is used to refer to two types of relationship of a very different nature: firstly a simple relationship of order, which is effectively objective; but sometimes also a logical-semantic relationship of “conditional relevance” (a question requires an answer, and the answer comes to complete the question to form with it an “adjacency pair”), and this relationship is of an interpretative nature.19 Placement is simply one of many resources used to interpret utterances. For example, the actual meaning of “How are you?” and other “greeting questions” depends on a series of factors which work simultaneously: the position of the utterance in the exchange (the earlier it occurs, the more it acts like a greeting), the degree of elaborateness of the wording, the accompanying prosody, face expression and gestures, the participants’ mutual knowledge about the current situation of the addressee and other contextual factors. 2.9

The role of context

Context shapes utterances and utterances shape context in turn: this conception, which reconciles determinism and constructionism, is widely accepted today. Discourse is both an activity which is conditioned by the context and which transforms this very context: pre-existing to interaction, context is continuously renewed 19. The notions of “sequence”, “sequencing” and “sequentiality” are used in a number of theoretical frameworks. For an overview of the different approaches towards these notions from both formal and functional perspectives, see Fetzer and Meierkord (eds.) 2002.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

throughout. The renewable nature of context is partly due to the fact that the term refers not only to the “external” or “situational” context (this “frame” surrounding the interaction, itself comprised of different components which can be classed in several ways)20 but also to the “sequential” or “intra-interactional” context21 (Schegloff 1992b), which continuously reframes conversational activities (for example, the introduction of a question creates “a new arena for subsequent action”, Duranti and Goodwin 1992:€29). In addition, context should be considered as a set of cognitive representations (shared at least partially by the different participants) which are constantly enriched and modified – even if it is obvious that all is not “renewable” in the context and that many components remain constant throughout the interaction. It is also widely agreed that context strongly determines the production and interpretation mechanisms which work in an “indexical” or “setting-related” way. Opinions diverge, however, regarding to what extent the analyst can and should use information which is not actually contained in the interaction’s text.22 Gumperz (in Eerdmans, Prevignano and Thibault 2002:€22) claims that the analyst “always needs a prior analysis of context”, and should therefore collect as much “ethnographic” information as possible on the setting being studied. However, most conversation analysts consider that we should do without “external” interpretative resources, which may be “misleading” (Heritage 1984:€282): considering that context is an infinite set, all the elements are not interactionally relevant and those which are will be revealed as such by the participants. At any moment of the interactional process, they can bring to light some specific aspect of context and make it significant; so the relevant contextual facts are “internalized” to some extent in the form of “indicators” which allow the analyst to do without external information. In this light, context is entirely considered as something endogenously generated within the talk of the participants and, indeed, as something created in and through that talk. (Heritage 1984:€283)

Let us note first of all that even when analysis wants to be purely “internal”, the analyst always draws on some external information. Take the example of a small shop: from what point is the mention of context legitimate? As soon as the shopkeeper “exhibits” his status as shopkeeper, by saying something like “Yes madam?” or “May I help you?” Yet the question cannot be correctly interpreted without 20. See among others Hymes’ (1972) SPEAKING model or Brown and Fraser’s (1979) model. 21. In textual linguistics, the internal surroundings of a given segment are sometimes called cotext. 22. On “controversy in CA about the proper attitude toward contextual knowledge”, see Bilmes 1996:€184. Note that this debate reminds us somewhat of the raging textual linguistics debate in the 70’s.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

knowing that it is occurring in a small shop... Is it necessary to wait until the customer says something like “I’d like a loaf of bread” to discover that the scene is taking place in a bakery (which is an interpretation made possible by a lexical and “encyclopedic” knowledge that cannot be considered as purely internal)? Such an attitude of refusing external information can seem rather artificial – all the more so as the constitution of a corpus, at least when dealing with a “collection” (interactions in small shops, telephone calls, work meetings, etc.), entirely depends on external criteria... Let us note too that the distinction between endogenous and exogenous context is entirely dependent on the way the corpus is made up (for example, for the analyst who only has an audio recording the characteristics of the setting constitute external information, whereas in a video recording they form entirely part of the semiotic material which makes up the interaction), and the way it is delimitated (if we widen the corpus, what is “external” may become “internal”). The analyst’s first gesture is to isolate a more or less long segment of talk-in-interaction, but for the members this segment only takes on meaning with regard to its environment, immediate or not. This initial gesture therefore constitutes a “bias” for the analyst who cannot therefore claim to take on the members’ point of view, especially if he chooses to look no further than the boundaries set by the sequence on which the analysis is focussed. Whether in a bakery, or in another setting, participants know where they are well before “showing” it. And this is the main objection we can make against this descriptive attitude: it contradicts the principle by which description should be made as far as possible from “the members’ point of view”; for when they enter a shop or a classroom, or when they take part in a television show, the members already have an idea regarding what kind of event they are involved in, and this mental picture will be called up constantly throughout the interaction. If taking context into account can be “misleading”, refusal to do so can be even worse. In a classroom, Heritage reminds us, we can have a non-didactic interaction and the opposite. But it is not because the teacher and pupils (or the doctor and patient) can from time to time in the classroom (or in the doctors’ office) produce an exchange which is apparently a conversation between peers that it will really be one. For example, in the co-constructed narrative taking place in a school analyzed by Mondada (1998:€252–3), the first ten turns give no explicit indication as to the status of the teacher; this does not mean, however, that it is a true “peer interaction”: the “members” are well aware of their respective status (which can be here considered as “omnirelevant”, cf.€Sacks 1992:€594–596), and this knowledge cannot help but influence their interpretation of conversational events. Moreover, when these markers occur, they have to be interpreted, which can only be achieved on the basis of prior conventionalization. I can understand that a speaker is “doing being teacher” or “doing being doctor” thanks to the kind of questions he asks; but



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

this understanding is based on my knowledge of some pre-existing correlations between a type of interactional behavior and a type of status or role. Lastly, the interactional effect produced by this “doing” depends entirely on whether or not the speaker really possesses teacher or doctor status,23 or to mention Sacks’ original example regarding this, the fact of “doing being ordinary” will not have the same interactional meaning if the “doing” is being done by a genuinely “ordinary” citizen or by the French President: the interactional meaning of any behavior is to be found somewhere at the crossroads between being and doing being, that is, at the interface between external and internal information. So an affirmation such as “context is not predefined” (Mondada 1998:€ 258) cannot be taken literally, it is useful above all for underlining that context is permanently recreated as the interaction goes along: the context is pre-existing to the interaction and constructed throughout the interaction at the same time. The analytic attitude which consists of pretending to discover the main characteristics of context only from some explicit markers occurring during the interaction is not only artificial but often misleading. For instance, when dealing with media-type interactions the audience needs absolutely to be taken into account, even though it is generally not explicitly referred to. It seems preferable to begin with the most relevant points of the context to which the members have access (“frame” of the interaction or its “schema”: type of setting, participation framework, goal of the exchange, etc.). Then we must see how these elements are activated in the discourse and how they may be changed and negotiated among the participants.24 In other words, we have to reconcile two ways of dealing with discursive data, labelled top-down and bottom-up by Aston (1988:€26): The schema provides initial presuppositions and expectations, but through the discursive process its instantiation may be modified and renegotiated on a bottom-up basis.

3. Analyzing an example: Good evening Mr Le Pen In order to illustrate the fact that when describing an interactional sequence, we have to resort to tools from various origins, I will take the example of this small 23. See Garfinkel for “breaching” experiments, and Goffman for “breaking frame” and “fraudulent identity”. We can also think of the fascinating “phoney” character, defined as someone whose “doings” are not in harmony with his “being”. 24. The notion of “conversational negotiation” appears best suited to deal with the reciprocal action between what exists before and what emerges during the interaction; on this notion see for example Roulet 1992 and Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2005: Chap.€2.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

excerpt from a television debate which took place in 2003 between Nicolas Sarkozy (who was Interior Minister at the time) and Jean-Marie Le Pen (President of the National Front party)25, and which will give me the chance to go back over the case of greetings. Sarkozy has already been on the show for a while and has been confronted with several members of the political arena. Le Pen makes his entrance, gives a general greeting, and makes himself comfortable as invited to do so by the host of the show Olivier Mazerolle (OM):





1 OM: monsieur Sarkozy alors euh Jean-Marie Le Pen président du Front National est avec nous euh vous allez débattre ensemble bonsoir monsieur Le Pen 2 LP: bonsoir/ 3 OM: voilà (.) prenez place (.) monsieur Le Pen […] 1 OM: so Mr Sarkozy euh Jean-Marie Le Pen the president of the National Front party is here with us euh and you are going to talk together good evening Mr Le Pen 2 LP: good evening/ 3 OM: right then (.) take a seat (.) Mr Le Pen […]

No sooner is he sitting down than he launches into a diatribe against the politicalmedia world for treating him as an “outcast”. Sarkozy lets him get on with his act for more than a minute. At the very moment when Le Pen after this general preamble turns towards Sarkozy, getting ready to attack, here is what happens: 4 LP: […] ASP26 monsieu:r/ le ministre de l’Intérieu:r/ vous me donnez l’impression::/ [ASP] 5 NS: [bonsoir/] monsieur Le Pen 6 LP: bonsoir/ bonsoir monsieu::r eh j’ai dit bonsoir en arrivant/ ASP mais euh vous étiez inclus collectiv- dans mon bonsoir collectif\

4 LP: […] ASP Mr Minister/ you seem to me::/ [ASP] 5 NS: [good evening/] Mr Le Pen 6 LP: good evening/ good evening si::r eh I did say good evening when I arrived/ ASP but uh you were included collectiv- in my collective greeting\ 25. This is the program 100 minutes pour convaincre [100 minutes to convince], France 2, 20th Nov. 2003. 26. ASP signals an audible inspiration.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

I will describe the greeting good evening Mr Le Pen, which appears identically twice (turns 1OM and 5NS), but with considerably different values due to the difference in sequential placement in the following way: As soon as we speak of a “greeting” it is necessary to turn to speech acts theory, since a greeting is a specific speech act, where the speaker “courteously indicates that he has recognized the listener”: such is the illocutionary value of so-called “greeting” utterances, according to Searle (1972:€107)27 who adds that this type of utterance is subject to the preliminary condition that “speaker and listener have just met”. This implies that the greeting should normally come at the very beginning of the interaction: this is in fact the case for the first occurrence of the greeting. This occurrence is also perfectly orthodox as far as sequencing is concerned: one greeting calls for another one in return (the exchange is “symmetrical”). Let us note, however, in the reactive move (or if preferred, in the second part of the adjacency pair), the absence of all term of address and the fact that it is collective (Le Pen utters this greeting as he walks towards his seat looking at no one in particular). The greeting delivered by Sarkozy (in 5) is more unusual: on the one hand it brutally interrupts Le Pen’s speech, on the other hand it arises when Sarkozy and Le Pen have been engaged in conversation for a while, it can therefore be considered as “misplaced” – but in part only for as Le Pen had until this point not been addressing Sarkozy exclusively, we can accept that “Mr Interior Minister” marks the beginning of a new interaction, embedded in the previous one (a “dilogue” finds itself embedded in a “polylogue”). The question is whether in a case like this a new exchange of greetings is necessary. Nothing is less sure: our ritual system is uncertain here, and the greeting is far from expected (in any case for Le Pen, whose norms apparently diverge from Sarkozy’s on this point, the greeting is totally unexpected). Nevertheless, due to its very specific placement, Sarkozy’s “good evening”, without ceasing to be a greeting, also serves as an indirect act of reproach. This value is the result of implicit reasoning like this: in engaging in an exchange with me you should have greeted me first, but you did not, so you lack good manners. It is also reinforced by intonation (markedly more rising than in turn 1OM), and also by the expression of triumph used by Sarkozy to welcome Le Pen’s reactive “good evening” (nodding his head up and down with a little smile), which is a sort of retroactive clue as to the indirect meaning of the reproach. Sarkozy’s utterance therefore receives a double illocutionary force: the force of a greeting conventionally attached to the “good evening”, and the force of a reproach which emerges in this particular context. It calls for a double reaction, 27. In fact, the “essential condition” of the greeting is rather that “the speaker indicates to the addressee that he has recognized him and/or intends to engage in a verbal exchange with him”.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

which indeed comes: obliged to return the greeting (which he repeats not without some annoyance), Le Pen also feels that he must justify his behavior (“I did say good evening when I arrived but you were included in my collective greeting”: his reaction to the reproach). Other interactional values (“perlocutionary” for speech acts theory) come along on top of these two illocutionary values, for example: The unexpected irruption of the greeting will upset the exchange and unsettle the opponent, as we can see in 7LP –€cut off in mid sentence, Le Pen is clearly thrown off balance, for at the end of his turn he is victim of a failure followed by a repair (“you were included in my collectiv- in my collective greeting”), which is not like him. In addition, this greeting will invalidate what has come before: since a greeting should normally appear at the very beginning of the exchange, what came before will to some extent become null and void; in this way Sarkozy suggests that the general preamble should not have taken place, and that Le Pen should have addressed him personally right from the beginning (Sarkozy’s reproach also concerns this point). In order to describe what happens at this moment of the interaction we can also call on face-work theory: A greeting is in principle an act of “courtesy” (see Searle’s definition above), in that it constitutes a “face flattering€act” (FFA), which is obviously the case with the host’s “good evening Mr Le Pen” (the politeness of the greeting is reinforced here by the term of address). But the FFA is seriously harmed by the way in which the greeting is used by Sarkozy afterwards, as a “face threatening act” (FTA) interfering with the greeting, namely the reproach aggravated by the interruption: Le Pen is severely reprimanded by Sarkozy and is obliged to justify his behavior like a naughty child (he is clearly placed in a low position by the reproach which is addressed to him). In such an example the threatening component is stronger than the flattering component and even cancels it out (here we have a sample of this “courteous delegitimization” which has been identified as one of Sarkozy’s favorite debating strategies). Finally we could call on Goffman for his work on “presentation of self ” and correlative construction of self-image and of that of others throughout the interaction: in this way Sarkozy, killing two birds with one stone, uses the greeting to show that he is a polite debater (even if this politeness is rather suspect here), and to label his opponent as having an unmannerly ethos. We can call upon Goffman again for the notions he has introduced in order to describe the “participation framework” –€in this example the setting is complex as we are dealing with a media interaction, the exchange taking place on the TV set is in fact a show intended for another party: the audience, who for the most part, we can imagine are overjoyed at the trick Sarkozy has played on Le Pen, who has the reputation of being a very skilled debater.

 Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

Obviously when necessary other tools can be called upon depending on the needs of the description. But this short example allows us to get some idea as to what an eclectic, and correlatively syncretic approach can mean, as it draws on descriptive resources taken from diverse fields of analysis and puts them together. This eclecticism is justified by the fact that discourse, and more especially discourse-in-interaction, functions on different levels which are both distinct and articulated (management of turns-at-talk, semantic-pragmatic coherence of the dialogue, global as well as local organization, face-work and ritualistic constraints), one same item working simultaneously on several levels, for example: – In “Can you close the door please?”, please acts as both a marker of illocutionary derivation (confirming the question’s indirect request value which is already suggested by the conventionalization of the structure and by the extralinguistic context), and as a softener of the face threatening act that the request constitutes. – In “I’d just like a baguette”, the adverb just firstly serves to prospectively organize the interaction by projecting that the transaction will merely consist of one purchase and that the shop assistant will have no need to ask “anything else?” afterwards. “Just” also has a ritualistic purpose: it is a kind of apology (the customer is sorry for issuing such a banal request); this adverb tends to appear systematically, in this context of small shops, when the request is for a product whose value is inferior to an agreed norm, defined according to either the average of the other transactions carried out in this setting or more locally to the prior transaction. 4. Concluding remarks CA has established the golden rule of absolute respect of data, which should be observed “carefully, closely, seriously, open-mindedly” (Schegloff 1999:€581). For us, “open-mindedly” means that we can make use of all available analytical resources, as long as they are compatible and adapted to both the object and the objective of the description. Thus, I have tried to show that in order to account effectively for what happens in interactions, it is often desirable –€and indeed in some cases even essential€– to include theoretical propositions from different paradigms (for example, we cannot do without the notion of speech act to describe the sequential organization of a conversation, or the notion of face-work to describe preference organization). In their introduction to (On) Searle on conversation (1992:€ 5), Parret and Verschueren evoke “the classical debate concerning the complementarity or the exclusivity of different orientations within pragmatics”. Personally, I am inclined to



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

favor complementarity, which makes description much richer and more exciting, albeit less “pure” –€if any approach can ever be totally pure: no model is made up of exclusively endogenous notions, for concepts spread out, migrate and cross school and even disciplinary boundaries (as the notion of “interaction” itself illustrates). This commitment in favor of complementarity (that is “eclectism”) is not without risks, as regards the global coherence of the description. The problem of how to connect the different layers of analysis, and how to put together a kind of “integrated model” which would take into account the different constraints that condition the construction of conversations (“technical” constraints such as turntaking, linguistic constraints, ritualistic and cognitive constraints too...) also arises. This point can perhaps be considered premature.28 To conclude, I would rather come back to the question of interpretation, which is central to discourse analysis. As we consider like Gumperz (in Eerdmans, Prevignano and Thibault 2002:€150) that the analysis of discourse-in-interaction’s main objective is to try to understand “how speakers understand each other”, we must accept the leitmotiv of conversation analysis whereby the analysis should “take on the members’ point of view”. But what exactly should we understand by that? Not that the analyst’s job is the same as that of the participants: the conditions in which these two categories of interpreters find themselves are different in all respects. With regard to the “members”, the analyst is both at a disadvantage (he generally does not have all the relevant contextual information at hand)29 and at an advantage as he has time (to review the recording at leisure, and continue to discover new relevant details), and a full set of theoretical tools and descriptive categories, which are never “natural” ones.30 They are categories which have been constructed in the context of a specific theory – TCUs, adjacency pairs, preliminaries, repairs, etc. are certainly not “membership categories”; and even apparently “commonsense” categories such as “turn” or “interruption” must be redefined and refined in order to become operative. Clearly this does not mean either that the analyst leaves full responsibility of interpretative work to the members: even if the conversation sometimes carries “metaconversational” elements, it goes without saying that the presence in the corpus of a term like “request” or “interruption” is not in any way a necessary condition (nor even in some cases a sufficient one) for identifying a request or an interruption. To adopt the members’ point of view can only mean that the analyst’s 28. See, however, Roulet et al.’s “modular” model (Roulet, Fillietaz and Grobet 2001) which proposes an integrated representation of the different constitutive dimensions of all kinds of discourse, be it monological or dialogical.€ 29. Unless he himself also took part in the interaction, which in turn creates other problems. 30. See Segerdahl 2003:€95€; and Schmale 2008 on folk conceptions of conversation (the study shows how far they are from scientists’ conceptions).



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

interpretation must be seen as a reconstruction of the participants’ interpretation, which is achieved by means that are only partially the same, and explicitly expressed in a suitable metalanguage. Whether it concerns the participants or the analyst, the interpretative activity always consists of extracting meanings from meaningful material delivered by the speakers, by calling up interpretative resources of a very various nature. This activity is always a real “job”, despite what we could conclude from some affirmations like this one: Mutual understanding is thus displayed, to use Garfinkel’s term, “incarnately” in the sequentially organized details of conversational interaction. Moreover, because these understandings are publicly produced, they are available as a resource for social scientific analysis. (Heritage 1984:€259; emphasis added)

This conception, which represents the participants as working towards “displaying publicly” the interpretation that has to be attributed to their utterances, is very comfortable for the analyst, who has just to examine these utterances in detail in order to extract their meaning. We can never emphasize enough the importance that should be accorded to even the slightest details of the utterances to be analyzed; but it is not enough to look, even very closely, at the data to miraculously have access to their meaning. Indeed, the principles of availability and accountability reformulate in their own way the semiotic principle: what is “displayed” are “signifiers” (in French signifiants –€“cues”, “markers”, “indicators” or “features”), which orient us towards specific meanings (in French signfiés). But these signifiers are no more “transparent”31 in a dialogue than in a monologue: describing always means interpreting, with some degree of subjectivity and risk inherent to this process. Interpreting dialogical discourse is, in fact, even more complex than interpreting monological discourse, as it involves reconstructing the interpretations made by the different participants turn after turn.32 The conversation analyst is an “archinterpreter”: he has to hypothesize step by step about the interpretative hypotheses of conversationalists who are involved in the dynamic process of collectively and sometimes conflictually constructing interactions. The higher the number of participants and the more complex the participation framework, the more difficult 31. For an example of this confidence in the “transparency of understanding”, see LeBaron and Koschman 2003 (where they talk above all about gestures which accompany verbal material –€gestures which are more or less iconic, therefore effectively more or less “transparent”, but the authors do not even discuss this very fundamental point). This text also illustrates the fact that what appears today to be a sort of denial of the semiotic process goes hand in hand with the dread of “mentalism” and the obsession of “objective” analysis (like in the good old days of distributionalism and behaviorism). 32. The linear nature of interpretative work does not rule out the possibility of “retro-interpretation”.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction 

the analyst’s task will be. For example, when dealing with a TV talk show he has to take into account not only the different participants in the studio but also the audience, which is made up of “members” whose understanding is not made “available” during the communicative event, and which is most heterogeneous. How these different participants interpret the interaction depends on their point of view (in every sense of the word) on the interactional scene, as well as on their background information, which cannot be completely reconstructed by the analyst. To finish, let us remember that the process of collective discourse construction is first made possible by the linguistic and more generally communicative competence of the participants, that means their knowledge of all kinds of conventions which are pre-existent to discourse (these rules that “generate the sequences”, to come back to Sacks quoted at the beginning of this article) and which are continuously activated and negotiated throughout – but no negotiation would be possible without a prior set of rules (which can themselves be subject to negotiation). If the progression of the exchange develops in such a tentative way, by incessant failures and repairs, this relentless search for the correct word, the appropriate expression and the right construction proves very clearly the existence of a system of rules that have been internalized by the participants in the interaction, and to which they do their best to conform. The analysis constantly refers (consciously or not, explicitly or not) to these rules – grammatical rules, pragmatic rules such as those which regulate speech acts, or lexical rules such as those on which activities of “categorization” are founded: for example, a speaker can categorize his emotional state via the term “angry” and its conventional meaning; if he says later that he is “furious”, we will be led to conclude that he “recategorizes” his state, even in the absence of any marker such as “I am even furious”, because we know that in English, the terms “angry” and “furious” are not synonymous. In other words: discourse analysts constantly make use of their linguistic knowledge; study of “language system” and study of “language uses and practices” are to be seen as definitely complementary. We cannot seriously claim that language reinvents itself in each moment of discourse. What is problematic, however, is knowing to what extent the linguistic system is affected by interaction and more particularly with regard to turn-taking constraints (given that language use is far from being limited to interactive contexts). This question is today under debate within CA (see for example Ochs, Schegloff and Thompson 1996). Schegloff is cautious about this point (saying in Prevignano and Thibault eds. 2003, 168: “it seems to me too early to offer ‘answers’ to these questions”), whereas others go so far as to claim that “language is interactionally structured”, and that “linguistic resources […] are shaped by interactional principles” (Mondada 2000:€24). This point needs to be clarified, therefore, just as the question as to what we should understand by “emergent” grammar (Hopper



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

1988, Streeck 1996) –€we can wonder if this term really means anything different than the traditional idea that the language system is nothing but a sedimentation of language use,33 as Saussure or Benveniste already said: C’est dans le discours […] que la langue se forme et se configure. On pourrait dire, calquant une formule classique: nihil est in lingua quod non prius fuerit in oratione. (Benveniste 1966:€131)34

These sedimentation phenomena can only be dealt with from a diachronic point of view. In one particular instance of discourse-in-interaction, what we can observe is the collective and tentative construction of malleable utterances according to a set of flexible rules: Conversation is like playing tennis with a ball made of Krazy Putty that keeps coming back over the net in a different shape. (David Lodge, Small World, Penguin Books, 1985:€25)

References Aston, Guy. 1988. “What’s a public service encounter anyway?” In Negotiating Service, Guy Aston (ed.), 25–43. Bologna: CLUEB. Atkinson, J. Maxwell and Heritage, John (eds.). 1984. Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation analysis. Cambridge: CUP. Benveniste, Emile. 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard. Billig, Michael. 1999. “Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis: an exchange between Michael Billig and Emanuel A. Schegloff ”. Discourse & Society 10 (4): 543–582. Bilmes, Jack. 1996. “Problems and resources in analyzing Northern Thai conversation for English language readers”. Journal of Pragmatics 26: 171–188. Brown, Penelope and Fraser, Colin. 1979. “Speech as a marker of situation”. In Social Markers in Speech, Klaus R. Scherer and Howard Giles (eds.), 33–62. Cambridge: CUP. Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen. 1978. “Universals in language use: Politeness phenomena”. In Questions and Politeness. Strategies in Social Interaction, Esther Goody (ed.), 56–289. Cambridge: CUP.

33. Concerning the question as to whether grammar precedes discourse or whether “grammar is secondary to discourse” (as Hopper asserts, 1988:€121), it reminds us of the sophistic question about which came first, the chicken or the egg; and regarding the drastic opposition he makes between two conceptions of grammar, “a priori” vs. “emergent” (supposedly belonging respectively to a “structuralist” vs. “hermeneutic” ideology), this is made possible by caricaturing the first conception as being “a deterministic view of grammar as a static, prioristic, complete system” (ibid.: 132), which no one has ever advocated. 34. “It is in discourse […] that the language is formed and configured. […]. One could say, to borrow a classical formula: nothing exists in language that was not before in discourse”.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction  Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: CUP. Cooren, François. 2004. “The Contribution of Speech Act Theory to the Analysis of Conversation: How Presequences Work”. In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction, Kristine L. Fitch and Robert E. Sanders (eds.), 21–40. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Duranti, Alessandro and Goodwin, Charles (eds.). 1992. Rethinking Context. Cambridge: CUP. Eerdmans, Susan L., Previgano, Carlo L. and Thibault, Paul J. (eds.). 2002. Language and Interaction. Discussions with John Gumperz. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Eggins, Susanne and Slade, Diana. 1997. Analysing Casual Conversation. London/New York: Continuum. Fetzer, Anita and Meierkord, Christiane (eds.). 2002. Rethinking Sequentiality. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Goffman, Erving. 1981: Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Goodwin, Charles. 1981. Conversational organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Gumperz, John. 2002. “Response essay”. In Eerdmans et al. (eds.) 2002, 105–126. Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Heritage, John. 1995. “Conversation Analysis. Methodological aspects”. In Aspects of Oral Communication, Uta M. Quasthoff (ed.), 391–418. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Hopper, Paul J. 1988. “Emergent Grammar and the A Priori Grammar Postulate”. In Linguistics in Context: Connecting Observation and Understanding, Deborah Tannen (ed.), 117–134. Norwood: Ablex. House, Juliane. 2000. “Understanding misunderstanding: A pragmatic-discourse approach to analysing mismanaged rapport in talk across cultures”. In Culturally Speaking, Helen Spencer-Oatey (ed.), 145–164. London/New York: Continuum. Hymes, Dell. 1972. “Models of the interaction of language and social life”. In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.), 35–71. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Wilson. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1990–1992–1994. Les interactions verbales (3 vol.). Paris: A.€Colin. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 2001. Les actes de langage dans le discours. Paris: Nathan. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 2004a. “Introducing Polylogue”. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1–24. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 2004b. “Que peut-on faire avec du dire?”. Cahiers de Linguistique Française 26 (“Les modèles du discours face au concept d’action”): 27–43. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 2005. Le discours en interaction. Paris: Nathan. LeBaron, Curtis D. and Koschmann, Timothy. 2003. “Gesture and the transparency of Understanding”. In Studies in Language and Social Interaction. In Honor of Robert Hopper, Phillip J. Glenn et al. (eds),119–132. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lerner, Gene H. 1996. “Finding ‘Face’ in the Preference Structures of Talk-in-Interaction”. Social Psychology Quaterly 59 (4): 303–321. Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: CUP. Marandin, Jean-Marie. 1987. “Des mots et des actions: ‘compliment’, ‘complimenter’ et l’action de complimenter”. Lexique 5: 65–99. Mey, Jacob. 1994. Pragmatics: An Introduction. London: Blackwell. Mondada, Lorenza. 1998. “Variations sur le contexte en linguistique”. Cahiers de l’ILSL 11: 243–266.



Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni Mondada, Lorenza. 2000. “Analyse conversationnelle et ‘grammaire-pour-l’interaction’”. In Modèles du discours en confrontation, A.-C. Berthoud and L. Mondada (eds.), 23–42. Berne: Peter Lang. Ochs, Elinor, Schegloff, Emmanuel A, and Thompson, Sandra A. 1996. Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: CUP. Parret, Herman and Verschueren, Jef. 1992. “(On) Searle on conversation: An introduction”. In Searle et al. 1992, 1–5. Pomerantz, Anita. 1978. “Compliment Responses”. In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, J. Schenkein (ed.), 79–112. New York: Academic Press. Prevignano, Carlo L. and Thibault, Paul J. (eds.). 2003. Discussing Conversation Analysis. The work of Emanuel A. Schegloff. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Roulet, Eddy.1992. “On the Structure of Conversation as Negotiation”. In Searle et al. 1992, 91–99. Roulet, Eddy, Fillietaz, Laurent and Grobet, Anne. 2001. Un modèle et instrument d’analyse de l’organization du discours. Berne: Peter Lang. Sacks, Harvey. 1987. “On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation”. In Talk and Social organization, Graham Button and John R.E. Lee (eds.), 54–69. Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters LDT. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation (2 vol.). Oxford (UK)/Cambridge (USA): Blackwell. Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Jefferson, Gail. 1974. “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation”. Language 50: 696–735. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1972. “Sequencing in conversational opening”. In Directions in Sociolinguistics: the Ethnography of Communication, John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds), 346–380. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1984. “On some questions and ambiguities in conversation”. In Atkinson and Heritage (eds.) 1984, 28–52. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1986. “The routine as achievement”. Human Studies 9: 111–151. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1987. “Entre Micro et Macro: Contextes et Relations”. Sociétés 14: 17–22. Schegloff, Emanuel A.1988. “Presequences and indirection. Applying speech act theory to ordinary conversation”. Journal of Pragmatics 12: 55–62. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992a. “To Searle on Conversation: A Note in Return”. In Searle et al. 1992, 113–128. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992b. “In another context”. In Duranti and Goodwin (eds.) 1992, 193–227. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1999. “Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis: an exchange between Michael Billig and Emanuel A. Schegloff ”. Discourse & Society 10 (4): 543–582. Schmale, Günter. 2008. “Conceptions populaires de la conversation”. Pratiques 139–140: 5–80. Searle, John R. 1972. Les actes de langage. Paris: Hermann [Translation of Speech acts, Cambridge, CUP, 1969]. Searle, John R. et al. 1992. (On) Searle on Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Segerdahl, Pär. 2003. “Conversation analysis as a rigourous science”. In Prevignano and Thibault (eds.) 2003, 91–108. Selting, Margret. 2000. “The construction of units in conversational talk”. Language in Society 29 (4): 477–517. Sinclair, John Mac H. and Coulthard, R. Malcolm. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The English used by Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford University Press. Streeck, Jürgen. 1980. “Speech Acts in Interaction: A Critique of Searle”. Discourse Processes 3: 133–154.



The case for an eclectic approach to discourse-in-interaction  Streeck, Jürgen. 1996. “A little Ilokano grammar as it appears in interaction”. Journal of Pragmatics 26: 189–213. Thibault, Paul J. 2002. “Contextualization and social meaning-making practices”. In Eerdmans et al. (eds.) 2002, 41–61. Vicher Anna, and Sankoff, David. 1989: “The emergent syntax of pre-sentential turn openings”. Journal of Pragmatics 13: 81–97. Wetherell, Margaret. 1998. “Positioning and interpretative repertoires: conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue”. Discourse & Society 9 (3): 387–412.

Grammar A neglected resource in interaction analysis? Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

Simon Fraser University and University of Helsinki Our aim in this paper is to explore the variety of ways in which grammar can be used as a resource for interaction. We propose that a grammatical analysis of social interaction needs to take two perspectives into account. The first involves showing how the meaning of a grammatical unit depends on its context of use (Schegloff 1996). The second involves identifying speakers’ specific choices of grammatical categories (e.g., verbs, nouns, etc.) and showing how these categories combine to create specific inference-rich meanings (Halliday 1978, 1994). Drawing from couples therapy data, we show that by adopting grammatical categories into our analysis, a unique perspective on the moment-to-moment unfolding of therapy can be provided.

1. Introduction There seems to be a growing trend in conversation analytic research these days in which increasing attention is being given to the relationship between language and social interaction. On the one hand, the emergent interest in language stems from the observation that ‘words’ play a key role in constructing our social lives and relationships. As Lerner (2004a: 93) has argued in a recent special issue on Practices of Turn Construction in Conversation, “The words people use in conversation with others are not only building blocks for sentences. Words are issued as part of the unfolding lives of their speakers in almost all social encounters with others – and most of these encounters are organized by talk-in-interaction.” On the other hand, this renewed interest has been fueled by a different kind of research agenda, one that we feel is even more significant; this is the recognition that grammar is a central

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

resource used in social interaction1 (see Ochs, Schegloff and Thompson 1996). One major line of research in this regard focuses on grammatical projectability in turn taking. In this work, grammar is seen as an interactional resource that allows speakers to project (i.e., infer) actions in progress and possible turn completions (Goodwin 1986; Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson’s 1974; Schegloff 1996). Moreover, since different languages may use different clause formats, a speaker’s ability to project turn completions may depend on the language being spoken (see Thompson and Couper-Kuhlen (2005) for a comparison of English and Japanese). To those linguists who adopt a functional approach to language – who have an interest in language in use – this endorsement of grammar from conversation analysts is certainly welcome. But for all the renewed interest in words and the grammatical formats of turns and turn constructional units, conversation analysts still seem to be somewhat wary about the extent to which grammar, and linguistic categories/concepts in particular, may play a role in explaining social interaction. There are, presumably, many reasons for why grammar has an equivocal status. One reason involves the conversation analytic tenet that any analysis of social interaction must be sensitive to participants’ orientations to meanings. This means that if categories are imported into an analysis, the analyst must demonstrate that conversational participants are in some way orienting to these categories. As a result, linguistic categories such as Agent, Subject, Modality, Theme can only form part of an analysis if these categories can be shown to be interactionally relevant to the conversational participants and to the trajectory of the interaction.2 A second reason stems from Schegloff ’s (1984) observation that there is no one-to-one relationship between grammatical structure and social action. For example, a turn containing a wh-interrogative (“why don’t you come and see me sometimes”) does 1. It should be noted that in systemic linguistics, words (i.e., lexis) and grammar are considered to be part of the same phenomenon, with lexis being the most delicate realization of the grammar (see Hasan 1987). 2. An even stronger constraint on analyst categories comes from the conversation analytic view on social context and sociological variables. Schegloff takes a very strong position on this issue, arguing that all interpretations of the data must be endogenously grounded in the details of talk-in-interation; for, as Schegloff (1997:€165) very forcefully argues in his abstract, “…this is a useful constraint on analysis in disciplining work to the indigenous preoccupations of the everyday world being grasped, and serving as a buffer against the potential for academic and theoretical imperialism which imposes intellectual’s preoccupations on a world without respect to their indigenous resonance.” To put it briefly, Schegloff is arguing against “critical discursive” research that assumes certain sociological variables such as gender or class to be relevant to the text, without first having looked at the text. Schegloff ’s position is to examine the details of the text first, and then see if any meaningful links can be made to such sociological variables. From this we can assume that any links postulated between grammar and social interaction will be put to the same test.



Grammar 

not necessarily function as a question. Rather, it may be doing different things such as inviting (Schegloff 1984:€31). A third reason may be Schegloff ’s (1996) insistence that grammar is only one resource among many others that speakers draw from in instances of collaborative meaning making; laughter, silences, aspirations, cut-offs, sound stretches, gestures, etc. may all influence the structure of a turn constructional unit in progress (Schegloff 1996:€103–104). All in all, conversation analysts seem to be fairly cautious when asked about the relationship between grammar and other levels of language or social organization. When Schegloff was asked in an interview if he could “… clarify the bi-directional relationship between the levels of grammar, or linguistic forms, and turns in conversation and their organization?”3, part of his response was “It seems to me too early to offer “answers” to these questions yet. In fact, it is probably too early to know yet whether these are the right questions, or ones formulated in the most productive way” (Prevignano and Thibault 2003:€167–168). Faced with these caveats concerning which categories can or should be included in an analysis of social interaction, linguists may feel that they must tread carefully for fear of focusing too much on grammatical structure and not enough on interactive meaning making. We would argue, however, that by taking a functional linguistic approach to social interaction, linguistic categories can be used in an analysis without compromising the concerns raised by conversation analysts. An approach that we feel is particularly well suited for this endeavour is systemic functional linguistics (Halliday 1994). In this chapter we aim to demonstrate some important ways in which speakers’ grammatical structures realize (and are realized in) social interaction. Drawing from a systemic functional linguistic (hereafter SFL) approach, we argue that a grammatical analysis does not necessarily detract from how other meaning-making resources are being deployed in interaction; especially if the analytic focus includes meaning or function in addition to structure. Nor does a grammatical analysis using grammatical categories necessarily imply that an analyst’s as opposed to a participant’s perspective on social interaction is being taken. For example, showing that speakers are meaningfully linking their grammatical structures to other places within the interaction provides a strong warrant for saying that speakers are drawing from (i.e., orienting to) various grammatical structures and meanings.

3. The complete question was: “From your perspective, could you clarify the bi-directional relationship between the levels of grammar, or linguistic forms, and turns in conversation and their organization? In other words, how do you see constraints emanating from the level of grammar operating in relation to turn-taking in conversation and the construction of turns, and, secondly, how does turn-taking impinge on grammar and its specific contribution?” (Prevignano and Thibault 2003:€167)

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

In the remainder of this paper, we attempt to explore the concept of social interaction from an SFL perspective, by showing how speakers draw on grammatical resources in situations of meaning making. In particular, we focus on three different modes of the grammar that are commonly referred to as interpersonal, ideational and textual (see Halliday 1994). We aim also to make links with studies in conversation analysis (hereafter CA) and CA-related approaches that have an interest in the meaning making potential of grammar. Our goal, therefore, is not simply to illustrate that the grammar is functionally-oriented, but also to show that, in Schegloff ’s (1996) sense, that the grammar is “positionally sensitive” to the interactional context in which it occurs. 2. Grammar in conversation analytic(-related) work The importance of grammar in CA (and CA-related) work can be succinctly summarized as follows: “Grammar is not only a resource for interaction and not only an outcome of interaction, it is part of the essence of interaction itself. Or, to put it another way, grammar is inherently interactional” (Schegloff, Ochs and Thompson 1996:€28). This clearly takes any notion of grammar away from the more formal linguistic position that grammars are autonomous systems. What is highlighted instead is the grammar’s ‘role’ in discourse and its positional or context sensitivity; grammars are resources for doing things, but they also derive their meaning from the surrounding talk. A wonderful example of this is how a seemingly ‘simple’ word such as “oh” can mean a variety of things depending on how it is uttered and where it occurs within a sequence of turns (Heritage 1998). Every CA-type analysis will, of course, involve examining words and/or grammatical structures to some degree. Sacks’ “Lectures on Conversation” are filled with examples in which he shows how a speaker’s choice of words and grammatical elements form a constitutive part of social interaction. Most CA studies, however, do not take grammar as a point of departure for their investigations; that is, conversation analysts are not interested in grammar per se, but in how language more generally is used to make meanings and construct a social world in common. But there are studies in CA that place special emphasis on words and grammar. We mention but a few of these studies that have focused specifically on English. Turning first to the study of ‘words in use’, much work has been done on membership categories (see especially Sacks 1992 and Antaki and Widdicombe 1998), conjunctions (Heritage and Sorjonen 1994; Raymond 2004; Streeck 2002; Turk 2004), evidentials such as ‘seem’ and ‘think’ (Roth 2002; Heritage and Raymond 2005) and response tokens such as ‘uh huh’, ‘mm’, ‘yeah’, ‘oh’ (Beach 1993; Gardner 1997, 2001; Heritage 1984b, 1998; Jefferson 1984; Schegloff 1982). Turning



Grammar 

now to grammatical structures, studies have focused on mood such as interrogatives (Heritage and Roth 1995; Raymond 2003), reported speech (Holt and Clift 2007), sentence grammar (Goodwin 1981), sentence/turn completions and extensions (Lerner 1991, 2004b), turn-constructional-units (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974; Schegloff 1996) and footing (Clayman 1992; Antaki et al. 1996). Other approaches to language that draw heavily from CA methodology have also contributed substantially to our understanding of how grammars are used in discursive contexts. One approach that especially foregrounds speakers’ uses of linguistic (i.e., syntactic and prosodic) resources is known as interactional linguistics (for recent overviews see Barth-Weingarten 2008 and Selting 2008). Another approach, known as discursive psychology, aims to reconceptualize ‘psychological’ phenomena such as ‘memory’, ‘affect’ and ‘perception’ in discursive and rhetorical terms (Edwards 1997; Edwards and Potter 1992; 2005; Potter 1996, 1998). In particular, their work has contributed to our awareness of how ‘cognitive’ terms such as ‘thinking’, ‘wanting’, ‘knowing’ and the like are positionally relevant and may do a variety of discursive and rhetorical work. This theme of ‘mental predicates’ and how they operate as interactional resources has also been taken up by ethnomethodologists. Most notable is their examination of the interactional operations of memory and how expressions involving ‘remember’, ‘recall’ and ‘forget’ can do accounting work by avoiding blame (Coulter 1985; Lynch and Bogen 2005). In CA, the interest in words and grammatical structures has largely been on their ‘positional sensitivity’ within a sequence of talk (Schegloff 1996). This corresponds to a ‘view from above’ in which language is examined with respect to the social and interactional context in which it is embedded (see Halliday 1978). Linguists, however, are often prone to take what Halliday calls a ‘view from within’; that is, grammar is examined with respect to its component grammatical structures (e.g., prepositional phrases, nominal groups, verbal groups). For instance, some grammatical approaches are interested in examining the ‘grammatical’ company that a certain verb takes. The verb ‘walk’, for example, takes a noun phrase (someone who does who walking) and may, but need not, take a prepositional phrase indicating temporal duration or the target location of the walk (e.g., ‘for an hour’, ‘to the store’). Examining a clause in this way can provide us with information about how combinations of words are construing experience. What this means is that the grammar of a word, e.g., walk, can tell us something about its meaning. Some ethnomethodologists such as Coulter (1985, 1989, 1999) have been strong proponents of this form of grammatical analysis. In his work on ‘forgetting’ and ‘remembering’, Coulter (1985) argues that an understanding of what ‘forgetting’ means requires grammatical inquiry along the lines of Wittgenstein (1958) and Ryle (1949). For example, the term forgetting is not an activity-type verb such as walking or playing. We do not generally ask “when did you forget?” (i.e., at what

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

specific hour/minute/second did you forget?) or “how long did your forgetting take?”4 Through various forms of grammatical tests we can tease out the behaviour of verbs and determine whether they construe states (know, believe), activities (run, walk), accomplishments (paint a picture, make a table) or achievements (win a race, realize).5, Functional linguists would also call attention to the kind of situation or event that the clause and/or verb is bringing into existence (e.g., Dik 1997; Halliday 1994; van Valin and Lapolla 1997). But, as someone more interested in discourse (and less in clause grammar) may ask, how would knowing that a verb construes a state or activity tell us anything about a social interaction? Wouldn’t this just merely be a linguist’s concern in sorting out verb typologies? We would argue that it certainly can be a participant’s concern. Consider example (1), taken from a couples therapy session. The transcript notation used for all examples is shown in Table€1. Table 1.╇ Transcript Notation (.) (1.0) [] = : underline CAPS .hh hh () (?) ((laughter)) ((coughing))

untimed short pause (less than .5 seconds) timed pause overlapping speech, e.g., A: how was the [movie ] B: [great ] contiguos utterance e.g., A: how was the movie= B: =great extended sound, e.g., we:::ll emphasis greater emphasis in breath outbreath e.g., t(hhh)ake transcriber’s guess at speaker utterance unidentifiable speaker Non-speech vocalizations are placed in double parentheses

4. Coulter was principally arguing against cognitive science views of the ‘mental’, in which remembering and forgetting are viewed as processes that involve storage, retrieval, etc. Coulter’s point is that our grammar reveals that we do not understand these terms as being activities. 5. This typology of verb-types is taken from Vendler (1967). Ryle (1949) proposed similar categories such as ‘act-verb’, ‘achievement-verb’ and ‘success-verb’.



Grammar 

(1) →

1 Ther: 2 3 Ther: 4 Ther: 5 Mark: 6 Mark:

a::nd ((directs gaze at S)) what was the occasion of your, [(0.5) ] [((shifts gaze towards M)) ] split. (in February) domestic violence. ((gazes at T, slightly raises eyebrows when saying “domestic”))

The therapist asks Mark what caused (i.e., occasioned) Mark and Stacey’s (Mark’s spouse) separation, to which Mark replies “domestic violence.” Now, although Mark does not supply an actual ‘verb’, we may infer an activity-type event realized in the nominalized form of “violence” in which a certain kind of (violent) action has taken place. Furthermore, there is the implication that there are two ‘participants’ involved in the action: this would be someone doing the action and someone (or something) to whom the action is done. From the classifier “domestic”, we may also infer that the violence is done to someone, and in this particular case it is more specifically an act of spousal violence. But, the way it stands, we do not know from Mark’s response who was violent to whom. This information is left unspecified. In order to show that it is not just us analysts but more importantly it is the therapist who is also orienting to these implied meanings, let us examine from example (2) what immediately follows. (2) →

7 Ther: 8 9 Ther: 10 11 Ther:

o:kay. ((makes ‘body’ nod, nodding head and leg)) (1.8) ((maintains gaze with M)) on uh, (1.0) on yer part?

What the therapist does in line 11 is prompt Mark to expand on his response (see Muntigl and Hadic Zabala 2008 on therapist prompts), and the Therapist does so by designing his prompt so as to grammatically latch onto Mark’s noun phrase: “domestic violence … on yer part?” The prompt targets the ‘who to whom’ information and one could well imagine that this sort of information may be important for a therapist in sorting out the degree of violence in the relationship.€What this brief example shows is that speakers are attuned to how experience gets construed and they will, therefore, pay close attention to the grammar of these construals. The therapist worked to unpack the unspecified yet inferable information deriving from the nominalized term “domestic violence”.6 Other relevant information 6. Now, of course, conversation analysts are aware that terms and categories are inference-rich (see Sacks 1992). In CA terms, the production of membership categories such as ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ will immediately make relevant specific meanings. In a similar vein, Potter (1996) argues that certain terms carry with them certain category entitlements that can map onto certain

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

associated with the expression “domestic violence” was also elicited by the therapist later on in the sequence. This included ‘what form the violence took’ (pushing Stacey through the door backwards), ‘how the violence came about’ (initiated by drinking) and ‘the result of the violent episode’ (physical injury). To sum up, although we whole-heartedly agree with the general claim made within CA that sequence and turn-taking organization provides the architecture for negotiating meaning and intersubjectivity (Heritage 1984a; Schegloff 2007), we would also add that the grammar, and what we will be later referring to as interpersonal, ideational and textual grammar, can influence how a sequence of social actions gets played out. For the remainder of this paper, we show how Hallidayan functional linguistics offers some powerful conceptual tools with which one can identify ‘grammars in use’. 3. A brief view of grammar & interaction in systemic functional linguistics Within an SFL approach, interaction can be generally defined as persons engaged in a collaborative meaning making activity that occurs in a socially relevant context; as writers/readers if we are dealing with written text, or speakers/hearers if we are dealing with spoken text. What makes the SFL approach to interaction distinctive is the special focus given to language and social context in the meaning making process (for extensive overviews of SFL theory see Halliday 1978, 1994, 2003, 2005; Halliday and Hasan 1985; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999). We will address language first. According to Halliday (1975), language has developed in response to three kinds of social-functional ‘needs’. The first is to be able to construe experience in terms of what is going on around us and inside us. The second is to interact with the social world by negotiating social roles and attitudes. The third and final need is to be able to create messages with which we can package our meanings in terms of what is New or Given, and in terms of what the starting point for our message is, commonly referred to as the Theme. Halliday (1978) calls these social roles or epistemic rights. Potter (1996:€ 133) provides an example of the differences in categorizing a ‘newspaper reporter’ as ‘journalist’ or ‘hack’. Whereas the former category can evoke meanings of ‘objectivity’ and ‘truth’, the latter may instead call to mind contrastive meanings such as ‘subjectivity’ and ‘corruption’. Returning to the therapy example, the term ‘domestic violence’ is also a category that generates certain kinds of inferences. Our point is that some of these inferences are bound up with the grammar of violence, as in ‘X does Y to Z’ where ‘does Y’ is a violent act, X is the doer and Y is the one to whom the violent act is done. Further, violent acts can be construed as having causes and results. A nominalization, however, leaves a range of meanings unspecified and in this way opens the door to their future specification and negotiation in the unfolding interaction.



Grammar 

language functions metafunctions, and refers to them as ideational, interpersonal and textual respectively. Halliday’s point is that any piece of language calls into play all three metafunctions simultaneously. Let us take the clause in lines 07–08 from Ex. (3) as an example, which is taken from a different couples therapy session. 07 Wen: he likes to lecture? (1.2) on any: any subject 08 that he feels even mildly uh uh y’know animated abou::t

Ideationally, the speaker is construing experience in terms of how she views her husband’s behaviour. This construal is realized in three parts. He is given the participant role of ‘behaver’, likes to lecture realizes a ‘behavioural process’ and on any: any subject that… realizes the ‘aboutness’ of the husband’s behaviour. Interpersonally, the clause is a highly evaluative statement about the husband. Evaluation is accomplished by linking the husband’s behaviour with meanings such as desire and strong inclination. Through these links the husband’s behaviour may gain the interpretation of being overly persistent and extreme or not quite ‘normal’. Textually, the clause places the husband in thematic position, with the new information realizing the scope of the husband’s lecturing. In other words, the clause is ‘about’ the husband and the new information involves the husband’s ‘extreme’ or overly persistent behaviour. Although, as we mentioned before, all three metafunctions are always ‘in operation’ for any given discourse, the interpersonal dimension does seem to play a prominent role in social interaction. This is because the interpersonal mode provides such resources as epistemic modal expressions, social actions and the organization of actions in sequence. This is very much in keeping with the CA concept of sequence organization as “…the vehicle for getting some activity accomplished” (Schegloff 2007:€2). The interpersonal mode can thus be seen as a frame in which the other metafunctions are realized; our ways of construing experience (ideational) and organizing our message (textual) is framed by our unfolding collaborative actions. The above illustration served to briefly sketch out the relationship between the different language functions and the various clause units that helped to realize those functions. Function, therefore, is closely tied up with the clause and the clause’s units. Changing the content of a clause (i.e., modifying a clause’s grammatical structure by inserting a different verbal group or prepositional phrase) will certainly have an impact on its function. Related to the notion that language is functional is the claim that language always occurs in some relevant social context or ‘context of use’. For, according to Halliday (1978:€ 28), “we do not experience language in isolation – if we did we would not experience it as language – but always in relation

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

to a scenario, some background of persons and actions and events from which the things which are said derive their meaning.” The term ‘social context’ refers to something very different from aspects of the material environment in which people interact. Instead, social context is an abstract concept that corresponds to “first, what is actually taking place; secondly, who is taking part; and thirdly, what part the language is playing” (Halliday 1978:€31). The first aspect of social context, what is actually taking place, is termed ‘field’ and refers to the subject matter and social activity that people are co-producing. For example, W’s clause above may be said to be realizing the social activity of complaining about her husband (see all of example (3) to convince yourself of this). The second aspect, who is taking part, refers to the social roles of all participants, which include status differences and the degree of social distance and affect found between participants. The third and final aspect, what part the language is playing, refers to the ‘mode’ of the interaction. Relevant aspects of mode include the medium (does the interaction involve writing or speaking?) and channel (are both visual and aural channels open to all participants?). It is important to emphasize that social context is a dynamic concept; that is, social roles, social activity, and mode of interaction are not static and nor do they in some way come before language. Rather, social context and language unfold together. Just as certain language selections can construct and alter the social activity or the social roles of the speakers, so do the already co-constructed social activities and social roles influence how language will be used. The aim in any analysis of text is to begin at both ends and not assume that the social context is somehow ‘given’ and will exercise its influence over the unfolding of the whole text. In order to take stock of how people collaboratively make meaning, or interact, we need to take how speakers use linguistic resources into account; that is, we need to be able to describe how speakers are using grammatical resources with respect to ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings. In the next sections, we explicate the role these resources have in the meaning-making process. 4. Grammar as an interactive resource The basic grammatical unit of analysis in examining interaction is the clause. A central assumption is that meanings – whether they are ideational, interpersonal or textual – are organized with respect to clausal units.7 Researchers in conversational analysis and interactional linguistics have also argued for the primacy of the clause 7. This does not mean that meanings are only realized in major clauses. Minor clauses such as exclamations, calls, greetings and alarms also realize metafunctional meanings (Halliday 1994:€95). These minor clauses, however, tend to be mono-functional and not tri-functional.



Grammar 

with respect to organizing interaction (see Thompson and Couper-Kuhlen 2005). In this work, clauses are viewed as a speaker’s resource for projecting next turn onsets, joint utterance completions and turn unit extensions. We would argue that, in addition to the clause being an essential resource for anticipating an interlocutor’s current or next actions, the clause also provides insight into how speakers construct multifunctional utterances and how a speaker’s meanings are cohesively and coherently tied to her/his own construction of the message and to another’s previous message. Paying close attention to clause and clause unit production also helps to explain how speakers co-construct an architecture of intersubjectivity (Heritage 1984a: 254); that is, it is partly through speakers’ production of meaningful ideational, interpersonal and textual ties within and between turns that enables speakers to display an understanding of each other’s social actions. In order to demonstrate how the grammar works as an interactional resource through which speakers construct multiple meanings that are cohesively and coherently tied to other meanings within and across turns, a short conversational segment taken from a couples therapy session will be analyzed (see Ex. 3, parts of which derive from Muntigl 2004a: 189–190; 2004b: 118–120). (3) → → → → →

01 Wen: 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Ther: 19 Ther: 20 21 22

.hh hhh well I think that uh (2.0) Fred just gives up now hh heh.hh I think that secretly he still wants to win the argument.hh he wants to prolo::ng Fred is a: uh he likes to lecture? (1.2) on any: any subject that he feels even mildly uh uh y’know animated abou::t he likes to lecture and and go on and on and on and on about it.hh and I- there wuz one this morning or yesterday or something that.hh that I thought well its deci:ded but Fred still had to::.hh really make sure that I knew.hh what wuz going on uh that that uh he had he had pressed his point [he has] done that all uh all my my years with him [what I’m] .hh what I’m starting tuh see here is a pattern uh um.hh as a couples therapist um I’m always looking for patterns?.hh that people get into that they get stuck in.hh and I’m I need your agreement

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola



→ 23 as tuh whether or not what we’re seeing here is this particular pattern → 24 .hh umm which is leading tuh the kinda communication → 25 that (both) you’re talking about.hh → 26 your experience Wendy Sue.hh is of uh living with a man → 27 who has a lecturing style 28 Wen: yes → 29 Ther: who talks to you cons 30 excuse me if I I’m relating back in her ways.hh ahh → 31 who who lectures you constantly.hh → 32 who goes on about things bove and beyond the point → 33 of being [resolved ] when they’re already resolved 34 Wen: [yes ] 35 Wen: yes . . . 36 Ther: [(what perhaps would you create tuh) ] 37 Wen: [I would agree I I would agree with that ] 38 Fred: [that’s uh ( ) ] 39 Wen: I jus I just want tuh give up an and just say yes 40 Ther: okay I wanna I wanna talk about that 41 I wanna talk in the little bit of the time that we have left about um 42 about that particular pattern.hh 43 um m: maybe since you’re speaking about I’ll ask you um.hh 44 what are y- impact or effect.hh does this lecturing style that you 45 experience from Fred 46 what does- what impact does that have on you.hh as a person 47 Wen: .hh oh well I it makes me feel like uh a child?.hh 48 to a certain degree.hh it makes me feel 49 like I’m (1.0) I I’m ignorant 50 that I can’t grasp it quickly.hh umm One key component of Ex. (3) involves a therapist (re)formulation of a client’s turn (lines 18–33). The term formulation is taken from Heritage and Watson (1979:€141) and refers to “the provision of candidate readings for the sense established in preceding stretches of talk”. These candidate readings generally do the work of providing the gist or an upshot of what a previous speaker had said (for examinations of formulations in therapy see Antaki 2008; Antaki et al. 2005; Buttny 1996; Davis 1986; Hak and de Boer 1996; Muntigl 2004a, 2007). We feel that formulations are



Grammar 

especially illustrative of the grammar at work in interaction, because they reflect the therapist’s attempt to, on the one hand, tie her/his meanings to the client’s meanings and, on the other hand, subtly modify the client’s meanings. Thus, by paying close attention to the therapist’s use of grammar, we will be able to detect similarities and differences in how the client has construed experience and how the therapist is now construing (the client’s) experience. In the following subsections, the therapist formulation will be examined with respect to the ideational, interpersonal and textual work that the therapist is performing. 4.1

Interpersonal meaning

An interpersonal analysis requires that the social actions of exchanges, or sequences of actions, be identified along with the speakers’ appraisals or assessments of people and events (Martin 1992, 2000; Muntigl 2009; Thompson and Muntigl 2008; Ventola 1984, 1987). We will be restricting our analysis to the first 35 lines of example (3). The first ‘move’ involves an extended complaint in which Wendy provides an elaborate critique of her husband Fred’s lecturing (lines 1–17). This is followed by a therapist formulation in lines 18–33, which then ends with Wendy voicing agreement (lines 34–35). Wendy’s extended complaint bears the features of what Edwards (1994, 1995) refers to as a script formulation. From his work on couples therapy, Edwards (1995:€319) argues that they appear in the form of relationship scripts and are “descriptions of actions and events that characterize them as having a recurring, predictable, sequential pattern.” In Wendy’s case, she is making the claim that Fred’s lecturing is not only frequent and predictable, but that he has a strong inclination and desire to lecture her. These meanings of frequency and inclination/desire are spread throughout the various grammatical structures of Wendy’s clauses. Frequency, for example, is realized through iterative present tense (“likes to lecture”) and within a temporal circumstance (“he has done that all uh all my my years with him”). Inclination, on the other hand, is realized in the desiderative component of a verbal group (“likes to lecture”), through the repetition of the verbal group (“go on and on and on and on”) and metaphorically within the predicator and complement (“still had to::.hh really make sure”; “pressed his point”). Fred’s strong inclination to lecture is also expressed through the trope ‘I thought X, but then Y happened’ (Sacks 1992; Jefferson 2004). This trope sets up a contrast between what Wendy was expecting to occur (i.e., the end of a discussion and the cessation of Fred’s lecturing) and what actually occurred (i.e., Fred’s continued and persistent lecturing); that is, even in situations where there is no justifiable need to lecture (“I thought well its deci:ded”), Fred is ‘driven’ to perform his behaviour (“but Fred still had to:: …”). By citing this example and by realizing meanings of usuality and

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

inclination mentioned above, Wendy is able to negatively appraise Fred’s behaviour as being overly persistent and highly frequent (and, by implication, abnormal). Seen within the larger context of this therapy session, Wendy’s script formulation may be performing other kinds of interactional and rhetorical business above and beyond merely demonstrating how obsessive Fred’s lecturing is. For example, Edwards (1995) argues that script formulations may serve to counter a spouse’s previous version of events. Prior to Wendy’s extended complaint, Fred had also been complaining that Wendy is ‘not enthusiastic about things’ and tends to withdraw. In this way, Wendy’s lack of enthusiasm and lack of interest can be re-interpreted as a reaction to Fred’s excessive lecturing. As Wendy herself puts it later on in line 39, “I jus I just want tuh give up an and just say yes.” But, a script formulation may have additional interactional and rhetorical relevance. It may also index a ‘relationship issue’ that is worthy of subsequent therapeutic work (Muntigl 2004a, 2004b); that is, it may sequentially implicate a therapist response, such as a therapist formulation, that in some way addresses the client’s complaint. Now the therapist’s next turn does indeed contain a formulation, but if we examine his turn more closely, it should be apparent that there is more interactional work going on than a ‘bare’ formulation might indicate. For instance, the therapist does not immediately launch into a restatement of what Wendy had said. Instead, his formulation is prefaced by an account or justification. For this reason, lines 19–25 have been analyzed as a Prefacing move that is separate from the core formulation found in lines 26–33. The breakdown of moves contained within the therapist’s turn is shown in example (4). (4) Pre-formulation Noticing T: .hh what I’m starting tuh see here is a pattern uh um.hh Account as a couples therapist um I’m always looking for patterns?.hh that people get into that they get stuck in.hh Solicit and I’m I need your agreement as tuh whether or not what we’re seeing here is this particular pattern.hh umm which is leading tuh the kinda communication that (both) you’re talking about.hh Formulation Formulation your experience Wendy Sue.hh is of uh living with a man who has a lecturing style Agree W: yes Formulation T: who talks to you cons excuse me if I I’m relating back in her ways.hh ahh who who lectures you constantly.hh who goes on about things bove and beyond the point



Grammar 

Agreement Agree Agree

of being [resolved

W: W: yes

[yes

] when they’re already resolved ]

We identified three acts within the Pre-formulation. These included noticing, account and solicit. The term ‘noticing’ derives from Schegloff (1988). One of the main features of noticings is that they tend to create an explanation slot (see Antaki 1994). For instance, noticing a stain on someone’s shirt may implicitly call for an explanation on how the stain got there. So, noticing something about an addressee may also put the onus on the addressee to provide an account. However, the burden of explanation may also be put on the speaker. Returning to the therapist, by noticing (i.e., seeing) a pattern, it would seem that the expectation is placed on the therapist, not the client, to explain the relevance of this noticing. We suggest two reasons for this. The first is that the therapist’s stance to what he is noticing is explicitly subjective; that is, he formulates it as “I’m starting tuh see…”, rather than beginning the clause with “you” as in “you seem to be saying that…,” which would shift the ‘responsibility’ of what was said more on Wendy. The second, and more powerful, reason is the therapist’s mentioning of a pattern. In her work on preannouncement sequences, Terasaki (2004:€199) argued that ‘thing-like’ nominals such as “something” or “thing” have a projective quality (e.g., “I got sumpn thet’s wi::ld”, “I got two good things”). They sequentially implicate a step-wise delivery of news such that the “something” will become specified later in the interaction. In a similar way, by claiming to have noticed a pattern, the therapist projects further talk that will not only explain the pattern, but will also serve as an account for having noticed the pattern in the first place. Immediately after the noticing, the therapist does two things. First, he accounts for having noticed the pattern by linking his institutional role of being a couples therapist with activities that therapists ‘always’ perform (i.e., couples therapists look for patterns). Second, he expresses the need to solicit agreement from the couple that his upcoming interpretation of the pattern will be correct. Note that towards the end of the pre-formulation, the therapist begins to shift from an “I” to a “We” perspective (i.e., “whether or not what we’re seeing here…”). Through this subtle shift of reference, the therapist is able to emphasize the importance of achieving consensus as a prerequisite for any future therapeutic work. In other words, it is not enough for the therapist to have noticed the pattern. The couple must also ‘share’ his vision. In the final and ‘core’ part of the therapist’s turn, a candidate reading is given to Wendy’s extended complaint, which appears in the form of a gist or summary. Although the initial part of the formulation tends to downplay Wendy’s extreme

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

assessments by equating Fred’s behaviour with a lecturing style, meanings of extreme persistence and frequency do get reintroduced later when the therapist emphasizes the manner in which Fred lectures (e.g., “lectures you constantly” and “goes on about things bove and beyond the point…”). The selections and modifications that the therapist makes, however, pertain largely to the area of ideational meaning and it is to this metafunction to which we now turn. 4.2

Ideational meaning

With this metafunction, an SFL analysis begins to part company with CA. In an ideational analysis, specific attention is given to what is called the transitivity structure of each of the clauses that comprise a turn and the conjunctive meanings that link clauses together (Halliday 1994, 2005[1967, 1968]). This essentially means identifying the conjunctive, verbal, nominal, adverbial and prepositional elements of each clause. For analyzing social interaction, however, the point of doing this kind of analysis is not simply to identify how often a certain verb, noun, preposition, etc. occurs. Instead, these grammatical structures are analyzed for their functions and for their ‘positional sensitivity’ or ‘function within the exchange’. Within ideational grammar, formulations are interpreted in a way that bears similarity to CA. They are rhetorical/conjunctive relations that function to summarize and/or clarify what a speaker had formulated in a previous turn (Muntigl 2004a, 2007). If we turn now to the specifics of the therapist’s formulation, two linguistic resources play an especially important function in summarizing Wendy’s meanings. The first corresponds to relational verbs (e.g., ‘to be’, ‘exemplify’, ‘represent’, ‘equals’) in which two entities are placed in an identifying relationship (‘x’ = ‘y’). The second is T’s use of grammatical metaphor (Halliday 1987, 1994, 1998), in which the client’s construal of experience becomes grammatically more abstract (e.g., turning a Process into a Participant; that is, a verb becoming a noun or adjective). One significant difference between the speakers’ use of ideational resources involves process (i.e., verb) type. Whereas Wendy construes experience in terms of action or behavioural verbs (e.g., to lecture, go on and on, pressed his point), the therapist construes experience in terms of relational verbs (e.g., “is”). The relational verb allows him to equate two ‘thing’-like phenomena. For example, the therapist equates his experience with “a pattern” (line 19), everyone’s experience with “this particular pattern” (line 23) and Wendy’s experience with a number of Fred’s behaviours (lines 26–33). From the ‘x’ side of the relational clause equation, the therapist moves from ‘my experience’ to ‘our experience’ to ‘Wendy’s experience’. On the ‘y’ side, Wendy’s prior formulation moves from ‘a pattern’ to ‘this particular pattern’ to ‘the features of the pattern’. The summarizing component of the Therapist’s formulation consists of his narrowing down what Wendy had



Grammar 

meant/experienced; first, her recount of Fred’s lecturing is identified as a particular pattern and, second, only selected elements of what Wendy had said are included in the pattern. what I’m starting tuh see here what we’re seeing here your experience Wendy Sue

‘X’

is is is

a pattern this particular pattern of uh living with a man who has a lecturing style who talks to you conswho who lectures you constantly.hh who goes on about things bove and beyond the point of being resolved when they’re already resolved

=

‘Y’

Another important aspect of the formulation includes how the client’s talk becomes modified. In particular, the therapist does not simply repeat what Wendy had said; instead, he reworks her wordings by placing some wordings in a new grammatical context. For example, “he likes to lecture?...” in line 07 (repeated in line 09) is transformed into “…a man who has a lecturing style.” Grammatically, Wendy’s construal of Fred as doing lecturing is changed into ‘lecturing’ as being an attribute of Fred. This type of transformation is commonly referred to as grammatical metaphor (Halliday 1994; 1998). Note, however, that the therapist does unpack lecturing style later on in his turn, reinstating lecturing to its original dynamic interpretation of “lectures you constantly” and “goes on about things.” But, as will be discussed shortly, ‘lecturing style’ in its metaphorical attributive form retains a high level of interactional relevance and has significant implications for the ensuing conversation. To sum up, the therapist’s use of ideational grammar serves a number of interactive functions. First, the relational verb structures provide a recurring frame for much of the summarizing work performed by the therapist. Second, transitivity resources such as grammatical metaphor are used to modify Wendy’s original description of Fred (i.e., lecturing → lecturing style). Third, the unique clausal constructions help to organize the therapist’s noticing and subsequent formulation as a newsworthy event. This last function, however, forms part of the textual metafunction and will be discussed in more detail below. 4.3

Textual meaning

Examining interaction from the perspective of the textual metafunction involves identifying thematic progressions and the location of new information within and across different discourse units. In the English language a theme occupies the ‘first

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

position’ of the clause and the new information in speech tends to realized via intonation (see Halliday 1994:€296). Thematic progressions can be examined for any given conversational sequence if we identify the themes within speaker turns. The topical themes (i.e., the ideational component of the theme) contained within Wendy’s script formulation and the therapist’s formulation are shown in Table€2 (lines 1–33). By examining the topical themes of Wendy’s clauses, it immediately becomes apparent that her husband is most often realized in theme position. In the majority of cases, Wendy’s husband serves as the point of departure for her assessments. For Wendy, thematic development does not consist of a change in her ‘point of departure’, but of consistently maintaining the same point of departure throughout her turn. In this way, she is able to build up a gradually increasing negative assessment of her husband. The topical themes of the Therapist’s formulation mark a different kind of progression. No longer is Fred the point of departure of the message. Instead, ‘seeing/ experiencing’ or ‘the therapist’s perspective’ is commonly made the theme. In other words, through these new themes the therapist is able to re-direct the trajectory of the talk such that what the clients and the therapist ‘see’ or ‘experience’ is placed under negotiation. Relational clauses, especially thematic equatives (or pseudo-cleft sentences) of the form “what I’m starting tuh see here is…”, are often used by speakers for thematic purposes (Halliday 1994:€42). We now turn to the aspect of new information or, more specifically, the way in which the therapist orients to the general issue of what is newsworthy. First of all, we should point out that much of Wendy’s script orients to the ‘typicality’ or ‘nonnews’ character of Fred’s behaviour; that is, Fred has ‘always’ lectured and, from Wendy’s perspective, this is not ‘front page headline’ material. But, what is deemed unremarkable for the speaker may, by contrast, be highly newsworthy for the addressee. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the therapist’s mention of a pattern. In Table 2.╇ Wendy’s and Therapist’s Topical Themes Wendy’s Topical Themes

Therapist’s Topical Themes

Fred, he, Fred, he, he, he (ellipted), there, I, it, Fred, I, he, he

what I’m starting tuh see here, as a couples therapist, I, what we’re seeing here, which, your experience, I

this way, the therapist announces that he has identified something therapeutically relevant; that is, his noticing constitutes a new way of looking at Fred’s lecturing, not merely as ‘typical’ behaviour but something that is deserving of more attention within a therapeutic context. Further, the therapist’s noticing of a pattern also



Grammar 

projects future talk that specifies the news, in the similar way that pre-announcement sequences do (Terasaki 2004). The pattern, therefore, will need to be ‘unpacked’ and elaborated upon. Newsworthiness is also realized in the verbal group “starting to see”; that is, by explicitly stating that he is “starting to…”, the therapist implies that he has just, at that moment, come to see/notice/realize something that was not available to him before. The newsworthiness, therefore, comes from his sudden ability to make an important, therapeutically relevant, inference. 5. Grammar influencing the trajectory of the interaction Our grammatical analysis has selectively focused on how interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings develop and become negotiated over the course of a ‘script formulation’-(re)formulation exchange. Interpersonally, the negotiation of moves consisted of the therapist restating Wendy’s extended complaint and Wendy agreeing with the restatement. Although the restatement did maintain Wendy’s initial evaluative meanings to a degree, it was noted that the therapist initially formulated Fred’s behaviour as a lecturing style. With this formulation the original meanings of usuality and inclination become lost, leaving only the attributive meaning of ‘lecturing’. Ideationally, construals of experience moved from Wendy using ‘doing’ processes/verbs to construe Fred’s lecturing behaviour to the Therapist’s formulations in which he used relational verbs to equate what he or the clients ‘see’ or ‘experience’ with ‘a pattern’, ‘a lecturing style’ or features of the lecturing style. And textually, the consistent thematic focus on Fred within Wendy’s turn changed to a focus on ‘seeing’ or ‘experiencing’ in the Therapist’s formulation. New information was also indexed by the therapist as a noticing, which also signalled the projection of upcoming therapeutic work that will elaborate on the clients’ ‘pattern’. In sum, by focusing on the grammatical resources used by each speaker on a clause-byclause basis, we were able to map out the trajectory of the exchange and the subtle shifts in interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings as the reformulation sequence unfolded. There are, however, certain grammatical shifts that seem to play a decisive role in influencing the trajectory of the conversation. From Schegloff ’s (1992:€111) perspective this would mean that certain grammatical resources have specific relevance or are procedurally consequential for the ensuing talk. A powerful example of a salient or relevant grammatical transformation involves the therapist’s reformulation of Wendy’s “he likes to lecture” into “a lecturing style”. The relevance of this example does not merely lie in the observation that lecture has changed from a behavioural process to an attribute. If we look further down in the example on lines 44–46, we notice that the therapist now uses “this lecturing style” as the

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

nominal group (i.e., participant) of a clause (“what are y- impact or effect.hh does this lecturing style that you experience from Fred what does what impact does that have on you.hh as a person”). As a result “this lecturing style” (also realized by “that” on line 46) becomes reconstrued as an Agent that impacts on/affects Wendy. Reformulating “lecture” into “a lecturing style”, therefore, creates certain interactional possibilities for both the therapist and Wendy. For this therapist nominalizing “lecture” allowed him to construe lecturing as an agentive participant that influences Wendy’s life. This unfolding activity of reformulating problems for the purpose of exploring their causal influences has been well documented in Muntigl (2004a, 2004b). Furthermore, this specific therapist activity relates to what is known in narrative therapy as externalizing the problem in order to unpack negative identity conclusions (for overviews of narrative therapy see White and Epston 1990; White 2001). If we view this process grammatically, it transforms Wendy’s formulation of ‘Fred lectures’ into simply ‘lecturing’, leaving the doer of the lecturing unspecified – note that the therapist does not say “Fred’s lecturing style”, which would merely have been a nominalized version of what Wendy had said before. So, by ‘de-thematizing’ Fred, the therapist is able to uncouple the strong association that Wendy makes between Fred and his lecturing behaviour. The behaviour (i.e., the lecturing) rather than the person is placed into the foreground. The practices of nominalizing, construing experience through ‘causal’ grammatical structures and using relational verbs to connect up different ‘participants’ also plays a significant part in linking different domains of the clients’ experience (see also Peräkylä 2004). These practices also helped to produce a substantially expanded ‘grammar of lecturing’. In order to show how domains of experience and grammatical realization of lecturing are mutually constitutive of each other, let us first consider the way in which Wendy’s initial script formulation was entirely focussed on Fred. It should be noted, however, that although Wendy clearly was the target of Fred’s lecturing, this was never expressed explicitly as such. This can be seen from if we take a sample of Wendy’s clauses: a. he likes to lecture? (1.2) on any: any subject b. he likes to lecture and and go on and on and on and on about it Notice that there is no ‘complement’ to the verb ‘lecture’; that is, Wendy does not say “he likes to lecture me…”. Fred’s lecturing, therefore, is formulated as a general activity, done to various people (including Wendy) in various situations. So, although we can infer that Wendy construes Fred as a lecturer, the link to herself as the repeated target of the lecturing is often not made explicit (with the exception of the ‘I thought X, but Y happened’ trope she provides towards the end of her script).



Grammar 

One of the things that the therapist does in the subsequent turn is tighten up this link between Wendy’s experience and Fred’s behaviour. Consider the following formulations made by the therapist: a. your experience Wendy Sue.hh is of uh living with a man who has a lecturing style b. who who lectures you constantly In clause ‘a’, an identifying relationship is made between Wendy’s experience and the lecturing, and in clause ‘b’, the complement of lecturing is specified (“lectures you…”). By placing the focus on Wendy’s experience and by specifying Wendy as the target of Fred’s lecturing, the therapist personalizes Wendy’s domain of experience. This means altering descriptions of Fred as a general lecturer, to one who lectures Wendy specifically. As a last step, the therapist provides causal connections between ‘the lecturing’ and Wendy’s personal domains of experience on which the lecturing was having a negative impact; in this way, the meaning and relevance of the lecturing becomes expanded in that it now also speaks to her feelings of self-worth or self-esteem (e.g., “it makes me feel like uh a child”; “it makes me feel like I’m ignorant”). 6. Conclusions One of the guiding principles that both SFL and CA share in common is the insistence that any analysis of social interaction include an examination of speakers’ meaning making resources used to (co-)construct the interaction. In this article, we have attempted to draw attention to some grammatical resources involved in meaning making and to show how links can be made between speakers’ grammatical selections and the kinds of interactional business these selections can accomplish. By taking stock of grammatical selections that are drawn on by a therapist and a client, we were able to develop a ‘grammatical profile’ of the therapeutic activity and to ascertain the therapist’s professional stock of interactional knowledge (see Peräkylä and Vehviläinen 2003). This did not simply mean identifying different nouns or verbs or counting grammatical structures to see how frequently they occur. Instead, it meant locating grammatical structures within sequences and accounting for their positional sensitivity. It meant identifying what interactional business the grammatical selections perform and what kinds of meanings, actions and activities they projected in the unfolding conversation. In the course of this paper, we tried to foreground different aspects of the grammar (interpersonal, ideational and textual) in our analysis. This was done in

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola

the tradition of SFL research by examining the functions of grammatical structures. Halliday (1994: xix) summarizes this position as follows: Since the relation of grammar to semantics is in this sense natural, not arbitrary, and since both are purely abstract systems of coding, how do we know where the one ends and the other begins? The answer is we don’t: there is no clear line between semantics and grammar, and a functional grammar is one that is pushed in the direction of the semantics.

We might say that we tried to go even further than Halliday by pushing a grammatical analysis in the direction of a sequential analysis. Proceeding along the lines of Schegloff (1996), we were also interested in discovering the grammar’s positional sensitivity within specific sequential contexts and, more specifically, what kinds of interactional work the grammar is capable of doing. But in order to do this, we still need to maintain our focus on the functional grammatical units that speakers deploy. The challenge for interaction analysts, as we see it, is to operate at both ends (i.e., grammar & interaction) and to make the appropriate links, where relevant. References Antaki, Charles. 1994. Explaining and Arguing. London: Sage. Antaki, Charles. 2008. “Formulations in psychotherapy.” In Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy, Anssi Peräkylä, Charles Antaki, Sanna Vehviläinen and Ivan Leudar (eds), 26–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Antaki, Charles, Barnes, Rebecca and Leudar, Ivan. 2005. “Diagnostic formulations in psychotherapy.” Discourse Studies 7 (6): 627–647. Antaki, Charles, Diaz, Félix and Collins, Alan. 1996. “Keeping your footing: Conversational completion in three-part sequences.” Journal of Pragmatics 25: 151–171. Antaki, Charles and Widdicombe, Sue (eds.). 1998. Identities in Talk. London: Sage. Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar. 2008. “Interactional linguistics.” In Handbook of Interpersonal Communication [Volume 2 of Handbook of Applied Linguistics], Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola and Tilo Weber (eds), 53–76. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Beach, Wayne. 1993. “Transitional regularities for ‘casual’ “okay” usages.” Journal of Pragmatics 19: 325–352. Buttny, Richard. 1996. “Clients’ and therapists joint construction of the clients’ problem.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 29 (2): 125–53. Clayman, Steven. 1992. “Footing in the achievement of neutrality: The case of news-interview discourse.” In Talk at Work, Paul Drew and John Heritage (eds), 163–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coulter, Jeff. 1985. “Two concepts of the mental.” In The Social Construction of the Person, Kenneth J. Gergen and Keith E. Davis (eds), 129–144. New York: Springer Verlag. Coulter, Jeff. 1989. Mind in Action. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. Coulter, Jeff. 1999. “Discourse and mind.” Human Studies 22: 163–181.



Grammar  Davis, Kathy. 1986. “The process of problem (re)formulation in psychotherapy.” Sociology of Health and Illness 8: 44–74. Dik, Simon. 1997. The theory of functional grammar, Part 1. The structure of the clause, 2nd Edn. Ed. Kees Hengeveld. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Edwards, Derek. 1994. “Script formulations: A study of event descriptions in conversation.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 13: 211–247. Edwards, Derek. 1995. “Two to tango: Script formulations, dispositions, and rhetorical symmetry in relationship troubles talk.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28(4): 319–350. Edwards, Derek. 1997. Discourse and Cognition. London: Sage. Edwards, Derek and Potter, Jonathan. 1992. Discursive Psychology. London: Sage. Edwards, Derek and Potter, Jonathan. 2005. “Discursive psychology, mental states and description.” In Conversation and Cognition, Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter (eds), 241– 259. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, Rod. 1997. “The conversation object mm: A weak and variable acknowledging token.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30(2): 131–156. Gardner, Rod. 2001. When Listeners Talk. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goodwin, Charles. 1981. Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, Charles. 1986. “Between and within: Alternative sequential treatments of continuers and assessments.” Human Studies 9: 205–217. Hak, Tony and de Boer, Fijgje. 1996. “Formulations in first encounters.” Journal of Pragmatics 25: 83–99. Halliday, M. A. K. 1975. Learning How to Mean. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. 1978. Language as a Social Semiotic. London. Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. 1998. “Things and relations: Regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge.” In Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science, James R. Martin and Robert Veel (eds), 185–235. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K. 2002 [1987]. “Spoken and written modes of meaning.” In On Grammar [Vol. 1 in the Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday], Jonathan Webster (ed), 323–351. London: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. 2003. On Language and Linguistics [Vol. 3 in the Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday], Jonathan Webster (ed). London: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. 2005 [1967–68]. “Notes on transitivity and theme in English – Parts 1–3.” In Studies in English Language [Vol. 7 in the Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday], Jonathan Webster (ed). London: Continuum. Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1985. Language, Context and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social Semiotic Perspective. Geelong, Vic: Deakin University Press. Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M. 1999. Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-Based Approach to Cognition. London: Cassell. Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1987. “The grammarian’s dream: Lexis as most delicate grammar.” In New Developments in Systemic Linguistics: Theory and Description, M. A. K. Halliday and Robin Fawcett (eds), 184–212. London: Pinter. Heritage, John. 1984a. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola Heritage, John. 1984b. “A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement.” In Structures of Social Action, J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage (eds), 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, John. 1998. “Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry.” Language in Society 27: 291–334. Heritage, John and Raymond, Geoffrey. 2005. “The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction.” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (1): 15–38. Heritage, John and Roth, Andrew. 1995. “Grammar and institution: Questions and questioning in the broadcast news interview.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28(1): 1–60. Heritage, John and Sorjonen, Marja-Leena. 1994. “Constituting and maintaining activities across sequences: And-prefacing as a feature of question design.” Language in Society 23: 1–29. Heritage, John and Watson, Rod 1979. “Formulations as conversational objects.” In Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, George Psathas (ed.), 123–162. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Holt, Elizabeth and Clift, Rebecca (eds.). 2007. Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, Gail. 1984. “Notes on a systematic deployment of the acknowledgement tokens ‘yeah’ and ‘mm hm’.” Papers in Linguistics 17(1–4): 197–216. Jefferson, Gail. 2004. “At first I thought.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, Gene Lerner (ed), 131–167. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lerner, Gene. 1991. “On the syntax of sentences in progress.” Language in Society 20: 441–458. Lerner, Gene. 2004a. “Introduction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (2): 93–94. Lerner. Gene. 2004b. “On the place of linguistic resources in the organization of talk-in-interaction: Grammar as action in prompting a speaker to elaborate.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (2): 151–184. Lynch, Michael and Bogen, David. 2005. “‘My memory has been shredded’: A non-cognitivist investigation of ‘mental’ phenomena.” In Conversation and Cognition, Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter (eds), 226–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martin, James R. 1992. English Text. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Martin, James R. 2000. “Beyond exchange: Appraisal systems in English.” In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 142–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Muntigl, Peter. 2004a. Narrative Counselling: Social and Linguistic Processes of Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Muntigl, Peter. 2004b. “Ontogenesis in narrative therapy: A linguistic-semiotic examination of client change.” Family Process 43 (1): 105–124. Muntigl, Peter. 2007. “A metapragmatic examination of therapist reformulations.” In Metapragmatics in Use, Wolfram Bublitz and Axel Hübler (eds), 235–262. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Muntigl, Peter. 2009. “Knowledge Moves in Conversational Exchanges: Revisiting the Concept of Primary vs. Secondary Knowers.” Functions of Language 16 (2): 225–263. Muntigl, Peter and Hadic Zabala, Loreley. 2008. “Expandable answers: How clients get prompted to say more during psychotherapy.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (2): 187–226. Ochs, Elinor, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Thompson, Sandra (eds). 1996. Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peräkylä, Anssi. 2004. “Making links in psychoanalytic interpretations: A conversation analytic perspective.” Psychotherapy Research 14 (3): 289–307. Peräkylä, Annsi and Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2003. “Conversation analysis and the professional stocks of interactional knowledge.” Discourse and Society 14 (6): 727–750.



Grammar  Potter, Jonathan. 1996. Representing Reality. London: Sage. Potter, Jonathan. 1998. “Cognition as context (whose cognition?).” Research on Language and Social Interaction 31: 29–44. Prevignano, Carlo and Thibault, Paul. 2003b. “Continuing the interview with Emanuel A. Schegloff.” In Discussing Conversation Analysis: The Work of Emanuel Schegloff, Carlo Prevignano and Paul Thibault (eds), 165–171. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Raymond, Geoffrey. 2003. “Grammar and social organization: Yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding.” American Sociological Review 68 (6): 939–967. Raymond, Geoffrey. 2004. “Prompted action: The stand-alone “so” in ordinary conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (2): 185–218. Roth, Andrew L. 2002. “Social Epistemology in Broadcast News Interviews.” Language in Society 31 (3): 355–381. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson’s University Library. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation (2 Vols.). Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Jefferson, Gail. 1974. “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.” Language 50 (4): 696–735. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1982. “Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things that come between sentences.” In Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics, Deborah Tannen (ed), 71–93. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1984. “On some questions and ambiguities in conversation.” In Structure of Social Action, J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage (eds), 28–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1988. “Goffman and the analysis of conversation.” In Exploring the Interaction Order, Paul Drew and Anthony Wooton (eds), 89–135. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. “On talk and its institutional occasions.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, Paul Drew and John Heritage (eds), 101–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1996. “Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction.” In Interaction and Grammar, Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff and Sandra Thompson, (eds), 52–133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1997. “Who’s Text? Whose Context?” Discourse & Society 8 (2): 165–87. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2004. “On Dispensability.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (2): 95–149. Schegloff, Emanuel. A. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Selting, Margret. 2008. “Linguistic resources for the management of interaction.” In Handbook of Interpersonal Communication [Volume 2 of Handbook of Applied Linguistics], Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola and Tilo Weber (eds), 217–253. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Streeck, Jürgen. 2002. “Grammars, words, and embodied meanings: On the uses and evolution of so and like.” Journal of Communication 52: 581–596. Terasaki, Alene. 2004. “Pre-announcement sequences in conversation.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, Gene Lerner (ed), 171–223. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Thompson, Geoff and Muntigl, Peter. 2008. “Systemic functional linguistics: An interpersonal perspective.” In Handbook of Interpersonal Communication [Volume 2 of Handbook of

 Peter Muntigl and Eija Ventola Applied Linguistics], Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola and Tilo Weber (eds), 107–132. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Thompson, Sandra and Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. 2005. “The clause as a locus of grammar and interaction.” Discourse Studies 7 (4–5): 481–505. Turk, Monica. 2004. “Using and in conversational interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (2): 219–250. van Valin, Robert and LaPolla, Randy. 1997. Syntax: Structure, meaning and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ventola, Eija 1984. “Orientation to Social Semiotics in Foreign Language Teaching.” Applied Linguistics 5 (3): 275–286. Ventola, Eija. 1987. The Structure of Social Interaction: A Systemic Approach to the Semiotics of Service Encounters. London: Pinter. White, Michael. 2001. “Narrative practice and the unpacking of identity conclusions.” Gecko: A journal of deconstruction and narrative practice 1: 1–17. White, Michael and Epston, David. 1990. Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. New York: Norton. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Researching intercultural communication Discourse tactics in non-egalitarian contexts Angel Lin

Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong In this chapter key sociological traditions forming the theoretical backdrop of current discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication research will be discussed and John Gumperz’s contribution to highlighting the interactional nature of everyday communication and language use will be outlined. Then I shall introduce the central thesis of this chapter: that discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication provide helpful frameworks for understanding how power is fluid and mediated through discourse and meaning-making, and how different social actors located in differential, hierarchical social positions, and coming from different cultural backgrounds, can negotiate through discourse for more advantageous positions for themselves. This thesis will then be delineated through drawing on positioning theory, (Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré and Langenhove, 1999), a discourse-based social identity theory, to analyse two examples of intercultural/inter-group communication.

1. Interaction analysis and discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication What is our conception of interaction analysis and on what notion of interaction can it be based? It seems that the notion of interaction cannot be essentially defined. A broad range of phenomena or activities can be seen as interaction by different people engaged in different forms of life (Wittgenstein’s notion, see Sluga and Stern, 1996). At one extreme of the continuum, any human (some would also argue machine) meaning-making activity can be seen as a form of interaction. One can conceive someone finding a fruitful way of seeing “reading” as a form of interaction (the reader making meaning of/interacting with the text and indirectly interacting with the invisible/non-physically present author; or to stretch the argument a bit, the computer “reading” some input and making certain responses to the input) (similar arguments can be made for watching TV, movies or watching

 Angel Lin

an exhibition). However, stretching the notion to that far end will not be too useful for the practical linguistic anthropologist interested in everyday human interaction. I shall therefore focus my analysis on the range of activities that involve some form of bi- or multi-party, face-to-face meaning-making, which is embedded in some shared forms of life or ways of living engaged in by the interactants. And “face-to-face” is to be understood broadly, i.e., can be mediated via some form of technology, e.g., phone talk, net talk, e-mail talk, etc. Interaction analysis thus has as its aim the uncovering of the kinds and nature of the meaning-making, interpretive processes involved and the semiotic resources drawn upon to enable the achievement of some mutual sense of inter-subjectivity (i.e., the perception on both/all parties that they achieve the sharing of certain perspectives with each other/one another). How is this sense of inter-subjectivity achieved? What is happening when this is not achieved (e.g., in cases of perceived communication barriers or breakdowns)? What is it that can bring about the overcoming of the communicative barriers or breakdowns? Under an interactional conception of language, language should not be seen as a reified object of study by linguists and language as a bounded concept is an ideological, theoretical and social construct – born of the activities of armchair linguists and/or political, national unifying/segregating agendas. The analytical focus should be on how languages as (continuously changing) systems of semiotic resources (among other semiotic systems of resources) are recruited and utilized for, and at the same time also transformed, during interaction. While the above brief summary will be familiar to those working in the interpretive traditions of discourse analysis, scholars working in the broader field of communication and/or intercultural communication might, however, need a brief introduction to discourse-based approaches. In the next section, key sociological traditions forming the theoretical backdrop of current discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication research will be discussed and John Gumperz’s contribution to highlighting the interactional nature of everyday communication and language use will be outlined. Then I shall introduce the central thesis of this chapter: that discourse-based approaches to intercultural communication provide helpful frameworks for understanding how power is fluid and mediated through discourse and meaning-making, and how different social actors located in differential, hierarchical social positions, and coming from different cultural backgrounds, can negotiate through discourse for more advantageous positions for themselves. This thesis will then be delineated through drawing on positioning theory, (Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré and Langenhove, 1999), a discourse-based social identity theory, to analyse two examples of intercultural/inter-group communication.



Researching intercultural communication 

2. Symbolic interactionism (SI), structuration theory, and discourse-based approaches Symbolic interactionism (SI) or that branch of sociology that focuses on human meaning-making and interpretive processes evolving around the use of symbols, or semiotic resources, has its roots in the pragmatist philosophers such as John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead. The SI perspective puts an emphasis on human interaction and communication via the use of symbols for meaning-making, and human interpretive processes which are central to interaction and communication. SI studies the interaction order of everyday life and focuses on the social, interactional, and discursive construction of self and other. Concepts such as power, social relations, contexts, self, and identities are seen as fluid, always open to negotiation and re-negotiation, and interactively coconstructed via discourse and other semiotic resources. In sum, the SI perspective emphasizes human interaction and communication as mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another’s actions (Blumer, 1986). While Anthony Giddens seems to have developed structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) quite independently of SI, structuration theory and SI are compatible with each other. The SI perspective sees people as active social agents, quite different from the solitary, rational, Cartesian individual (or subject). People are seen as social actors – constantly actively adjusting, interpreting, and organizing and re-organizing their ways of speaking and their ways of being (e.g., ways of dressing, looking, thinking, viewing, feeling, interpreting, hearing, etc.) to adjust to others in social interactions. The self is created through such on-going social interactions, and it is a self that is fluid, and constantly negotiating with and adjusting to others. The SI concern is with how the social order (macro forces and structures) is constantly being created, reproduced, or contested and transformed. Similarly, structuration theory provides a solution to overcome the sociological macro-micro, structure-agency theoretical divide by seeing the macro and micro, social structures and agency, as mutually constitutive and shaping. Giddens (1984) thus attempts to provide an overall theoretical framework to deal with two major sociological issues: (i) the division between the conscious subject and social structures, and (ii) agency or praxis and collective forms of social life (i.e., the agency/structure problem). Giddens (1984) sees social action and interaction as tacitly enacted social practices and discusses how they become institutions or routines and reproduce familiar forms of social life: The basic domain of study of the social sciences, according to the theory of structuration, is neither the experience of the individual actor, nor the existence of any

 Angel Lin

form of social totality, but social practices ordered across space and time. Human social activities, like some self-reproducing items in nature, are recursive. That is to say, they are not brought into being by social actors but continually recreated by them via the very means whereby they express themselves as actors. In and through their activities agents reproduce the conditions that make these activities possible. (Giddens, 1984, p.€2).

With structuration theory, Giddens attempts to integrate human social action with the larger systems, structures, and institutions of which we are a part. It is the continual repetition of social action and interaction in more or less routines or repeated practices that constitute what may appear to be the larger social forms or systems. Under structuration theory, structure is not outside of and imposed on social action, but is both constituted/structured by and shaping/structuring social action. Structuration theory thus seems to attempt to overcome the structuralist determinism that is sometimes attributed to social theorists who emphasize too much the reproduction tendency of social structures. Under structuration theory, precisely because structures and social actions are mutually constitutive and shaping/structuring, there is the possibility of transformation of larger social structures through situated social actions, which often involve discursive practices. This perspective is especially important to the central argument of this chapter: that in interactional contexts where power relations figure predominantly, social actors can draw on discourse tactics to attempt to transform the larger social forces (more on this later). Both SI and structuration theory thus seem to have formed the sociological backdrop of discourse-based approaches to research on intercultural communication (e.g., Scollon and Scollon, 1995; Carbaugh, 2005). Recent readers in intercultural communication (e.g., Gudykunst, 2005; Holliday, Hyde and Kullman, 2004; Kiesling and Paulston, 2005) also provide entries on discourse-based approaches. While Giddens (1984) does not focus on discussing language and discursive practices, many current discourse analysis frameworks have in one way or another drawn on Giddens’ structuration theory in seeing social actions as predominantly mediated through language and other semiotic resources (e.g., Gee, 1999). The ethnography of communication started by Dell Hymes and John Gumperz (Gumpez and Hymes, 1986) also appeared in around the same period of time as SI and structuration theory. Gumperz’s work on intercultural/inter-group interaction is important as not many intercultural communication studies focus on nonegalitarian situations. Below I shall discuss John Gumperz’s contribution to theorizing about intercultural or inter-group communication, especially in nonegalitarian contexts.



Researching intercultural communication 

3. Gumperz’s contribution to an interactional conception and analysis of language Gumperz’s research has made great contribution to de-centering language as a research and analytical focus in his privileging of communicative practice, or the everyday communicative event embedded in mundane everyday activities as the central analytical focus, and in his constantly stressing the importance of situating the communicative event (the interaction) in its larger sociocultural and institutional context including the larger context of power relations. One might see him as a pioneer in critical sociolinguistics (although he might not like to attach such labels to himself and his work). His rich work in developing theories of intercultural, inter-dialectal, inter-group communication is also a major contribution which few will dispute about. Although Gumperz seems to hold reservations about the methods and procedures of conversation analysis (CA), the methods and procedures developed in conversation analysis, though considered to be clinical by some, do seem to offer some useful empirically grounded and practical research tools to interaction analysts, especially if they are used flexibly and not subscribed to religiously. Gumperz seemingly asserted that conversation analysts have apriori, static assumptions about groups, communities or group membership.€ An examination of Harvey Sacks’ early lectures on conversation as well as subsequent work in CA, however, does not warrant such an assertion. Nevertheless, it is important to take Gumperz’s warning about not taking “community” or “membership” as static, given categories but as something negotiated, constantly evolving in interactions. CA methods can and need to be more applied to the analysis of interactions at “borderland places”, i.e., cross-cultural, cross-group, cross-community (if you want), and cross-position interaction (more on this below), and one can see such analytical projects a bit on the minority side in mainstream CA studies – projects that will take as its central analytic goal to uncover and describe how sense-making “methods” and “procedures” come into sharing by participants (e.g., cross-cultural, cross-generation, cross-gender, etc.), who might generally be seen as not sharing much in common. To borrow a metaphor from developmental psychology, one can say that we need to develop CA analytical projects that are more “developmental” or “longitudinal” than “cross-sectional”. What are the analytical categories that an interactional analyst should take as the most relevant ones at the present time, and what should be the short-term and the long-term objectives of an interactional analysis approach? It seems that a good unit of analysis is a speech event that is ordinarily recognizable as such by interaction participants. One should also take what is recognizable as communication barrier and communication breakdown as a focus for analysis. Gumperz

 Angel Lin

compares this approach with the grammarian’s approach: while grammarians analyse grammatical and ungrammatical sentences and compare them to yield grammatical insights, an interactional analyst should analyse both successful communication events and instances of communication barriers and breakdowns. The long-term objective is to uncover the methods and procedures that people (e.g., coming from very different backgrounds or with very different memberships) can possibly use to co-construct common methods/procedures of sensemaking, of achieving some perceived (provisional) sense of inter-subjectivity. This is a theoretical project with important implications for a number of disciplines and for practical challenges facing us now in an increasingly globalized world of incommensurable discourses (with both processes of homogenization and fragmentation taking place). Communication after 911 takes on different meanings – is communication or sharing some form of consensus possible only among “members”? How do “non-members” (e.g., coming from radically different positions, backgrounds, be it linguistic, racial/ethnic, religious, social, gender, sexuality, generational) become recognizable to one another as “fellow members” (of shared humanity) – i.e., recognizable to one another as sharing some common methods and procedures of meaning-making and co-inhabiting some shared forms of life (including methods and procedures for resolving conflicts of interests and cultures), no matter how provisional it is? Issues in contemporary studies of interaction A major issue in contemporary studies of interaction seems to be related to the tendency of researchers to hold a dichotomous micro-macro view of human interactions, especially in conducting interaction analysis. There seems to be a traditional dualistic view in sociolinguistics (e.g., in terms of micro-interactional sociolinguistics vs. macro-sociolinguistics) which Gumperz readily speaks against and shows in his work how unhelpful such a perspective is. This dualistic division reflects a lack of ability on the part of the analyst to overcome Cartesian dualism in theorizing human phenomena. This is also reflected in some general criticism sometimes directed towards CA: e.g., the accusation that CA is too “micro” oriented. In this regard I want to quote Harvey Sacks in his “micro” analysis of an introduction sentence in a group therapy session (Spring 1966, Lecture 04a – An introduction sequence, collected in Gail Jefferson (Ed.), 1992): One thing we can come to see is that producing the introductions in the form of a sentence might specifically be done to make available to Jim that ‘a group’ is being presented. That is, we want to differentiate between Jim being introduced to ‘three people’ in close order, and Jim being introduced to ‘the group,’ one by one. In that regard, it seems to follow that sentence-making is to be conceived as a kind



Researching intercultural communication 

of social institution in perfectly conventional ways. I suppose we don’t ordinarily think of the use of grammar as a social institution for demonstrating organization. Courses in social organization don’t have, I suppose, sections on the way you can build sentences to present a group, where you use the resources of the grammar to do that. But it might not be a bad idea. It isn’t, then, that we have sentence-making on the one hand and social structures on the other, and one can study their relationship by, e.g., studying dialectics. …. (Sacks, 1966/1992, p.€288)

Thus, the micro-macro analytical division is unproductive (as the discussion of structuration theory above shows) and tends to divide theoretical and research work into the work of critical social theorists and the work of micro-(socio)linguists. Whereas a more productive analytical stance would be to see, as both Gumperz and Sacks do, the marco (e.g., social structures) as being enacted, maintained, reproduced, taking shape, or being contested, being transformed…etc., through and through in the micro interactional event (e.g., sentence making in introducing someone to a group). This seems to be the most challenging and yet most interesting task for the interaction analyst; i.e., not to leave social theory to the social theorists, as argued by Gumperz himself (2003). Another issue, which will also form the thesis of this chapter, is the relative lack of theoretical and methodological attention to analysis of intercultural-communication-situated-in-non-egalitarian-contexts. While there does not seem to be any dearth of research findings on intercultural communication, they tend to fall into the trap of linguistic and cultural essentialism; e.g., making claims like: people from the background of Language A and Culture A make and respond to compliments in these ways while people from the background of Language B and Culture B make and respond to compliments in those ways, etc. Also, there is a need for more study on conflicts or oppositional practices in intercultural communication located in non-egalitarian contexts. Gumperz’s famous studies of the job interview and the research student ‘pleading’ to the professor (2003) are among the few classical and pioneering studies in cross-group communication marked by hierarchical power relationships. And we must also note that Gumperz understands intercultural communication in a broad sense as inter-group (or in what I would call: inter-location or inter-position) communication; i.e., communication between people coming from different languages, cultures, dialects, social networks or classes, etc. Stretched to the extreme it can be said that all communication shares in some features (albeit to hugely varying degrees) of some inter-group or inter-position communication. This is also what Bakhtin means by saying that we need to acknowledge the “otherness” inherent in any dialogic encounter (Gardiner, 2004). In this chapter, I would like to continue in the tradition started by Gumperz in focusing on analysis of inter-group communication situated in larger sociopolitical,

 Angel Lin

non-egalitarian power matrixes, and in understanding the tactics used by nonpowerful participants to make the best out of a bad situation. Michel de Certeau discussed and described the everyday tactics used by non-powerful people and pointed out that tactics are ‘weapons of the poor’ (1984). Understanding the discourse tactics used by the non-powerful in inter-group communicative events will contribute to understanding the discourse strategies that Gumperz has devoted much attention to studying. In the next section, I shall draw on the analytical tools of positioning theory and storyline analysis (Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré and Langenhove, 1999) to analyse interactional examples from two case studies, each marked by a different configuration of power relations among the interactants. Drawing on positioning theory and storyline analysis to understand discursive tactics in inter-group communication in non-egalitarian contexts In this section I shall draw on the analytical resources of positioning theory (Davies and Harré, 1990; Harré and Langenhove, 1999) to analyse discursive tactics in two examples presented. In typical colonial encounters, the colonizer discursively positioned the colonized as a cultural, ethnic and linguistic ‘other’, establishing binary separation of the colonizer and the colonized and asserting the naturalness and primacy of the former (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 1998). In both our daily conversations as well as public discourses such discursive construction of self and other and of different subject positions for self and other routinely occurs. Positioning theory (Davies and Harré, 1990) proposes that such subject positions are linked to our discursively constructed storylines which are constantly being negotiated by different parties: One speaker can position others by adopting a story line which incorporates a particular interpretation of cultural stereotypes to which they are ‘invited’ to conform, indeed are required to conform if they are to continue to converse with the first speaker in such a way as to contribute to that person’s story line. Of course, they may not wish to do so for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they may not contribute because they do not understand what the story line is meant to be, or they may pursue their own story line, quite blind to the story line implicit in the first speaker’s utterance, or as an attempt to resist. Or they may conform because they do not define themselves as having choice, but feel angry or oppressed or affronted or some combination of these. (Davies and Harré, 1990, p.€7)

The construction of storyline is central to the establishment and articulation of collective and personal identities, which involve assigning different subject positions (or ‘characters’) to different people in a certain context according to a storyline projected by one’s discourse. By ‘giving people parts in a story’, a speaker



Researching intercultural communication 

makes available ‘a subject position which the other speaker in the normal course of events would take up.’ (Davies and Harré, 1990, p.€5). Below we shall quote Davies and Harré (1990) to delineate the key concepts of positioning theory for analyzing discursive tactics through analyzing the kinds of subject positions and storylines being both enabled and contested in discourse by different parties: We shall argue that the constitutive force of each discursive practice lies in its provision of subject positions. A subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those that use that repertoire. Once having taken up a particular position as one’s own, a person inevitably sees the world from the vantage point of that position and in terms of the particular images, metaphors, story lines and concepts which are made relevant within the particular discursive practice in which they are positioned. (Davies and Harré, 1990, p.€3)

In projecting storylines, people routinely draw on culturally available stereotypes (or recurring storylines) as resources to position themselves and others. In addition, different storylines are linked to different moral orders, with different sets of norms about what counts as right, legitimate and appropriate to do (Davies and Harré, 1990). It is in light of the conceptual framework and analytical tools offered by positioning theory that we shall understand “non-egalitarian contexts”. By “non-egalitarian contexts”, I do not mean a static, fixed, essentialist context out there. Instead I want to describe the larger power structures in which the interactants are located and the ways in which the different interactants draw on these structural resources bring into shape, to reproduce (e.g., by the relatively “more powerful” party – powerful as defined by her/his location in larger sociopolitical structures) or to contest and subvert such a move to create a non-egalitarian context (e.g., by the relatively “weaker” party – weaker as defined by her/ his location in larger sociopolitical structures). Thus, while interactants are differentially located in larger social structures and occupy differential positions in the larger power matrixes, the local context is being discursively constructed (reproduced or contested, negotiated and subverted and so on) in situ by the interactants (e.g., through the different storylines and subject positions being projected by different parties in conversation). For instance, while one party starts off by trying to shape the context as a non-egalitarian one (by putting him/herself in a more powerful position through a particular storyline being projected), the other party might contest and subvert the effect of such a move by using discourse tactics (e.g., through negotiating a different storyline and thus invoking different subject positions and a different moral order).

 Angel Lin

In the following case study of Carman Lee (pseudo-name), a Hong Kong business executive and her US client on the phone, we seem to be witnessing such tensions in the negotiation of a less or more egalitarian context. Then in Case Two, we shall look at the discourse tactics of ‘Long Hair’, a grass-root, leftist, democracy fighter in Hong Kong, and how he negotiates a more egalitarian discourse context when interacting with powerful middle class politicians and party leaders in public. Case One: A business executive in Hong Kong Carman Lee works in a medium-size gift and premium company in Hong Kong. Her company manufactures and trades gifts and premiums, plastic products, both generic and tailor-made. They have a factory with 200 workers in China where the manufacturing takes place, and a marketing and sales office in Hong Kong where designing of products and negotiations with clients take place. Their clients come from the Middle East, Europe and their biggest clients are from the US. However, these US clients seldom come to Hong Kong and they communicate with them mainly through email. The clients she comes into face-to-face contact with are mostly from the Middle East (e.g., Dubai), and these are diasporic ethnic Indian and Pakistani business executives who are very hardworking and very willing to travel. Some clients are from Europe (e.g., Italy), and when they come she will speak a few words such as Italian and they will be very happy to hear them; they will also learn a few phrases in Chinese, such as “Ni hau ma?” (How are you?). English to her is easier to learn than Mandarin Chinese although she is ethnic Chinese, because to her Mandarin Chinese comes in a more formal style than Cantonese, which is her mother tongue (e.g., “go haak hou yiu-kauh” in Cantonese; in Mandarin Chinese, one should say: “go haak yiu-kauh hou yimh-gaak” – a more formal, elaborate style needs to be used). Her job responsibility lies mainly in sales and marketing; solving the problems of clients, e.g., helping them to do promotion; e.g., a big pharmaceutical company wants to use their company logo to design a stationery holder plus a clock; her job focuses on communication with them; e.g., explain the design, negotiate the price, and the schedule, etc. Now with e-mail in very common use, she mostly uses e-mail to communicate with overseas clients. Thus, more written English than spoken English is used, especially when they are in the same time zone. On socializing with clients: she mainly needs to socialize with long-term clients who have become personal friends; when they come she will take them to lunch; these clients are frequent visitors to Hong Kong and have visited HK for over 10 years; so, they are very familiar with the places in Hong Kong; and in dinners with them they will talk about things such as different education systems in different places.



Researching intercultural communication 

The following are excerpts from the interview exchanges conducted in June 2004 between the author and Carman on intercultural communication experiences (the interview was conducted in both Cantonese and English and both parties code-switch naturally in the interview; the following is an English translation of the exchanges): Carman: Yes, we have a Hong Kong accent. I care about it a little bit; I feel that it’s not nice to hear; I’ll learn by imitation; e.g., paying attention to the English on TV; sometimes when I hear some Hong Kong people speaking English on TV with a distinctive Hong Kong accent I would feel a bit uncomfortable;… Anson Chan’s (the former high official in Hong Kong, an ethnic Chinese educated in the University of Hong Kong) English is okay; and Uncle Tung’s (the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong) English is not bad either. But I don’t have any problems communicating with my clients. Lin: If you have children, which accents of English do you want them to learn? Carman: Well, I don’t care much about that; as long as they can communicate, it’s okay. Because, even within the same country, people have different accents and you cannot say which ones are the best or more superior. My former colleague in the bank, when she spoke English we can tell she’s a Hong Kong person but she is someone who’s speaking rather good English. …. I think I can handle them (English-speaking foreigners) in my job domains; so I can speak English in certain domains only, e.g., some jargon related to their culture, which I’m not familiar with; sometimes we guess each other’s meanings but we can communicate alright. …. Lin: Have you ever come across any communication difficulties with your clients? Carman: In particular I have an Italian client, and he’s very happy when I speak Italian to him, but my Italian is limited (to several sentences) and English is not his mother tongue and sometimes he’d say, sorry, my poor English; but we can understand each other alright; speaking is more difficult, because of loss of meaning or misunderstanding; so before each meeting his secretary will e-mail the agenda to me first and then after the meeting he or his secretary will give us the minutes, or we’ll e-mail him to confirm what has been discussed, to do this, just “for sure”. I have an Engineering colleague who writes very well in English, and he’s very good in using simplified English to express technical details and people can understand his writing clearly. One incident of difficulty in communication: one time in a very noisy environment, a long-distance call from a US client, and the topic is

 Angel Lin

rather complicated and I experienced some difficulties in communication with him. And I used a strategy: I said to him: it’s very noisy here; please let me go somewhere and talk to you again; actually it’s a strategy to get him to say the things again. Americans do not “jauh neih” (Yale transcription of Cantonese words meaning “accommodate you”), i.e., accommodate you; they just speak as if you speak English as your mother tongue, and they will have sounds omitted and so on; those who speak English as a mother tongue will not articulate every sound, e.g., they will not say “I will”, but will shorten it; whereas second language speakers of English (e.g., those clients from the Middle East) will articulate every sound clearly and so it’s easier to understand their English. Some clients are very arrogant and will not speak to you if you speak slowly; e.g., some clients on the phone will start with the sentence: Is there anyone who speaks English. I’d answer him or her: where are you from? What can I help you with anyway? I’ll answer them directly in English. On the whole, in the industry or in HK, our colleagues might not be confident to speak English and especially when the clients speak fast and our colleagues will become diffident and hesitate to speak English even further. But I won’t be like that, e.g., I’ll ask them to spell their names, e.g., spell it please, and then I’ll say it’s strange, as it is not a common name. We can see from Carman’s remarks that she is a very confident speaker of English and she uses English in intercultural communication with other second and foreign language speakers of English, such as ethnic Indian and Pakistani clients from the Middle East or clients from Europe. With these clients she communicates comfortably in English – a language that does not belong to them as a mother tongue but a useful communication tool that has forged their business relationships and sometimes personal friendships. Such intercultural communication is characterized by egalitarian mutual respect. For instance, an Italian client would admit to her, “sorry, my poor English,” but she accommodates him by using her limited Italian with him, while he will also use some Chinese phrases to show his good will. In this sense, both parties show willingness to use the other’s language, if only as a symbol of respect and interest in the other’s language and culture. The storyline being co-produced in conversation between Carman and her Middle-East and European clients is thus one that projects subject positions which are more horizontally related rather than vertically related to each other; e.g., no speaker claims her/himself to be occupying a subject position higher than the other. Also, English comes in not as the superior communication tool, but just as



Researching intercultural communication 

a useful tool for intercultural communication between egalitarian, mutually respectful parties occupying near-peer subject positions. No one claims the subject position of an expert speaker of English. Also, their creative use of multiple communication strategies to ensure communication of important business information (e.g., e-mailing agendas in advance and written records of meetings afterwards) proves that successful communication does not depend on only one channel and second/foreign language speakers of English can use English fruitfully for intercultural communication without invoking the notion of the need for native-speaker-defined “good” English. In the storyline co-produced in their intercultural communication, it is a world and a moral order under which both conversation participants bear equal responsibilities to make oneself intelligible to each other and to try one’s best to appreciate each other’s efforts in communicating across cultural and linguistic boundaries without expecting any one party to lopsidedly make all the efforts for making oneself intelligible to the other party. The mutuality and egalitarian atmosphere that characterize Carman’s interactions with clients from non-English countries (e.g., Middle-East, Europe) stand in sharp contrast with the kind of attitudes shown by some of her US clients. For instance, some US clients will start a phone conversation by saying: ‘Is there anyone who speaks English?’ The storyline being projected by this US client’s question presupposes a world and a moral order that has at least two inter-related ideological underpinnings: that it is entirely the responsibility of the other party to accommodate the US client linguistically, and that the burden of successful intercultural communication rests entirely with those who need to mater English to communicate with those who already speak English as a first language. In this utterance we see the reincarnation of the storyline in imperialist literature, e.g., Robinson Crusoe, the legacy of imperialist and colonial mentalities (see analysis by de Certeau, 1984). This brings us to the witnessing of another practice of Carman, which can be seen as subversive. Instead of answering this client in a subservient way, she asked in her own variety of English: ‘Where are you from? What can I help you with anyway?’ By responding to a question not with an answer but with a question, she turned the tables and showed her agency and confidence in answering back to the voice posing as a colonial master. In her defiant act, she answered with a voice that belongs to a self-respecting, empowered agent who does not subscribe to the master-primitive imperialist storyline and resists the first party’s attempt to define the context as a hierarchical one. She is projecting a totally different storyline in her reply. In this storyline the subject positions are reversed: she is someone who demands to know the background of the caller; i.e., she is the one who has the right to demand information from the caller in the first place. In the storyline that she counter-projects with her reply, she is an equal partner in this business and professional relationship with her US clients, not a

 Angel Lin

linguistic or cultural inferior. For instance, she will handle them quite confidently; e.g., by asking them to spell their names when the pronunciation is not clear. In doing this, she indicates to the other party that the burden of intercultural communication rests with both parties, and not only on her side and she successfully uses her discourse tactics to negotiate a more egalitarian intercultural communication context through projecting a different storyline with more egalitarian subject positions linked to a moral order under which both parties share equal responsibilities for making the communication work rather than expecting one party to lopsidedly accommodate the linguistic demands of the other party. In the next section we shall use positioning theory and storyline analysis to analyse discourse tactics used by people of the marginalized. Case Two: ‘Long Hair’: A defiant, outspoken, grassroot, democracy fighter in Hong Kong ‘Long Hair’ is the nickname of Leung Kwok-hung, a leftist, outspoken, grassroot, political activist in Hong Kong for many years. He was elected a Legislative Councillor in Hong Kong on 12€September 2004. His winning of the election was mainly due to the support of young voters, mainly disenfranchised youths in Hong Kong who are discontent with the education system, high unemployment rates and the increasingly stratified society along social class lines. Many university student associations also invited him to give talks right after his successful election. My discourse data consists of his public televised debates with powerful rightwing business leaders who are also powerful party (e.g., Liberal Party) leaders in Hong Kong before and after the election. Due to limited space here, I shall quote only one excerpt from one such debate in a public forum shortly after the election (20 Septermber 2004, City Forum, televised live by Radio Television Hong Kong; the event was recorded by the researcher for analysis). I shall briefuly describe the context of the excerpt and then present the excerpt of the exchanges between James Tien (a powerful business leader and also the Chairman of the Liberal Party in Hong Kong) and Leung Kwok-hung (Long Hair). When James Tien Pei-Chun, Chairman of the Liberal Party then, is debating with Andrew Cheng of the Democratic Party, Leung Kwok-hung (Long Hair) interrupts and speaks to James Tien in an assertive tone (The original Cantonese utterances are transcribed in Chinese characters, with English glosses tabulated next to them in the table below):



Researching intercultural communication 

Cantonese utterances 1. 梁: 田少，我唔會再要你對我道 歉，你唔使驚。 2. 田：你對我咁友善，我點會驚。 3. 梁：不過我段報紙、有段新聞比 大家睇，就係田北俊公司被爆欠 薪（說時拿出剪報給現場觀眾 看）。你為打工仔著想，你竟然 間搞成咁！我初時以為你係清潔 先生，你有咩野講？欠左人百幾 萬！個個人都好老下架喇，做左 咁耐幫你。 4. 田：依個係我一個合資公司= 5. =梁：你係咪口蜜腹劍？ 6. 田：依個係合資公司，響國內既 情形，宜家仲響度打緊官司= 7. =梁：即係你唔知？= 8. =田：我唔係好詳細了解，但係我 會負責既。 9. 梁：你到宜家都唔知呀？你有無 關心過個個人呀？ 10. 田一臉為難，想開口時梁又搶著 說：宜家好簡單，我就唔會再攞d 野過黎比你睇架喇！我有首詩送 比你，你有無、你識唔識水滸 傳，水滸傳度有首詩。 11. 田笑說：你好似武松吖！ 12. 梁不理他，續說：叫苦熱歌，苦 熱歌。赤日炎炎似火燒，野田禾 稻半枯焦，農夫心內如湯煮，皇 孫公仔把扇搖。（說時真的拿出 扇子在搖）嗱！你，依把扇就送 比你，第日你搖下搖下，睇下香 港咁多人失業，三十萬人失業， 你、你都話你自己有功既！七年 以黎，董建華禍港央民，斗零救 窮人，二千億港市，你係咪搖住 扇響度睇？你響行政會議．．．

English translation Leung: Young Master Tien, I will not request you to apologize to me again, you don’t have to be afraid. Tien: You are so friendly to me, I will not be afraid. Leung: But see the news report, a news report for all of us to see, is the reporting of the incident of wages owed by James Tien’s company (Leung pulls out a newspaper cutting and shows to the audience). You are considerate towards the workers, you did something like this! I at first believe you are Mr Clean, you have anything to say? Owing people a million dollars or so! That person is quite old, and have served you for so long. Tien: This is one of my joint ventures…= =Leung: Are you poison in the honey? (literal translation: honey-mouth and sword-stomach) Tien: This is a joint venture, it’s a case in Mainland, now it is engaging in a lawsuit= =Leung: That means you don’t know?= =Tien: I don’t quite understand the details, but I will be responsible. Leung: You still don’t know now? Have you ever cared about that person? Tien looks embarrassed, Leung again interrupts before Tien can speak: Now it is simple, I won’t take any more thing out and give it to you to see! I have a poem as a present for you; have you, do you know Water Margins, there is a poem in Water Margins. Tien jokes: You are just like Wu Song. Leung ignores him, and continues: It’s called Bitter-Hot Song, Bitter Song. Hot red Sun is burning like fire, crops are half-withered. Farmers’ hearts are like boiling soup, the royals are fanning. (Leung takes out a real fan and fans himself with it.) See! You, this fan is for you; on the other day you fan and fan, seeing how many people in Hong Kong lose jobs, 300,000 people are unemployed, you, you still say you have your contribution! Seven years from now, Tung Chee-wah caused disasters to the country and its people, 50¢ to save the poor, $200 billion for the Hong Kong market, are you fanning and watching? In the Executive Council, you…

 Angel Lin

Cantonese utterances 13. 田笑著反問：今日係咪好過舊年 呀已經？係咪你把扇多少撥倒d比 窮人呢宜家？ 14. 梁：你係咪搖左扇？你話你係聽 依個居民既心聲，你落區，你知 唔知翠華餐廳一杯齋啡加一個菠 蘿油係幾錢？你淨係識紅酒既價 格，你主張紅酒減稅！ 15. 田：以前我係唔識，依排我都知 道係有ABC餐。 16. 梁：幾多錢呀？ 17. 田：十五蚊倒啫。 18. 梁：十五蚊？! 19. 田：ABC餐喎！ 20. 梁：我話比你聽，係二十蚊，齋 啡加菠蘿油，翠華係全港最多人 食既餐廳。 21. 田：咁你食得貴我好多喇長毛！ 22. 梁：嗱！紅酒減稅，你地就講到 好優惠喇自由黨，當係政績咁 講。你有無諗過D人，連食過十五 蚊既餐都無，你講得啱喇！

English translation Tien smiles and asks back: “Isn’t today much better than last year? Is that your fan fanning stuff for the poor? Leung: Have you fanned the fan? You said you are listening to the people’s voice at heart, you visited the community, do you know how much a black coffee and a pineapple-bun-with-butter cost at Tsui Wah Restaurant? You only know the price of red wine, you proposed red wine tax-reduction. Tien: I didn’t know in the past, but now I know there are set-meals A, B and C. Leung: How much then? Tien: Like around 15 bucks. Leung: 15 bucks?! Tien: Set-meals A, B C! Leung: Let me tell you, it’s 20 bucks, a black coffee with a pineapple-bin-with-butter. Tsui Wah is the most popular restaurant in Hong Kong. Tien: So you dined more expensively than I did, Long Hair! Leung: See! Red wine tax-reduction, you guys claiming a good offer (by) the Liberal Party, saying it like a contribution. Have you ever thought of the people, not even having eaten a 15-buckmeal; you have said so right!

In this exchange, we can see that Long Hair is very skillful in using quick, witty, discursive tactics to position his interlocutor, his debating opponent, James Tien, as a rich family’s son not knowing much about the living conditions and suffering of grassroot people. James Tien, being well-known in Hong Kong society as coming from a rich family, is often addressed to as ‘Tien-siu’ in public media (literally: Young Master Tien). In the Chinese language, ‘personal name + siu’ is an address term reserved for young masters, usually used by servants to address their young masters (‘siu’ being a word to attach to the name of the young master; ‘siu’ means ‘young master’). In public media in Hong Kong, sons of wealthy families are often referred to as X-siu (X is the name of the person). Long hair (Leung), by using this membership category term (Jayyusi, 1984; Hester and Eglin, 1997) right from the beginning of the exchange, is positioning Tien as someone coming from the rich upper classes, and as someone who does not share the lifeworld of the majority of people in Hong Kong.



Researching intercultural communication 

Then Leung pulled out a newspaper clipping to show that one of Tien’s employees was treated unfairly (with wages unpaid to him). By showing concrete evidence and by cornering Tien about his ignorance of the plight of his own employee, and then juxtaposing/equating Tien’s ignorance with his lack of concern (Turn 9), Leung is launching a powerful accusation against Tien in Turns 3–9. Being caught unexpectedly by Leung on this incident, Tien (apparently without any assistant beside him to brief him on this incident) acts in a role that Leung seems to have both expected and positioned him to act in the storyline projected in Leung’s discourse: That Tien-siu (Young Master Tien) is uncaring and unkind even to his own employee (or servants who have served him – his company – for so long; see Turns 3 and 9). Having cornered Tien with this concrete incident showing Tien’s lack of concern and care for his own employees, Leung immediately recited a Chinese ancient poem (‘as a present’ to Tien) which talks about the plight of poor people under a cruel government in the Sung Dynasty. The poem was taken from the famous Chinese classical novel, Water Margins, which depicted the story of a group of disenfranchised people who were forced to rebel against an oppressive, uncaring, corrupt government which let the rich and the powerful bully poor, powerless, ordinary people in the Sung Dynasty of China. It must be pointed out here that while Leung is from the grassroots, he is widely-read in the Chinese classics and can recite Chinese classical poetry and essays at ease. Compared with Leung, Tien is shown to be not only an uncaring rich son (due to family wealth), but also someone who is unfamiliar with Chinese classics. Leung’s fluent recitation of this ancient Chinese poem in one of the most famous Chinese classical novels, has again, given Leung an upper hand. By reciting this poem from Water Margins, Leung is also evoking the collective memory of the storyline of Water Margins: how decent, honest people were forced to become anti-government rebels to fight for justice. After travelling on the time line from the present (Tien’s apparent unfair and unkind treatment of his employee) to the ancient (reciting the poem from Water Margins to evoke the storyline of an unfair and unjust ruling elite), Leung again takes Tien back to the present by interrogating him about his knowledge of the living conditions of the grassroot people in Hong Kong (Turns 14–20): asking Tien how much it costs to have a common meal in Hong Kong). Again, Tien’s knowledge is shown to be inadequate, and Tien is further positioned as a typical member of the rich not knowing the plight of the poor. Leung’s discursive tactics are systematic, almost like well-planned, and he has cleverly drawn on popular cultural and discursive resources: news reports, ancient Chinese classical stories, Chinese poem depicting the plight of poor people, and everyday streetwise knowledge (of the living conditions) of grassroot people.

 Angel Lin

When reciting the poem, Leung fans a traditional Chinese paper fan, which serves as a hook to anchor the audience’s imagination (those watching this debate in front of the television) in Leung’s storytelling – his projecting of a storyline not too dissimilar to that of Water Margins. Tien is thus put on the defensive, but given his lack of Chinese cultural and discursive resources (Tien was Western and English-educated, not familiar with Chinese classics), his rebuttal seems so ineffective in front of Leung’s consecutive attacks, the last of which being the accusation of Tien as only knowing and caring about the reduction of red wine tax (Turn 22). Again, the middle class symbol of red wine (in Hong Kong, red wine consumption is associated with a middle and upper class life style) is invoked by Leung to position Tien as a bona fide middle class person, neither cognizant of, nor caring about, the life conditions of the grassroot people in Hong Kong. Long Hair has always been well-known for his eloquent, outspoken, defiant discourse style and this is precisely why some young people and many working class people like him. They like his upfront, straightforward, no-nonsense discourse style and his consistent voicing out of the economic difficulties of the grassroots and his direct attacks on the non-democratic political structure of Hong Kong. When a well-known rich guy, James Tien, who was also Chair of the Liberal Party representing business interests, was in the debating show, Long Hair deployed his discursive tactics skillfully to position Tien in a negative light: as someone who does not know about, and cannot, and will not care about grassroot people in Hong Kong. Has Leung been unfair to Tien in cornering him with his superior Chinese cultural and Hong Kong streetwise knowledge and linguistic resources? Has he been not interacting in a rational way? Recent critiques of Habermas’s ideal communicative situation, where interactants interact in a constraint-free, egalitarian context, have pointed out how unrealistic it is when the interactions are between people located in different power relationships (e.g., Crossley and Roberts, 2004). Gardiner (2004) has even pointed out that subscribing to such rationality norms will bring more damage to the already marginalized in such a context. In the above analysis, I attempt to show how Leung (relatively powerless in terms of wealth and in the existing governing structure of Hong Kong) skillfully deploys his other kinds of cultural and linguistic capital (e.g., his familiarity of Chinese classical stories and street knowledge of Hong Kong) to position an otherwise much more powerful person (Tien) in a negative light. Tien is shown to be of a lesser statue given the moral order projected by Leung’s storyline. Such a (re)presentation of the world (and the moral order and accompanying rights and obligations sets linked to it) gives Long Hair the moral high ground.



Researching intercultural communication 

Coda Having looked at the two examples above, it seems to us that intercultural or intergroup communication is more likely to be (at least provisionally) successful if both parties are willing to make the effort to overcome communication barriers, to mutually respect each other’s language and culture (e.g., Carman and her European and Middle-East clients), and to mutually share the burden of intercultural communication. In their conversation both parties co-produce a storyline which offers relatively more egalitarian subject positions for both parties. However, in nonegalitarian contexts (which are in fact not static and are open to negotiation and re-negotiation through discourse), intercultural communication does not always resemble the well-intentioned, civil, good-mannered interactive styles of interactants in other intercultural communication contexts, and ‘weaker’ parties might draw on discourse strategies or tactics; e.g., returning an arrogant question with a question, turning the tables, and counter-projecting a different storyline with a more empowered subject position for self (as in Carman’s example when interacting with an arrogant U.S. client) to subvert the power relations and to negotiate for, and reconstitute the context into a more egalitarian context for interaction. Such discourse tactics often do not subscribe to rationality, appropriateness or politeness norms as these discourse tactics (or strategies, in Gumperz’s terms) are ‘weapons of the poor’ (de Certeau, 1984). The use of positioning theory and storyline analysis seems to be a promising direction to help intercultural communication researchers understand how different social and cultural groups located in different positions in the larger social structures, nevertheless, attempt to project a different social and moral order under which they can mitigate their structural disadvantage and create a discursive context where more egalitarian subject positions are discursively made possible, if only momentarily, thus, attempting to change the context and larger social forms, norms and structures through in situ social actions and discourse tactics (see earlier discussion of structuration theory). This paper represents a preliminary attempt to analyse two examples of such intergroup communication in non-egalitarian contexts and it is hoped that further research in this area will help us understand the different discursive resources (and constraints) leading to both the challenge and the degree of (im)possibility of achieving intersubjectivity in inter-group/intercultural communication in adversarial situations.

 Angel Lin

Acknowledgement The author is indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions for revision on an earlier draft of this paper. References Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. 1998. Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London and New York: Routledge. Blumer, Herbert 1986. Symbolic Interactionism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carbaugh, Donal 2005. Cultures in Conversation. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. City Forum. Televised live on 20€September 2004 by Radio Television Hong Kong. Crossley, Nick and Roberts, John M. 2004. After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Oxford: Blackwell. Davies, Bronwyn and Harré, Rom. 1990. Positioning: “The discursive production of selves”. Retrieved from www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/position/position.htm. De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Eerdmans, Susan L., Prevignano, Carlo L. and Thibault, Paul (eds). 2003. Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. Gardiner, Michael E. 2004. “Wild publics and grotesque symposiums: Habermas and Bakhtin on dialogue: Everyday life and the public sphere”. In After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Nick Crossley and John M. Roberts (eds), 29–48. Oxford: Blackwell. Gee, James P. 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gumperz, John J. 2003. “Response essay”. In Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz. Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul Thibault (eds), 105–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gumperz, John J. and Hymes, Dell (eds). 1986. Directions in Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Gundykunst, William B (ed.). 2005. Theorizing about Intercultural Communication. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Harré, Rom and Langenhove, Luk V. 1999. “The dynamics of social episodes”. In Positioning Theory. Rom Harré and Luk V. Langenhove (eds), 1–13. Oxford: Blackwell. Hester, Stephen and Eglin, Peter (eds.). 1997. Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis. Washington, D.C.: International Institute for Ethnomethodology. Sacks, Harvey. 1966/1992. “Lecture 04a – An introduction sequence”. In Lectures on Conversation. Gail Jefferson (ed), 288. Oxford: Blackwell. Holliday, Adrian, Hyde, Martin, and Kullman, John. 2004. Intercultural Communication. London: Routledge. Jayyusi, Lena. 1984. Categorization and the Moral Order. Boston: Routledge. Kiesling, Scott F. and Paulston, Christina B (eds.). 2005. Intercultural Discourse and Communication. Oxford: Blackwell. Sluga, Hans, and Stern, David G (eds.). 1996. The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scollon, Ron and Scollon, Suzanne Wong. 1995. Intercultural Communication. Oxford: Blackwell.

Studying interaction in order to cultivate communicative practices Action-implicative discourse analysis Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

Communication Department, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA Action-implicative discourse analysis (AIDA) is an ethnographically informed discourse-analytic approach that works to provide normative understandings of situated communicative practices that are action-implicative for social life. Extending the logic of grounded practical theory (Craig and Tracy 1995), AIDA develops reconstructed accounts of the communicative problems, interaction strategies, and normative ideals of a practice. We introduce AIDA and illustrate the approach with an example from recent research on school board meetings in an American local community. We compare AIDA with other approaches to language and social interaction, focusing on interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz) and conversation analysis (Schegloff). We argue that to understand the distinctive character of these approaches requires recognizing each one’s orientation to the discursive context of a particular academic discipline.

Introduction Interview Comments: (1) John Gumperz, Interactional Sociolinguistics As to “regularities” of communicative practice, I believe that these should ultimately be derived from or related to in-depth analyses of situated encounters in a variety of settings (Prevignano and Thibault 2003a: 151). (2) Emanuel Schegloff, Conversation Analysis If one is committed to understanding actual actions (by which I mean ones which actually occurred in real time), it is virtually impossible to detach them from their context for isolated analysis with a straight face (Cmejrkova and Prevignano 2003:€39).

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

We begin this chapter by echoing words that Schegloff and Gumperz uttered in interviews in which each was questioned about his approach to studying interaction. Conversation analysis (CA) and interactional sociolinguistics (IS) differ from each other in many significant ways, as does action-implicative discourse analysis (AIDA), our own approach. As a starting point, however, all three approaches hold this in common: to understand social action, interaction, or communicative practices – whatever this stuff is to be called – requires looking at it in the context in which it occurred. Our chapter is divided into two sections. In the first section we overview AIDA, providing an example to show how we analyze interaction. For the example we draw upon some recent work studying community-level school board meetings. The second section of the chapter gives focal attention to the similarities and differences of AIDA with two alternative approaches, CA and IS. We argue that to understand the distinctive character of these three approaches requires recognizing each approach’s orientation to the context of a particular academic discipline. These disciplinary contexts have shaped what each approach takes for granted or treats as contested about language and social life. That CA originated in sociology, IS in linguistics, and AIDA in communication is crucial to understanding why each approach poses the questions about interaction that it does. Action-implicative discourse analysis AIDA is centrally interested in describing the problems, interactional strategies, and ideals-in-use within existing communicative practices. It is an approach that melds the analytic moves of discourse analysis – attending to situated talk and texts – with the goal of developing an understanding that will be action-implicative for practical life. AIDA works to provide a reconstructed account of the communicative problems, interaction strategies, and normative ideals of a practice so that participants will be able to reflect in more sophisticated ways about how to act. AIDA takes a rhetorical point of view, presuming that people can make more or less reflective decisions about how to communicate in order to act well and achieve or avoid certain outcomes. It is a normative approach: potential usefulness for being able to think and act wisely is a key criterion for assessing the contribution of particular studies. In what follows, we describe intellectual traditions that shaped AIDA and say a bit about its focal unit and aims, methodological profile, and rhetorical-normative stance. A more elaborated description of AIDA can be found in Tracy (2005).



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

AIDA’s intellectual heritage AIDA is best described as the coming together of two traditions: practical theory, an approach developed in the field of communication, and discourse analysis as it is practiced in the multidisciplinary community. Consider each tradition. Craig (1989, 1996, 1999, 2008b; Craig and Tracy 1995) has argued that communication studies should be conceived as a practical discipline rather than an empirical science. Rather than assuming that the ultimate goal of inquiry should be to produce descriptions and theoretical explanations of empirical phenomena, as is the case when a discipline is conceived as a science, a practical discipline takes its ultimate goal to be the cultivation of practice. This difference in goals has implications for the role of theory, because the cultivation of practice requires attention to normative as well as empirical questions. Whereas explanatory scientific theory lends itself to the cultivation of an instrumental (means-ends) orientation to practice, practical normative theory is “centrally concerned with what ought to be; it seeks to articulate normative ideals by which to guide the conduct and criticism of practice” (Craig and Tracy 1995:€249). How exactly to integrate the technical-productive (techne) side of communication with its moral-political (praxis) aspects is a major challenge for communication studies conceived as a practical discipline. Practical theory seeks to reconstruct communicative practices and provides methodological guidance for doing so (Craig and Tracy 1995). To reconstruct a practice means to conceptualize an idealized, normative model that is grounded in close observation as well as critical reflection. Researchers can reconstruct communicative practices at three levels. First and most crucial is the problem level: identifying the problems that occur for different categories of participants in particular social practices. Second, reconstruction can describe the specific conversational techniques and strategies that are employed to manage focal problems (the technical level). Finally, reconstruction can formulate the abstract ideals and principles that account for the selection of techniques for addressing particular kinds of problems (the philosophical level). Of note, the philosophical level must be grounded in situated ideals, the beliefs about good conduct that can be inferred from patterns of praise and blame made by participants in actual situations of practice. AIDA adopts the goals of practical theory and pursues them through the method of discourse analysis. Discourse is a term that gets used in quite different ways (e.g., Cameron 2001; van Dijk 1997a, 1997b). Our usage is similar to that found in linguistics (e.g., Schiffrin 1994), where “discourse” is paired with the term, “analysis” and treated as an umbrella term to refer to a variety of approaches to the study of talk or text. At its simplest, discourse analysis involves careful study of recorded and transcribed talk or text, where excerpts are used to make scholarly arguments. A second and different meaning of the term “discourse” is informed by

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

the work of Michél Foucault (1972) – what Gee (1999) refers to as big-D discourse in contrast with little-d discourse. Big-D discourse, often mentioned in the plural (discourses), refers to complex social practices such as education or business. Some forms of discourse analysis, for example critical discourse approaches (Fairclough 2001), are interested in both big-D and little-d discourse, but many discourse analysts are not. For this reason it is important to keep the two meanings distinct. As an approach that analyzes interaction, AIDA has been influenced by CA, anthropologically-influenced speech act traditions, discursive psychology, and critical discourse analysis (CDA). From CA, AIDA takes the commitment to study everyday interaction and the practice of repeatedly listening to exchanges that researchers have transcribed while attending to many particulars, including intonation, abrupt word or phrase cut-offs, and repetition and vocalized sounds (uh, um, eh). Moreover, although not accepting the CA principle that an interpretation should only use what is visibly displayed in a next turn at talk (Schegloff 1992, 1998), AIDA does share the CA view that how an interactional partner responds is an important resource for anchoring proposals about participant meaning. From anthropologically-influenced speech act traditions (Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper 1989; Brown and Levinson 1987; Gumperz 1982b), AIDA assumes the importance of seeing assessments about conversational actions as culturally-inflected judgments. Discursive psychology contributes to AIDA through its notion of dilemma (Billig et al. 1988) and in its development of a rhetorical stance toward discourse. Finally, critical discourse approaches argue that small-d discourse should be connected with big-D discourses (Fairclough and Wodak 1997). As AIDA is committed to cultivating the communicative practices that are studied, CDA offers one model of how that linkage might be made. But, let us consider what AIDA studies of interaction look like in their own terms. Distinctive features of AIDA AIDA focuses on communicative practices in institutional sites, with an analytic aim of reconstructing the web of actor problems, conversational moves and strategies, and situated ideals involved in those practices. An obvious question becomes, then, what is a communicative practice? Practice as a term has some useful ambiguities; at its core, though, it can be thought of as a way of referring to activities that occur in specific places among specific kinds of people; practice is another way to refer to a speech event (Hymes 1974) or what participants take to be a situation’s frame (Goffman 1974; Tannen 1993). Ordinary names given to practices often call up a constellation of site-people-purposes connections. “School board meetings,” “departmental colloquia,” and “classroom discussions” are examples of easily recognized practices related to educational settings. Practice is a way of unitizing



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

the social world to enable analysis. Since institutional practices involve multiple categories of people who are positioned differently within the practice, the problems of a practice will differ with a participant’s position. Getting a handle on the interactional problems from the points of view of the main categories of participants is one aim of AIDA, although often this aim is pursued across multiple studies. Having identified an important communication practice, a next question becomes how to study it. AIDA is a type of discourse analysis that is also ethnographic. To reconstruct a communication practice well demands that a researcher have extensive knowledge about the routine actions and variation in the practice. This requires the analyst to do sustained observation of the practice. It also requires analysts to develop an understanding of both how participants talk with each other in the practice (the focal discourse) and how they talk about their practice (meta-discourse). What exactly will be the necessary ethnographic components will depend on the practice being studied. In the analysis of school board meetings, soon to be illustrated, the focal discourse data were 200 hours of one community’s school board meetings recorded from a local cable broadcast and collected over a several-year time span. In addition to the focal discourse, only a small proportion of which was transcribed, were the following kinds of data: notes taken from viewing the televised meetings; several observations of the meetings on site; agenda, minutes, and other documents related to particular policy discussions; local newspaper articles and editorials about Board activities; and interviews with a variety of participants. Moreover, since all of these materials came from one community, the final activity involved observing meetings in other communities. Thus, a first step in AIDA is to develop extended knowledge of a focal practice. This can be accomplished by taping (or getting access to tapes of) a good number of hours of the central discourse activity, and by building up a portrait of the scene, the people, and the practice drawing on whatever additional materials are relevant and accessible. A next step for AIDA is to identify the segments of a focal practice for transcription and analysis. At the selection and transcription stage, AIDA differs from CA in two ways. First, AIDA would never begin with discourse moments that before analysis, as Harvey Sacks would advocate, seem to be “utterly uninteresting data” (1992:€293). While there is no dispute that such analyses can be valuable, for AIDA, not all moments of interaction are equally promising places to start. In AIDA, selecting stretches of discourse to be transcribed is a theoretically shaped activity. Since one goal is to understand the problems of a practice, moments in which participants seem to be experiencing discomfort, tension, or conflict are especially promising targets to focus on. Since another goal is to understand the situated ideals of a practice, instances where participants express evaluation of other people’s actions are a second type of talk likely to be selected. Finally,

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

segments of interaction that seem at odds with how an institution describes its aims and practices are also potentially of interest. Second, AIDA studies typically work with relatively long segments of interaction and give limited attention to timing and prosody. The reason for this choice flows from the AIDA commitment to develop ideas that contribute to participants’ reflection about a practice. For this reason, AIDA gives primary attention to the aspects of communication about which people are most able to reflect: choices about wording, speech acts, arguments, and speech or story organizations. In its normative orientation and its interest in both big-D and little-d discourse, AIDA resembles CDA. The normative principle that guides AIDA differs, however, from that of CDA. Whereas CDA is centrally committed to a negative critique that exposes invisible practices of power and domination rooted in macrosocial inequities, AIDA is centrally committed to addressing normative problems that arise within particular, situated social practices. AIDA, unlike CDA, aims toward a positive reconstruction that conceptualizes how particular communicative practices should be conducted. From an AIDA point of view, power and status differences are an unavoidable, and often desirable, aspect of institutional life. Practices cannot be judged without attending closely to their particular contexts. AIDA draws upon the Aristotelian idea of phronesis – good judgment, prudence, practical wisdom, sound and thoughtful deliberation, reasonableness – as a basis for the critique of practices. Phronesis is “not a simple process of applying principles or rules to cases that leaves the principles or rules unchanged; in prudential practice, there is a negotiation between the case and the principle that allows both to gain in clarity” (Jasinski, 2001:€463). Within AIDA, the central starting point for development of normative proposals is to identify the practice’s situated ideal(s). Situated ideals are participants’ beliefs about good conduct that can be reconstructed from discursive moments in which they praise and criticize. Situated ideals capture the complex prioritizing of competing concerns and values that not only will, but also arguably should, be operative in actual practices. Situated ideals may be reconstructed from analysis of participant interviews (Tracy 1997) or from study of interactive moments in conjunction with institutional documents or other segments of interaction (e.g., Agne 2007). In the school board meeting project, the school district was developing its policy position toward students and staff who were gay (Tracy and Ashcraft 2001). In this deliberative body, the group’s espoused principle of communicative conduct was to avoid arguing over words. Yet, in reflective moments and in its actual practices, participants treated word arguments positively, framing them as serving valuable functions. Arguments over document language were used to manage a dilemma. To make a decision, the group sought to advance the value to which the majority of the group was committed – in this case, advocating acceptance of gays. At the same time, the group majority wanted to maintain good relations with group



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

members committed to a contrary value. Because the school board wanted to avoid being dismissive and sought to show that it was treating all views seriously, it needed to spend a significant amount of time talking about the wording options rather than moving ahead merely because they had the needed number of votes. Arguing over words was how the group attended to these competing commitments. AIDA example: School board meetings To illustrate how AIDA analyzes interaction, we focus on one exchange that occurred at a school board meeting. As background, it is important to note that, in the United States, local governance committees, commonly referred to as school boards, are influential in shaping educational policy. These boards, usually ranging between 5 and 11 members, are elected by their local communities and make a host of decisions about policies, resource allocation, and to a certain degree, curriculum. Of all the decisions that school boards make, none is quite as important as the task of selecting the person to fill the role of superintendent. It is the district superintendent who interprets and implements the board’s policies and directs the day-to-day operation of the school district. This person is enormously influential. A school board meeting typically involves the elected officials, the superintendent and selected school staff, and varying numbers of citizens from the community. Meetings are public, often broadcast over community-sponsored radio or television stations, and include times for citizen commentary and for discussion among the board members about issues on which they will soon be voting. Among some boards there is little disagreement and almost all votes are unanimous (Newman and Brown 1992). At other times, though, boards become sites for the playing out of serious disagreements that exist in the community. The exchange that is analyzed below comes from a board meeting in which there was a history of votes routinely splitting into majority and minority positions. The exchange occurred among one of the board members who took the minority position and was usually outvoted (Shoemaker), two of the board officers who were part of the majority coalition, (Hult and Shonkwiler) and a consultant (Ceruli) who had been hired to assist with the district’s search for the next superintendent. On the meeting’s agenda, the item of discussion was described as “Approval and Acceptance of the Superintendent Search Committee.”1 Meeting Excerpt: Minority Member Shoemaker’s No Vote

1. This analysis is a shortened version of one that appears in more detail, with more specifics of the school board meetings and other segments of meeting interaction in Tracy and Standerfer (2003).

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

(H=Hult, the president; Sh=Shoemaker, board member in minority position; S=Shonkwiler, the vice president; C=Ceruli, paid consultant to the Board) 1 H: Susan 2 Sh: I have some questions, um. I guess clarification first. I assume that these names are 3 added to, um (.) what we are going to be voting on here. We’re voting on the process, 4 the budget, and these names, is that correct? 5 H: We’re voting on the process and the budget. Search process and budget. 6 Sh: Will we= 7 H: = I guess the names are an inherent uh element of that (.) 8 Sh: So we are voting on the names orâ•‚ 9 H: It’s the whole thing we are voting on 10 Sh: not 11 H: Yeah. 12 Sh: Okay. So we -are voting on the names 13 H: Yeah. Yeah. I think so (pause) in effect. I mean there’s no separate category for it but 14 S: It’s part, it’s part of the whole package 15 Sh: Well it just 16 H: Part of the whole thing 17 S: Part part of the package 18 Sh: It seems to me that if we vote on the members of DAC [District Advisory Council] and 19 we vote on the members of our real estate task force, we certainly should be voting on 20 our superintendent search committee. 21 H: Wanna do it name by name or d’you wanna do it as a lump sum? Lump group. 22 Sh: Lump sum is fine. 23 H: Okay. 24 S: hh Move that we appoint the listed members to the task force that was approved by the 25 board at the last meeting. 26 H: I just hâ•‚ guess that would be just a friendly amendment (.) to the motion. 27 S: I stand corrected. That would be an amendment to the motion. 28 H: ºOkayº Great. 29 Sh: ºOkayº Now. Some questions for Mr. Ceruli, please? Um. how many searches for 30 superintendents have you conducted in the past? 31 C: Uh, wâ•‚ 32 Sh: Approximately 33 C: Our firm is a, ah research and facilitation firm. So we have not conducted a ah 34 superintendent search. We’ve bâ•‚ been in involved with um um one particular search in 35 Denver. Uh but what we do are public process and research and so what were, ah what 36 we’ve offered to do here. And what we’ve done thus far is um put together the parts of 37 the public process that would uh uh accompany this um and all of the research and that 38 it whâ•‚ thâ•‚ it which essentially a search is. It is aâ•‚ it’s an effort to um aâ•‚ acquire the 39 information you need from these individuals. And so that’s what we would conduct. 40 Sh: So the answer is that you haven’t. ((laughs)) 41 ((Audience laughter)) 42 C: We, uh. That’s right. That is the answer.



Action-implicative discourse analysis  43 Sh: Is that correct? ((laugh)) 44 C: That is the answer. Correct. 45 Sh: That you have not uh supervised or organized or whatever you are doing for us a 46 superintendent’s 47 C: Right. 48 Sh: search committee ever before. 49 C: Uh we’ve conducted searches for the um the scientific and cultural facilities district uh 50 executive director that’s been with them for eight years. We uh assisted on the 51 conducting of the Great Outdoor Colorado search for their executive director, so we 52 have done executive director searches before. We haven’t done a search for a 53 superintendent specifically. 54 Sh: Uhâ•‚huh, I just wanted to clarify that. Um, I guess am going to have to vote against this.

For analytic purposes, we will divide the exchange into two sections: lines 1–28 and 29–54. If we were to interpret Shoemaker’s actions through the focal decision – approval of the search process – we would likely “see” evidence of hidden agendas and the irrationality of much of the talk that goes on in decision-making groups. However, if we assume that people and their talk are reasonable, attending to legitimate problems, then what becomes visible? In lines 1–28, Shoemaker questions the meaning of voting to approve the superintendent search procedures. Although the most straightforward function of questions is to seek information, questions frequently challenge and criticize (Tracy 1997). In lines 2–4, where Shoemaker questions whether committee members’ names are to be included in the vote, it seems possible that she is merely seeking information. However, when she twice repeats the upshot of Hult’s answer (“so we’re voting on the names,” lines 8 and 12) and then explicitly states why she regards it as unreasonable not to specify the committee make-up, it becomes clear that the “question” is a challenge. Hult’s response (line 21), in fact, acknowledges Shoemaker’s criticism and offers a solution. Yet the choice she offers Shoemaker– “name by name or lump group” – frames Shoemaker as unreasonable. In light of the shared view that school board meetings were already too long, a proposal to turn the approval process into a yes-no vote on 11 citizens, as well as all the other pieces of the process, implicated Shoemaker negatively. Stated differently, Hult’s comment humors and therein seeks to silence a difficult member. This humoring is underscored by Shonkwiler’s proposal (lines 24–25) when he states, “Move that we appoint the listed members to the task force that was approved by the Board at the last meeting.” In essence, the President’s and Vice President’s comments frame Shoemaker as haggling over something that has already been decided, and therefore implicitly wasting time and being unreasonable. Shoemaker’s response, “lump sum is fine” (line 22), is interesting because it is at odds with an implication established through her prior questioning – that there

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

was something troubling about the search committee’s make-up.€Allowing approval of the committee to be bundled into the “search process” decision would seem to be just the issue to which Shoemaker had earlier been objecting. Yet, at this juncture in the meeting, she pursues the issue no further, shifting attention to other concerns. How, then, might it be possible to see Shoemaker’s talk as reasonable? Models of group interaction often assert competing notions of good member behavior. On the one hand, members are encouraged to be vigilant and not to go along with the majority to avoid conflict (Janis and Mann 1977). On the other, they are expected to avoid actions that contribute to the negative reputation that meetings have come to have in Western society: as ineffectual, a waste of time, tedious, and so forth (Schwartzman 1989). In groups that use majority rule rather than consensus, problematizing the direction the group is going, but then permitting the group to continue, is a reasonable strategy for a person whose position is in the minority. Such a move allows the member to establish his or her reservations and yet to avoid being cast as the group “problem.” In the second half of the exchange, Shoemaker challenges consultant Ceruli’s competence to be organizing the superintendent search process. In asking Ceruli how many superintendent searches he had previously conducted (lines 29–30), and then tacking on that it would be acceptable for Ceruli to offer an approximate number (line 32), Shoemaker implies the reasonableness of expecting Ceruli’s firm to have done a number of searches. In adding “approximately” to her initial question formulation, Shoemaker’s question offers a “candidate answer” (Pomerantz 1988). Approximation of a number makes sense if one is dealing with relatively large numbers, at least, say, 10 or 15. But, if it is expected that a person has done only one or two searches, there is no need to ask for an approximate number. This is even more the case if a questioner expects that a firm may have done no searches. Ceruli’s nonfluent and rambling answer makes visible his awareness of the implications of this question as well his own discomfort with those implications. Although Ceruli tries to reframe the experience he does have, Shoemaker does not accept his reframing. In summarizing the gist of Ceruli’s comment (line 40) as “the answer is you haven’t [any experience]” she offers an unfriendly reading. Not only does Shoemaker respond unsympathetically, but she also underscores it with her follow-up questions and, thereby, forces Ceruli to acknowledge publicly and repeatedly that he has no experience conducting a superintendent search. From Ceruli’s point of view, it is hard to imagine that he did not see Shoemaker as deliberately working to undermine him in a situation where the group (i.e., the board majority) had already hired him. If we raise the question concerning what purpose Shoemaker’s talk serves, a function does become apparent. Shoemaker’s interrogation draws attention to the fact that some persons, but not she, hired a consulting firm with questionable



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

competence. Furthermore, her pursuit of this issue strongly implies that she was not part of that decision; either the decision occurred behind her back (because the majority favored it and there was no need to get her input), or it was made despite concerns she may have raised. Shoemaker’s comments, thus, construct a version of recent events that make visible for citizens in the community (i.e., voters in the upcoming election) that the board majority led by the president acted in a high-handed and/or questionable manner. Shoemaker went on to vote against the search committee composition, a position that was decisively outvoted by other board members. But, although in this immediate decision, Shoemaker lost – her arguments did not lead the group to change direction – a negative assessment of her talk is not warranted. When we look at this deliberation process in a larger frame, her talk on this occasion functioned to shape longer-term outcomes. In the subsequent election a key issue became the reasonableness of the incumbents’ conduct in board meetings, both with each other and in dealing with members of the public (Craig and Tracy 2005; Tracy 1999; Tracy and Muller 2001). Were members of the board majority acting democratically with each other and the larger public? Were they exercising good judgment in the decisions with which they were entrusted? This interactive segment, as well as others like it, helped create a community impression that the board leaders were acting “undemocratically.” In the election that followed, the president and the two other majority coalition members running for election were voted out of office, and Shoemaker became president. Arriving at a reconstruction of the problems, conversational techniques, and situated ideals of a practice, such as school board meetings, requires observing and reflecting on multiple instances and kinds of interaction from the viewpoints of various categories of participants. A developed reconstruction needs to attend to the larger interactional scene. Based on this single analysis, we would highlight the following. First, using AIDA makes visible a problem. When elected officials in community groups know their opinions are in the minority, they face a difficulty. As elected officials, brought to power though a process of voting, they are expected to show respect for democratic decision-making. They are also expected to exert influence and shape policies and decisions in a direction consistent with the views they advocate. How to do this is a major challenge when members know they will be outvoted. Shoemaker’s moves, analyzed above, point to some of the conversational techniques that persons in this position can and do use. In essence, Shoemaker’s way of posing questions and reformulating others’ answers functioned to challenge the good judgment and fairness of the board majority while displaying her own commitment to democratic process (i.e., her willingness to be outvoted). Simply put, when elected officials cannot affect the immediate decision, their talk can be employed to shape the larger decision-making context.

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

Finally, analysis of a single interaction, such as we have done here, is inadequate for developing a situated ideal of school board meeting conduct. Construction of situated ideals, an important aim within AIDA, necessitates looking at multiple instances of a kind of interaction along with collecting and studying participant interviews and institutional documents. In the contextual crevices – the spaces between what people actually do and how they evaluate their own and others’ actions within the practice itself, in interviews, and in institutional documents – are to be found the raw materials for reconstructing a situated ideal. Based on study of materials from the larger project (Craig and Tracy 2005; Tracy 1999, 2008, 2010; Tracy and Craig 2003; Tracy and Muller 2001), the exchange offers a glimmer of the ideal that participants seem to hold. A belief in the goodness of “democracy/democratic process,” seems to represent an ideal for school board meetings. Participants’ situated ideals, however, differ from those that philosophers and political theorists stake out in conceptual essays. The ideal for school board meetings in this study is one that recognizes the value of extended talking and consensusdecision-making, and, at the same time, voting and majority rule to settle differences (Mansbridge 1980). It is an ideal that assumes the desirability of elected officials exercising their judgment and at the same time assumes that elected officials should represent their constituents (Schudson 1998). In addition, the situated ideal is one that sees formal rules as the cornerstone of fairness but also seems to recognize that rules, at least on particular occasions, can be impediments to “real democracy.” Stated a bit differently, the situated ideal for school board meeting conduct, reconstructed from what participants say, espouse, and criticize, is a dilemmatic ideal. It is not philosophically coherent, but it is pragmatically useful and defensible. The situated ideal for these American school board meetings identifies competing criteria for assessing conduct and leaves the selection of applicable criteria for participant argument in the interaction moment. The situated ideal shapes and constrains conduct and at the same time is a resource for justification and critique. Studying interaction: A disciplinary conversation Disciplinary discourses2 Academic disciplines are discourse communities. A discipline is “a conversational community with a tradition of argumentation” (Shotter 1997:€42) that participates in broader communities of disciplines with their own traditions of argumentation. 2. Portions of this section have been adapted from Craig (2008b).



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

Modern disciplines do not represent eternally fixed categories of knowledge; rather, they are institutional objects that emerge and evolve within this ongoing “conversation of disciplines” (Craig 2008b). Each discipline is constituted in discourse in its own particular way, in part by being routinely contrasted against neighboring disciplines. As Godzich (1986: x) commented, “the mutual relation of the disciplines is never one of autonomy or of heteronomy, but some sort of complicated set of textual relations that needs to be unraveled in each instance.” This process can be illustrated briefly in the cases of three disciplines central to our present discussion: sociology, linguistics, and communication. The “sociological perspective” of sociology can be defined only against a background that includes traditions of argumentation about sociology’s differences from history, psychology, anthropology, economics, and other disciplines. Classic writings in sociology assert the uniqueness and importance of a sociological perspective with compelling intellectual force, but sociologists have always disagreed among themselves about the meaning and value of such a perspective. The sociological tradition can be read as a series of arguments about how much and in what ways sociology differs from other disciplines. Perspectives within sociology can be described as economic, cultural, historical, political, psychological, and so forth. If the idea of a sociological perspective were no longer felt to be worth discussing, even among sociologists, then the conversation would break up or turn to other topics and sociology would cease to exist as a meaningful discipline. However unlikely this scenario may seem, sociologists have sometimes expressed the fear that something like it may be happening (Brewer 2007; Halliday and Janowitz 1992; Osborne and Rose 1997; Turner and Turner 1990).3 The disciplinary identity of linguistics is equally agonistic (Badger 2006; Harris 1993) and negotiable with reference to other fields such as anthropology, cognitive science, communication studies, sociology, and rhetoric (e.g., Bucholtz and Hall 2007; Leith 1994; Ochs, Schegloff and Thompson 1996; Tusting and Maybin 2007). Of particular importance, the discourse community of linguistics has been shaped by a debate over “autonomous linguistics,” the idea that language is an autonomous structure independent of social behavior generally (Newmeyer 1986). Although many linguists, and especially those who identify as sociolinguists or anthropological linguists, would not agree with this position, it is a position that cannot be ignored. For linguists, the position that language is not autonomous is controversial and must be argumentatively defended. In sociology and communication, in contrast, the interpenetration of language and the social is generally taken for

3. On the history and disciplinary identity of sociology, see also: Collins (1985), Lepenies (1986), Levine (1995), Mazlish (1989), and Ross (1991).

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

granted. Few sociologists or communication scholars would dispute such a claim. For them, the arguable issues concern how language and society are connected. Our own discipline of communication, although notoriously heterogeneous and not yet fully institutionalized, is not without its own traditions of argumentation and identity negotiations vis-à-vis other fields (Craig 1989, 1999, 2008a, 2008b; see also Buzzanell and Carbaugh 2009; Donsbach 2006). Tracy (2001) described several features as characterizing a communicative approach to interaction.4 A first feature is the prominence of strategy and audience as key terms in the analysis of interactional moments. Second is the attention given to problematic interaction, including persuasive and conflict situations, whether the conflicts are between people or are among an actor’s multiple situated aims. Third, seeing talk as a form of practical and moral action has deep roots in the communication field (going back to the ancient verbal arts of rhetoric and dialectic), even while it is important note that it is by no means the dominant tradition at the present time. Finally, communication research about interaction has tended to use a more argumentative writing style than is typically used in other social science disciplines (Tracy 1988). This greater amount of argumentative discourse accomplishes many things, but one important one is to discursively enact communication as a heterogeneous discipline in which a wide range of assumptions cannot be taken for granted but must be argumentatively defended in each publication. Interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, and AIDA in Their disciplinary contexts IS originated in linguistics, CA in sociology, and AIDA in communication. Each of the three disciplines is a distinct discourse community with a particular intellectual-institutional history that forms a background for judging claims that can be straightforwardly asserted or assumed in research versus claims that are controversial and must be justified by explicit arguments appropriate to that discipline. Until the last few decades, as Schegloff (Cmejrkova and Prevignano 2003a) has noted, social scientists did not regard ordinary interaction as deserving systematic study. To merit study, interaction needed to be either defective (e.g., mental retardation or schizophrenia) or seen as directly related to profit-making (e.g., salesmanship, negotiation). This lack of interest in ordinary talk no longer persists. All kinds of informal and institutional interaction have been or are being studied by discourse 4. The essay, addressing linguists, included 5 features that distinguish a communicative kind of discourse analysis. The first, which applies to discourse analysis but not to the study of interaction, was a preference for discourse that is interactive (i.e., talk) rather than written texts.



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

scholars. The interactional-conversational-linguistic turn of so many social science disciplines has been impelled by diverse forces, but certainly two important ones have been the discipline-challenging moves of Gumperz and Hymes (1972) in linguistics and anthropology, and of Sacks (1992) in sociology. In the early 1970s, Gumperz and Hymes, working at the intersection of linguistics and anthropology, developed the ethnography of speaking, an approach that challenged the dominant traditions of both disciplines. In anthropology at that time, little attention was given to speaking and language. How, Gumperz and Hymes asked, can culture be understood if attention is not given to how people speak to others in the events that compose their lives? IS, the second stream that flowed from the ethnography of speaking tradition, attended more to the field of linguistics, and especially the subfield of sociolinguistics. To understand verbal exchanges, Gumperz (1982b: 1) argued, requires “knowledge and abilities which go considerably beyond the grammatical competence we need to decode short isolated messages.” In framing the proposal this way, interactional sociolinguistics can be seen as centrally arguing with fellow linguists. The proposal takes for granted a central goal of linguistics – to explicate knowledge underlying “language” – but disagrees with many linguists as to where that knowledge is to be grounded. Not in the grammatical or semantic properties of the code (linguistics, proper), nor in social and language variables detached from interaction (sociolinguistics, e.g., Labov 1966); instead, Gumperz claimed, the most interesting component of language knowledge is to be found in social interaction. The idea of contextualization cue, perhaps Gumperz’s most important idea, necessitated attending to linguistically peripheral information (e.g., prosody, discourse particles) to develop a good picture of what situated meanings were being made and how interactional problems could arise (Levinson 2003). Not only did Gumperz’s discipline affect his argument but his area of specialization also did. That Gumperz was an anthropological linguist influenced the interaction scenes he selected for study. Although a variety of interaction genres have been studied (e.g., Gumperz 1982a), they have almost entirely involved persons of different speech communities. In pursuit of understanding this kind of complex interaction, interactional sociolinguistic studies have drawn upon interviews, analysis of text genres such as African American preaching (Gumperz 1982c), and, on occasion, simulations (Akinnaso and Ajirotutu 1982). In reflecting on the intellectual contributions of Gumperz, Levinson (2003:€ 32) noted, “Gumperz’s analyses of conversation have nothing of the theoretical cleanliness to be found e.g.€in conversational analysis. His tools are eclectic and the toolbox cluttered.” Gumperz’s students (e.g., Tannen 1986) and grand-students (e.g.€Yamada 1992) have continued the tradition of using multiple means to understand situated sense-making. It was within the disciplinary context of linguistics, particularly in the American academic

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

scene, that Gumperz and students’ focus on interaction, and moreover, a functional approach to it, was radical. In communication, taking a functional approach is mainstream. For communication scholars, function and its close relative, strategy, are taken-for-granted key concepts to use in studying social life (Craig and Tracy 1983). In contrast to that of CA, Gumperz’s influence in the field of communication has been relatively limited. An unsympathetic reading of his work could frame him as asserting no more than a disciplinary commonplace in communication. That communicative functions are important is an unquestioned assumption in the discourse community of communication studies. Although IS and Gumperz’s work are not synonymous, for many purposes they can be treated as alternative forms of reference. This is not the case with CA and Schegloff ’s work. CA is a broad enterprise. Many scholars internationally and across disciplines currently would define themselves as doing CA or being strongly influenced by “it.” Yet, as CA has been taken up in locations outside the US and in disciplines outside sociology, it has to some degree been refashioned. In each case, CA has merged with other impulses that are specific to the academic tradition (US, European) and the particular discipline. “CA” in communication (e.g.€Beach 1996; Glenn, LeBaron and Mandelbaum 2003), linguistics (Ochs, Schegloff and Thompson 1996), or feminist psychology (Kitzinger and Frith 1999; Speer 2002) – to identify only three of the most obvious alternatives – each has a distinctly different flavor from the kind of CA that Schegloff does. Moreover, in contrast to what is stated in the discussion about CA with Schegloff that occurred in the Prevignano and Thibault (2003b) volume, in many intellectual corners (e.g., Hutchby and Wooffitt 1999), Harvey Sacks is treated as the originator of CA. This way of framing CA is especially visible in work that builds on Sacks’ analyses of membership terms (Fitzgerald and Housely 2002; Hester and Eglin 1997). Sometimes this work is treated as a kind of CA; at other times it is treated as something entirely different and labeled “membership categorization analysis,” an approach to be contrasted with CA. What is to be treated as inside or outside of CA is by no means obvious. When, for instance, does a study become CA-influenced rather than a piece of CA scholarship proper? Is any study that goes beyond claims that can be grounded in the recipient’s uptake not a CA study? Is all the work done by visible conversation analysts actually CA? For instance, would the quantitative coding study of questions in US presidential press conferences conducted by CA scholars Clayman and Heritage (2002), be considered CA? How much ethnographic work can a CA scholar do and how can it be used in interpretation of an interactional scene before the work’s CA status is called into question? Are studies that pursue issues such as gender inequality through a close look at conversations that have been transcribed using the Jeffersonian transcription system CA research?



Action-implicative discourse analysis 

We do not have answers to these questions. The point we wish to highlight is that as CA has become widely influential, its boundaries have become less clear. In this more intellectually diffuse landscape, Schegloff can be seen as anchoring a position that emphasizes a structural view. A leap from interaction structure to language structure is a small one. That this is so, we believe, accounts for the spreading attractiveness of Schegloff ’s version of CA among linguists. His view of CA meshes with assumptions about structure and function familiar to the discourse community of linguistics. Interestingly, other CA scholars (e.g., Drew 1992, 1998; Pomerantz 1989/90), who build on Sacks’ less structural ideas, seem to have been somewhat less influential in linguistics but more influential in functionallyfocused disciplines like psychology and communication. At its inception, CA both sought to address a key sociological issue and challenge the position most sociologists were taking toward it. CA developed a way to understand social structure and offered a radical critique of the macro, “top-down” kind of answers that were and continue to be dominant in sociology. Initially, studies of interaction in CA focused on conversations among family and friends, often on the telephone, or among juvenile delinquents in treatment, suicide hotlines (Sacks 1992), or exchanges with the police (Zimmerman 1984), all interaction sites traditionally connected to sociology. Today, CA and CA-influenced studies can be found of all kinds of interaction. Much more than interactional sociolinguistics, CA has succeeded in tearing loose from its disciplinary mooring. As it has done so, though, its character has become fuzzier. The distinct contribution of AIDA AIDA shares with IS a concern with problematic interaction. But, the kinds of problems to which AIDA and IS give attention are different. Operating within a linguistic tradition, Gumperz has built an analytic frame on the opposition between central and peripheral linguistic information (Levinson 2003). Lexical and syntactic kinds of information are treated as focal, whereas prosody, the use of discourse particles, and several other features are seen as background language information. Gumperz ‘s research has highlighted the problems that occur within language processes (e.g., vocal intonation patterns) that are largely out of awareness. IS, as is true of culture-attentive discourse approaches generally, can help people recognize that moments of interactional trouble arise from reasonable but culturally-specific meaning-cueing practices. In contrast, AIDA is primarily interested in institutional problems that arise among nationally and ethnically similar persons. Rather than cultivating better understanding of subtle out-of-awareness practices, AIDA seeks to make visible discourse strategies that can be named, reflected upon, and adopted by participants to make their practice work better.

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig

A second distinctive feature of AIDA is its metatheoretical stance. Instead of pursuing the building of a descriptive science of interaction as Schegloff espouses for CA, or exposing ideology and social inequity as CDA aims to do, AIDA’s approach to the study of interaction is guided by its practical theory view of research. AIDA aims to develop practically useful and morally defensible reconstructions of interactional problems, conversation techniques, and situated ideals of a variety of communicative practices. With an end goal of enabling people to better manage the very particular communication practice that they care about, AIDA, as its name suggests, is a discourse approach that aims to be action implicative. References Agne, Robert. 2007. “Reframing practices in moral conflict: interaction problems in the negotiation standoff at Waco.” Discourse & Society 18: 549–578. Akinnaso, F. Niyi and Ajirotutu, Cheryl. S. 1982. “Performance and ethnic style in job interviews.” In Language and Social Identity, John J. Gumperz (ed), 119–144. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Badger, Richard G. 2006. “Investigating agonism in linguistics.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1442–1456. Beach, Wayne A. 1996. Conversations about Illness: Family Preoccupations with Bulimia. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Billig, Michael, Condor, Susan, Edwards, Derek, Gane, Mike, Middleton, David and Radley, Alan. 1988. Ideological Dilemmas. London: Sage. Blum-Kulka, Shoshona, House, J., & Kasper, G. 1989. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Brewer, John D. (ed.). 2007. “Sociology and its strange ‘others’” [special issue]. History of the Human Sciences 20 (2): 1–175. Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. 1987. Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary and Hall, Kira. 2008. “All of the above: New coalitions in sociocultural linguistics.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 12: 401–431. Buzzanell, Patrice and Carbaugh, Donal. (eds.). (2009). Distinctive Qualities of Communication Research. New York: Routledge. Cameron, Deborah. 2001. Working with Spoken Discourse. London: Sage. Cmejrkova, Svetla and Prevignano, Carlo L. 2003. “On conversation analysis: An interview with Emanuel A. Schegloff.” In Discussing Conversation Analysis: The Work of Emanuel A. Schegloff, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault (eds), 11–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Collins, Randall. 1985. Three Sociological Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press. Craig, Robert T. 1989. “Communication as a practical discipline.” In Rethinking Communication; Volume 1; Paradigm Issues, Brenda Dervin, Lawrence Grossberg, Barbara J. O’Keefe and Ellen Wartella (eds), 97–122. Newbury Park CA: Sage. Craig, Robert T. 1996. “Practical-theoretical argumentation.” Argumentation 10: 461–474. Craig, Robert T. 1999. “Communication theory as a field.” Communication Theory 9: 119–161.



Action-implicative discourse analysis  Craig, Robert T. 2008a. “Communication as a field and discipline.” In International Encyclopedia of Communication, Wolfgang Donsbach (ed.), Vol. II, pp.€ 675–688. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. Craig, R. T. 2008b. “Communication in the conversation of disciplines.” Russian Journal of Communication 1: 7–23. Craig, Robert T. and Tracy, Karen (eds.). 1983. Conversational Coherence: Form, Structure and Strategy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Craig, Robert T. and Tracy, Karen. 1995. “Grounded practical theory: The case of intellectual discussion.” Communication Theory 5: 248–272. Craig, Robert T. and Tracy, Karen. 2005. “‘The issue’ in argumentation practice and theory.” In The Practice of Argumentation, Frans H. van Eemeren & Peter Houtlosser (eds), 11–28. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Drew, Paul. 1992. “Contested evidence in courtroom cross-examination: The case of a trial for rape.” In Talk at Work, Paul Drew and John Heritage (eds), 470–520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drew, Paul. 1998. “Complaints about transgressions and misconduct.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 31: 295–325. Fairclough, Norman. 2001. “The discourse of new Labour: Critical discourse analysis.” In Discourse as Data, Margaret Wetherell, S. Taylor and S. J. Yates (eds), 229–266. London: Sage. Fairclough, Norman and Wodak, Ruth. 1997. “Critical discourse analysis.” In Discourse as Social Interaction, Teun A. van Dijk (ed), 258–284. London: Sage. Fitzgerald, R. and Housley, W. 2002. “Identity, categorization and sequential organization: The sequential and categorial flow of identity in a radio phone-in.” Discourse & Society 13: 579–602. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. Gee, James P. 1999. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Glenn, Phillip, LeBaron, Curtis D. and Mandelbaum, Jenny. 2003. Studies in Language and Social Interaction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Godzich, Wlad. 1986. “Forward: The further possibility of knowledge.” In Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, vii–xxi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gumperz, John J. and Hymes, Dell. 1972. Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Gumperz, John J. (ed.) 1982a. Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J. 1982b. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J. 1982c. “Fact and Inference in Courtroom Testimony.” In Language and Social Identity, John J. Gumperz (ed), 163–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J. 2003. “Response essay.” In Language and interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz, Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault (eds), 105–126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Halliday, Terence C. and Janowitz, Morris. (eds.). 1992. Sociology and Its Publics: The Forms and Fates of Disciplinary Organization. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Harris, Roy A. 1993. The Linguistics Wars. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Hester, Stephen and Eglin, Peter (eds.). 1997. Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

 Karen Tracy and Robert T. Craig Hutchby, Ian and Wooffitt, Robin. 1998. Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Janis, Irving L. 1982. Groupthink. Dallas, TX: Houghton Mifflin. Jasinski, James. 2001. Sourcebook on Rhetoric. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kitzinger, Celia and Frith, Hannah. 1999. “Just say no? The use of conversation analysis in developing a feminist perspective on sexual refusal.” Discourse & Society 10: 293–316. Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Leith, Dick. 1994. “Linguistics: A rhetor’s guide.” Rhetorica 12: 211–226. Lepenies, Wolf. 1988. Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology (R. J. Hollingdale, trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levine, Donald N. 1995. Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levinson, Stephen C. 2003. “Contextualizing ‘contextualization cues’.” In Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz, Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault (eds), 31–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mansbridge, Jane. 1980. Beyond Adversary Democracy. New York: Basic Books. Mazlish, Bruce. 1989. A New Science: The Breakdown of Connections and the Birth of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Newman, D. L., & Brown, R. D. 1992. “Patterns of school board decision making: Variations in behavior and perceptions.” Journal of Research and Development in Education 26: 1–6. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1986. The Politics of Linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ochs, Elinor, Schegloff, Emanuel A. and Thompson, Sandra A. (eds). 1996. Interaction and Grammar [Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 13]. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, Thomas and Rose, Nikolas. 1997. “In the name of society, or three theses on the history of social thought.” History of the Human Sciences 10: 87–121. Pomerantz, Anita. 1988. “Offering a candidate answer: An information seeking strategy.” Communication Monographs 55: 360–273. Pomerantz, Anita. 1989/90. “Constructing skepticism: Four devices used to engender the audience’s skepticism.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 22: 293–313. Prevignano, Carlo L. and Thibault, Paul J. 2003a. “Continuing the discussion with John J. Gumperz.” In Language and Interaction: Discussions with John J. Gumperz, Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault (eds), 149–162. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Prevignano, Carlo L. and Thibault, Paul J. (eds.). 2003b. Discussing Conversation Analysis: The Work of Emanuel A. Schegloff. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ross, Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. “In another context.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds), 191–227. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel. A. 1998. “Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue – Reply to Wetherell.” Discourse & Society 9: 413–416. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell. Schudson, Michael. 1998. The Good Citizen. New York: The Free Press.



Action-implicative discourse analysis  Schwartzman, Helen B. 1989. The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities. New York: Plenum Press. Shotter, John. 1997. “Textual violence in academe: On writing with respect for one’s others.” In Transgressing Discourses: Communication and the Voice of the Other, Michael Huspek and Gary P. Radford (eds), 17–46. Albany: SUNY Press. Speer, Susan A. 2002. “What can conversation analysis contribute to feminist methodology? Putting reflexivity into practice.” Discourse & Society 13: 783–803. Tannen, Deborah. 1984. Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tannen, Deborah. 1993. Framing in Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press. Tracy, Karen. 1988. “A discourse analysis of four discourse studies.” Discourse Processes 11: 243–259. Tracy, Karen. 1997. Colloquium: Dilemmas of Academic Discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tracy, Karen. 1999. “The usefulness of platitudes in arguments about conduct.” In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation, Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, J. Anthony Blair and Charles A. Willard (eds.), 799–803. Amsterdam: SicSat. Tracy, Karen. 2001. “Discourse analysis in communication.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi Hamilton (eds), 725–749. Oxford: Blackwell. Tracy, Karen. 2005. “Reconstructing communicative practices: Action-implicative discourse analysis.” In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction, Kristine Fitch and Robert Sanders (eds.), 301–319. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tracy, Karen. 2008. “‘Reasonable hostility’: Situation – appropriate face attack.” Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture 4: 169–191. Tracy, Karen. 2010. Challenges of Ordinary Democracy: A Case Study of Deliberation and Dissent. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Tracy, Karen & Ashcraft, Catherine. 2001. “Crafting policies about controversial values: How wording disputes manage a group dilemma.” Journal of Applied Communication Research 29: 297–316. Tracy, Karen and Craig, Robert T. 2003. Communicative Ideals within Democracy: Conduct Arguments at School Board Meetings. Paper presented at 8th International Pragmatics Conference, Toronto. Tracy, Karen and Muller, Heidi. 2001. “Diagnosing a school board’s interactional trouble: Theorizing problem formulating.” Communication Theory 11: 84–104. Tracy, Karen and Standerfer, Christina. 2003. “Selecting a school superintendent: Sensitivities in group deliberation.” In Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups, Lawrence Frey (ed.), 109–134. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tusting, Karin and Maybin, Janet. 2007. “Linguistic ethnography and interdisciplinarity: Opening the discussion.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 11: 575–583. Turner, Sephen Park and Turner, Jonathan H. 1990. The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology. Newbury Park: Sage. van Dijk, Teun A. (ed.). 1997a. Discourse as Social Interaction. London: Sage. van Dijk, Teun A. (ed.). 1997b. Discourse as Structure and Process. London: Sage. Yamada, Haru. 1992. American and Japanese Business Discourse: A Comparison of Interactional Styles. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Zimmerman, Don H. 1984. “Talk and its occasion: The case of calling the police.” In Meaning, Form and Use in Context, Deborah Schiffrin (ed.), 210–228. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press.

Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system An activity analysis perspective Srikant Sarangi

Health Communication Research Centre, Cardiff University In this paper I argue that interaction – as a communicative system – is central not only to forms of everyday social encounters but also to professionalclient relationships in institutional settings. The role language plays in these interactional trajectories has to go beyond the dichotomous language as system and language as behaviour divide, and focus on the phenomenon of interaction itself, but not necessarily reducing interaction to language practice. This means that as interaction analysts we can utilise linguistic insights when interpreting professional-client encounters, but not be limited by them. Healthcare interaction, as an institutional and professional site, can be seen as an expert communicative system, with complex variations – along different modalities – reflecting different specialities and participant frameworks. I focus here on the linguistic dimension in the counselling domain, where communicative expertise is to be conceptualised in terms of hybrid interactional competencies for the management of different initiation-response frames, including aspects of uncertainty, risk, selfand other-initiated diagnostic and prognostic scenarios. Interaction analysis – what I refer to as activity analysis – should take as its starting point the structural, interactional and thematic maps of whole encounters, while aligning with the agenda of the professionals and the clients in a given setting in order to make any findings uptake-oriented in practically relevant ways.

1. Introduction: Expertise as mediated knowledge-in-interaction Expertise, for many, equates with ownership of knowledge, or declarative knowledge in a content-intensive sense. According to Stehr (1994), we live in ‘knowledge societies’, where experts exert knowledge-based power in all aspects of our social lives. But exactly what counts as expert knowledge and what relationship professionals as experts establish with available knowledge systems is open to

 Srikant Sarangi

debate. Over the years, bureaucracy as a rule-governed expert system has given way to knowledge-based expertise with the attendant growth in professionalism, although professional power and expertise are routinely monitored through state institutions (Johnson 1972, 1993; Larson 1977; Freidson 1994). Freidson (1994:€137) believes that ‘bureaucratic organisation is assumed to be antithetical to the freedom of activity traditionally imputed to the professional’. However, in many domains, e.g., education, healthcare, social welfare, the professional groups are closely embedded and governed within an institutional/organisational frame, thus risking their independence and credibility. Policy-level changes at the institutional and organisational level can potentially transform the everyday practices of professionals, including their interactional trajectories with clients. In the healthcare setting, for instance, new regulatory practices such as clinical governance, evidence-based practice, patient-centredness, shared decision-making will no doubt have epistemological and ontological ramifications regarding the status of expert knowledge and power, with potential communicative consequences at the interactional level for a given professional-client encounter. Shils (1968) draws a distinction between experts and intellectuals: while the latter are preoccupied with general knowledge, experts deal with specialised knowledge. However, Merton (1957:€209) captures this difference differently: ‘intellectuals devote themselves to cultivating and formulating knowledge’ whereas experts are more interested in transmitting and applying that knowledge. Moving away from such narrow dichotomies, Stehr (1994) characterises professional experts as both ‘knowledge-bearing’ and ‘knowledge-disseminating’ agents. He argues that in the process of disseminating knowledge, professionals as experts affect the very knowledge base they mediate. In stressing that their function is not a passive one, Stehr (1994:€186) writes: The knowledge these occupations employ is not, under most circumstances, directly of their creation. That is, these occupations serve as mediator between the knowledge producers and the knowledge users, between those who create a capacity for action and those whose job it is to take action.

Stehr’s observation above underlines the significance of situated interaction which provides a platform for both knowledge-dissemination and knowledge-bearing. In our contemporary society, the intellectual-expert dichotomy in terms of knowledge orientations becomes further complicated with the rise of technologybased expert systems.1 Many of the professional-client encounters – in healthcare, in education, in other public and private sectors such as inland revenue, banks, 1. In the healthcare context, expert systems may include technologies such as X-ray procedure, laboratory-based tests, software-assisted risk assessments as well as patients’ case records, official forms and certificates.



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

insurance firms – are now managed through technological know-how characterised by rule-based calculations and algorithms. The mediator role of the professional expert is potentially under threat when his/her activities are constrained by the kind of knowledge generated through available expert systems. In a sense, the very existence of an expert system undermines the expertise of the profession, individually and collectively. To quote Illich (1977:€ 33), ‘as techniques multiply and become more specific, their use often requires less complex judgements and skills’. Generally, expert systems are targeted at the so-called non-experts requiring explicit rule-following, which is rather different from what professional experts are expected to do when dealing with clients. Professional experts work with a set of rules, but these rules are often mediated through their experience and the demands of the particularities of the case in hand. While advances in science and technology (as expert systems) have direct consequences for what constitutes knowledge as well as the authority of the professional experts, the tensions are once again manifest at the communicative level. The communicative relationship between clients, experts and expert systems is thus in a constant flux. New experts and new expert systems are continually emerging, especially in the area of healthcare delivery. Consider the case of nurse-led telephone-mediated information/advice service in the UK (NHS Direct) for people with minor concerns who may not need to attend a clinic physically to consult their General Practitioner (GP). At a political, institutional level, this service is a means of cutting waiting time on the part of an organisation that is under considerable stress – financially and in terms of human resources. However, as far as the nursing profession is concerned, it appears to be a transfer of expertise from General Practitioners to nurses. Under this new system, nurses can interact with callers/ patients directly without being overshadowed by the presence of a GP. In actual fact, it turns out to be a case of trading places: the expertise of the GP is replaced by an impersonal, institutional expert system. When dealing with patients, the nurse professionals are obliged to routinely and systematically follow algorithms in conducting their people-processing activity as they lack the institutional power to diagnose and prescribe. In interactional terms, this is a complex expert manoeuvre as nurses have to manage a three-party encounter, especially when the caller is not the actual patient needing intervention. This is further complicated at a procedural level as the nurse professional has to decide which aspects of the information exchange do or do not fit within the dictates of the software-based expert system. What we have here is a situation where the interaction/participation framework is constrained by derivative knowledge, which does not allow nurse professionals to draw on their own experience and expertise as and when they see relevant. Remotely accessible expert systems can thus marginalise the expert-in-flesh

 Srikant Sarangi

and discount the complex nature of knowledge that professionals socialise into and have access to in their everyday communicative practices. 1.1

Access to expertise and the ‘lay expert’

‘The client comes to the professional because he has met a problem which he cannot himself handle’ (Hughes 1958:€141). As Agar (1985) suggests, institutional discourse, which inevitably involves professional experts, is constituted in three key stages: diagnosis of the client, directives targeted at the client’s problems, and reports in the form of case notes which encompass both diagnoses and the directives. This underscores the fact that professionals are privy to scientific knowledge as well as organisational knowledge that clients do not have direct access to. According to Rueschemeyer (1986:€166), experts define the situation for the untutored, they suggest priorities, they shape people’s outlook on their life and world, and they establish standards of judgement in the different areas of expertise – in matters of health and illness, order and justice, the design and deployment of technology, the organisation of production.

This then allows for a lay-expert distinction, which is a long standing one. Schutz (1964) contrasts expert knowledge and lay knowledge as follows: The expert’s knowledge is restricted to a limited field but therein it is clear and distinct. His opinions are based on warranted assertions: his judgements are not mere guesswork or loose suppositions. The man on the street has a working knowledge of many fields which are not necessarily coherent with one another. His knowledge of recipes indicating how to bring forth in typical situations typical results by typical means. (Schutz 1964:€122).

Expertise, according to the above stipulation, implies an in-depth mastery of a field of knowledge. ‘Warranted assertions’ can only be made within a ‘limited field’. Lay knowledge, by contrast, is not distinctly specific: it is rather ‘typical’, although over time clients can acquire such know-how and become ‘professional clients’ (Sarangi and Slembrouck 1996). In its contemporary form, expert knowledge is accessible to many of us, especially with the wider availability of web- and internet-based information systems. In the healthcare context, the notion of ‘lay expert’ (Tuckett et al 1985, Moore at al 2001, Sarangi 2001, Prior 2003) is central to our understanding of expert knowledge as something which is accessible to patients and their carers and that it is not something which only the professional expert embodies, although professionals supplement their scientific knowledge with highly valuable experiential knowledge. In the case of chronic illnesses, we can safely assume that patients do have access to and experience of more specialised knowledge about their conditions (DoH 2001). The



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

same holds for healthcare concerning children. As Strong and Davis (1978:€63) point out, parents have expert and detailed knowledge about their children, so doctor’s scientific and generalised expertise is bound to be contingent on parents’ expertise: ‘The dependency of doctors’ expertise on parents’ expertise exists where the medical problem can only be resolved by recourse to knowledge that only the parents possess’. The same is true of elderly patients or patients with limited mental abilities where carers take on the ‘expert’ role of managing their illness and lifeworld. 1.2

The interactional basis of professional expertise

With regard to the medical profession, Freidson (1970) suggests that professional expertise is constituted in a combination of scientific/technical knowledge and clinical/experiential knowledge. As I see it, both these knowledge systems are interactive, cumulative and systematic and do give rise to an array of expert interaction systems in functional specific ways. Another inevitable component of this ‘expertise mix’, as I have pointed out earlier, is the institutional/organisational ethos in which professional activities are carried out. Much of the expert knowledge (scientific, clinical and organisational) are discernible in the interactional level in terms of systematic history taking, diagnostic reasoning, use of evidence, offer of causal explanations etc. More than mere rule-following, the contingent character of interaction assumes significance. As Freidson (1970:€90) points out: People [in the medical profession] are constantly responding to the organised pressures of the situations they are in at any particular time, that what they are is not completely but more their present than their past, and what they do is more an outcome of the pressures of the situation they are in than of what they have earlier internalised.

In Foucauldian terms (Foucault 1970), appropriation of discourses is an expert knowledge activity, constituted in both the what of knowledge and the how of knowledge (Ryle 1949), although these knowledge-claims may not always be made explicit (Polanyi 1958, Heath 1979, Sarangi 2005a). In interactional terms, knowledge management becomes a communicative activity, which professional experts have to embody in their everyday lives when dealing with clients and fellow professionals. Professionals’ acquisition of new technical knowledge and familiarisation with the changing organisational/institutional ethos as well as clients’ access to expert knowledge more widely contribute towards transforming the nature of situated interactional trajectories. In light of the discussion above, interaction is constitutive of expert knowledge alongside scientific, experiential and organisational dimensions, and that healthcare professionals have explicit and tacit levels of knowledge about

 Srikant Sarangi

interaction in their specific professional, institutional settings. I proceed as follows. In Section€ 2, I briefly outline the interactionist turn in social and human sciences, followed by, in Section€ 3, an overview of communicative practices in healthcare encounters. In Section€4, I offer a general framework of activity analysis for analysing interaction in professional and institutional settings. This leads me to an illustration of a case study dealing with familial breast cancer in the context of genetic counselling (Section 5). In conclusion (Section 6), I acknowledge the eclectic nature of the activity analysis framework, but underscore its relevance as an uptake-oriented analytic endeavour. 2. The interactionist turn in social and human sciences Let us take a cursory look at the debate concerning the primacy of interaction within the social and human sciences (for a recent overview see Atkinson and Housley 2003). Interactionsim, in a broad sense, is a perspective which allows situated human agency to mediate social structure. The nature of this mediation, however, is not necessarily shared among various perspectives. A starting point, for our purposes, is Blumer’s (1969) model of symbolic interaction, which was primarily a reaction against a deterministic view of the social world which relied heavily on causal explanations. According to Blumer (1969:€11–12): The position of symbolic interactionsim is that the ‘worlds’ that exist for human beings and for their groups are composed of ‘objects’ and that these objects are the product of symbolic interaction… The nature of an object – of any and every object – consists of the meaning that it has for the person for whom it is an object.

Glassner (1980) considers Blumer’s position as being idealistic, which is conceptualised as an alternative to materialism by denying the existence of phenomena in their own right. Other interactionists such as Mead (1934) and Simmel (1950) would distance themselves from such extreme symbolism and recognise the existence of social phenomena in their own right. This has led Glassner (1980:€22–23) to propose what he calls ‘essential interactionism’ consisting of events, states, phenomena and processes: ‘Interactions may be described as processes made up of phenomena within various events, which at each point make up states amid other states’. Bakhtin’s project in dialogicism can also be seen as an exercise in interactionism. The basic unit – utterance – is not reducible to an objective meaning outside of their communicative environment. For Bakhtin (1986:€99): Language as a system has an immense supply of purely linguistic means for expressing formal addresses … But they acquire addressivity only in the whole of a concrete utterance.



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

The notion of addressivity is never exhausted, as ‘anticipated responsive reactions’ are considered part and parcel of one’s individual style. In a similar vein, Voloshinov (1987:€99) suggests that the context of the utterance must consist of three factors: (1) the common spatial purview of the interlocutors (the unity of the visible…); (2) the interlocutors’ common knowledge and understanding of the situation, and (3) their common evaluation of that situation.

Wilson (1971:€ 60) characterises this trend of interactionism as a shift from the normative paradigm in which ‘interaction is viewed as rule-governed in the sense that an observed pattern of action is rendered intelligible and is explained by referring to rules in the forms of dispositions and expectations to which actors are subject’. As Voysey (1975:€24) puts it: The major problem with this [normative paradigm], however, is that if rules are to account for observed or imputed similarities in action in different situations, or over time, there must be an assumption of ‘substantial cognitive consensus’. Actors must agree not only that a situation is one in which a particular rule should be followed, but on what counts as evidence that it is being followed.

This raises particular questions about the positioning of the analyst in looking for patterns of similarities and differences across a given interactional trajectory. For Wilson (1971:€67), within the ‘interpretive paradigm’, unlike the normative one, ‘interaction is an essentially interpretative process in which meanings evolve and change over the course of the interaction’. This echoes the Weberian position: What distinguishes an interpretive explanation is that it involves explaining behaviour by reference to the agent’s conceptions of what he is doing, as opposed to explaining it by causal laws. Interpretive explanation takes into account the fact that an agent’s knowledge of his actions differs in important ways from that which an observer can have of those actions. (Levison 1974:€101)

Such a perspective on social action/interaction is not only at the heart of phenomenology (Schutz 1964), ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) and cognitive sociology (Cicourel 1974), but also what characterises Goffman’s call for the study of interaction in its own right. In the preface to Relations in Public, Goffman (1971:€13) writes: The realm of activity that is generated by face-to-face interaction and organised by norms and co-mingling – a domain containing weddings, family meals, chaired meetings, forced marches, service encounters, queues, crowds, and couples – has never been sufficiently treated as a subject matter in its own right. In fact, a convenience has often been made of it. Whenever a concrete illustration has been needed of how it is with a social establishment, or a bit of social structure, or even a society, interaction vignettes have been fetched in to provide vivid evidence and,

 Srikant Sarangi

incidentally, a little obeisance to the fact that there are people out there moving about. Thus interaction practices have been used to illuminate other things, but themselves are treated as though they did not need to be defined or were not worth defining. Yet the nicest use for these events is the explication of their own generic character.

Following from this conviction, Goffman (1983) formulates his notion of the ‘interaction order’: My concern over the years has been to promote acceptance of this face-to-face domain as an analytically viable one – a domain which may be titled, for want of any happy name, as the interaction order. (Goffman 1983:€2)

In making a strong case for the study of ‘the neglected situation’, Goffman offers a distinction between interaction order to mean interactional practices and the traditionally conceptualised ‘elements of social organisation’ in the sense of social structures – or what Wilson (1971) refers to as the ‘normative paradigm’. He goes on to capture the linkage between these two domains as ‘loose coupling’ (Goffman 1983). In this sense, the ‘interaction order’ for Goffman goes beyond face-to-face encounters, and by extension, talk-in-interaction within the conversation analytic tradition. This is clearly reflected in what Goffman treats as data in his writings and what knowledge of context he invokes to aid the interpretive procedure. One striking observation is that Goffman issues a challenge to linguistics to explicate systematically the role of language in interaction. As he puts it with relation to his notion of footing: ‘linguistics provides us with the cues and markers through which such footings become manifest, helping us to find our way to a structural basis for analyzing them’ (Goffman 1981:€157). As Tannen (1993) points out, Gumperz’s (1982) theory of conversational inference is one such response. In addition to contextualisation cues functioning as a signalling mechanism for negotiation and shifts in frames and footings, other pragmatic notions such as presupposition, implicature, coherence, indexicality are intricately embedded in Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis. I shall return to these analytic resources in my proposal for activity analysis in Section€4. 3. Communicative practices in healthcare encounters Over the years, communicative practices in healthcare consultations have attracted the attention of scholars from within conversation analysis, sociolinguistics and discourse studies (e.g., Mishler 1984, Fisher and Todd 1986, Heath 1986, Drew and Heritage 1992, Sarangi and Roberts 1999, Candlin and Candlin 2003, Sarangi 2004, Sarangi 2005a, Heritage and Maynard 2006). It is worth acknowledging that



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

a vast number of healthcare interaction studies have prioritised the doctor-patient encounter, especially in the primary care setting, which has been described as a genre in structural and sequential terms (Ten Have 1989). Several insights have been gained at the interactional level by scholars working within the conversation analytic tradition: e.g., Maynard’s (1991) perspective display series in delivery of bad news; Heritage and Sefi’s (1992) step-wise organisation of advice by health visitors; Silverman’s (1997) information-as-advice formats in HIV counselling. Identification of such interaction patterns is testimony to the power of micro-analysis, but this also shows that healthcare professionals expertly bring off certain preferred interactional trajectories when communicating with their clients. Peräkylä and Vehviläinen (2003) have recently drawn our attention to what they call professional ‘stocks of interactional knowledge’ (SIK). By SIK, they refer to the normative models and theories found in communication textbooks and manuals. Quite rightly they challenge the rather simplistic conceptualisation of interaction and, in the Goffmanian spirit, call for the need to systematically examine the interaction process itself. One needs, however, to keep the textbook characterisation of interactional knowledge separate from how professional practitioners conceptualise and operationalise interaction in their everyday practice. When we interview professionals or become involved in long-term ethnographic fieldwork, we realise the complex nature of interactional knowledge shared among professionals. Following Polanyi (1958), my concern here is with the embodied, tacit knowledge of interaction with which healthcare professionals conduct their communicative practices. Consider Byrne and Long’s (1976) identification of interactional differences between a medical consultation and an employment interview. Focusing on a ‘repeat prescription’ visit, they suggest that ‘all of the patient’s replies to questions have been absorbed by the doctor who has never used any of the information given to develop further responses’ (p.13). Although they readily acknowledge this as untypical of consultation, they do claim that in 75% of their recorded consultations, ‘the doctor provides all of the causes and the patient all of the effects’ (p.13).2 By contrast, in the employment interview situation, the interviewer ‘initiates the discussion and is thus causative, but all of his subsequent questions are the result of something the interviewee has previously said. Thus all of his interventions are really effects rather than causes’ (p.12). At the risk of premature generalisation, this finding underscores how professional dominance is routinely manifest as 2. Interestingly, this lack of attention to the patient’s contributions is used as a rationale for Byrne and Long to focus their analysis only on the doctor’s consulting style, broadly based on the interaction category system developed by Bales (1970). The complexity of the communication process, however, has been acknowledged by many researchers from within this tradition (see, for example, Davis [1982] who draws upon key insights from Goffman).

 Srikant Sarangi

interactional asymmetry and can have potential implications for patient-centred healthcare delivery. It would follow that doctors will need to develop a more involving style of participation and allow more interactional space to patients for a fuller articulation of ‘the voice of the lifeworld’ (Mishler 1984, Mishler et al 1989). Within the spectrum of medical consultations, there are interactional variations to reckon with. One would expect different interactional patterns for repeat visits as opposed to first visits, in primary care settings as opposed to tertiary clinic settings, for consultations dealing with simple curable conditions as opposed to those involving chronic illnesses. Providing information and communicating intervention in the context of antibiotics prescription vs. chemotherapy intervention will necessitate different interactional trajectories and outcomes. Davis (1982), dealing with children’s clinics, observes that when children are called in for routine check-ups (receptive stance) as opposed to when they come with presenting problems (initiative stance), different patterns of interaction management emerge. In his seminal study of Down’s Syndrome children, Silverman (1987) shows how doctors de-medicalise the child’s condition as part of a non-interventionist agenda, and thus shift responsibilities about care to parents, which has to be accomplished interactionally. Let us consider in detail the communication of uncertainty in the cancer setting. In an early study, McIntosh (1978) shows how doctors use routine responses, including doses of euphemism, to deal with uncertain diagnosis and prognosis. In addition to clinical uncertainty, doctors have to cope with two other forms of uncertainty: (i) uncertainty about patients’ genuine desire to know a bad diagnosis and prognosis; and (ii) uncertainty about how patients might react to bad news, whether diagnostic or prognostic. Such an awareness then has interactional consequences. McIntosh found that doctors routinely used typification strategies, i.e., allocate patients first to illness categories and then ‘profess’ or ‘imply’ certainty and uncertainty. This demonstrates that healthcare professionals operate with different models of communication management depending on the severity of the condition as well as certainties and uncertainties surrounding clinical and external factors. The data examples McIntosh provides may come across as being explicitly directive and paternalistic, with no indication of shared decision making protocols. In the current climate of patient-centred healthcare in the UK, such maxims will have undergone transformation, although the same clinical outcomes/interventions may probably be the result. On the surface of interaction, we would expect the deployment of patient-oriented styles such as perspective display series (Maynard 1991) to negotiate treatment options. This suggests that expert interaction management systems are subject to general socio-political, organisational and technological changes in healthcare delivery.



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

The counselling encounter, which is the focus of my analysis in this paper (see Section€ 5 below), is different from mainstream medical consultations. The nondirective ethos of counselling and therapy is often manifest in a series of interactional features: e.g., minimal back-channelling on the part of the professional and use of repetition to signal confirmation or request elaboration surrounding interpretive summaries (Ferrara 1994); withholding of answers to clients’ questions (Turner 1972); packaging of information-as-advice (Silverman 1997); initiation of reflective frames to elicit clients’ levels of understanding and coping mechanisms (Sarangi et al 2004, 2005), and use of hypothetical questions to announce future states of affairs, upgrade the conditionality of such assertions and prepare the client for worst scenarios (Peräkylä 1995). In the context of therapeutic encounters, Ferrara (1994) draws an important distinction between the rhetorical force and the speech act force underlying participants’ interpretive practices. In focusing on the interactional significance of repetition in therapeutic settings, she identifies two types of repetition: echoing and mirroring. Echoing involves ‘the contiguous repetition of another’s utterance or statement using the same downward intonation in an adjacency pair’, which is usually done by the client, sometimes allowing for pause. Echoing signals emphatic agreement more than explicitly formulated confirming utterances such as ‘yes’, ‘I know’, ‘you’re right’. What the therapist proposes as a candidate for echoing is an ‘interpretive summary about the client’s experience’; so the repetition by the client signals agreement of assessment proffered by the therapist. Mirroring, on the other hand, involves ‘partial repetition by the therapist of a client’s statement’ using the same downward intonation. This is meant to be heard by the client as a request for elaboration. Both therapists and clients share these interactional norms and can be seen as aligned to each other’s communicative practices. With regard to group therapy encounters, Turner (1972) discusses participation structure in relation to question-answer sequences. When clients ask questions such as ‘why are we here’, ‘is therapy working’ as ‘first action’, the therapist is not supposed to occupy the ‘second action’ position and offer an immediate response. This withholding of the ‘second action’ position is not to be regarded as indifference on the part of the therapist; indeed it constitutes a display of situated interactional expertise. In a similar vein, Scheff (1968:€12) characterises the psychotherapeutic interview as ‘a series of offers and responses that continue until an offer (a definition of situation) is reached that is acceptable to both parties’. According to him, the success of a therapeutic session relies on ‘patients who accept, or can be led to accept, the problems as internal, as part of their personality, rather than seeing them as caused by external conditions’ (Scheff 1968:€13). This perspective underlines how questions are framed and how the therapist controls the interaction by shifting topics, while rejecting the clients’ offers. At the interactional

 Srikant Sarangi

level there seems to be a relationship between the staged nature of interaction management and the therapeutic outcome. In some clinical contexts, Peräkylä, Ruusuvuori and Vehviläinen (2005) point to a potentially strong association between interaction theory and treatment theory. Different healthcare sites will prioritise different interactional features based upon their diagnostic and treatment regimes, while also aligning with institutional/organisational realities (Sarangi 2005b). Shifts at the organisational policy level, such as movements towards patient-centred, evidence-based healthcare, have interactional consequences that are not necessarily anticipated. Likewise, developments in scientific knowledge and technology no doubt impact upon interactional trajectories. In other words, interaction as an expert communicative system constitutes an essential component of healthcare delivery. 4. Activity analysis and interaction types Generally speaking, institutional encounters are a structured activity (Agar 1985), organised around tasks (Drew and Heritage 1992), with an interplay of institutional, professional and personal-experiential modes of talk (Sarangi and Roberts 1999). Levinson (1979) proposes the notion of activity types (characterisation of settings such as a medical consultation, a courtroom cross-examination) and the inferential schemata that accompanies them as the basis for analysing institutional encounters. Healthcare encounters, whether involving clients or fellow professionals, can be analysed in activity-specific terms, while allowing for variations within and across specialties and sites. A further notion of discourse type or interaction type (characterisation of forms of talk such as history taking, cross-examining, troubles telling, advice giving) is useful in our understanding of the dynamic, hybrid nature of a given activity type. What I propose here as ‘activity analysis’ (Sarangi 2000, Sarangi 2005c, Sarangi [in press]) does build on the seminal work of Levinson (1979), especially his notion of activity type. A theme-oriented discourse analysis underpins such an exercise (Roberts and Sarangi, 2005). Within this orientation, variations within and across healthcare encounters – in terms of focal and analytic themes – are legitimately warranted. More importantly, the analytic task is to be based on an overall mapping of structural, interactional and thematic trajectories of a given encounter as a way of identifying activity-specific coherence and incoherence as well as critical moments for further detailed analysis. Activity analysis pays attention to the flexible nature of the relationship between form and content of a given encounter. Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz (1982:€15) point out that ‘communicative flexibility enables us to tell, by looking



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

only at actual performance features and without knowing the content, whether two speakers are actively communicating’. While this is true, and Goffman’s notions of alignment, frame and footing would attest such a position, there is an imperative for the analyst to engage with the content of the interaction order. This is particularly so in the professional/institutional context, where interactional patterns cannot be disentangled from the treatment of content or theme (Sarangi 2007). The key concepts for activity analysis derive from Goffman – the concepts of frame, footing, face work and alignment. It is worth noting that although Goffman’s notion of interaction order and the attendant methodology of ‘frame analysis’ (Goffman 1974) have had a lasting impact on many forms of interaction analysis undertaken within sociolinguistics and discourse studies, Goffman hardly engaged himself with analysing recorded social encounters in a systematic way. What is not always clear is how one goes about defining and working with notions such as frame and footing. There has been a tendency to define such concepts in a contingent manner to suit the analyst’s current purposes. Like the term discourse, frame has been used at different layers of meaning. For instance, Tannen and Wallat (1993) use frame to draw distinctions between ‘consultation frame’, ‘examination frame’ and ‘reporting frame’ in the context of medical examination/interview. Also, they go on to suggest that there are tensions in the way such frames are manifest, although one could regard this as part of hybrid competencies of both the medical professional and the client. Another key notion to activity analysis is alignment. The notion of alignment is based on a view of interaction as jointly produced. In a seminal paper, Stokes and Hewitt (1976) suggest that the notion of ‘aligning actions’ encompasses two meanings: (i) how individual conduct accords with that of co-participants in the creation of social acts; and (ii) how problematic situations involve discrepancies ‘between what is actually taking place in a given situation and what is thought to be typical, normatively expected, probable, desirable or, in other respects, more in accord with what is culturally normal’ (1976:€843). Alignment, from an activity analytic perspective, involves both well-synchronised turn-taking and a display of shared understanding of what is talked about and what participant roles are expected at a particular point in time. As interaction analysts, therefore, we need a reasonable understanding of the topics of counselling and therapy in order to be able to interpret in a meaningful way the interactional trajectories of a given encounter. Activity analysis therefore has to be grounded in what I would call ‘thick participation’ (Sarangi 2007) in the professional/institutional events, and ‘thick description’ has to draw upon structural, interactional and thematic mapping of whole encounters (Roberts and Sarangi 2002, Sarangi [in press]). It is worth pointing out that structural and interactional maps have been particularly useful in educational settings (Green and Wallat 1981, Mehan 1979) and in narrative

 Srikant Sarangi

analysis (Labov and Waletsky 1967, Gee 1997). Interactional mapping can be realised both in terms of distribution and volume of turn taking and such maps can tell us something about the interaction system and the positioning of the participants within it. This is not to suggest that the more one talks, i.e., holds the floor, the more powerful s/he is. Interactional asymmetry should not be confused with knowledge asymmetry. Equal access/right to turn taking does not necessarily equate with symmetrical knowledge relations. To summarise, the following analytic features are constitutive of activity analysis: – Mapping of entire encounters at structural, interactional and thematic levels – Communicative flexibility in terms of activity types and discourse/interaction types – Integration of discoursal and rhetorical devices – Goffman’s notions of frame, footing and face-work – Gumperz’s notions of contextualisation cues and conversational inference – Alignment: sequential and normative – Social and discourse role-relations – Thick participation and thick description Within a framework of activity analysis, interactions are seen as a narrative unfolding of events and characters, organised temporally and spatially. In addition to the sequential order, rhetorical moves are also central to how events and characters are portrayed and managed in interaction (see, for instance, Goodwin’s [1994] general proposals about nature of salience, backgrounding and foregrounding of information; see also use of devices such contrast, reported speech, question, repetition, metaphor). In this sense, activity analysis as an enterprise in interpretive understanding can be situated between sequential description (as is the case with conversation analysis) and extra-situational explanation (as is the case with critical discourse analysis). 5. An extended case study from genetic counselling In this section I adopt the activity-analytic perspective for the purposes of analysing interactional patterns in counselling encounters, especially genetic counselling which can be characterised as a hybrid activity type (Sarangi 2000). The choice is between taking the route of corpus-based analysis of genetic counselling to demonstrate variations in interaction types (both patterns of differences and similarities) or focusing on a single case in order to understand the staged dynamism characteristic of the overall interactional trajectory. Here I choose the latter option and focus on a single genetic counselling session involving familial breast cancer. My focal



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

theme is risk and uncertainty and the analytic themes will centre around the notions of frame, alignment and the rhetorical devices of escalation and de-escalation. Management of risk and uncertainty is typical of genetic counselling, especially involving predictive testing. The professional expertise of the counsellor is evident in giving clear explanations about genes, patterns of inheritance, population risk etc. It also constitutes a space for discouraging unwarranted decisions, whether about testing or acting on positive test results. The genetic counselling protocol in South Wales, from where the following case of breast cancer is taken, includes at least two or more sessions before a gene test is offered to the client. The extended extracts below constitute the very first session to ascertain the at-risk status of the client (AF), who is in her early twenties.3 The genetic counsellor (G2) opens the session as follows: the purpose of this session is is really to discuss breast cancer – how it can run in families and (.) just wonder what your own sort of worries and concerns were eh eh in the matter.

Such a definition of the situation (McHugh 1968) is integral to activity analysis, as this not only provides a frame of reference for the participants in the interaction in question, but also for the interaction analyst. Given the space constraints, I shall not offer the structural, interactional and thematic maps for this clinic session (for illustrations, see Sarangi [in press]). Let me first summarise the first 12 turns. AF reports that she has always been aware of breast cancer running in her family. AF has already had a mammogram, following which she has now been referred to the genetics clinic. In a routine fashion and using the typification strategy (see McIntosh 1978 above), G2 explains at length the general basis of breast cancer: that it is a common condition affecting one in ten/twelve women in the general population, independent of hereditary factors; that only a small number of women inherit it genetically, in which case they will develop it at a younger age than normal, and that they often develop cancer in both breasts. G2 then goes on to explain the working of genes as follows (see appendix for transcription conventions): Extract 1 01 G2: these genes when they work normally they protect against breast cancer (.) and they also protect against ovarian cancer as well 02 AF: mhm

3. The names of participants have been anonymised. The case study is taken from The Wellcome Trust funded project on Communicative Frames in Counselling for Predictive Genetic Testing (2000–2004).

 Srikant Sarangi









03 G2: but if they become altered in some way or or damaged then (.) they stop working and that protection is lost so if someone if a woman inherited one of these altered copies of the gene 04 AF: yeah 05 G2: she has a higher risk of developing breast cancer and also it’s like higher risk of developing ovarian cancer as well (1.5) and that’s (.5) those are the sort of (.) women that (.) those families are the ones where you you see a lot of women [affected] (1.5) 06 AF: [yes] 07 G2: (.5) now- these families aren’t that common but what we do find quite often is that because breast cancer in itself is so common we find families where there are several people affected just by chance 08 AF: mhm 09 G2: so what we need to do is to try and decide whether and when we’re looking at someone’s family tree try and decide whether [it’s chance] 10 AF: [it’s chance] 11 G2: or whether we think there might be a gene involved basically 12 AF: mhm

Here G2 dominates the interactional space, much of which has been taken up by explanations about normal vs. altered genes, which will become the frame of reference for the rest of the encounter. Unlike psychotherapeutic encounters where the therapist, through use of minimal backchannelling cues, allows the client to express his/her concerns (Ferrara 1994), genetic counselling often involves a fair amount of explanation talk, given that not everybody who comes to clinic will be familiar with the complexities of how genes work. Through consistent use of minimal cues, AF remains interactionally aligned to the explanation routine. The concept of risk is introduced within a framework of uncertainty – in a mixture of hypothetical language (‘if ’), and by using the generic third person referents (‘a woman’, ‘someone’, ‘those’/’these’ families) – which may be seen as an instance of typification strategy to manage uncertainty of routine explanation (McIntosh 1978). AF is allocated to an already existent category of at-risk condition, rather than singling out her personal circumstances and addressing them specifically (see McIntosh’s distinction between patient’s condition and patient’s circumstances). There is a significant pause of 1.5 seconds in turn 05, which, as part of delivery of routine explanation, can be taken as a signal for continuation of G2’s turn (see Boden’s [1994] discussion of long pauses in committee meetings). The contributions made by AF are minimal, but taken together they indicate her awareness of basic genetic knowledge (also evident from her opening remarks, not shown here). In turns 07 and 09, G2 prepares the ground for diagnostic work, as he draws a



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

distinction between chance mutation and patterns of inheritance, as the latter will have a significant bearing on whether AF will develop breast and ovarian cancer at a younger age. Extract 2 (continues from extract above) 01 G2: so one of the ways we do that is by drawing a family tree like the one that we’ve drawn for you 02 AF: mhm 03 G2: the one that (nurse) drew for your own family and we’ve to see if we find any patterns of of breast cancer in in (.) in the family 04 AF: mhm mhm 05 G2: so if we look at your family tree ((both shift their gaze to family tree diagram on paper)) the circles are women squares are men and the ones that are coloured in have had breast cancer (.5) so you’re down here and that’s your mother had breast cancer [at] 06 AF: [yeah] 07 G2: the age of forty two 08 AF: yeah 09 G2: and she’s how is she now? 10 AF: she’s fine 11 G2: she’s fine [yeah okay] alright so she is (.) now sixty-five 12 AF: [yeah she’s fine] 13 G2: and her mother had breast cancer first at the age of forty-three 14 AF: erm 15 G2: and then again at the age of sixty-eight? 16 AF: erm (.5) 17 G2 and also he:::r sister 18 AF: yeah 19 G2: had breast cancer at the age of sixty and she’s now seventy-eight 20 AF: yeah 21 G2: and you think there might be someone else as well [on that side of the family] 22 AF: [yes yeah there is ] (.) there is yeah 23 G2: right also on your father’s side of the family there’s some more distant relatives [who] who have breast cancer as well but that’s quite 24 AF: mhm 25 G2 [they’ve got-] 26 AF: [my father’s] aunt and cousin 27 G2: =yeah so they’re- they’re quite distantly related already to you

 Srikant Sarangi



28 AF: mhm 29 G2: so I think this side of the family is definitely the more important side (1.0)

What we see here is a retrospective history taking routine, which is typical of genetic counselling. It is striking that G2 presents the genetic facts concerning AF’s family members in the format of A/B-events4 (Labov and Fanshel 1977), which only requires AF to confirm G2’s statements. Such a history taking routine is markedly different from those undertaken in many other tertiary consultation settings. The latter are characterised by embedded and chained questions (A-events) asked by the doctor to which patients provide information (B-events). In this instance, G2’s knowledge about AF’s family history is derived from the family pedigree chart alluded to in turn 05 (note that family pedigree is routinely charted by specialist nurses prior to the first clinic session). Starting with turn 05, G2 focuses on the maternal side and foregrounds the age of onset in each instance. It is thus a display of expert genetic knowledge, which requires attributing discriminatory significance to patterns of inheritance across AF’s maternal and paternal lines. Affected family members’ age at onset is crucial information for determining if another close relative will develop breast cancer at a younger age. The particularities of familial inheritance patterns thus come to the fore, as part of G2’s expertise. As we see in turns 21ff, G2 stresses that it is the mother’s side which has direct consequences for AF’s current and future genetic status. The two family lines are portrayed in terms of proximal vs distant relations as far as genetic inheritance is concerned. The discussion here anticipates which of the family members will need to be contacted for the diagnostic/predictive work to be conducted smoothly, and how AF’s decision to test might have implications for these family members vis-à-vis others. Extract 3 (continues from extract above) 01 G2: I mean looking at that it does look like there might be something being passed down the fam- through the family (.5) the other thing that we do is we can do a calculation where we compare the ages of the women who have had breast cancer to to those who haven’t had breast cancer (1.0) and so we can actually from that we can work out what we think the chances are (.) that there might be a gene running in the family 02 AF: erm 4. According to Labov and Fanshel (1977), ‘A’ events refer to information which is known to the speaker, ‘B’ events refer to information which is known to the addressee and ‘A/B’ events refer to information known to both parties. Following this, if the speaker makes a statement about a ‘B’ event, this will be heard by the addressee as a request for confirmation.



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 









03 G2: and what we think your own risk of having breast cancer in your lifetime 04 AF: yeah 05 G2 see if it’s increased somewhat 06 AF: yeah 07 G2: now I did this for your (.) for your family and we do it using a computer (.5) but it’s essentially just a sort of complicated calculation 08 AF: yes 09 G2: and your own risk is higher than that of the general population = 10 AF: =I thought it would be ((tense laugh)) I’m not surprised 11 G2: thought yeah yeah and it’s it’s your risk is about thirty percent basically I [think] so you’re ^^^^^^a thirty [percent] 12 AF: [so that’s] high high is it? Or:::: 13 G2: it’s (.5) it is 14 AF: yeah 15 G2 significantly high I mean anything that we’re- I mean w16 AF: erm 17 G2: has to be taken with a pinch of salt because it is 18 AF: yeah::::ah 19 G2: just based on a on a sort of mathematical calculations so it’s not a (.5) a 20 AF: yeah:::ah 21 G2: figure [that is set] in stone or anything [like that] that22 AF: [no:: no::] [erm] 23 G2: so it would mean that sort of three times out of ten you would have a chance of (.) breast cancer (.) but then again seven times out of ten you won’t [develop] breast cancer 24 AF: [yes:::] (.5) 25 G2: so you- (.5) so your chance is about three times as high as the general population 26 AF: oh that’s nice ((laughing)) [hhhh hhhhh hhhhh] hah hah 27 G2: [^^^ ^ na:::::::::] (.5) 28 G2: but it (.) it sounds like that’s not a lot (.5) not a big (.5) of a [of a yeah yeah] 29 AF: [oh it’s no shock no no] 30 G2: (you thought that it’d go up higher) (.5) you would be (1.0) we would think about seriously think about looking for a gene in your family [(^^ ^^)] 31 AF: mhm

 Srikant Sarangi



32 G2: to see if we could find an alteration because you your your risk is sufficiently high enough for us to think about that 33 AF: right 34 G2: but (.5) doing that test has a lot of implications in it in itself (1.0)

The above episode begins with a return to the results frame, which is strategically initiated in order to make progress with diagnosis. In turn 07, the computerised risk figure is ascertained, similar to how medical test results are routinely given, although a gene test result is yet to be obtained for establishing AF’s at-risk status. G2 uses mitigation (‘just a sort of ’), which is subjected to further de-escalation in turn 21 (see below). The risk figure is worked up in a staged manner: beginning with a general statement such as ‘your own risk is higher’ (turn 09). This is met with a lack of surprise from AF in turn 10 (notice the absence of a news marker), almost as if she has been anticipating such an outcome. An interactional misalignment becomes evident. G2 then reformulates the risk in percentage terms. AF immediately asks if she falls into the category of high risk – the frame of reference being one’s risk is either high or low in relation to one’s own individual circumstances (see Adelswärd and Sachs [1998], Edwards et al [2002], Sarangi 2002 on how people find it difficult to make sense of individual risk in terms of absolute numbers). When AF asks whether her risk is high, she seems to allude to the notion of ‘high’ as it applies to her as an individual, and not ‘high’ in a comparative sense such that her risk is higher vis-à-vis the general population. G2 responds by labelling AF’s at-risk status as ‘significantly high’ (turn 15), but this is immediately downgraded when G2 draws attention to the abstract basis of the ‘mathematical calculation’ and underscores the fact that the 30 percent figure is not ‘set in stone’ (turns 17, 19 and 21). G2 then recasts the 30 percent figure in a different language: ‘three times out of ten you would have a chance of breast cancer’ (turn 23). And within the same turn he de-escalates this risk assessment without actually altering the risk figure (‘but then again, seven times out of ten, you won’t develop breast cancer’). The frame again shifts to AF’s risk vis-à-vis the general population. Metaphorically speaking, the dynamics of escalation/de-escalation is achieved by treating AF as a dice, thrown into the air and then allowing it to land on a chance territory. An interactional pattern emerges as far as escalation and de-escalation of risk is concerned: rather than further escalate a given risk figure in the next available turn, G2 consistently chooses to de-escalate this risk assessment before additional escalation is done in a staged manner.5 AF’s response to the high risk figure (turn 26) is another instance of interactional misalignment, which comes across as indifferent, or even sarcastic, tinged 5. For a similar analysis of escalation and de-escalation devices in the legal context, see Goodwin (1994).



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

with nervous laughter, perhaps as a device to release anxiety. Seen from G2’s viewpoint, this marks a dispreferred response, and he has to interactionally adjust to this situation. We note, in turn 28, G2 formulating AF’s perspective (this seems to be a variation of what Maynard [1991] regards as perspective display series) before shifting the frame to diagnosis which will involve ‘looking for a gene in your family’ (turn 30). AF has to meet the eligibility criteria for genetic tests, and here G2 has to draw on his expert awareness of local service provision at an organisational level (Wood et al 2003). The risk figure of 30 percent is regarded by G2 as optimal, even though AF does not seem to think of this as a high enough risk. About 12 turns are omitted, where AF latches on to G2’s remark in turn 34 to talk about a television documentary she had watched recently. This concerned the story of two sisters, with susceptibility for breast cancer. The test results showed one of them as positive, who then opted for mastectomy to remove all the tissues from her breast. AF concludes with the remark: ‘the risk was virtually taken away for her’. This interjection is significant because, as we will note in the extract below (see turn 36 in particular), AF may already be considering drastic intervention measures if her test results were to be positive. For her, mastectomy can be a means of weeding out potential risk once for all. Extract 4 01 G2: [yeah] [yeah] yeah (.5) yeah I mean the thing about doing the the gene test is that if if it shows that you do have an alteration of a gene 02 AF: mhm 03 G2: then your your risk will actually be a lot higher than thirty percent – it’ll be more like eighty percent 04 AF: ho God ((nervous laughter)) 05 G2: so it’s actually 06 AF: ((sighs)) 07 G2: yeah so (.5) so I mean that’s [it’s-] 08 AF: [so it’s] virtually definite then 09 G2: well [still (.) there’s still twenty percent chance that it isn’t] so- but it’s 10 AF: [mmhm] 11 G2 a lot higher [^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^] 12 AF: [(I mean) ^^^^ ^^^ ^] ^^^ ^^ ^ ^ 13 G2: whereas if- if we showed that you didn’t have an alteration in the gene then your chance of (.) you your chance (would go down again) 14 AF: mhm 15 G2: to the general population so 16 AF: mhm so if I did have an alteration in the gene what (would happen) then?(.5)

 Srikant Sarangi









17 G2: well - essentially at the moment I would advise you to be involved to see a breast surgeon and to so you’re and to first thing examine 18 AF: yeah 19 G2: yourself regularly [every] month - make sure you you’re seen20 AF: [yes:::] I’ve had a mammogram already yeah 21 G2: right make sure you’re seen by a breast surgeon 22 AF: mhm 23 G2: regularly and also be involved in a screening programme 24 AF: but you can only go as regularly as they allow [you can’t you] 25 G2: [yes exactly] 26 AF: I mean you can’t do any more [can you no] 27 G2: [that’s right] and there’s- at the moment the evidence that mammograms help in the under fifties [isn’t] isn’t definite anyway 28 AF: [mhm] [mhm] 29 G2: [we don’t] know whether it actually works you know 30 AF: mhm (.5) 31 G2: so (there may) the best the best (.5) (plan) is still very much selfexamination and reporting symptoms at an early stage because 32 AF: mhm 33 G2: the earlier the earlier any cancers are picked up the the better the chance of a cure (.5) and if we did the gene test [(and)] 34 AF: [yes::::::] 35 G2: and it showed that you’re at high risk we wouldn’t actually do anything different in terms of- because we can’t do anything el- we can’t do anything more in terms of screening that would already- you already have maximum screening for the moment 36 AF: yea:::::h so there [wouldn’t be] you wouldn’t have like an option to have (.) surgery or anything 37 G2: well (.5) there would be an option for - but that’s quite a serious (.5) undertaking basically (.5) to have a mastectomy is (.5) but I mean that’s something (.5) that is you know some (.5) something to::: think about for a long time beforehand 38 AF: mhm 39 G2: one of the things about- (1.0) the the testing procedure itself is because of the you know the implications are such as these we we - it’s not the sort of thing we just say you know - give us your arm we’ll take some blood and send the results in the post that sort 40 AF: mhm 41 G2: of thing I mean (.5) we’d see you back here for two sessions of an hour 42 AF: mhm mhm



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 





43 G2: at least you know or as long as it takes basically 44 AF: AF: yeah 45 G2: and then give you the results on the third session (.) so it’s not the sort of thing that we do:::: (.5) (off the cards) 46 AF: righ::t 47 G2: (.5) and the purpose of today is really just to explain this to you and give you the option of you know of that it that it’s just to let you know that we can do a test 48 AF: erm (.5)

First we notice escalation of risk by G2 as a way of justifying future action. The hypothetical scenario makes it possible to talk about worst possibilities, while also encouraging AF to reflect on her feelings and coping mechanisms. AF’s remark in turn 08 – ‘so it’s virtually definite then’ – calls for a de-escalation move on G2’s part in turn 09 (‘there’s still twenty percent chance that it isn’t so’). These are like exit strategies when the risk talk hits the upper ceiling. In the hypothetical mode, G2 offers both ends of the spectrum, as he draws attention to the possibility of AF not having an alteration (turn 13). It is interesting that AF chooses to engage with the ‘positive test result’ scenario (turn 16) and test out the possible intervention options available. In turns 17ff, G2 slides into typification, although apparently he continues to address AF in his use of ‘you’ form. In turns 24 and 26, AF uses the generic second person pronoun ‘you’ to signal her disappointment at accessing the screening programme optimally. With regard to mammograms, G2 alludes to scarce resources and issues of eligibility as much as outlining the lack of evidence of clinical benefits for mammograms under fifties, using his expert knowledge status. This leads AF to explore in a prospective way alternative options such as surgery (turn 36). In turn 37, G2 signals his hesitation, highlighted by the dispreference marker ‘well’ and the accompanying statement that ‘that’s quite a serious undertaking basically to have a mastectomy’. Rather than pursuing this intervention frame any further, G2 instead chooses to return to the genetic test protocol and to make obvious the ways in which this differs from other medical test situations (turn 39), followed by a further definition of the genetic counselling protocol. Some twenty turns are omitted, when AF reports her discussions with the specialist nurse prior to this clinic appointment. While G2 goes to considerable length in emphasising that she does not have to rush into a decision of any sort, AF signals explicitly that she ‘would want the test’. Our final extract is as follows: Extract 5 01 G2: (.5) the way that we actually (need) do the test would be to take some blood of someone in your family who actually has this condition or has had [the condition] 02 AF: [so my mother] (that)

 Srikant Sarangi



03 04 05 06 07



08 09 10 11



12 13



14 15 16 17: 18



19



20 21



22 23



24



25 26



27

G2: it would be your mother or- ideally your mother in fact (yeah) AF: mhm G2: because she is the closely most closely related AF: erm G2: to you (.5) and the way- it works is that (1.0) each of us has - you you’d have how your mother’s got two copies of this gene (.) and if we assume (.) that she (.5) that one of her one of the copies has AF: mhm G2: altered for her to have had the condition or the disease AF: yeah G2: and she could have either passed on the normal copy of the gene to you or the altered copy of the gene to you so there’s a fifty-fifty chance (.5) and if she’s passed on the normal copy for you (.) of the gene to you then you haven’t got it- your risk is the same as the general AF: erm G2: population - if she’s passed on the (.) the altered copy then your risk is [much higher] AF: [higher] G2: yeah so that’s - that would be the situation AF: right G2: and the same would also apply to your sister (1.0) AF: my sister doesn’t seem to (^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^) ((laughter)) I [don’t think] G2: [right well] I mean different people have different reactions to the whole thing and some people are not interested at all and that’s fine because at the end of the day what we’re testing for is something that we we can’t do that much about (you see) AF: mhm mhm (.5) G2: so it’s it’s not you know that’s why that’s why we spend so (.5) long going AF: mhm G2: through the implications of it (1.0) how wo- how do you think your mother would feel about giving a a blood sample AF: oh she’d hate it but she’d do it [she] hates needles [she’d] absolutely hate it G2: [right] [right] okay (.5) G2: ‘cause there are- I mean the other implication is that there’s also a higher risk of ovarian cancer as well in these women AF: mhm



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 



28 G2: so that’s something else 29 AF: =Go:::::::::d [oh god he he heh hhe hheh heheh] ((sigh)) o::::::::::h dear oh dear 30 G2: [alright it g- it g- and it gets worse but-] (.5) but I think that’s about all (the bad news that) there is 31 AF: o:::::::::::h ((falling tone)) [really] I’m so glad I came

The consultation more or less returns to where it had begun. G2 first spells out which of the family members could be involved in the testing process. We again have an escalation/de-escalation routine (turns 07, 09, 11 and 13). In turn 11, we have a repetition of the explanation concerning autosomal dominant genetic conditions, but articulated in everyday terms. G2 now speaks the language of high/low risk as AF had initiated. In turn 19, G2 admits the failure to cure (‘what we are testing for is something that we we can’t do that much about’). In what follows, he justifies why genetic counselling as an activity is information-rich by dealing with implications of not only testing and test results for individuals concerned, but also in considering consequences for family members. In turn 23, the intervention frame is introduced with the enquiry about AF’s mother’s feelings for giving a blood sample. The question is framed ambivalently, possibly requiring a more than matter-of-fact response that is offered by AF in turn 24. In turn 26, G2 mentions other risk scenarios, which makes AF display her anxiety and nervousness, but she is overall pleased to have accessed the counselling service to know about her current and future risk status. The interaction continues for another 30 turns where AF begins to talk about her cousin who recently died of bowel cancer. G2 offers to look at this cousin’s history to see if this might have any consequences for AF’s at-risk status. The closure is accomplished by setting out a procedure for taking blood sample from AF’s mother. Throughout the encounter, two things become apparent: first, the frames shift constantly between family history, diagnosis, possible test results and intervention, which may be typical of genetic counselling dealing with predictive testing. There is a constant shifting between retrospective and prospective scenarios: often retrospective accounts have a prospective orientation. The idea is to selectively guide the client to provide information that would lead towards a diagnosis or prognosis rather than just being a mission in fact finding. Secondly, the escalation and de-escalation of risk is accomplished in a rhythmic, dance-like fashion whereby every escalation move is followed by a de-escalation move.

 Srikant Sarangi

6. Conclusion Focusing on the professional/institutional context, I have suggested that interaction as an expert communicative system is a necessary condition of healthcare encounters for understanding risk, coping with uncertainty, evaluating evidence, making decisions etc. It is not always possible to discern from interaction itself what decisions are eventually made, but the interactional context, which is contingent and constantly unfolding, plays a significant part in communicative processes and outcomes. In developing a model of activity analysis, I have tried to show that there is more to interactional trajectories than sequential organisation of turn-taking. In the words of Lynch and Sharrock (2003: xxxix): ‘Although the sequential procedures that make up what conversation analysts call “talk in interaction” are evident in, and important for, the organisation of practices in a variety of social institutions, it is not enough to say that, for example, a jury deliberation or a medical diagnosis is an “organisation of talk”’. The case study of genetic counselling demonstrates the dynamic frame shifts between accessing services, explaining conditions, taking family history, discussing testing protocol, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. There are rhetorical aspects to interaction – here patterns of escalation and de-escalation of risk – which calls for interactional mapping to be matched with thematic mapping of the entire encounter. Activity analysis is one possible way to engage with the micro-level of interaction against the backdrop of professional/institutional realities. The activity analysis framework proposed here is intended to be eclectic, not ‘in the frequent use of that term when it is equated with some magpie collection but in the sense of choosing ideas or principles from diverse systems of thought toward the formation of a coherent, integrated, whole system’ (Perlman 1957: xii). There remains the issue of consensus about definitions and scope of concepts such as frames, footing and alignment if our analytic work has to have external validity. Interaction in the professional setting is not a skill, but a knowledge system, laminated with expertise and authority that we as interaction analysts need to understand in order to navigate our analytic apparatus. The need for collaborative interpretation is paramount, given that interpretation of themes in professional contexts is not as straightforward as it might seem (Sarangi 2007). In my view, interaction analysis, especially with regard to professional and institutional settings, has to be recipient-designed in practically relevant ways in order to facilitate potential uptake (Sarangi 2005a, Sarangi 2007). What professionals may want from interaction analysts is not directives about how to conduct social interaction in their communities of practice, but theoretical and analytic insights for reflection as they are likely to apply such insights about interaction selectively, in the same way as they deal with theories and models of scientific and technical



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system 

knowledge. Analytic sensibility of the kind emerging from conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and other traditions of pragmatics and discourse analysis has no doubt demonstrated the dynamic workings of language in interaction, including context-specificity as well as stable patterning of interaction types across contexts. We may ask, with specific reference to the positioning of discourse and interaction analysts, whether our analytic enterprise is more of an intellectual rather than professional expert-like endeavour. I am inclined to see our analytic endeavour as one that maps on to other-oriented professional expertise rather than becoming an exercise in pure intellectualism. Appendix Transcription Conventions (.): micropause; (…): pause exceeding one second; ((gap)): indicates an interval of longer length between speaker turns and an approximation of length in seconds; underlining: indicates increase emphasis as in stress; -: indicates cut-off of prior word or sound; [text in square brackets]: overlapping speech; ((text in double round brackets)): description or anonymised information; (text in round brackets): transcriber’s guess; =: a continuous utterance and is used when a speaker’s lengthy utterance is broken up arbitrarily for purposes of presentation. References Adelswärd, Viveka and Sachs, Lisbeth. 1998. “Risk discourse: recontextualisation of numerical values in clinical practice”. Text 18 (2): 191–211. Agar, Michael. 1985. “Institutional discourse”. Text 5 (3): 147–168. Atkinson, Paul and Housley, William. 2003. Interactionism. London: Sage. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee, edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bales, Robert Freed. 1950. Interaction Process Analysis. Mass: Addison-Wesley. Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interaction. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Boden, Deirdre. 1994. The Business of Talk: Organisations in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. Byrne, Patrick S. and Long, Barrie E. L. 1976. Doctors Talking to Patients. London: The Royal College of General Practitioners. Candlin, Christopher N. and Candlin, Sally. 2003. “Healthcare communication: A problematic site for applied linguistics research”. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23: 134–154.

 Srikant Sarangi Cicourel, Aaron V. 1974. Cognitive Sociology: Language and Meaning in Social Interaction. New York: The Free Press. Davis, Alan G. 1982. Children in Clinic: A Sociological Analysis of Medical Work with Children. London: Tavistock. Department of Health 2001. The Expert Patient: A New Approach to Chronic Disease Management for the 21st Century. London: Department of Health. Drew, Paul and Heritage, John (eds) 1992. Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, Adrian, Elwyn, Glyn and Mulley, A. J. 2002. “Explaining risks: turning numerical data into meaningful pictures”. British Medical Journal 324: 827–830. Ferrara, Kathleen W. 1994.Therapeutic Ways with Words. New York: Oxford University Press. Fisher, Sue and Todd, Alexandra D. (eds) 1983. The Social Organisation of Doctor-Patient Communication. Washington DC: Centre for Applied Linguistics. Foucault, Michael. 1970. L’Ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard. Freidson, Eliot. 1970. Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. Freidson, Eliot. 1994. Professionalism Reborn: Theory, Prophecy and Policy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gee, James P. 1997. “Thematised echoes”. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7 (1–4): 189–196. Glassner, Barry. 1980. Essential Interactionism: On the Intelligibility of Prejudice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper & Row. Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Goffman, Erving. 1983. “The interaction order”. American Sociological Review 48: 1–17. Goodwin, Charles. 1994. “Professional vision”. American Anthropologist 96 (3): 606–633. Green, Judith L. and Wallat, Cynthia. 1981. “Mapping interactional conversations – a sociolinguistic ethnography”. In Ethnography and Language in Educational Settings, Judith L. Green and Cynthia Wallat (eds), 161–195. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 161–195. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John and Cook-Gumperz, Jenny. 1982. “Introduction: language and the communication of social identity”. In Language and Social Identity, John J. Gumperz (ed), 1–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Christian. 1986. Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1979. “The context of professional languages: an historical overview”. In Language in Public Life, James E. Alatis and G. Richard Tucker (eds), 101–118. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Heritage, John and Sefi, Sue. 1992. “Dilemmas of advice: aspects of the delivery and reception of advice in interactions between health visitors and first-time mothers. In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, Paul Drew and John Heritage (eds), 359–417. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, John and Maynard, Douglas W. (eds) 2006. Communication in Medical Care: Interaction between Primary Care Physicians and Patients. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hughes, Everett C. 1958. Men and their Work. New York: Free Press.



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system  Illich, Ivan. 1977. Disabling Professions, with contributions from Irving K. Zola, John McNight, Jonathan Caplan and Harley Shaiken. London: Marion Boyars. Johnson, Terence J. 1972. Professions and Power. London: Macmillan. Johnson, Terence J. 1993. “Expertise and the state”. In Foucault’s New Domains, Mike Gane and Terry Johnson (eds), pp 139–152. London: Routledge. Labov, William and Fanshel, David. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press. Labov, William and Waletsky, Joshua. 1967. “Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience”. In Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, June Helm (ed) 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Larson, Magali Sarfatti. 1977. The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press. Levinson, Stephen C. 1979. “Activity types and language”. Linguistics 17 (5/6): 365–399. Levison, Arnold. 1974. Knowledge and Society: An Introduction to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Lynch, Michael and Sharrock, Wes. 2003. “Editors’ Introduction”. In Harold Garfinkel, Michael Lynch and Wes Sharrock (eds), vii–xlvi. London: Sage. Maynard, Douglas W. 1991. “The perspective-display series and the delivery and receipt of diagnostic news”. In Talk and Social Structure, Deirdre Boden and Don H. Zimmerman (eds), 164–192. Cambridge: Polity Press. McHugh, Peter. 1968. Defining the Situation: The Organisation of Meaning in Social Interaction. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. McIntosh, Jim. 1978. “The routine management of uncertainty in communication with cancer patients”. In Relationships between Doctors and Patients, Alan G. Davis (ed), 106–131. Farnborough: Saxton House. Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society: From the standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. Edited with Introduction by Charles W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mehan, Hugh. 1979. Learning Lessons. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure, revised edition. New York: Free Press. Mishler, Elliot G. 1984. The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Mishler, Elliot G., Clark, Jack A., Ingelfinger, Joseph and Simon, Michael P. 1989. “The language of attentive patient care: A comparison of two medical interviews”. Journal of General Internal Medicine 4 (July/August): 325–335. Moore, Alison, Candlin, Christopher N. and Plum, Gunther. 2001. “Making sense of viral load: one expert or two?” Journal of Culture, Health and Sexuality 3 (4): 429–450. Peräkylä, Anssi. 1995. AIDS Counselling: Institutional Interaction and Clinical Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peräkylä, Anssi and Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2003. “Conversation analysis and the professional stocks of interactional knowledge”. Discourse & Society 14 (6): 727–750. Peräkylä, Anssi, Ruusuvuori, Johanna and Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2005. “Professional theories and institutional interaction”. Communication & Medicine 2 (2): 105–109. Perlman, Helen H. 1957. Social Casework: A Problem Solving Process. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

 Srikant Sarangi Prior, Lindsay. 2003. “Belief, knowledge and expertise: The emergence of the lay expert in medical sociology”. Sociology of Health & Illness 25: 41–57. Roberts, Celia and Sarangi, Srikant. 2002. “Mapping and assessing medical students’ interactional involvement styles with patients”. In Unity and Diversity in Language Use, Kristyan Spelman Miller and Paul Thompson (eds), 99–117. London: Continuum. Roberts, Celia and Sarangi, Srikant. 2005. “Theme-oriented discourse analysis of medical encounters”. Medical Education 39: 632–640. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich. 1986. Power and the Division of Labour. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutcheson. Sarangi, Srikant. 2000. “Activity types, discourse types and interactional hybridity: The case of genetic counselling”. In Discourse and Social Life, Srikant Sarangi and Malcolm Coulthard (eds), 1–27. London: Pearson. Sarangi, Srikant. 2001. “On demarcating the space between ‘lay expertise’ and ‘expert laity’”. Text 21 (1/2): 3–11. Sarangi, Srikant. 2002. “The language of likelihood in genetic counselling discourse”. Journal for Language and Social Psychology 21 (1): 7–31. Sarangi, Srikant. 2004. “Towards a communicative mentality in medical and healthcare practice”. Communication & Medicine 1 (1): 1–11. Sarangi, Srikant. 2005a. “The conditions and consequences of professional discourse studies”. Journal of Applied Linguistics 2, 3, 371–394. Sarangi, Srikant. 2005b. “Interactional expertise in healthcare encounters”. Communication & Medicine 2 (2): 103–104. Sarangi, Srikant. 2005c. “Activity analysis in professional discourse settings: The framing of risk and responsibility in genetic counselling”. Hermès 41: 111–120. Sarangi, Srikant. 2007. The anatomy of interpretation: Coming to terms with the analyst’s paradox in professional discourse studies. Text & Talk 27, 5, 567–584. Sarangi, Srikant. [in press]. “Practising discourse analysis in healthcare settings”. In Qualitative Methods in Health Research, Ivy Bourgeault, Raymond DeVries and Robert Dingwall (eds). London: Sage. Sarangi, Srikant, Bennert, Kristina, Howell, Lucy, Clarke, Angus., Harper, Peter, and Gray, Jonathon. 2004. “Initiation of reflective frames in counselling for Huntington’s Disease predictive testing”. Journal of Genetic Counselling 13 (2): 135–155. Sarangi, Srikant, Bennert, Kristina, Howell, Lucy, Clarke, Angus., Harper, Peter, and Gray, Jonathon. 2005. “(Mis)alignments in counselling for Huntington’s Disease predictive testing: Clients’ responses to reflective frames”. Journal of Genetic Counselling 14 (1): 29–42. Sarangi, Srikant and Roberts, Celia. (eds) 1999. Talk, Work and the Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Sarangi, Srikant and Slembrouck, Stefaan. 1996. Language, Bureaucracy and Social Control. London: Longman. Scheff, Thomas J. 1968. “Negotiating reality: Notes on power in the assessment of responsibility”. Social Problems 16 (1): 3–17. Schutz, Alfred. 1964. Collected Papers vol II. The Hague: Nijhoff. Shils, Edward. 1968. “Intellectuals”. In International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences vol. 7, Edward Shils (ed), 399–415. New York: Macmillan. Silverman, David. 1987. Communication and Medical Practice: Social Relations in the Clinic. London: Sage.



Healthcare interaction as an expert communicative system  Silverman, David. 1997. Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction. London: Sage. Simmel, Georg. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolff. New York: The Free Press. Stehr, Nico. 1994. Knowledge Societies. London: Sage. Stokes, Randall and Hewitt, John P. 1976. “Aligning actions”. American Sociological Review 41: 838–849. Strong, P. M. and Davis, Alan G. 1978. “Who’s who in paediatric encounters: morality, expertise and the generation of identity and action in medical settings”. In Relationships Between Doctors and Patients, Alan G. Davis (ed), 48–75. Farnborough: Saxton House. Tannen, Deborah. (ed) 1993. Framing in Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press. Tannen, Deborah and Wallat, Cynthia. 1993. “Interactive frames and knowledge schemas in interaction: Examples from a medical examination/interview”. In Framing in Discourse, Deborah Tannen (ed), 57–76. New York: Oxford University Press. Ten Have, Paul. 1989. “The consultation as a genre”. In Text and Talk as Social Practice: Discourse, Difference and Division in Speech and Writing, Brian Torode (ed), 115–135. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Tuckett, David, Boulton, Mary, Olson, Coral, and Williams, Anthony. 1985. Meetings between Experts: An Approach to Sharing Ideas in Medical Consultations. London: Tavistock. Turner, Roy. 1972. “Some formal properties of therapy talk”. In Studies in Social Interaction, David Sudnow (ed), 367–396. New York: Free Press. Voloshinov, V. N. 1987. “Discourse in life and discourse in art”. In Freudianism, I. Titunik and N. Bruss (eds), 93–116. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Voysey, Margaret. 1975. A Constant Burden: The Reconstitution of Family Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wilson, Thomas P. 1971. “Normative and interpretive paradigms in sociology”. In Understanding Everyday Life, Jack D. Douglas (ed), 57–79. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wood, Fiona, Prior, Lindsay and Gray, Jonathon. 2003. “Translations of risk: decision making in a cancer genetics service”. Health, Risk & Society 5 (2): 185–198.

Interacting with difficulty The case of aphasia Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

Edith Cowan University, Australia and University of Newcastle, Australia Following brain damage after stroke, a language disorder known as aphasia can significantly interfere with conversational flow due to both the individual’s difficulties with word-finding and grammar, as well as their conversational partner’s ability to deal with such difficulties. This chapter explores the kinds of analyses used to date to illuminate the nature of interactions involving people with aphasia and their conversational partners, and the difficulties they encounter. In particular, Conversation Analysis (1977) and Systemic Functional Linguistics approaches (Halliday 1994) are discussed, and the challenges involved in applying such frameworks to clinical populations are examined.

In analysing talk as it occurs in everyday situations, observations can be made, and hypotheses can be devised which add to our knowledge of individuals’ access to meaning making and the way(s) in which speakers communicate with each other. Current analyses of everyday conversations extend beyond the formalist analyses that in the past often depended on monologic or literary texts, and challenge our notions of language competence and what constitutes it. For many years, researchers and clinicians concerned with individuals with communication disorders viewed their communication abilities and associated problems from a formalist perspective of language. There was a focus on individuals’ lexical and syntactic skills, and their performance on decontextualised language tasks was deemed to reflect their underlying language competence. More recently, through the influence of pragmatic perspectives, discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, the individual’s performance in everyday talk has become of increasing interest and focus. Research into this area presents numerous challenges and benefits as it provides information on conversations that are inherently problematic, for different reasons, across different disorders. In this chapter, we compare the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic contributions to the understanding of one particular

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

communication disorder, namely aphasia (a loss or impairment of language due to specific brain damage e.g., stroke). We also contrast the contribution made by the two very different approaches of conversation analysis and systemic functional linguistics to an understanding of the effect of aphasia on everyday talk. Our observations drawn from this frame of reference draw attention to the insight that not all the ‘problems’ associated with aphasia are directly related to the individual’s brain damage, but instead arise from the contextual demands of the interaction. We suggest that this recognition raises the important corollary that opportunities for maximizing effective communication arise from working within this social conversational context. Aphasia has been chosen as the focus of this chapter not only because it is the main focus of our own clinical research, but as it provides a specific instance of a disorder in which breakdown in lexicogrammar is the essential characteristic, in the presence of relatively intact ‘pragmatic’ skills (i.e., the aphasic speaker appears to be trying to participate in the conversation/topic at hand, experiencing frustration when ‘meanings’ cannot be realized successfully). Aphasia can be contrasted with other disorders that involve less disruption of lexicogrammar, and greater disruption of so-called ‘pragmatic’ aspects of communication e.g., the ‘inappropriate’ changing of topics, or the discussion of contextually inappropriate topics of those with traumatic brain injury, or the confabulatory language characteristic of dementia or schizophrenia (where the speakers often lack insight into their verbal behaviours). While analysis of these latter disorders yields equally informative data and interpretations, it is important to examine each disorder individually as much as possible, with the aim being to focus on specific characteristics that can be contrasted eventually with characteristics of other disorders, in order to establish their relative significance and to explore potential associations between processes and structures. 1. ‘Problems’ in conversation Conversations can become problematic for a number of reasons and everyday difficulties are well documented in otherwise ‘normal’ speakers’ interactions. Misunderstandings can occur between interlocutors, leading to the need for clarification and correction, or these can sometimes lead to conflict, where one person may be offended by a misinterpretation of another’s comments, and even terminate the interaction. Speakers can also experience ‘slips of the tongue’ (Cutler 1982) where individual words or phrases are produced incorrectly, leading to the need for selfcorrection and repair. Both the leading proponents of the two key approaches to interaction analysis that we will be considering in this chapter – Conversation



Interacting with difficulty 

Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics - suggest that it is surprising that there are not more problems in conversation, given the complexity of language. However, while Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks (1977) would suggest that interactional machinery accounts for this relative ease of interaction, Halliday (1994) would suggest the reason we understand each other so well is because of redundancy and context. For speakers with communication disorders and their conversational partners, such difficulties as noted above can become amplified several times over, as the interactants attempt to negotiate meanings under less than optimal conditions. The effects of brain damage on a person’s interactive skills can be numerous. In aphasia, the lexicogrammar is impaired, so that the speaker with aphasia has difficulty making the right lexical choices and even finding the correct lexical items, and may also have difficulty in putting words together to form clauses, and establishing logical connections between the clauses. In severe cases, the disintegration of language is so great that a listener can perceive little overall structure to the discourse of the person with aphasia, in which case it is judged to be totally incoherent. The kinds of impairments following more diffuse brain damage, such as that suffered after a traumatic brain injury or associated with dementia, are less specific to the lexicogrammar, and involve more difficulties in linking the lexicogrammar to the interpersonal context. In this regard, the speaker may not appear to be having difficulty forming clauses or texts from a lexicogrammatical perspective, but the language is not always appropriate to the situation. These latter difficulties are often described as ‘cognitive-communication’ disability, and thus differentiated from the focus of this chapter on aphasia. In the case of aphasia, the brain-damaged speaker struggles to use his/her remaining linguistic resources to convey meanings, whilst the conversational partner uses all possible resources – both linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge, incorporating contextual variables – to try and make sense of what the other speaker is saying, and to attempt to get the conversation back ‘on track.’ Often in the interaction between an aphasic speaker and communication partner, the person listening to the aphasic partner must become even more active than usual in his/her role of co-construing the discourse, as inordinate amounts of ‘guessing’ and ‘filling in the blanks’ have to occur to assist comprehension of what is being said. Conversely, the aphasic speaker may also have difficulties processing what is being said to him/her because of receptive language difficulties (also part of aphasia), but have limited resources to use to interpret/repair such problematic instances. An interactional approach to language provides those interested in the discourse of people with communication disorders a way of examining not only how an aphasic person ‘copes’ and functions during conversation i.e., utilizes his/her skills to convey meaning given diminished linguistic resources, but also two other

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

perspectives. One involves examining the effects of different conversational partners (and hence different styles of interacting) on the aphasic person’s use of his/ her resources, and the second involves examining the ways in which the conversational partners ‘handle’ the aphasic person’s contribution to the conversation. Obviously these two perspectives are inextricably interwoven and should be seen together as the ways in which both parties negotiate what can potentially be problematic meaning-making by both partners (given that aphasic individuals may also have comprehension difficulties, making it problematic at times for them to follow what the non-brain damaged person is saying). 2. Analyses/frameworks used to date Historically, the study of communication disorders has been approached from a number of perspectives, reflective of the multi-disciplinary interest in language. Formal linguistic and psycholinguistic frameworks have been perhaps the most commonly utilised, aphasia research focusing for many years primarily on the lexicogrammatical difficulties evidenced by aphasic speakers at the word and sentence levels, and more recently in the context of discourse, but usually monologic discourse. The focus of analysis in this case is very much an intra-individual one, with the language ‘disorder’ identified solely in the language of the aphasic speaker. Language is viewed from a synoptic perspective in this paradigm, where it is seen as a set of rules followed (or not) within the mind of the individual speaker. However, in more recent years, the focus has expanded somewhat to include the ways in which lexicogrammatical difficulties manifest themselves in an interactional context, and the role of the interlocutor in co-constructing the discourse with the aphasic partner. Such an approach uses an inter-individual perspective, where language is viewed as a dynamic phenomenon, designed and used for social purposes. The earliest clinical analyses of interactions used a variety of ‘pragmatic’ analyses that are still used, largely based on the work of Searle (1969) and Grice (1975). Such analyses stem from the perspective that pragmatics involves ‘language in use.’ Pragmatic rules are often seen as separate from linguistic rules that govern phonology, the lexicon and syntax – elements that are impaired in aphasia, for example, as discussed in the work of Prutting and Kirchner (1983), Murray and Chapey (2001), and Myers (1999). However, Carlomagno and colleagues (2000) challenge this view in a paper that examines both the current and potential use of so-called pragmatic principles in the treatment of aphasic individuals. While they acknowledge the historical separation of pragmatics and lexicogrammar in many aphasia assessment and treatment paradigms, they highlight the need to examine both pragmatic ‘functions’ and aspects of the lexicogrammar as they interact. Ulatowska



Interacting with difficulty 

and Olness (2000) support this view. Traditionally, language therapy often relied on word-finding activities involving picture naming tasks, or grammatical activities such as sentence construction tasks. Carlomagno and colleagues suggest that therapy focus on both formal aspects of the lexicogrammar, as well as its use in interactions. For instance, they highlight the necessity of taking context into account when using co-reference. They discuss the effects that working within a conversational framework can have on specific aspects of the lexicogrammar, for example, Wertz and colleagues (1981), Springer and colleagues (1991). Another approach has been based on Conversation Analysis (CA) and has been used by a number of researchers to address the patterns of interaction occurring in aphasic conversations (Beeke et al. 2007a). Much of the work in applying CA to aphasia has been influenced by the pioneering work of the linguist, Charles Goodwin (1981), whose analysis of interactions involving a speaker with severe expressive aphasia (his father) and others illustrated the co-construction of meaning (Goodwin 1995), and the emergence of communicative competence through the joint work of the partners, rather than seeing (in)competence as an attribute of an individual (Goodwin 2003a). Two main areas preoccupy the research using conversation analysis to study aphasia, firstly investigating how communication effectiveness might be facilitated through self and other repair (Ferguson 1994, 1998; Lesser 2003; Lindsay and Wilkinson 1999), and secondly the design and evaluation of conversational therapy programs (Boles 1998; Booth and Swabey 1999; Whitworth et al. 1997; Wilkinson et al. 1998). Parallel with these developments, a number of aphasia researchers have been exploring the applications of more eclectic frameworks such as found in the interactional sociolinguistics of Gumperz (1982), and within these broader frameworks have considered issues of power in interactions involving a person with aphasia (Simmons-Mackie and Damico 1999). Systemic functional linguistic principles (SFL) (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004) have also been used to describe aphasic interactions in terms of speech functions (Ferguson 1992b), and generic structure potential (Ferguson and Elliot 2001), with Armstrong (1991; 1993) discussing the implications of breakdowns in cohesion for interactions. Such applications will be explained in more detail below, but it has been the link between lexicogrammar and context, central to the work of Michael Halliday in systemic functional theory, that has attracted the authors to description of disordered conversations using this framework. As Eggins & Slade (1997/2004) note: “Structural-functional approaches ask just what is conversational structure, and attempt to relate the description of conversational structure to that of other units, levels, and structures of language.” (p.43).

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

It is this relating between levels of language, looking for how one is realized by another, through which SFL offers a different perspective from other forms of interactional analysis. The following section will explore this further. 3. Connecting lexicogrammar with context One of the recent developments in the application of CA principles to aphasic discourse has been an increasing focus on examining the links between the lexicogrammar and context during conversation. In an attempt to become more specific regarding the links between lexicogrammar and the aphasic speakers’ and their conversational partners’ ability to negotiate meaning, utilizing a CA framework, Beeke and colleagues (2003a; 2003b; 2007b) have explored ways in which the patterns of agrammatic constructions of an aphasic speaker during interactions may well be attempts to ‘manage’ the conversation successfully in light of difficulties at the lexicogrammatical level. Beeke and colleagues discuss phenomena such as ‘fronting’ or ‘left dislocation’ (e.g., a noun phrase being used at the beginning of a clause, then elaborated upon by more simple constructions in aphasic talk). Such constructions deny canonical order of clauses, but function in normal discourse to highlight or thematise particular aspects. In aphasic discourse, however, Beeke and colleagues describe such usage as a means by which aphasic speakers are able to convey meaning in the presence of lexicogrammatical difficulties. For example, when discussing her participation in past wedding preparations, the aphasic speaker begins with the temporal noun phrase, ‘July no June….three tier wedding cake I make it.’ Because of the presence of the noun phrase, the listener does not misinterpret the lack of tense marker otherwise required for indicating the past. Another phenomenon noted was termed a ‘sequential proposition’ pattern. This involved the construction of a proposition without the normal conjoining elements, but interpretation depending on a contextual sequence. For example, the aphasic speaker just mentioned was discussing making a wedding cake for her friend, and having to buy particular hexagonal cake-tins for this task: Jane: oh what sort are they havin’ Connie: m tuh hexagon shape m tuh [I Jane: [ you got tins for that Connie: no no uh – I have the tins Jane: you gotta get ‘em Connie: yeah yeah Jane: oh right



Interacting with difficulty 

Connie: m Edgerton green cake shop Jane: oh is there one there? Connie: yeah Beeke, Wilkinson and Maxim (2003b) also reported on differences found between grammatical usage in sentence tests, and structured elicited narratives to that found in conversational interaction. In the more structured situations, their speaker demonstrated ability to construct SVO type structures. However, few utterances in the conversational sample conformed to the SVO type format. In contrast, the phenomena of fronting and sequential construction of a proposition were contained in the conversational data, but rarely occurred in the structured elicited data. Such data suggest that studying language as it occurs in normal interaction may well tell us very different things about the language of aphasic speakers than data gained in either decontextualised or monologic tasks. Beyond this implication, as Lesser (2003) points out, there is increasing recognition that what is observable in aphasic language use is as much the speaker’s adaptation to communication difficulty as reflecting what psycholinguistics would describe as the ‘underlying linguistic impairment’ (Beeke et al. 2007a; Heeschen and Schegloff 1999). This kind of analysis appears to go beyond previous CA approaches to aphasia in as much as it looks at the semantic function of the patterns found a little more. For example, in the texts from which the above brief examples were drawn, a phenomenon known as fronting was identified, with its potential purpose also proposed i.e., highlighting or thematising. In the next section of this chapter, we explore further research within a systemic functional framework, which addresses some of these issues. 4. SFL’s perspective on contextual issues While it is clear that CA is certainly concerned with the context of utterances, it appears at times that this ‘contextualisation’ is either local to the immediately surrounding utterances only, or global in terms of its description of predetermined patterns of interaction, that do not relate to specific contexts, but can be generalized across a variety of genres e.g., the notion of adjacency pairs. SFL, on the other hand, characterizes context in terms of register and genre. Numerous linguists and sociolinguists have written extensively on context, but Halliday’s notion of context of situation (Halliday and Hasan 1985), expanding on the work of Firth (1957) provides a solid framework by which to characterize contexts as belonging to particular registers and genres. The framework enables the analyst to explore language in context in a systematic way, examining the three aspects ‘field’ (referring to what is

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

occurring and what is being discussed), ‘tenor’ (referring to the relative status of the interlocutors) and ‘mode’ (referring to the channel of communication e.g., written, spoken) that relate to the three social functions of language: i) to understand and represent our environment and experience of that environment ii) “to represent our experience to each other’; and iii) to organise our enactments and representations as meaningful text” (Martin and Rose 2003:€6). These latter three purposes are known as the experiential, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions of language. At an even higher level, one can characterize genres, which are said to “represent a system of staged goal-oriented social processes through which social subjects in a given culture live their lives” (Martin 2002:€56–57) in terms of particular patterns and structures of language required for particular social purposes. The importance of this higher level of abstraction of context is that discourses can be seen as having relatively predictable structures, and generalizations about behaviours can be made beyond the single instantiation of any one event. Systematicity is central to such a framework, so that a finite set of options is available to speakers in particular situations, and a level of probability is possible to gauge in terms of how a particular situation will unfold at various linguistic levels. When working with data obtained from individuals with communication disorders, such abstraction can be very useful. Firstly, it provides some notion of ‘norm’ for particular genres, about which judgements can be made re pathology/ no pathology. Conversely, it can allow the analyst to isolate particular contextual variables that may be affecting the behaviours observed. For example, in the analysis of field, tenor and mode, variables of field can be isolated (topic, nature of interaction), tenor (social distance between conversational participants, familiarity) and mode (e.g., face to face discourse, telephone interaction, SMS messaging). This framework has proved useful in a series of studies on individuals who have neurogenic communication disorders (Armstrong et al. 2005/2007; Armstrong and Mortensen 2006; Ferguson 2007; Ferguson and Armstrong 2004; Togher 2000; Togher and Hand 1998; Togher et al. 1997). Findings such as the fact that familiarity has a significant impact on interactions for these individuals (Ferguson 1994; Togher et al. 1997), and that written vs. spoken modes invoke different use of grammatical resources (Mortensen 2003) are examples of the ways SFL can inform clinical practice. While the effects of familiarity may be fairly obvious i.e., speakers interact differently when levels of shared knowledge and comfort within the interaction vary, it is the ways in which language varies that is of interest. Such phenomena as differences in modality manifest themselves in specific ways in interactions involving individuals with brain damage. For example, in investigating individuals with traumatic brain injury, Togher and Hand (1998) found that these individuals were less able to use modality for politeness purposes in service encounters with unfamiliar persons than their non-brain-damaged counterparts.



Interacting with difficulty 

Such phenomena may account at least partially for the perceived bluntness of this group and their perceived lack of social skills. The importance of context and an understanding of how meaning is ‘constructed’ in an interaction between someone with a communication disorder and their conversational partner can be viewed as central. SFL’s multistratal and multifunctional dimensions enable the analyst to examine speakers’ utterances from multiple perspectives and in so doing, add a depth to analysis not always available in unidimensional analyses. For example, when exploring aspects such as grammatical structure, the role of certain structures in creating meaning is examined. The use of modality has been examined for its role in the aphasic speaker’s ability to negotiate conversations and in politeness (Ferguson 1992b). Many grammatical analyses used in aphasia research tend to quantify features such as the amount of clausal embedding, or use of tense endings, without looking at the effects of these on overall discourse meaning. Similarly, ‘repair’ has been addressed without directly exploring the role of lexicogrammar in the behaviour (Lindsay and Wilkinson 1999; Perkins 1995). Ferguson’s study of repair (1992a; 1993), however, incorporated the role of cohesion between turns in the analysis of guessing techniques used by conversational partners (see below). 5. Lexical retrieval in interaction While aphasia is a heterogeneous disorder, the symptom common to all types and degrees of severity of aphasia is anomia or word-finding difficulty. Armstrong’s research considers the availability of lexicogrammatical resources for cohesion for people with aphasia and demonstrates the difficulties aphasic speakers have providing clear reference (often using pronouns and demonstratives without explicit antecedent referents) and producing the variety of lexical sense relations that assists in creating a coherent text. These difficulties in providing explicit cohesive ties linking ideas within the text place an increased load on the communication partner as the partner attempts to build a coherent view of the meanings being conveyed, but to-date most research in aphasia has considered anomia as a problem of the individual with aphasia rather than recognizing its impact on the interaction as a whole. When communication partners converse with anyone who is having wordfinding difficulty, they frequently will supply the word or prompt the speaker to be able to find the word. This ‘supplying words’ is a particular feature of conversations involving a person with aphasia. Naturally, world-knowledge and shared knowledge are major contributors to assist with the guesses made by the partner, but another important resource is the co-text that immediately precedes the word

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

being sought. Ferguson (1992a) combined conversation analysis methodology with systemic functional linguistics to explore the role of co-text in supplying words for people with aphasia (Armstrong 1987, 1991). Ferguson looked at 21 conversations - 7 conversations between an aphasic speaker and spouse, 7 conversations between an aphasic speaker and their friend or neighbour, and 7 conversation between the spouse and the friend or neighbour, and identified moments in the conversations where significant trouble and repair arose, in that these moments extended over at least 5 turns, and involved at least two turns of hypothesisforming as defined by Bremer and colleagues (Bremer et al. 1996). In the following Example 1, a typical moment of trouble in the interaction has occurred, in which ‘A’ (a 60 year old man who had suffered a left cerebrovascular accident 4.5 years prior to this conversation being taped) is talking about fishing with ‘LF’ (his 33 year old son-in-law). Example 1: Word-finding difficulty in interaction LF You ever been deep sea fishing? A Oh yeah I been outside, um, Port Stephens. Went out with Maxie, and Teddy. He said um, … he said, I’ll show you how to, hood [PARAPHASIC ERROR] the r-rod up.€ And I was shrowing [PARAPHASIC ERROR] to throw it in. And it was a very very rough sea, and I just X the XXX [UNINTELLIGIBLE SYLLABLES]. I said I can’t feel anything. Listen how do, don’t you feel that tug? Yes. He said, hook ‘em! And I hooked, and next minute they brought him in. Two pound, …um.. christ, can’t think of it now. LF Was it bream? A No. LF Snapper? A …Flathead, flathead, yeah LF Flathead! Deap sea, and you got a flathead! A That’s right. Well, we’re on the bottom, and we got about sixty flathead. That’s where we were. This type of guessing sequence obviously also occurs in interactions not involving an aphasic interactant, though in this example the son-in-law’s request for further confirmation of the type of fish (‘flathead’) may well reflect uncertainty that the sought-after word had in fact been found, as his world knowledge of fishing suggested that this would be an unusual catch in deep sea fishing. His experience with aphasic interaction would alert him to the higher probability of misrecognition of target words and the common occurrence of semantic errors involving close semantic associates. In Ferguson’s study, the text immediately preceding moments of significant trouble was analysed by identifying the semantic relationships of the words



Interacting with difficulty 

supplied to those sought based primarily on the systemic linguistic work on cohesion (Halliday and Hasan 1976) – namely, lexical association of superordinate, cohyponym, and repetition, as well as other collocational relationships. There were 57/63 guesses involved at these moments of trouble for which it was possible to identify immediately preceding co-textual resources. Of the 57 guesses, 31 (54%) were accepted by the partner (i.e., either explicitly accepted, or no further repair) and 26 (46%) were rejected by the partner. Lexical associates proved to be more strongly represented in the immediately preceding co-text for rejected guesses (54% of resources were lexical associates) than for accepted guesses (23% of resources were lexical associates). The converse was found for general collocation, which was more strongly associated with accepted guesses (26% of resources) than rejected guesses (4% of resources). This research suggests that the frequency with which words co-occur in the language provides an important potential resource for people in interactions involving repair of word-finding, and illustrates the usefulness of analysing the interaction as a unit rather than separating the contributions of the aphasic speaker from those of the communication partner. 6. Interpersonal resources It is often remarked that people with aphasia have marked preservation of social and interpersonal interaction skills, despite even severe to profound levels of aphasic impairment. While most of the research into aphasic communication has tended to focus on the difficulties in communication, both conversation analysis and systemic functional linguistic perspectives have turned the focus of research to the remaining strengths in communication, and so have illuminated some of the means by which people with aphasia do manage to communicate despite their difficulties. For example, how might people with aphasia manage the linguistic resources for modality that allow speakers to modulate and shade meanings and manage the politeness work required for interpersonal interaction? Ferguson considered the linguistic resources available to speakers with moderate-severe aphasia for politeness (Ferguson 1992b), and found that the aphasic speakers (in a series of short role plays) made use of all available resources (including such devices as shifts in verb tense, negation, comment adjuncts, use of interrogative forms for giving commands). The extent of modulation remained weak e.g.€using forms such as ‘can’ rather than the more modulated ‘could’, but modulation was clearly an available resource for interaction, even in the presence of significant aphasic difficulty. Partners of people with aphasia accommodate for the communicative difficulty in diverse ways, and Ferguson’s conversation analysis research suggested that communication partners may simply make more use of personal interactive styles

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

for conversational repair, since they were observed to adopt similar patterns of repair with both partners with and without aphasia (Ferguson 1994). However, at least for some people, the presence of communication difficulty appears to lead to ‘over-accommodation’ for the difficulty (Giles et al. 1992; Giles and Smith 1979). The following Example 2, provides an illustration of both the preserved storytelling skills of a person with aphasia (in a continuation of the conversation from the same dyad as described in Example 1) as he tells his story of the fish that got away, as well as providing an example of overt ‘other-repair’ which would be considered marked in an interaction between father and son-in-law if aphasic difficulty was absent. Example 2. Other-repair of trouble in aphasic interaction A You could see him. It was just on dusk. LF And you had him on your line? A Yeah, he was there, break the, you could see him, um, out about, ah seven metres. X.. LF How far? A ..About.. LF ..Seven what, metres, feet?1 A I don’t now, I was going to say metres, but X LF Don’t worry about how far. But he was close enough to see. A I’ll say. LF Was he in the waves? A Yes. And there was three, lifesavers there, XX come on get him! Bring him in! They seen him too! I said, uh-oh, he’s gone. What!.. Couldn’t believe it. In Example 2, the son-in-law attempts to clarify the distance being talked about, firstly through an attempt to clarify the specific term used (‘metres’, ‘feet’), then appears to let that correction go in order to re-establish the flow of the story, but then seeks to make the clarification through establishing other information (‘close enough to see’, ‘in the waves’). Arguably, the closeness of the fish to the beach makes little difference to the point of the story (that the fish got away), and such other-repair may have covert ‘therapeutic’ purposes that are rarely seen in nonaphasic interaction, i.e., an attempt by the partner to provide practice and achievement of word-finding for the person with aphasia. 1. The metric system of measurement was introduced in Australia during the 1970s, and so the 60 year old man would be more familiar with imperial measures, while the son-in-law would be more familiar with metric. However, many people in Australia continue to use ‘inch’ and ‘feet’ measures as general descriptors in casual conversation while using the metric system in accurate measurement situations.



Interacting with difficulty 

Sometimes over-accommodation can take the form of a marked intonation pattern adopted when talking with the person with aphasia in a similar fashion to what is sometimes described as ‘elder-speak’ (Kemper et al. 1998). An in-depth case report of such accommodation using intonation was provided by Ferguson and Peterson (2002), in which a 51 year old female neighbour used a marked intonation pattern when addressing comments to a 75 year old man but not when talking with his 72 year old wife. To consider this intonation pattern with reference to the social interaction, Brazil’s framework (1981) was used for the categorisation of pitch contours (falling, rising, fall-rise, rise-fall) with reference to information roles (contrastive, additive, equivalence) and social roles (congruence/divergence). Ferguson and Peterson found that the speaker adopted intonation contours associated with marked patterns of divergence and contrast, and the researchers hypothesised that this pattern of communication was designed to facilitate the auditory comprehension of the person with aphasia (as this was significantly impaired). This socialsemantic analysis of the interaction allows us to see further than the observation of the behavioural anomaly, and this deeper level provides important opportunities for us to go beyond description towards insights into potential explanations. 7. Interpreting ‘problems’ as pathological When examining aphasic texts, there is an inherent temptation to examine how they differ from those of non-brain damaged speakers - and in the case of interactions, how conversations between an aphasic speaker and their partner differ from conversations between partners with no communication impairment. There are obvious benefits in approaching aphasic discourse from this perspective, and various aphasiologists have recently highlighted aspects of ‘normal’ discourse so as to highlight the need for clinicians to be aware of stylistic variation across normal speakers before labelling the verbal behaviours of individuals with brain damage as ‘pathological’ (Armstrong 2002; Mackenzie 2000; Van Leer and Turkstra 1999; Youse et al. 2001). Much of this data, however, relates to monologic discourse. Schegloff (2003) encourages aphasiologists to pursue such an approach with respect to conversation, and highlights the fact that phenomena observed in ‘aphasic’ conversations often occur in ‘normal’ conversation as well. With this in mind, Schegloff also notes the importance of making systematic contrasts between interactions with and without speakers who have language pathology, since without these contrasts it becomes all too easy to account for problems that arise in the talk in terms of pathology. The gathering of data from non-brain-damaged speakers is important both clinically and theoretically, in order to establish more comprehensive notions of which patterns of interaction are qualitatively different from normal, and which patterns

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

may perhaps be simply quantitatively different. However, there is some debate as to how useful such comparisons with normal data are if repair is not just quantitatively different but also qualitatively different in interactions involving aphasic speakers. As previously discussed earlier in this chapter, Wilkinson, Beeke and Maxim (2003) describe what they see as adaptations made by an aphasic speaker that they suggest are qualitatively different, for example, ‘fronting’ (bringing key words to the first position in an utterance). The main thrust of their argumentation lies with the recognition that such use of language is adaptation by the speaker to the communicative needs of the listener, rather than evidence of underlying agrammatism, and there is considerable support for this stance (discussed elsewhere in this chapter). However, their research fails to recognise how the aphasic speaker is making use of both the available discourse-semantic resources for thematising key information (commonly used by normal speakers), either as a clause theme, or as a hyper-theme for a grouping of clauses (Martin 1992:€437–449), i.e. the aphasic speaker is making use of a ‘normal’ resource, rather than displaying ‘pathological’ adaptation. In addition, interesting data has been collected by some researchers (e.g.€Croteau et al. 2004) that include attitudinal information on what interactions were like before the neurological incident – again important information of both clinical and theoretical significance. It is common for behaviours to be labelled pathological merely because some neurological damage has been identified. And yet, there is much variation in conversational style, so speakers’ and their partners’ perceptions of differences are just as important as currently observed ‘difficulties.’ The other perspective from which to view the interactions of individuals with aphasia is not to compare them with ‘normal’ interactions, but to analyse them in relation to themselves alone i.e., the negotiation of meaning within the couple and its ‘success’ or otherwise. This perspective is perhaps more amenable to and common in clinical practice, where the aim of any intervention is to improve interactions. A clinical intervention program designed by Locke and colleagues (Locke et al. 2001a; Locke et al. 2001b) emphasises the focus on the aphasic person and their conversational partner, where a collaborative approach is used to establish which behaviours are problematic, and which facilitate in cases of conversational ‘trouble’ i.e., where some breakdown in communication occurs. Such a collaborative approach is being increasingly used in conversational treatment programs (Boles and Lewis 2003; Fox et al. 2009; Hopper et al. 2002; Turner and Whitworth 2006). 8. Brain & language interaction In researching aphasia there is an almost irresistible urge to draw implications and relationships between the language data and potential brain functional organization.



Interacting with difficulty 

Indeed, for much of the early history of aphasia research, brain and language relationships were the major focus of those seeking an understanding of localization of function. With the advent of technology allowing accurate imaging of lesion sites and dynamic brain function in the second half of the twentieth century (Hillis 2002), work using aphasic data explicitly drew away from localization as a goal, and focused upon theoretical modelling of components and processes within the linguistic system. Seidenberg articulates the concern of many working in the field when he points out that using brain-damaged performance to make inferences about normal function is analogous to trying to find the best way to the airport by looking at the back roads after there has been a blockage on the freeway route (Seidenberg 1988). Even within information processing perspectives involving the design of neural networks that incorporate the real-time processing constraints known to operate in human neurophysiology, the search has been to understand how language may be learned and how it functions within undamaged systems (Harley 1996; Plaut 1996), rather than relying heavily on inferences from biologically damaged systems. As discussed by Schegloff (Cmerjrkova and Prevignano 2003), this focus on abstract theoretical modelling within cognitive science sees language as an interaction of separable components, with any contextual variables either ignored, or treated as another factor that again can be separated. For those working with aphasia, this modular perspective has been both useful and limiting. The cognitive neuropsychological approach to aphasia has been useful in allowing for close definition of aphasic deficits and clear articulation of therapy targets (Byng 1993). However, as Lesser (2003) notes, such modelling may provide insights into serial (conscious, controlled) linguistic processing but not parallel (automatic, contextualized) linguistic processing. Hence, the problems encountered in the generalization of therapy gains to real-world contexts are to be expected, when the contextual demands of language use are not incorporated within both assessment and therapy for aphasia. Researchers in the field of aphasia have at times suggested, as Lesser (2003) does, that pathological language use may offer a ‘window’ into psycholinguistic processing. However, Heeschen and Schegloff (1999) argue against looking at agrammatic errors as ‘windows into the brain’ with regard to linguistic processing, arguing instead that such manifestations represent contextual adaptation. However, we raise the question as to whether other models of language use may have the potential to offer insights into real-time, real-world linguistic processing. At this stage we are intrigued by the way that the systemic functional linguistic model suggests a view of semantic networks based on a probabilistic model of association (Hasan et al. 2005/2007) and query the extent to which such a probabilistic model is compatible with emerging neural network theories investigating semantic

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

access and storage impairments (Gott and Plaut 2002). We ask whether such models may provide a way through to future understandings of the semantic retrieval problems that rest at the heart of aphasia. There is also the question as to whether research into the social interaction of people with aphasia can illuminate our understanding of brain and language relationships. Lesser argues that the methodology of Conversation Analysis does not allow such insights, given its particular focus on what she describes as “surface data” (Lesser 2003:€152), and its atheoretical approach. A separate but related question is whether or not the study of aphasic interactions might inform an understanding of normal social interaction (i.e., of the social machinery, rather than the individual cognitive processing). Lesser suggests that the inclusion of speakers with pathology will necessarily result in abnormal interactional patterns. In response, we argue, in line with Goodwin (Goodwin 2003b: 17) and Perkins (2003) that the presence of communicative difficulty exposes the workings of conversational collaboration. Conversational collaboration is always present in every interaction, but typically is as invisible as the technique of a team of professional jugglers – dropping the ball alerts us to the interactive processes involved. 9. The value of interactional analysis for clinical purposes In undertaking interaction analysis of conversations of individuals with communication problems and their partners, the analyst may have any one of a number of goals. As noted previously, analyses of language addressing language ‘skills’ as they appear in monologic discourse tend to focus on the speaker’s ability to use linguistic resources to convey meaning from a largely ‘synoptic’ perspective. Interaction analyses, looking at dialogic interactions directly, illuminate the success or otherwise of the aphasic speaker’s language attempts/utterances through analysis of the response of the interlocutor and tend to be dealt with from a more dynamic perspective, focusing on how the text unfolds during the interaction. Similarly, interaction analyses can reveal the way(s) in which an aphasic speaker might use the other speaker’s utterances to ‘scaffold’ his/her own (Perkins 2003), so that notions such as ‘coherence’ do not reflect one speaker’s contribution, but are constructed through the dialogue between the two speakers. Interactional analysis necessarily drives clinicians away from sentence-level formal assessment tasks, towards more natural assessment methods. There is a constant tension between the need for maximising the validity of sampling through natural observation and the clinical demands of cost/time-effective methods and sufficiently controlled conditions to allow for comparison over time (to ascertain change associated with recovery and/or therapy) and for comparisons across



Interacting with difficulty 

speakers (to allow for research development of therapy methods). Ramsberger and Menn (2003) describe a naturalistic story-retell task involving the aphasic speaker telling another person about an episode of the television show I Love Lucy, and this represents a more naturalistic sampling method than similar story-retell tasks involving picture description, for example the ‘Cookie Theft’ picture from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (Goodglass et al. 2000), or the drawn cartoon stories, such as the ‘Cat Story’ (Ulatowska et al. 1981), and more recently using a well-known Finnish cartoon (Korpijaakko-Huuhka 2004). Ferguson has used an interactive task in which the person with aphasia watches a mock car-accident enacted using model cars, and then provides an eye-witness account to another person (Ferguson 1993, 2002), while Togher has developed a more interactive task in which the target speaker and partner are left alone to work out what might be the use of an unusual object and their conversation audio-recorded for later analysis (Kilov et al. 2009; Power et al. 2004). Researchers working solely within the conversation analysis paradigm have consistently used real-world conversation sampling, although still often in a clinical setting, for example, in the work of Klippi and Laakso (Klippi 1996; Laakso 2003; Laakso and Klippi 1999). As Schegloff (2003) points out, any targeted assessment creates a ‘frame’ which draws our focus towards events within that frame and tends to reduce our focus on what is happening outside that specific context. Certainly, elicitations such as just described allow the interaction analysis a wider view than that obtainable through formal testing frames, but any elicited observational opportunities need also to be supplemented with natural observations of the speaker in their everyday interactions to enhance the validity of the assessment process. The use of interaction analyses allow us to move from a notion of ‘error’ (as resulting from some problem resting in the individual, which we as outside observers identify) to the notion of ‘trouble’ (as arising in the interaction rather than in either individual, and as identified by the interactants themselves). This is a fundamental paradigm shift for the focus of therapy for communication difficulty, as it challenges notions of effective and successful communication, and how we might characterise linguistic competence. For example, Anward (2003) suggests that the act of repairing provides an opportunity for the person with aphasia to display social competence. This shift has profound implications for the decision as to whether or not to provide therapy (i.e., who is deciding whether there is a problem that requires therapy?), who should be involved in the therapy (i.e., one or both or more communication partners?), where should therapy be undertaken (i.e., in clinics or in natural settings?), what should be the goals of therapy (i.e., are goals defined with reference to the individuals or for the interaction?), and how are outcomes of therapy to be measured (i.e., how will clinicians know when therapy should finish?).

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson

10. Toward the future The work on interaction analysis that has been applied to-date in the field of communication disability in general, and in the study of aphasia particularly, has had a strong clinical focus. Contemporary studies relate to how useful interaction analysis will be to the mission of speech pathologists, i.e., to maximize communication for people with communication disability. Thus, a range of approaches which might be considered as falling within the umbrella of ‘interaction analysis’ have shaped the research into the nature of communication disability and its consequences for people’s everyday lives, as well as underpinning the development of clinical tools for assessment and therapy, and in widening the scope of therapeutic practice. Looking to the future, at a more theoretical level, it is questionable whether contemporary studies integrate understandings at a broader social-cultural level with interaction analyses, and there are limits to which contemporary studies attempt to integrate understandings of brain-language relationships. It may be that such theoretical boundaries are beyond the scope of approaches within interaction analysis, but as speech-language pathologists, we find that the nature of our work demands that we are ‘boundary-riders’ along these ‘borders’ of interaction analysis. We are working with people faced with social stigma and socio-cultural notions of disability in a world where language is highly valued, and in which the loss of language results in disempowerment - yet our approach to the analysis of these aspects of communication disability is, at best, guided by general understandings only, and our interventions are often disconnected with our interaction analyses. We are also working with people whose language difficulties arose from brain impairment, and so we know a lot about which parts of the brain have been affected for them, and we necessarily draw on the neurophysiological and psychological understandings of brain function in order to understand and conceptualize the ‘how’ of their language processing, e.g.€why they might be slower to formulate responses, why perseveration may occur. These everyday demands prompt us to view the future directions of interaction analysis as resting with the ability of different perspectives to model and explain linguistic processing in the context of both the instance of interaction and the wider culture in which communication is playing a part. References Anward, Jan. 2003. “Own words: On achieving normality through paraphasias.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Interacting with difficulty 

Armstrong, Elizabeth. 1987. “Cohesive harmony in aphasic discourse and its significance in listener perception of coherence.” In Clinical Aphasiology: Conference Proceedings, Robert H. Brookshire.(ed). Minneapolis, MN: BRK Publishers. Armstrong, Elizabeth. 1991. “The potential of cohesion analysis in the analysis and treatment of aphasic discourse.” Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 5(1):39–51. Armstrong, Elizabeth. 1993. “Aphasia rehabilitation: A sociolinguistic perspective.” In Aphasia Treatment: World Perspectives, Audrey J. Holland and Margaret M. Forbes.(eds). San Diego, CA: Singular. Armstrong, Elizabeth. 2002. “Variation in the discourse of non-brain-damaged speakers on a clinical task.” Aphasiology 16(4/5/6):647–658. Armstrong, Elizabeth, Ferguson, Alison, Mortensen, Lynne and Togher, Leanne. 2005/2007. “Acquired language disorders perspective.” In Continuing Discourse on Language: A Functional Perspective, Jonathan Webster, Ruqaiya Hasan and Christian Matthiessen.(eds). London: Equinox. Armstrong, Elizabeth and Mortensen, Lynne. 2006. “Everyday talk: Its role in assessment and treatment for individuals with aphasia.” Brain Impairment 7(3):175–189. Beeke, Suzanne, Maxim, Jane and Wilkinson, Ray. 2007a. “Using conversation analysis to assess and treat people with aphasia.” Seminars in Speech & Language 28(2):136–147. Beeke, Suzanne, Wilkinson, Ray and Maxim, Jane. 2003a. “Exploring aphasic grammar 1: A single case analysis of conversation.” Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 17(2):81–107. Beeke, Suzanne, Wilkinson, Ray and Maxim, Jane. 2003b. “Exploring aphasic grammar 2: Do language testing and conversation tell a similar story?” Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 17(2):109–134. Beeke, Suzanne, Wilkinson, Ray and Maxim, Jane. 2007b. “Grammar without sentence structure: A conversation analytic investigation of agrammatism.” Aphasiology 21(3/4):256–282. Boles, Larry. 1998. “Conversational discourse analysis as a method for evaluating progress in aphasia: A case report.” Journal of Communication Disorders 31:261–274. Boles, Larry and Lewis, Mimi. 2003. “Working with couples: Solution focused aphasia therapy.” Asia Pacific Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing 8:153–159. Booth, Susan and Swabey, Donna. 1999. “Group training in communication skills for carers of adults with aphasia.” International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 34(3):291–309. Brazil, David C. 1981. “Intonation.” In Studies in Discourse Analysis, R.Malcom Coulthard and Martin Montgomery.(eds): Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bremer, Katharina, Roberts, Celia, Vasseur, Marie-Therese, Simonot, Margaret and Broeder, Peter. 1996. Achieving Understanding: Discourse in Intercultural Encounters. London: Longman. Byng, Sally. 1993. “Hypothesis testing and aphasia therapy.” In Aphasia Treatment: World Perspectives, Audrey Holland and Margaret M. Forbes.(eds). San Diego, CA: Singular. Carlomagno, Sergio, Blasi, Valeria, Labruna, Ludovica and Santoro, Anna. 2000. “The role of communication models in assessment and therapy of language disorders in aphasic adults.” Neuropsychological Rehabilitation 10(3):337–363. Cmerjrkova, Svetla and Prevignano, Carlo L. 2003. “On conversation analysis: An interview with Emanuel A. Schegloff.” In Discussing Conversation Analysis: The Work of Emanuel A. Schegloff, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault.(eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Croteau, Claire, Vychytil, Anne-Marie, Larfeuil, Celine and Le Dorze, Guylaine. 2004. “’Speaking for’ behaviours in spouses of people with aphasia: A descriptive study of six couples in an interview situation.” Aphasiology 18:291–312.

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson Cutler, Anne. 1982. Slips of the Tongue and Language Production. New York: Mouton. Eggins, Suzanne and Slade, Diana. 1997/2004. Analysing Casual Conversation. London: Cassell(1997)/Equinox Publishing(2004). Ferguson, Alison. 1992a. “Conversational repair of word-finding difficulty.” In Clinical Aphasiology, Margaret L. Lemme.(ed). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Ferguson, Alison. 1992b. “Interpersonal aspects of aphasic communication.” Journal of Neurolinguistics 7(4):277–294. Ferguson, Alison. 1993. “Conversational repair in aphasic and normal interaction.” In Department of Linguistics. Sydney: Unpublished PhD thesis, Macquarie University. Ferguson, Alison. 1994. “The influence of aphasia, familiarity and activity on conversational repair.” Aphasiology 8(2):143–157. Ferguson, Alison. 1998. “Conversational turn-taking and repair in fluent aphasia.” Aphasiology 12(1):1007–1031. Ferguson, Alison. 2002. “(Abstract) Information exchange: Describing dimensions which might respond to conversation therapy. Paper presented at 10th International Aphasia Rehabilitation Conference, Brisbane 24–26€July, 2002.” Brain Impairment 3(2):174. Ferguson, Alison. 2007. “Multiparty interactions in aphasia.” In Clinical Aphasiology: Future Directions, Martin J. Ball and Jack S. Damico.(eds). Abingdon, Oxford: Psychology Press. Ferguson, Alison and Armstrong, Elizabeth. 2004. “Reflections on speech-language therapists’ talk: Implications for clinical practice and education.” International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 39(4):469–477. Ferguson, Alison and Elliot, Ngiare. 2001. “Analysing aphasia treatment sessions.” Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 15(3):229–243. Ferguson, Alison and Peterson, Peter. 2002. “Intonation in partner accommodation for aphasia: A descriptive single case study.” Journal of Communication Disorders 35:11–30. Firth, John R. 1957. “Personality and language in society.” In Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951: Oxford University Press. Fox, Sarah, Armstrong, Elizabeth and Boles, Larry. 2009. “Conversational treatment in mild aphasia: A case study.” Aphasiology 23(7–8):951–964. Giles, Howard, Coupland, Nikolas, Coupland, Justine, Williams, Angie and Nussbaum, Jon. 1992. “Intergenerational talk and communication with older people.” International Journal of Aging & Human Development 34(4):271–297. Giles, Howard and Smith, Philip.€ 1979. “Accommodation theory: Optimal levels of convergence.” In Language and Social Psychology (pp.45–65), Howard Giles and Robert N. St Clair. (eds). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Goodglass, Harold, Kaplan, Edith and Barresi, Barbara. 2000. Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE-3). 3rd Edition: ProEd. Goodwin, Charles. 1981. Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, Charles. 1995. “Co-constructing meaning in conversations with an aphasic man.” Research on Language and Social Interactions 28(3):233–260. Goodwin, Charles. 2003a. “Conversational frameworks for the accomplishment of meaning in aphasia.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, Charles. 2003b. “Introduction.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin. (ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Interacting with difficulty  Gott, Stephen J. and Plaut, David C. 2002. “The impact of synaptic depression following brain damage: A connectionist account of “access/refractory” and “degraded-store” semantic impairments.” Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 2(3):187–213. Grice, Herbert P. 1975. “Logic and conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics: Vol.3, Speech Acts, Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan.(eds). New York: Academic Press. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Halliday, Michael A.K. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd Edition. London: Arnold. Halliday, Michael A.K. and Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Halliday, Michael A.K. and Hasan, Ruqaiya eds. 1985. Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University. Halliday, Michael A.K. and Matthiessen, Christian. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd Edition. New York: Arnold. Harley, Trevor A. 1996. “Connectionist modeling of the recovery of language functions following brain damage.” Brain and Language 52(1):7–24. Hasan, Ruqaiya, Cloran, Carmel, Williams, Geoff and Lukin, Annabelle. 2005/2007. “Semantic networks: The development of clausal and textual perspectives on theme.” In Continuing Discourse on Language: A Functional Perspective, Ruqaiya Hasan, Christian Matthiessen and Jonathan Webster.(eds). London: Equinox. Heeschen, Claus and Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1999. “Agrammatism, adaptation theory, conversation analysis: On the role of so-called telegraphic style in talk-in-interaction.” Aphasiology 13(4–5):365–405. Hillis, Argye E. 2002. “Preface to special issue: New techniques for identifying the neural substrates of language and language impairments.” Aphasiology 16(9):855–858. Hopper, Tammy, Holland, Audrey and Rewega, Molly. 2002. “Conversational coaching: Treatment outcomes and future directions.” Aphasiology 16(7):745–761. Kemper, Susan, Ferrell, Patrice, Harden, Tamara, Finter-Urczyk, Andrea and Billington, Catherine. 1998. “Use of elderspeak by young and older adults to impaired and unimpaired listeners.” Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 5(1):43–55. Kilov, Andrea, Togher, Leanne and Grant, Susan. 2009. “Problem solving with friends: Discourse participation and performance of individuals with and without traumatic brain injury.” Aphasiology 23(5):584–605. Klippi, Anu. 1996. Conversation as an Achievement in Aphasics (Studia Fennica, 6). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Korpijaakko-Huuhka, Anna M. 2004. “Aphasic speakers’ linguistic choices in a cartoon-story task.” University of Helsinki, Finland (Dissertation Abstracts International, ISSN 1042–7279). Laakso, Minna. 2003. “Collaborative construction of repair in aphasic conversation: An interactive view on the extended speaking turns of persons with Wernicke’s Aphasia.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laakso, Minna and Klippi, Anu. 1999. “A closer look at the ‘hint and guess’ sequences in aphasic conversation.” Aphasiology 13:345–363. Lesser, Ruth. 2003. “When conversation is not normal: The role of conversation analysis in language pathology.” In Discussing Conversation Analysis, Carlo L. Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault.(eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lindsay, Jane and Wilkinson, Ray. 1999. “Repair sequences in aphasic talk: A comparison of aphasic-speech and language therapist and aphasic-spouse conversations.” Aphasiology 13:305–325.

 Elizabeth Armstrong and Alison Ferguson Locke, Sandra, Wilkinson, Ray, Bryan, Karen, Maxim, Jane, Edmundson, Anne, Bruce, Caroline and Moir, Diana. 2001a. “Supporting Partners of People with Aphasia in Relationships and Conversation (SPPARC).” International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 36(Supplement):25–30. Locke, Sandra, Wilkinson, Ray and Bryant, Karen. 2001b. Supporting Partners of People with Aphasia in Relationships and Conversation. Oxon, UK: Speechmark. Mackenzie, Catherine. 2000. “Adult spoken discourse: The influences of age and education.” International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 35:269–285. Martin, James R. 1992. English text: System and Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Martin, James R. 2002. “Meaning beyond the clause: SFL perspectives.” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 22:52–74. Martin, James R. and Rose, David. 2003. Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause. London: Continuum. Mortensen, Lynne. 2003. “Reconstructing the writer: Acquired brain impairment and letters of community membership.” Sydney: Macquarie University. Murray, Laura and Chapey, Roberta. 2001. “Assessment of language disorders in adults.” In Language Intervention Strategies in Aphasia and Related Neurogenic Communication Disorders, Roberta Chapey.(ed). Baltimore, MD: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. Myers, Penelope S. 1999. Right Hemisphere Damage: Disorders of Communication and Cognition. San Diego, CA: Singular. Perkins, Lisa. 1995. “Applying conversation analysis to aphasia: Clinical implications and analytic issues.” European Journal of Disorders of Communication 30:372–383. Perkins, Lisa. 2003. “Negotiating repair in aphasic conversation: Interactional issues.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plaut, David C. 1996. “Relearning after damage in connectionist networks: Toward a theory of rehabilitation.” Brain and Language 52(1):25–82. Power, Emma, Anderson, Alison, Togher, Leanne and Werry, Kate. 2004. “Chatting with their peers: Analysis of discourse in people with Huntington Disease in a residential care facility.” In 26th World Congress of the International Association of Logopedics & Phoniatrics. Brisbane, 29€August - 2€September. Prutting, Carol A. and Kirchner, Diane M. 1983. “Applied pragmatics.” In Pragmatic Assessment and Intervention Issues in Language (ch.2), Tanya M. Gallagher and Carol A. Prutting.(eds). San Diego, CA: College-Hill. Ramsberger, Gail and Menn, Lisa. 2003. “Co-constructing Lucy: Adding a social perspective to the assessment of communicative success in aphasia.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2003. “Conversation analysis and communication disorders.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A., Jefferson, Gail and Sacks, Harvey. 1977. “The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation.” Language 53(361–382). Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts. London: Cambridge University Press. Seidenberg, Mark S. 1988. “Cognitive neuropsychology and language: The state of the art.” Cognitive Neuropsychology 5(4):403–426. Simmons-Mackie, Nina and Damico, Jack S. 1999. “Social role negotiation in aphasia therapy: Competence, incompetence, and conflict.” In Constructing (In)competence: Disabling Evaluations in Clinical and Social Interaction (ch.14, pp.313–342), Dana Kovarsky, Judith F. Duchan and Madeline Maxwell.(eds). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.



Interacting with difficulty  Springer, Luise, Glindemann, Ralf, Huber, Walter and Willmes, Klaus. 1991. “How efficacious is PACE therapy when ‘language systematic training’ is incorporated?” Aphasiology 5:391–399. Togher, Leanne. 2000. “Giving information: The importance of context on communicative opportunity for people with traumatic brain injury.” Aphasiology 14:365–390. Togher, Leanne and Hand, Linda. 1998. “Use of politeness markers with different communication partners: An investigation of five subjects with traumatic brain injury.” Aphasiology 12:755–770. Togher, Leanne, Hand, Linda and Code, Chris. 1997. “Measuring service encounters in the traumatic brain injury population.” Aphasiology 11:491–504. Turner, Sonja and Whitworth, Anne. 2006. “Clinicians’ perceptions of candidacy for conversation partner training in aphasia: How do we select candidates for therapy and do we get it right?” Aphasiology 20(7):616–643. Ulatowska, Hanna K., North, Alvin J. and Macaluso-Haynes, Sara. 1981. “Production of narrative and procedural discourse in aphasia.” Brain and Language 13:345–371. Ulatowska, Hanna K. and Olness, Gloria. 2000. “Discourse revisited: Contributions of lexicosyntactic devices.” Brain and Language 71(1):249–251. Van Leer, Eva and Turkstra, Lyn. 1999. “The effect of elicitation task on discourse coherence and cohesion in adolescents with brain injury.” Journal of Communication Disorders 32(5):327–348. Wertz, Robert T., Collins, Michael J., Weiss, David, Kurtzke, John F., Friden, Thomas, Brookshire, Robert H., Pierce, James, Holtzappled, Pat, Hubbard, D.J., Porch, Bruce E., West, Joyce A., Davis, Larry, Matovitch, Violet, Morley, Gerald K. and Resurreccion, Ernesto. 1981. “Veterans Administration cooperative study on aphasia: A comparison of individual and group treatment.” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 24:580–594. Whitworth, Anne, Perkins, Lisa and Lesser, Ruth. 1997. Conversation Analysis Profile for People with Aphasia (CAPPA). London: Whurr. Wilkinson, Ray, Beeke, Suzanne and Maxim, Jane. 2003. “Adapting to conversation.” In Conversation and Brain Damage, Charles Goodwin.(ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilkinson, Ray, Bryant, Karen, Lock, Sandra, Bayley, Kate, Maxim, Jane, Bruce, Caroline, Edmundson, Anne and Moir, Diana. 1998. “Therapy using conversation analysis: Helping couples adapt to aphasia in conversation.” International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 33(Suppl):144–149. Youse, Kathleen, Stout, Connie and Bosworth, Karyn E. 2001. “Cohesion in discourse of collegeeducated and non-college-educated adults: Implications for young adults with brain injury.” Advances in Speech Language Pathology 3(2):97–108.

Ecologies of gesture Jürgen Streeck

The University of Texas at Austin This chapter presents a heuristic of ways in which hand-gestures participate in communicative interaction. Rather than conceiving gesture as part of language, an ecological perspective is proposed, and gestures are examined both in relation to sequences of social actions and to the ecological context. This broader account of gesture requires a different conception of the human body than is commonly presupposed by researchers of “nonverbal communication”: a model of the body not as an instrument of expression, but as a skilled (knowing) inhabitant of worlds.

1. Context In 1992, at a conference on “the contextualization of language” organized by Auer and di Luzio (Auer & di Luzio 1992), hand gestures were analyzed by several presenters as contextualization cues, that is, as “surface features of message form … by which speakers signal and listeners interpret what the activity is [and] how semantic content is to be understood” (Gumperz 1982:€57). The theory of contextualization cues suggests that these cues signal contextual frames in terms of which social meanings of utterances are understood, for example the perceived social relationship between speaker and listener. Gestures serve as contextualization cues when they indicate aspects of illocutionary force, discourse structure, or turn-taking organization; we can refer to this type of gesticulation as “pragmatic”. Gumperz’ notion of contextualization is grounded in the tradition of context analysis, a term first proposed by Gregory Bateson (1971). Bateson had noticed that there are communicative behaviors which do not convey content, but rather instruct recipients how a bit of behavior is to be taken, for example as “play”. Such meta-messages, which are typically conveyed by small behavioral forms – a raised eye-brow, a certain incline of the head – convey contextual frames of moments of interaction. A familiar example of body behavior that functions in this contextdefining capacity are shrugs, i.e., motions of the eyebrows, hands, and/or shoulders,

 Jürgen Streeck

which have in common the formal feature of raising or retraction and which, as a family, convey a stance of detachment or indifference towards a proposition or a reported event. Hand gestures can frame the current or next verbal act by the speaker or specify the kind of uptake that he or she seeks for the utterance currently underway. Heath, in his contribution to The Contextualization of Language showed that hand-gestures, in their moment-by-moment coordination with speech, form part of “the famework to which subsequent action will be addressed in the turn by turn organization of talk” (Heath 1992). Streeck and Hartge showed that certain conventional hand gestures, when they are made in the forefield or at the beginning of turns at talk, “preview” the action that the speaker is planning to take in that turn (Streeck & Hartge 1992). While this is a mode of gesturing which closely corresponds to Bateson’s notion of contextual frames – bits of behavior are marked (framed) as being of a certain mode or type–, Bateson also proposed an ecological and systemic understanding of contexts of interaction, for example when he suggested that no unit of behavior ever stands apart from the context by which it is specified, but rather is “part of the ecological subsystem called context”; it is not “the product or effect of what remains of the context once the piece which we want to explain has been cut out from it” (Bateson 1972:€338), but rather participates in establishing or sustaining the multimodal framework of behavioral interrelationships from which it accrues its locally specific meaning. Different modes of gesticulation (e.g.€depicting, pointing, displaying an illocution) differentially direct and focus the attention of the participants and in this fashion also contribute to the structuring of the interaction. This will be clarified below. While Bateson only made reference to G.H.Mead’s analysis of interaction in an opaque remark in his contribution to The Natural History of an Interview – “our concept of communication becomes interactional”, he notes, “and our intellectual debt is to G.H. Mead” (Bateson 1971:€20) – Mead’s conception of human symbols and mind as originating in a generic conversation of gestures (Mead 1909, 1934) is an important foundation for the empirical study of gesture. In Mead’s account of the interactional phylogenesis of human cognitive and symbolic functions gestures play the most significant part. Mead regarded gestures as early parts of acts, an idea which he took from Darwin (Darwin 1955 1872). But in contrast to Darwin, who thought about gestures as affect expression, Mead suggested that they facilitate the mutual anticipation of social acts: a gesture is a foreshadowing, not an expression. Gestures enable individuals to navigate the rapids of potentially harmful moment-by-moment interaction by allowing them to adapt to what is coming before the fact (cf.€Streeck 2009b). We must be aware that the foreshadowing of imminent actions is not the only purpose for which gestures are made and that Mead’s account would not cover and explain all conversational gestures. Nevertheless, Mead’s model of the conversation



Ecologies of gesture 

of gestures gives us a starting point for analyzing gestures – namely in terms of how they contextualize the next moment (see McDermott & Roth 1978) – that is not very different from a conversation-analytic approach (e.g.€Goodwin 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin 1986; Heath 1986; Schegloff 1984). The analogy between Mead’s account of interaction and conversation analysis and his implicit influence on CA are rarely acknowledged. Evidently, Mead was a thinker of the first half of the 20th century, not a micro-analyst with a microphone and video-camera. But what Mead and Schegloff have in common is an understanding of interaction as sequentially, turn-by-turn-, incrementally designed social action. Conversation analysts thus have analyzed gestures by reference to where in the turn at talk and action-sequence gestures are being and what “jobs” they do and what projections they make in these positions. Schegloff (1984), observing the frequent pre-positioning of hand gestures relative to their “lexical affiliates”, analyzed them for how they bring an element of talk into play and thus mark the opening up of this element’s “projection space”. While the foreshadowing of a “lexical affiliate” is a function typically enacted by descriptive (referential) gestures, other modes of “forward-gesturing” (Streeck 2009b) can be productively analyzed as components of action formation. Schegloff (2007) has described conversational organization as a set of specific organizations each of which addresses a fundamental problem that conversationalists need to cope with at each and every point in their interaction. Among these is the “action-formation problem”: how are the resources of the language, the body, the environment of the interaction, and position in the interaction fashioned into … particular actions, … recognizable by recipients …, – actions like requesting, granting, complaining? (Schegloff 2007: xiv)

One can distinguish several relevant positions at which gestures are made during the unit-by-unit unfolding of turns and sequences of action. For example, a first relevant position is prior to turn beginning, near the possible completion of someone else’s turn.1 Intending next speakers can rely on body motion, including gestures, to attract attention to themselves and signal their intent to take the next turn (Kendon 1970). Once the attention of others is attracted, the gesture can also display what kind of talk the turn will be used for: a story (Streeck & Hartge 1992), a question, a confession (Streeck 2009b), etc. Other common displays in the forefield or at the beginning of turns show aspects of the beginning turn’s design (e.g.€that it will be a multi-unit turn). Or the gesture displays the speaker’s stance in relation to what is about to be said (as in the example of shrugs). A common type of turn-final gestures are acts of 1. Concrete examples and analysis of the phenomena that are glossed over here are found in Streeck 2007, 2009 a,b, and Streeck & Hartge, 1992.

 Jürgen Streeck

“handing over” which model talk as a transaction involving physical objects (see Müller 2003; Cienki & Müller 2009). “Giving” or “offering” hands can gradually turn into receptacles ready for something to be placed in them. In other words, they can serve to solicit response (Streeck 2007). Generally, gestures of the hand are welladapted to dealing with turn-taking matters because they can be performed and understood concurrently with speech, free from the pitfalls of overlapping talk. 2. Ecologies of gesture: Body and environment One ecology to which gestures of the hand contribute and owe their intelligibility, then, is the production (or “formation”) of sequences and turns of (conversational) social action. Hand gestures can be part of the design of these turns and actions and, by virtue of their positioning within them, provide recipients with a “forwardunderstanding”, i.e. an anticipation, of what will come next. But this is only one relevant dimension in terms of which gestures of the hands are made and understood. Another was pointed out by Goffman, in a rarely cited statement: While the substratum of a gesture derives from the maker’s body, the form of the gesture can be intimately determined by the microecological orbit in which the speaker finds himself. To describe the gesture, let alone uncover its meaning, we might then have to introduce the human and material setting in which the gesture is made. … The individual gestures with the immediate environment, not only with his body, and so we must introduce this environment in some systematic way (Goffman 1964:€164).

Symbolic acts of the hands, in other words, are also made within real, physical settings, and they can couple with specific aspects of the scene (Goodwin 2007) and illuminate it. I have found a heuristic of six ecologically different modes of gesturing useful: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

gestures physically linked to the (tangible) environment at hand; gestures elaborating the (visible) world in sight; gestures that depict actual, imaginary, and abstract worlds; gestures that construe ideational content (gestural concepts); gestures that embody and construe communicative acts by the gesturer (e.g.€concurrent acts of speech); and 6. gestures by which transactions are managed, including those that regulate the behavior of co-interactants. Other gesture ecologies could presumably be identified, but in the meantime this heuristic enables us to take note of the fact that hand gestures not only embody meaning and mediate communication in heterogeneous ways, but also bring the communicating body in contact with the world in a variety of distinct modes.



Ecologies of gesture 

What is at issue in part is how visual and tactile (or haptic) features of gestures intersect. Consider gesture practices of the first variety. These involve direct tactile contact – or at least near-contact – between the gesturing hand and the immediate physical setting, the world at hand. Gestures of this kind, which involve immediate physical contact, are abundant in many work settings, including those where people cooperate by means of inscriptions on paper. One can think of two car-mechanics exploring with their fingers a dent in a fender to determine how to remove it: exploratory motions become gestures, which can display information, such as the texture of the surface. People can virtually share tactile experience by gesturalizing the motions through which this experience is gathered. Car-mechanics (and practitioners of many other professions) also disassemble and mock-disassemble complex objects (e.g.€car-parts) and make the connectedness and separability of subparts visible by motions of their hands. Or think of a group architects leaning over a blueprint, one of them emphasizing by a motion of the hand the curvature of a (planned) wall. All of these practices engage the interactants’ hands in their actual, material involvement with the material world. In each case, the world at hand is elaborated and made intelligible with the help of gestures. A concrete example of this first variety comes from the interaction between a car-mechanic and his apprentice. The apprentice explains the function of a bolt in the trunk of a car to his boss. He points to tracks on the two sides of the trunk and moves his hands back and forth, thus showing how the bolt moves while holding the trunk-cover in place as it is being opened or closed. Notice how truncated the apprentice’s verbal explanation is; without the gesture, it would be incomprehensible. (Black dots in the transcripts indicate the moments captured in the drawings.)

(1) 1 Mechanic

2 Apprentice 3 Mechanic 4 Apprentice 5 Mechanic

What this bolt here for, need to go inside?

Figure 1 Oh no, there’s- an ( - - - - • - - - - - - - ) Something to hang from this? For the cover right here. Okay. ( - - ) You just inspect everything.

 Jürgen Streeck

In this example, an object at hand is elaborated by the gesture: what cannot be gleaned from the immobile object – how its parts behave and connect when in motion – is being added by the motion of a properly configured hand. The contiguity between object and hand secures the reference of the gesture. Such reference can be more tenuous in the second variety, gestures that elaborate the world in sight. The senses are implicated in different ways when people rely on motions of the hands to make sense of the currently visible world, the part of the immediate environment that is available to their eyes, but not their hands. In this case the hands are used to visually augment visual experience, to provide additional structure, layers of meaning that annotate what can presently be seen. In the following extract, the mechanic, interacting with one of his senior employees, is instructing him to switch two tires of a car which is located in another, distant section of the shop.€He uses pointing gestures in the process. After summoning the employee with an index-up gesture (Fig. 2.1), he poins with his indexfinger (Fig. 2.2), which the recipient acknowledges with a pointing gesture of his own (Fig. 2.3). The mechanic, taking this response as insufficient evidence that the employee has correctly identified the tire that is to be replaced, then makes a second pointing gesture (Fig. 2.4), carefully lowering his head so that his line of vision can be inferred, and adds “this side” (line 5).

(2)



Figure 2.1

1 Mechanic

(summons Cedric with an ‘index up’ gesture) (5.5)



Figure 2.2



Ecologies of gesture 

2 Mechanic

The • front right side tire



Figure 2.3

3 the fro:nt •

4 Cedric 5 Mechanic 6 Cedric 7 Mechanic 8 Cedric

Figure 2.4 ( ) [ • this side Okay you need to switch with that tire Okay.

Gestures of the hands that focus attention on an object in the tangible or visible environment often also provide an aspect under which an object is to be perceived.2 Differences in hand-shape, for example, can indicate whether an object is to be seen as an individual, as an examplar, as a set or collection, and so on. Addons to pointing gestures can indicate that there is something beyond the horizon, and tracing motions can select and emphasize boundaries in the landscape. Through gestures of both the first and the second ecological variety then, the local setting of the interaction – the place that is currently inhabited by the interactants – is structured and its meaning for the ongoing activity clarified. These gestures, in turn, derive their visible significance from their coupling with the context that is available to the senses. 2. See Kendon, 2004:€167; Streeck, 2009a: Ch.4.

 Jürgen Streeck

Other modes of gestural communication are predicated upon a turn away from the environment of the interaction, a shift of attention from the world to the gesturing hands themselves, which are not oriented outward, but rather do their work in the center of the interactional huddle. These are the gestures that produce mock-up worlds, representations of whatever actual or virtual (imaginary or abstract) scenes that the talk is about. Depiction is a distinct gestural practice, tightly organized and firmly supported by linguistic units, for example demonstratives and deictic adverbs such as like this (Streeck 2002), and visually attended by both speaker and recipient (Streeck 1993; Gullberg & Kita 2009). Rather than the gesture directing attention to what can be seen, other deictics, including gaze direction, indicate that what needs to be seen is the gesture. In the following extract gestures of the hand enable the recipient to imagine an absent world. They depict what the spoken utterance describes. Here, an architect (MJ) talks to a student researcher (C) about a potential building site that he has just visited. While his talk gives a vivid description of the scene, it is the gestural structuring of the space in front of him that ultimately enables the interlocutor to build an adequate representation of the site that he describes. (Only a selection of the gesture movements that the architect makes are included in this transcript.) (3)

1 C 2 MJ 3 4 C 5 MJ 6 7 C 8 MJ

9

So y’all went to a new space today. (- - - - - ) We went to a- well. It’s gonna be (. ) our (. ) latest (. ) job hopefully. This is the Newman house is that the one? ( - - ) AhÂ� uh- Nieman. Nieman. Rick Nieman. Nieman? Yeah. So (. ) we had to go check o:n

Figure 3.1 how the • power-cabels come across because (-----)



Ecologies of gesture 

10

thi- the initial idea I had for the- ( - - )

11 12 C 13 MJ

Figure 3.2 the house is to actually do it in three terrace • levels.= = Mh hm. Because the side almost has this three (. ) ter-

14 15 16 17 29

Figure 3.3 It has two very disti:nct ( - • - ) terrace levels and then we’ll probably try’n pull one out of the very to:p. (----) Absolutely fanta:stic. (11 lines deleted)) And on this bottom one ( - - )



Figure 3.4

 Jürgen Streeck

30

there’s this natural • grotto ( - - - - - - - ) right down here.

31 32 C 33 MJ 34

Figure 3.5 And it’s this very tiny, • intimateHmm. [ piece, with the with the water runoff coming down and dripping.

The drawings show that, in contrast to the previous interactions, the gesturer here focuses his gaze on his own hands. The architect’s gaze upon his hands is in fact quite sustained, owing to the centrality of his hand motions to the complex spatial representation that he is building. An intermittent glance by the gesturer to the gesturing hands, however, is generally characteristic of hand-gestures made in the depictive mode (Streeck 1993). The focus of attention of the entire interacting ensemble is upon the gestures, which represent some world beyond the setting of the interaction, rather than highlighting and elaborating features of the current scene. This is what, quite simply, is meant by ecology here: a gesture’s relations to the participants’ attentional field, that is, the field which they perceive, construe, or imagine. Depictive gestures structure the participants’ imagination, pointing and other visually indexical gestures the setting that they can see, and tactile and haptic gestures the setting that they can touch, handle, and, more often than not, see as well. In other words, the three types of gestures evoke figures on different kinds of ground and they focus cognitive attention in different ways: they either augment and organize what is available to the interactants’ senses or they give structure to their imagination. Depiction is not the only purpose for which pictorial gestures are made. Only depictions, by definition, show what something looks like, and it may be for this reason that speakers who provide depictions with their hands, look at them at some point. The gaze to the hand is a display of the gesture’s depictiveness. Equally pictorial (if not always in a narrowly visual sense) is the conceptual mode of gesticulation, that is, performances of embodied schemata that structure content and represent somethingÂ�as something (Goodman 1968). To emphasize its



Ecologies of gesture 

nature as a distinctly manual mode of cognitive grasping, I label this mode of gesturing ceiving, from Latin cap, “take”, “take hold of ” (as in con-ceive and con-cept). Gestures in both the depictive and conceptual modes are “iconic” or “imagistic” (Beattie 2004). But whereas depictive gestures are made deliberately and, at least briefly, looked at by the gesturer, conceptual gestures are more like spontaneous bodily insights, creative manual figurations of content that is in need of a form. This is most visible when the speaker makes a concrete gesture to construe ideational content for which s/he is simultaneously searching a lexical representation. Gestures produced in this mode are not attended (i.e. looked at) by their makers. Depiction and conceptualization by gesture, in other words, are two related modes which are distinguished by the different frameworks of visual attention within which they operate: depictive gestures are made in or near the center of visual attention, conceptual gestures emerge from the periphery of the attentional field: they are spontaneous “body thoughts” (Strathern 1996). In example 4, the mechanic enacts the concept cranking. He is presently taking issue with a customer’s account of engine trouble that she experienced; he points out that her car did, in fact, “crank”. (In other words, both battery and starter were working.) As he utters the word, he performs an eye-brow flash, a facial display of recognition, while rotating the index-finger of his right hand, which is elevated to his ear. The enactment is a multi-modal performance of “hearing cranking” (i.e. achieving a knowing recognition of a sound as being by the turning of the starter).

(4) 1 Mechanic

2

When she came to start the car, the car flooded her.

Figure 4 She crank•in’. ( - - ) She misdescribed to me.

This is not a pantomimic depiction of someone’s behavior in the talked-about situation; it is not a depiction at all, but rather a synthetic embodiment of a concept: the mechanic enacts it frequently along with the word crank, independently of whether this word is used in descriptive, abstract, or proscriptive contexts. In other words, the gesture is a concrete cept (manual concept) that corresponds to a verbal concept, not to a physical entity or event, as depictive gestures do. Many gestures made in the mode of ceiving depict what we traditionally call the vehicle of a metaphor (Cienki

 Jürgen Streeck

& Müller 2009). The speaker’s body supplies a sensorimotor schema that structures some phenomenon or abstract domain and thereby renders it intelligible. The remaining modes of gesturing do not relate to the world around the interaction or the world that is being talked about, nor do they construe the content of the conversation in other ways. Rather, they relate to the interaction itself. They have been called “pragmatic” (Kendon 2004) or “interactive” (Bavelas et al. 1992) gestures. I distinguish between gestures that relate to the communicative actions of the speaker/gesturer and those that relate to the current, anticipated, or desired actions of the addressee. In one mode the gesturer displays (aspects of) what he or she is doing in the (current or imminent) utterance, in the other s/he directs others what to do. It is quite possible that this distinction is not tenable or needs to be refined, so that, for example, gestures that formulate communicative relationships or engagements can be accomodated. But the ecological difference between these modes of gesturing and the ones discussed above should be clear enough. An example of the first of the two types, gestures that display communicative acts, is the following, from the same interaction as Example 4. Here, the mechanic concludes his explanation of the customer’s engine trouble, hinted at in Example 4, with a “handing over” or “palm-up/open hand” gesture (cf.€Müller, 2003). (5) 1 Hussein 2

all the car smoke, wasting gas,

3 4 Jürgen

Figure 5 no po•wer. Oh.

The gesture marks the consequence of the antecedent conditions that the speaker lists in this sentence, and at the same time marks the end of the utterance and thus the transfer of the turn to the interlocutor, who produces an understanding token, oh. Pragmatic gestures appear to be both the most frequent variety of conversational gestures and the type that is most often conventionalized, and among pragmatic gestures the open-handed “handing over” is a particularly common unit. The pragmatic mode of gesturing is not perceptually different from ceiving, i.e. gestural conceptualization. What differs is what is being conceptualized, and



Ecologies of gesture 

thus, how the gesture is processed3: pragmatic gestures do not frame what is being talked about, but aspects of the process of talking. Gestures of the other subvariety refer to actions of the addressee, for example by soliciting a response or by proscribing a responsive action that the other could take. An example is the following gesture with which its maker seeks to stop the interlocutor from proceeding further with her talk: that forthcoming talk is figuratively held at bay. Bev is talking about a movie which she recommends Rani go and see; Rani seeks to keep her from revealing too much about the plot.

(6) 1 Bev It’s really good.



Figure 6

2 Rani Don’t • tell me. This gesture is understood as relating to the interlocutor’s actions; this is its primary coupling. Hand gestures thus mediate processes of sense-making in a number of quite different fashions, and a multitude of heterogeneous practices are available, apparently in any culture, to deal with gesture’s diverse tasks. 3. The body in communication The diversity of ways in which motions and configurations of the hands participate in communicative processes and their different couplings with components of the communicative situation gives us pause to reconsider the way in which the body is conceptualized in research on language and social interaction. Until recently, most research and model-building concerning “nonverbal communication” was predicated upon an expressive understanding of the human body: various body parts or regions (the forehead, the face, the hands) or the body in its structured configuration (posture) were treated as expressive of the communicator’s “internal” disposition, of mental imagery or intent. The body was thus attributed an ancillary role (as maker of sign-bodies) in activities governed by semiotic relations, or subsumed 3.

For more on this see Streeck, 2009a: Ch. 8.

 Jürgen Streeck

under abstract categories such as agent or subject. The body was treated as if it had nothing of its own to contribute to sense-making. Even though gestures are conceived as “material carriers of thinking-for-speaking” (McNeill & Duncan 2000), the mindfulness of the human body – the fact that it knows the world on its own terms – was rarely taken into account. But especially when we study gestures in the context of activities that involve manual action, as in a car-repair shop, the fact that they themselves are bodily acts becomes important: gestures can no longer be reduced to expressive forms that are only incidentally made by the hands, but their manual nature and their frequent origin in, and indexical ties to, practical actions of the hands (as well as the tools and objects involved in them) are central to how these gestures mean. The empirical study of multimodal interaction meets up here with developing lines of research and theorizing in fields of study such as cognitive science (Wilson 2002), cognitive linguistics (Johnson 1987), and “communities of practice” or praxeology (Hanks 1996). In these fields, attempts have been made to reconceptualize the body as a cognitive entity and make sense of it in terms of how it inhabits and acts in worlds (Streeck, Goodwin and LeBaron, to appear). Much of the recent work on bodily components of human communication continues to be based, if not explicitly then in terms of research methods, on a dualist conception of body and mind. Gestures are seen as the external dimension or “sign vehicles” of mental content or process. In my own work, I take a rather different tack, working from an understanding of the human body as the primordial organ and site of human cognition, as proposed by phenomenological philosophers (Heidegger 1962 (1926); Merleau-Ponty 1962; Polanyi 1958). These have argued that we must understand human understanding by finding it, in the first place, in concrete, practical, physical activity in the world. This congrues with recent work in anthropology (Hastrup 1995; Ingold 2000; Keller & Keller 1996; Strathern 1996), philosophy and linguistics (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch 1991), educational psychology (Lave 1988), and sociology (Connerton 1989; Harper 1987; Mauss 1973 (1935)), which works from the fact that the human mind – and the symbols that it relies upon – are embodied. In cognitive science, there is a growing acceptance of the idea that certain higher-level cognitive abilities are rooted in lowerlevel sensorymotor skills (Wilson 2002). Recent findings indicate that the concepts underlying language are stored in the brain in terms of action-perception loops (Barsalou 1999; Glenberg 2002). Brain structures that control movement are also involved in perception, especially perception of other humans (Wilson & Knoblich 2005). More broadly, the raison d’être of brains is motor control, which makes thinking an internalized form of movement (Llinàs 2001). Lakoff & Johnson have fittingly entitled their second book Philosophy in the Flesh (1999). In their work, however, the body appears almost exclusively as a natural, universal



Ecologies of gesture 

entity: there is no recognition of the fact that bodily experience is itself culturally constrained. Gesture is symbolic body action evolved from the body’s practical engagement with the world. It exemplifies that traditional separations between internal and external, or ideational and material resources, and between cognition and communication, embodied communication and practical work, between language use and practical action, are obsolete. In the most characteristic situations of human communication – symbolic, multimodal communication lodged in practical cooperation – they are one. Gestures and languages, then, are not only means for interacting and communicating – let alone for sharing information–, but for inhabiting worlds together and managing interaction in the process. They have evolved from and facilitate distributed cognition (Hutchins 2006). However, there are limitations even to advanced, non-dualist conceptions of the body which squarely situate the mindful body in the world. For this world, as it is commonly construed, is a thing-world, not an interpersonal or intercorporeal one. This might be the legacy of Heidegger with his emphasis on equipment and manipulation, or related to the current interest in professional communication and contexts of material work (Lave 1988). But human bodies do not only acquire worldly skills in their engagement with objects or matter, but also through their unmediated contact with other human bodies, and this contact – especially during childhood – is also subject to cultural regulation and thus difference. For example, de León, studying the socialization of young children in Maya-speaking Tzotzil communities in Southern Mexico (de León 2000), has demonstrated that these children experience social interaction far more frequently and intensely than children in the industrialized countries of the Northern hemisphere through the medium of direct physical (tactile) contact. Distinct patterns of intercorporeality during childhood have implications for the kinds of participatory competence that the child acquires. We need a much richer understanding of the body in its culturally specific modes of participation, resonance, and agency, not so much to solve methodological problems – these, I believe, have large been resolved – but to close the gaps between the various concurrent, non-dualist conceptions of humanity that are currently emerging at such a rapid pace. 4. Historical dimensions An ecological approach to interaction which seeks to come to terms with the multimodal nature of human action and interaction – including the fact that human action more often than not involves tools and is situated in artefactual, i.e. human-made, environments – comes up against the issue of the historical

 Jürgen Streeck

constitution of this world. Of course, the historical constitution of the human mind – via the socio-culturally specific, human-made psychological tools that it uses – is at the core of Vygotsky’s conception of the human mind (Vygotsky 1978). This, I think, is the other big theoretical challenge that we face: to rethink the phenomena that we study – the behaviors, signs, and bodily practices – in terms of their historical constitution. Humans are adaptive systems. Internal processes are structured so that they integrate well with structures in the environment, including the structures of human-made symbolic environments. Major changes in cognitive and communicative media result in transformations of cognitive architecture (Donald 1991). In any moment of communication – i.e., symbolically mediated interaction – historically evolved or sedimented structures, practices, and generalized experiences – concepts – are in play and may subtly be altered in the process. Our field awaits a kind of theoretical reframing that is dynamic and accomodates uninterrupted change, instead of implicitly or explicitly assuming the static nature of symbolic structures, grammar, or conversational organization. For example, given the importance of sequence organization in conversational interaction – and, as we have seen, the understanding of gestures – the question arises where these action sequences that conversational organization manages come from: how old they are, how wide-spread, how variable. Some of these “speech act institutions” (D’Andrade 1984) may well have developed from interaction formats that, without being innate, predate the arrival of speech: Social institutions … are often robust, with deep histories, and their fortunes are subject to patterns of cultural evolution on a time-scale different from the ephemeral interactions that nevertheless instantiate them (Enfield & Levinson 2006:€27).

Levinson has reflected on the origin and history of the parts of the human interaction engine (Levinson, 2006) and argued that interaction appears to have detailed universal properties. … The … cultural systems that have been studied reflect very similar, in some cases eerily similar, subsystems (Levinson 2006:€46).

Still, these properties are cultural, not biological, properties, notwithstanding the fact that they are predicated on a human biology that makes the production of culture – adaptive, local culture – possible. This challenge, too, is a theoretical one: we usually do not need to reckon with the historicity of the phenomena when we seek to describe the organization of social interaction and the deployment of linguistic and gestural components in interaction. It appears to me that the real challenges – or the more interesting challenges – at this point are not ones of research methodology – of identification,



Ecologies of gesture 

description, analysis, and synthesis of interaction and language units. While a great deal of work still needs to be done, the convergences of various hitherto independent strands of language and interaction research demonstrate that the study of interaction and language, or of talk and interaction, has developed into a robust, normal science, vast differences in approach notwithstanding. But something important remains unexplained when we abstract away from issues that we cannot explain with our own methodology or that fall outside the purview of our disciplinary knowledge: the intelligence and resonance of the bodies that organize their dealings with one another without any conscious “mind” even being aware of the fact (which is what usually takes place in the realm of gestural communication) or the historical evolution and ongoing change of all the component practices and resources that the interaction order is made of. 5. Dynamical systems One abstract framework in terms of which these multiple ecological parameters can be brought together in a coherent fashion is dynamical systems theory. Dynamic systems theory conceives communicative encounters “in terms such as engagement and disengagement, synchrony and discord, and breakdown and repair” (Shanker & King 2002:€607): in a dynamic system, all of the elements are continuously interacting with and changing in respect to one another, and an aggregate pattern emerges from this mutual co-action (loc.cit.)

Social interaction is a “dynamic dance” (King 2004), an “activity of mutual attunement” (Shanker & King 2002:€ 606), within which “each partner must cooperate, moment by moment, in creating the coordination” (King 2004:€1). As Streeck & Jordan (2009) have argued, each participant in this “dynamic dance” constitutes an embodiment of the multiple contexts in which it has to sustain itself. The “dynamic dance” is one of fluid, multi-scale, joint sustainment in multiple contexts simultaneously. A gesture is part of a speaking turn and embodies in its form the immediate context in which this turn is produced: for example, by being a gesture of rejection it embodies the offer or invitation that preceded it. But it may simultaneously be about and thus embody the specific, historically developed relationship between two people and be a move in the institutional context of that relationship.€And finally it is a component in– and through its enactment sustains – a historically evolved symbolic code: it may be a conventionalized gesture.

 Jürgen Streeck

Interaction … is never ‘about’ just one level of context.... Rather, it is simultaneously ‘about’ all of the scales of embodied context the participants bring to bear during the interaction. Embodied action (including speech) always contributes to the sustaining of multiple nested contexts at once (Streeck & Jordan 2009:€454).

References Auer, Peter, & di Luzio, Aldo (eds.) 1992. The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1999. “Perceptual symbol systems.” Behavior and Brain Sciences, 22 (4): 577–609; discussion 610–560. Bates, Elizabeth, Camaioni, Luigia, & Volterra, Virginia.1975. “The acquisition of performatives prior to speech.” Merril-Palmer Quarterly, 21: 205–226. Bateson, Gregory. 1971. “Communication.” In The Natural History of an Interview. Norman McQuown (ed.), (Vol. 95 – Series XV. Chicago: Micro-fiche. University of Chicago Library. Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine. Bavelas, Janet, Chovil, Nicole, Lawrie, Douglas A., & Wade, Allan. 1992. “Interactive gestures.” Discourse Processes, 15: 469–489. Beattie, Goeffrey. 2004. Visible Thought: The New Psychology of Body Language. London: Routledge. Cienki, Alan, & Müller, Cornelia (eds.). 2009. Metaphor and Gesture. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Andrade, Roy G. 1984. “Cultural meaning systems.” In Culture Theory. Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Richard A. Shweder & Robert A. LeVine (eds.). 88–121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darwin, Charles. 1955 (1872). The Expression of Emotions in Animals and Man. New York: Philosophical Society. de León, Lourdes. 2000. “The emergent participant: Interactive patterns in the socialization of Totzil (Maya) infants.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 82: 131–161. Donald, Merlin. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, Stephen C. 2006. “Introduction: Human sociality as a new interdisciplinary field.” In Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, Cognition and Interaction. N.J. Enfield & Stephen C. Levinson (eds.). 1–37. London: Berg. Glenberg, Arthur M., & Kaschak, Michael P. 2002. “Grounding language in action.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(3): 558–565. Goffman, Erving. 1964. “The neglected situation.” American Anthropologist, 66(6, Part 2): 133–136. Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in Public. Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, Erving. 1983. “The interaction order.” American Sociological Review, 48: 1–17. Goodman, Nelson. 1976 (1968). Languages of Art. 2nd ed.. Indianapolis: Hackett. Goodwin, Charles. 1986. “Gesture as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation.” Semiotica, 62 (1–2): 29–49. Goodwin, Charles. 2007. “Environmentally coupled gestures.” In Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language: Essays in Honor of David McNeill. Susan D. Duncan, Justine Cassell & Elena T. Levy (eds.). 195–212. Philadelphia: Benjamins B.V.



Ecologies of gesture  Goodwin, Charles., & Goodwin, Margorie. H. 1986. “Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word.” Semiotica, 62 (1–2): 51–75. Gullberg, Marianne, & Kita, Sotaro. 2009. “Attention to Speech-Accompanying Gestures: Eye Movements and Information Uptake.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 33: 251–277. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hanks, William F. 1996. Language and Communicative Practices. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Harper, Douglas. 1987. Working Knowledge. Skill and Community in a Small Shop.€ Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heath, Christian. 1986. Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Christian. 1992. “Gesture’s discreet tasks: Multiple relevancies in visual conduct and in the contextualisation of language.” In The Contextualization of Language. Peter Auer & Aldo diLuzio (eds.). 101–128. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Heidegger, Martin. 1962 (1926). Being and Time. New York: Harper and Row. Hutchins, Edwin. 2006. “The distributed cognition perspective on human interaction.” In Roots of Human Sociality. N.J. Enfield & Stephen C. Levinson (eds.). 375–398. London: Berg. Johnson, Mark. 1987. The Body in the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Keller, Charles M., & Keller, Janet D. 1996. Cognition and Tool Use. The Blacksmith at Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kendon, Adam. 1970. “Movement coordination in social interaction: Some examples described.” Acta Psychologica, 32: 100–125. Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. King, Barbara. J. 2004. The Dynamic Dance: Nonvocal Communication in African Great Apes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lakoff, George, & Johnson, Michael. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lave, Jean. 1988. Cognition in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, Stephen C. 2006. “On the human interaction engine.” In Roots of Human Sociality. N.J. Enfield & Stephen C. Levinson (eds.). 39–69. London: Berg Publishers. Lllinàs, Rodolfo R. 2001. I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McDermott, Ray P. & Roth, David. 1978. “Social organization of behavior: Interactional approaches.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 7: 321–345. McQuown, Norman. 1956. The natural history of an interview. Chicago: Chicago Manuscripts in Cultural Anthropology. Mauss, Marcel. 1973 (1935). “The techniques of the body.” Economy and Society, 21: 70–88. Mead, George H. 1909. “Social psychology as a counterpart to physiological psychology.” Psychological Bulletin, 6: 401–408. Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Müller, Cornelia. 2003. “Forms and uses of the Palm Up Open Hand.” In The Semantics and Pragmatics of Everyday Gestures. The Berlin Conference. Cornelia Müller & Roland Posner (eds.). 234–256. Berlin: Weidler. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1979. “On the relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation.” In Discourse and Syntax.Vol. 12. Talmy Givón (ed.). 261–288. New York: Academic Press.

 Jürgen Streeck Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1984. “On some gestures’ relation to talk.” In Structures of Social Action. J. Maxwell Atkinson & John Heritage (eds.). 266–295. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction. A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schutz, Alfred. 1982. Collected Papers. Vol. 1–3. The Hague: Martinus Nijhof. Shanker, Stuart G., & King, Barbara J. 2002. “The emergence of a new paradigm in ape language research.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(3): 605–656. Strathern, Andrew J. 1996. Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Streeck, Jürgen. 1993. “Gesture as communication I: Its coordination with gaze and speech.” Communication Monographs, 60: 275–299. Streeck, Jürgen. 1995. “On projection.” In Social Intelligence and Interaction. Esther Goody (ed.). 87–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Streeck, Jürgen. 2002. “A body and its gestures.” Gesture, 2, 1: 19–44. Streeck, Jürgen. 2008. “Laborious intersubjectivity: Attentional struggle and embodied communication in an auto-shop.” In Embodied Communication in Humans and Machines. Ipke Wachsmuth, Manuela Lenzen & Gunter Knoblich (eds.). 202–228. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Streeck, Jürgen. 2009a. Gesturecraft. The Manufacture of Meaning. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Streeck, J Jürgen 2009b. “Forward-gesturing.” Discourse Processes, 45 (3/4): 161–179. Streeck, Jürgen., & Hartge, Ulrike. 1992. “Previews: Gestures at the transition place.” In Peter Auer & Aldo di Luzio (eds.). The Contextualization of Language. 138–158. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Streeck, Jürgen. & Jordan, J.Scott 2009. “Communication as a dynamical system: The importance of time-scales and nested contexts.” Communication Theory, 19: 445–464. Streeck, Jürgen, Goodwin, Charles & LeBaron, Curtis (eds.) to appear. Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, Lew. 1978. Mind in Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wilson, Margaret. 2002. “Six views of embodied cognition.” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9: 625–636.

The neglected listener Issues of theory and practice in transcription from video in interaction analysis Frederick Erickson €

University of California, Los Angeles How phenomena are arranged in a transcript always incorporates a theory of the phenomena represented by it. The playscript transcripts of conversation analysis embody a logocentric view of interaction: they arrange interaction around the sequential progress of talk and obscure relations of mutual influence between the speaking behavior of speakers and the listening behavior of listeners. A transcription system that adapts musical scores is better able to capture the embeddedness of talk in interaction and the coordinated timing of instrumental acts that provides an independent resource of interactional organization. In this way it contributes to a renewed effort toward the study of space, time, and visual phenomena in social interaction. The chapter includes examples of €quasi-musical transcription whose notation €shows both the sequential and the simultaneous occurrence of verbal and nonverbal actions of speakers and listeners.

1. Introduction It seems to me that the two most pressing issues for future work in the study of language in interaction (or of interaction in relation to language use) concern (1) empirical work and theory development that connect studies of larger scale and longer term social processes with local scenes of face to face interaction – the “structuration” or “macro-micro” issue in relation to oral discourse, and (2) the tendency over the last generation to emphasize the study of talk’s local conduct over other aspects of what happens locally during the course of face to face interaction. To discuss the first issue requires much more room than is available here, and I have tried to do that in a book recently published (Erickson, 2004). Accordingly I won’t even try to address that issue here, but will simply mention it by title. The second issue is the focus of the comments that follow. I should make it clear to

 Frederick Erickson

the reader at the outset that I think my own work has contributed somewhat to the very problem I discuss below. That is, in part, because the study of talk is so intellectually important and empirically intriguing that there is a strong temptation to give it central focus – and also because many scenes of interaction are primarily constituted by the talk that is taking place in them (many, admittedly, but not all – and there’s the rub.). What I say here I do not want to be interpreted as implying that I think the past half century’s efforts in the study of naturally occurring talk have not made significant progress from where we were in the late 1950’s. Rather, I see that work as providing shoulders on which scholars can now stand to look toward a slightly more distant edge of the horizon. 2. The selectivity of transcription Over the past fifty years audiovisual recordings (formerly sound cinema film and more recently videotape) have been increasingly used as a primary information source in studies of language use in social interaction. As Ochs has noted in a classic paper (1979), all transcription approaches presuppose theoretical commitments. This is because any transcription is inherently incomplete – the multidimensional complexity of speech and nonverbal behavior involved in social interaction is such that it cannot be fully represented in any single transcript. Rather, transcription is necessarily selective, emphasizing some aspects of speech or nonverbal behavior over others. This selectivity is especially apparent in “playscript” transcription of speech. Using a succession of lines on a full page as a way of organizing a transcript can show many details of the real-time conduct of talk, lexically and (with special diacritical markings added) such transcription can even show a good deal about speech prosody. But it tends to privilege in its representation the speaking activity of speakers over the listening activity of listeners that is occurring simultaneously with the speaking. Thus the on-line influence of listeners upon the on-line production of talk by speakers tends to be obscured. In other words, “incipit verbum,” whatever its status may be as a theological proposition appearing at the outset of the Gospel According to John (Jn 1.1: “In the beginning was the Word...”) is not an appropriate programmatic foundation for the study of social interaction. Such interaction is a pre-human phenomenon and thus its organization and conduct is, at least in part, phylogenetically prior to the evolution of the human capacity for speech. Experientially for its participants, social interaction begins with space and time, and with vision in addition to hearing, usually before any words are uttered. Social interaction in circumstances of copresence among participants happens in particular places, in real time, and as the participants are able to monitor one another’s actions visually as well as auditorially.



The neglected listener 

(Indeed one of my teachers, Edward T. Hall (1966) showed not only how within the course of social interaction we judge interpersonal distance visually in a variety of ways, but how the whole sensorium is involved as we sense distance auditorially, kinaesthetically, tactilely, olfactorily, and even thermally, as we monitor intuitively the body heat of those engaged with us in interaction face to face.) 3. Social interaction as an ecosystem As we speak during the course of social interaction we are not doing so on the telephone, nor are we talking to one another through a keyhole; we have available visual information on the listening activity of listeners on-line, while we speak. I emphasize while here (see Condon and Ogston 1967) because the information speakers have about listening reactions of audience members comes to us instantly through vision – it is available in present moments as we speak, and everything that interactional participants are doing together, verbally and nonverbally, contains potentially significant information for the interpretation of what is going on in the interaction, whether those are the interpretations of analysts or of the participants themselves. These are key insights taken from the then cutting edge field of cybernetics that informed the pioneering approach to the analysis of social interaction developed a half century ago by Bateson, Fromm-Reichman, McQuown, Birdwhistell, and others in the interdisciplinary group that produced the unpublished monograph “The Natural History of an Interview” (see also Ruesch and Bateson 1951). This approach has been called “Context Analysis” by Kendon, who observes “One comes to recognize that what a person may be saying, for example while he is saying it, may be shaped by information he is taking in from his recipient; and by the same token, how the recipient is behaving, where he is placing his headnods, his smiles and frowns, and how he is patterning his visual attention, may also be shaped by, even as it is shaping the activity of the speaker.” (Kendon, 1990:€29). As I have said elsewhere along similar lines, to be engaged in social interaction is like climbing a tree that climbs you back in the same time. (Erickson, 1986:€296). In his classic essay “The neglected situation” Goffman called face to face interaction an “ecological huddle” (Goffman 1964:€135). Such an ecology is only possible to maintain when the participants in interaction not only occupy the same spatial and temporal setting but construct it through their conjoint action. As McDermott has said (1976:€36), “people in interaction constitute environments for each other.” The conduct of interaction must be organized socially; that is, the activities of the various participants must relate in ways that take account of one another. This is a local ecology of sustained mutual attention and influence.

 Frederick Erickson

A necessary condition for such mutuality is that participants in interaction must be in the same place, and that situatedness involves both objective and subjective aspects; phenomena that are present in the scene and the phenomenology of the participants – their patterns of attention. Participants must orient to one another within the spatial setting that is given in the built environment (size of the setting as defined by walls, stationary placement of furniture or tools) as well as within the spatial setting that is established in their patterns of interpersonal distance. They also must orient to one another within a common temporal setting that is established by the timing of their speech and body motion (by “timing” here I mean actual duration in “real time”, not the compressed time of analytic synopsis). This spatial and temporal situating of interaction permits common expectations among participants of where action will happen and when it will happen, in immediate and next moments. Actions contain cues for their own interpretation. Bateson (1956) called these “metamessages” and Gumperz (1982) called them “contextualization cues.” Moreover, as conversation analysts have elegantly shown in their studies of speech, particular communicative actions, as part of an overall contextualization cueing process project in the course of their doing toward turning points and (eventually) toward concluding points, all of which will occur in future time. Communicative actions, both verbal and nonverbal, are also done simultaneously in concert with the actions of others. If participants take action outside the frames of timing and of spacing that their conjoint action is creating and sustaining– action that happens too soon or too late, action toward there rather than toward here – what happens are interactional “stumbles” – awkward moments of behavioral asymmetry in which abrupt posture shifts and gestural and verbal re-starts take place. Such action can be characterized as inadequately social; i.e. the social organization of face to face interaction can be conceived as resting upon a foundation of time in conjoint use and space in conjoint use. 3. Playscript transcription privileging speech over other semiotic media It is fair to say that over the last forty years the analysis of social interaction has focused primarily on speech. Tremendous strides have been taken in the study of oral discourse within immediate social interaction – I think in particular here of the study of indexicality in talk that has developed within linguistic anthropology (c.f. Silverstein, 1976, 1992 and Hanks 1996:€176–183, 230–236) and of the work of conversation analysis (see the review by Goodwin and Heritage 1990 and the recent volume edited by Prevignano and Thibault 2003). But everything is a tradeoff. Progress in the study of naturally occurring speech carries with it a tendency toward “logocentrism,” an overemphasis on speech by which the larger “whole” of



The neglected listener 

social interaction – its collective temporal/spatial/bodily organization – gets short shrift analytically. Routine transcription practices manifest this central focus on speech at the expense of additional aspects of “situatedness” in interaction and of additional semiotic media by which meaning is communicated in interaction. One of these, the transcription system developed by Jefferson in collaboration with Sacks and Schegloff (as exemplified in Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson 1974 and as discussed in Heritage and Atkinson 1984) has currently become almost a standard approach in transcribing speech. It was developed on the IBM Selectric typewriter and is an ingenious use of that machine’s capacities to portray, in relatively simple and direct ways, features of speech that had previously been ignored in the analysis of the social conduct of speaking or were previously only able to be represented by laborious and arcane procedures of phonetic transcription. Among these features are hesitations and re-starts, in-breaths, “sound-stretching” of vowels, volume emphasis in syllables, the timing of pauses, speech that overlaps between speakers, and speech that alternates between speakers with no gap and no overlap.€ Jefferson’s system has an overall playscript format which shows turns taken by successive speakers by dropping down vertically at the left margin of the typed (printed) page. (Playscript formats of one sort or another, whether they follow Jefferson’s transcription conventions or not, are now so ubiquitous as to appear to be the only way to transcribe speech for purposes of analysis and publication.) The problem with any approach to transcription is that it illuminates and foregrounds some aspects of social interaction and leaves other aspects either un-represented entirely or in the background of analytic attention. A transcription approach is an intellectual tool, and like all tools it is designed for particular uses. A screwdriver does one kind of work very well; a chisel does another. It is possible to use a screwdriver as a chisel, and vice versa, but the results are not nearly so satisfactory (and the work is accomplished in not nearly so efficiently a way) as when a particular tool is used in the manner for which it was designed. Because of this transcription of verbal and nonverbal behavior is not merely a theory-neutral empirical procedure in the study of social interaction Rather, it is a manifestation of theoretical commitments. (For elaboration on this point see the discussion cited at the outset of this paper, in Ochs 1979). It follows that to criticize a particular transcription approach for certain limitations is not to deny its utility as a tool but to point out that its best uses are particular to the theoretical presuppositions out of which it was developed. All transcription approaches have their limits and attendant strengths, as Ochs argues persuasively. It is up to the analyst to recognize those limits, to use them to advantage when appropriate and, when it becomes necessary, to design other tools for other uses (thus adopting certain other limits in order to maximize certain other utilities).

 Frederick Erickson

It needs to be recognized that playscript transcription approaches do privilege speech at the expense of the other kinds of communicative behaviors that are involved in interaction. Moreover, it is not just that playscript transcription presents various aspects of speech in relatively great detail and presents nonverbal activity in less detail, it is that such transcription makes it appear as if the primary actions of agents that are occurring in the interaction are those of speaking; that it is talk that moves social interaction along and that everything else that is happening is in some way a consequence of the actions of talk, as if what in the overall scene is not talk were a tail being wagged somehow by the talking. 4. Alternative approaches to “multimodal” transcription As a corrective to the inherent logocentrism in playscript transcription, alternative transcribing procedures can show the simultaneous actions of listeners and speakers and can identify more clearly than can playscript approaches the relations of the actions of the interactional participants in real time and actual space. Because of limitations of length in this discussion I will mention only a few examples of these procedures here. One is the postural positioning diagrams and line drawings presented by Scheflen (1973) in his monograph length analysis of a single family therapy session. Another is the diagrams presented in the collection of essays on instances of dyadic and small group interaction by Kendon (1990). Another is the published version of Goodwin’s doctoral thesis on relations between gaze and speech (Goodwin 1981) and his recent analyses of professionals’ learned “ways of seeing” (Goodwin 2000a, see also van Leeewen and Jewitt 2000 more generally as a resource, the edited volume in which Goodwin’s 2000a essay appears). Another is the attempts that I and others have made to represent the timing patterns of verbal and nonverbal behavior in interaction using quasi-musical notation (Erickson 2003, 2004). What many of these attempts have in common is that they display the various actions of interactional participants in relation to a common time line which shows “real time. (Even an ordinary transcript of speech, when it does not display speech over a time line but rather in some form of playscript transcription, presents the speech in a way in which it can be read faster than life – outside the actual durations of its performance.) In the early work using audiovisual records, e.g.€that of Scheflen and Kendon, this time line was established through slow motion analysis of cinema film using a number code for frames of cinema film, each frame of film being exposed at 1/24 of a second. More recently, in analysis based on videotape, digital clock-face time codes in minutes, seconds, and microseconds provide the evidence for the timing of nonverbal and verbal phenomena,



The neglected listener 

and there are also now available various computer programs for the analysis of motion and speech. In such transcription the time line is presented horizontally on the printed page and the behavior of separate individuals is overlaid vertically across the timeline, as in the schematic representation below, which shows various verbal and nonverbal actions of individuals A, B, and C – these could be turns at speech, single word utterances as an exclamation or as a listening reaction, head nods, hand and arm gestures (on this, see especially Kendon 1997), shifts in postural position, glancing toward and then away from a computer screen or a tire pressure gauge, reaching for a book on a desk or a plate of food on a dinner table, putting a forkful of food in one’s mouth: 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 A: xxxx yy xxx zzzzz zzzz yyy xxxx bbb B: zzzzz xxxx aa xxxxx zz xxxxxxx C: xx y xxxx zzzzz c

Figure 1.╇ “Horizontal” transcription of verbal and nonverbal behavior on a time line.

In the case of quasi-musical notation (see Erickson 2003, 2004, 2008) the timeline is not indicated by an ordinal scale displayed horizontally on the page, as in the example above, but as on a musical page. In such pages the horizontal arrangement of “bar lines” presents each “measure” as approximately equal in duration. A closer representation of actual timing values is provided by the musical notes within each two beat “measure” – half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and thirty-second notes. (When the simultaneous actions of a set of individuals are displayed on the musical page what results is a diagram that appears like an orchestra score, and overall such a score resembles the ordinally scaled time line version in the schematic diagram shown above.) An illustration follows. The quasi-musical notation in the example above shows eight successive twobeat measures (10–17) from a larger transcript published and discussed in greater elaboration in Erickson (1992 and 2004). Those discussions emphasized the content of talk, which is the beginning of a collective complaint sequence in which the family discusses how much things cost nowadays. The transcript represents the talk and eating behavior that occurred during a family dinner table conversation. Seated at the table are the father (Fa), the mother (Mo), a guest (G), the oldest brother who is in junior high school (B-1), the next oldest brother (B-2), the next oldest brother (B-3), the sister who is in 3rd grade, and the youngest brother (B-4). The transcript has a horizontal strip on which verbal and nonverbal activity of each participant can be shown.

 Frederick Erickson

Figure 2.╇ Quasi-musical notation



The neglected listener 

Food had been served by the mother on each person’s plate (fried chicken, potatoes, and a cooked vegetable). A stainless steel salad bowl sat near the middle of the table and family members could, if and when they wished, reach for the bowl, bring it to a position in front of their plate, and help themselves to a serving of salad – lettuce and tomato from the family garden. A large metal fork and spoon were placed in the bowl to enable food transfer to one’s plate. In order to get food from one’s plate into one’s mouth it was necessary to spear a bit of food on one’s plate with a small fork and then raise it to one’s lips. Because the plates were ceramic and the salad bowl was metal, when the metal utensils hit the surface of the plate or bowl they made small clicking sounds, which were audible on the video recording. Thus the onset of food transport motions could be seen and heard to begin with a click, followed by movement of the utensils toward either one’s plate (in the case of salad service transfer) or to one’s lips (in the case of transferring one bit of food to one’s mouth). These sounds and motions of food transfer are indicated in the transcript. “FP” with an eighth note shows the point at which one of the participants put their fork to their plate, making a click. “FM” indicates the point at which the fork reached the mouth of the eater. A horizontal line below the speech line indicates a forkful of food being held motionless in mid-air by an eater (or moving only very slowly forward), and a jagged line indicates accelerated forward motion of the fork toward the eater’s mouth. (Thus in measure 10 the oldest brother’s fork is shown as motionless in mid-air, with motion toward his mouth beginning at the onset of measure 11 and the fork reaching his mouth on the beginning of the second beat of measure 11. Notice also at the beginning of measure 10 the father’s fork hit his plate at the beginning of the first beat. He did not pick up food at that point, and his fork hit his plate again at the beginning of the second beat of measure 11. The reader is encouraged to look for other FP-FM occurrences throughout the eight measures shown above.) The transcript also shows how the eating behavior of various family members is temporally coordinated with the speaking behavior that was occurring. Usually syllables that appear at the beginning of each of the two beats in a measure are pronounced with volume stress. Thus in measures 10–11 as the oldest brother says “seventy five dollars goes in a day” he did it with the following stress pattern: “seventy dollars goes in a day.” This clause is initiated with the syllable “se” and is completed with the word “day” and those syllables both appear at the beginning of the first beat in each successive measure. In other words, the three volume-stressed syllables in the clause appear at a regular time interval in relation to one another – marking an underlying cadence. (The reader should now look across other measures to see the cadence patterns that are apparent in the verbal transcription that uses quasi-musical notation.)

 Frederick Erickson

Having identified cadential patterning in the speech of the various participants, now look for the ways in which the nonverbal food transport behavior articulates in cadence with the speech behavior that is occurring simultaneously and successively. Notice in measure 10 that as the oldest brother utters most of a clause he holds his fork motionless in mid-air, in front of his face. Then on the first beat of measure 11 he begins to move his fork toward his mouth. The fork reaches his mouth exactly at the beginning of the next beat, the second beat of measure 11. Also in measure 11 the transcript shows that exactly on the beginning of the second beat in simultaneity with the oldest son’s putting his fork to his mouth, the father put his fork to his plate. As that was happening the guest uttered the second of five successive laugh sounds – the second one receiving volume stress – and simultaneously B-3 uttered the first stressed syllable in the word “dollars.” This cadential pattern – with stressed syllables or onsets of speech tending to occur, more often than not, “on the beat” – is further marked at the beginning of measure 10 as, simultaneously with B-1’s uttering the “se” syllable of “seventy,” both the father and the guest put their forks to their plates in audible simultaneous clicks. As a final way of illustrating the interdigitation of timing patterns in both speaking and eating we can turn to the transcript’s representation of what happens with the salad bowl. At the very beginning of measure 11 the mother had reached across to the center of the table and picked up the salad bowl. She then moved it relatively slowly to a position in front of her plate, setting the bowl down (with an audible click) exactly on the beginning of the second beat of measure 12. In measure 13 she had reached for the serving fork and spoon in the bowl (however, the transcript does not show this). Then at the very beginning of measure fourteen the metal fork and spoon hit the bottom of the steel bowl with an audible click, on the beat. After that the mother gathered pieces of lettuce and tomato between the fork and the spoon in the bottom of the bowl. The fork and spoon then remained motionless in the bottom of the bowl during measure 15 while the oldest son was saying his next major utterance, which was a question addressed across the table to his mother. Immediately after he began to say “foo” in “food shoppin’” at the beginning of measure 16 (notice that with that fricative and vowel he had disambiguated the utterance “how about last time you went/” which without a grammatically completing next word was still ambiguous, in a state of incompletion. That clause could have been completed with the words “bowling” or “clothes shopping”, but in this case the “foo” indicated that the word in production was “food”). YET ONLY AFTER THE SON’S UTTERING OF THE “FOO” PARTICLE, did the mother begin to lift the fork/spoonful of salad out of the bowl, which she then transported toward her plate, with the fork and spoon touching the surface of the plate with an audible click exactly at the beginning of the first beat of measure 17, in time with the overall cadence pattern. In other words, the transcript shows the



The neglected listener 

mother having “put on hold” in mid-course her transport of salad from the salad bowl to her plate while her oldest son was addressing her with a question. And then, as her son completed his utterance and she had quickly brought the salad to her plate on the next cadential beat, she replied to her son’s question with an ironic rejoinder, “well, we won’t talk about that.” The transcript’s depiction of the mother’s temporal accommodation of her salad transport to the timing of her son’s uttering his question to her is analogous to what that son (B-1) did in measures 10 and 11. Notice that as he said the utterance “seventy-five dollars goes in a day” he held his forkful of food in mid-air until he had completed the utterance with the final syllable “day,” which also completed the grammatical unit. It was on the next “beat” of measure 11, and exactly on that cadential beat, that the son then put the forkful of food to his mouth. This kind of temporal articulation and accommodation of two different kinds, or strata, of orderings of interaction at the dinner table – the enacted social order of eating together and the enacted social order of conversing together – cannot be shown in playscript transcription nearly so clearly as it can by some sort of “horizontal” multimodal transcription that displays selected aspects of both speaking behavior and eating behavior. The quasi-musical transcript shown and discussed above is one way to transcribe to show the inter-digitation of talking and eating. (N.B. A video clip of this example of a dinner table conversation can be viewed on the internet by accessing the homepage of my faculty website at the University of California, Los Angeles. That address is <www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/members/ferickson>) The previously discussed multimodal transcript did not emphasize spatial or postural relationships between the various interactional participants and between individuals and particular objects in their own personal surrounds as individuals make use of those objects in their interaction. These can be shown concretely by line drawings (see especially Scheflen 1973 for examples ) or more abstractly by flow charts of various kinds. Sometimes the spatial displays are tied to a time line and sometimes it becomes necessary to represent spatial relationships and temporal relationships separately in diagrams. Hybrid approaches are also possible. It is now quite simple to import photographs from digital video into playscript transcription of speech (as is especially characteristic in the recent work of Goodwin) and the effect of this is to “interrupt” to some extent the logocentric implications of the playscript transcription. Formerly it was very expensive to print analytic charts in which information about interactional behavior was displayed “horizontally” on a time line, or in musical typescript. With the advent of digital typesetting, however, those costs have decreased substantially. In addition, digital video recording and analysis software also makes it logistically easier and less expensive than it used to be to collect and analyze audiovisual records of social interaction.

 Frederick Erickson

6. Conclusion The “multi-modality” of the semiotic means by which humans communicate with one another in social interaction has become more significant theoretically. As social interaction is considered as an ecosystem of mutual influence among participants (Goodwin in press calls this a “semiotic ecology”), the time may be ripe for renewed effort toward the study of space, time, and visual phenomena in social interaction. Scholars seem to be attending more and more to “multi-modal” aspects of the organization of social interaction, as if they were rediscovering the analytic and theoretical insights of the early “context analysts,” (see for example recent publications on “multi-modal discourse analysis” such as van Leeuewen and Jewitt 2000, Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, Levine and Scollon 2004, and the essay on action and embodiment by Goodwin 2000b. See also the special issue of Musicae Scientiae 1999/2000 on the musicality of social interaction, as well as van Leeuwen 1999 and Auer et al 1999.) Thus the prospect seems promising for nonverbal and temporal aspects of interaction to receive more attention in relation to speech than in the recent past. I hope that listening activity in relation to speaking activity, and other aspects of temporal and spatial organization in the conduct of social interaction by which information is made available to participants visually as well as auditorially, will be treated in the future as phenomena of serious research interest, providing better balance with our continuing analytic interests in the organization and uses of talk. References Auer, Peter, Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Müller, Frank. 1999. Language in time: The rhythm and tempo of spoken interaction. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. Press. Bateson, Gregory. 1956. “The message ‘this is play.’” In Group Processes. B. Schaffner (ed.). New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. Condon, William and Ogston, William D. 1967. “A segmentation of behavior.” Journal of Psychiatric Research 5: 221–235. Erickson, Frederick. 1986. “Listening and speaking.” Language and linguistics: The interdependence of theory, data, and interpretation. Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics 1985. In Deborah Tannen and James Alatis (eds.). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Erickson, Frederick. 1992. “They know all the lines: Rhythmic organization and contextualization in a conversational listing routine.” In The contextualization of language. Peter Auer and Aldo di Luzio (eds.). 365–397. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.



The neglected listener  Erickson, Frederick. 2003. Some notes on the musicality of speech. In Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics 2001. Deborah Tannen (ed.). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Erickson, Frederick. 2004. Talk and social theory: Ecologies of speaking and listening in everyday life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Erickson, Frederick. 2008. Musicality in talk and listening: A key element in classroom discourse as an environment for learning. In Communicative musicality: Exploring the basis of human companionship.€Stephen Malloch, S. and Colwyn Trevarthen (eds.). 449–463. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1964. The neglected situation. In The ethnography of communication. John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes (eds.). Special issue of American Anthropologist 66: 6, Part 2: 133–136. Goodwin, Charles. 1981. Conversational organization: Interactions between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press Goodwin, Charles. 2000a. “Practices of seeing”. In Handbook of visual analysis. T. van Leeuwen and C. Jewitt (eds.). London: Sage Publications. Goodwin, Charles. 2000b “Action and embodiment within situated human interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1489–1522. Goodwin, Charles. in press. “Constructing Meaning Through Prosody in Aphasia.” In Prosody in Interaction. Barth-Weingarten, D. Reber, E. and Selting, M. eds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Goodwin, Charles, and Heritage, John. “Conversation analysis.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 283–307 Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press. Hall, Edward T. 1966. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday. Heritage, John. and Atkinson, D. Maxwell. (1984) “Introduction.” In Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. J.Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press. Hanks, William 1996. Language and communicative practices. Boulder, CO: Westview Kendon, Adam. 1990. Conducting interaction: Patterns of behavior in focused encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press. Kendon, Adam. 1997. “Gesture.” Annual review of anthropology. 26: 109–128. Kress, Gunther and van Leeuwen, Theo. 2001 Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communiction. London: Arnold. Levine, Philip.€and Scollon, Ron. (eds.) 2004. Discourse and technology: Multimodal discourse analysis. Georgetown U. Press. Musicae Scientiae 1999/2000. Special issue of Musicae Scientiae: Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music 1999/2000. Ochs, Elinor. 1979. “Transcription as theory.” In Elinor Ochs and Bambi B. Schieffelin (eds.) Developmental pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. Prevignano, Carlo and Thibault, Paul. 2003 Discussing conversation analysis: The work of Emanuel A. Schegloff. Amsterdam and New York: John Benjamins. Ruesch, Juergen and Bateson, Gregory. 1951. Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry. New York: Norton. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974 A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language 50: 696–735. Scheflen, Albert. 1973. Communicational structure: Analysis of a psychotherapy transaction. Bloomington: Bloomington U. Press.

 Frederick Erickson Silverstein, Michael. 1976. “Shifters, verbal categories, and cultural description.” In Meaning in anthropology. K. Basso and H. Selby (eds.). Albuquerque: School of American Research. Silverstein, Michael. 1992. “The indeterminacy of contextualization: When is enough enough?” In The Contextualization of Language. P. Auer and A. di Luzio, (eds.) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. van Leeuwen, Theo. 1999. Speech, music, sound. New York: St. Martin’s Press. van Leeuwen, Theo. and Jewitt, Carey. 2000. Handbook of visual analysis. London: Sage Publications

Dialogical dynamics Inside the moment of speaking John Shotter

University of New Hampshire As I see it, all communication begins in, and continues with, our living, spontaneous, expressive-responsive (gestural), bodily activities that occur in the meetings between ourselves and the others and othenesses around us. Indeed, as living, embodied beings, we cannot not be responsive in some fashion to the expressions of others (spoken, written, or otherwise), and to other kinds of events, occurring in our immediate surroundings. In this article I outline methods for exploring the unfolding dynamics of our utterances in their speaking and how they can give rise to a ‘shaped’ and ‘vectored’ sense of our moment-bymoment changing placement within the situation of our talk – engendering in us both unique anticipations as to what-next might happen along with, so to speak, ‘action-guiding advisories’ as to what-next we might do.

“On the one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language ‘is in order as it is’. That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us. – On the other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order. So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence” (Wittgenstein 1953, no.98).

Much attention in linguistics has been paid to patterns of already spoken words, to the spatial shapes or forms of already completed acts of speaking.1 Instead, in this article, I want to focus attention on people’s words in their speaking, on what happens in the course of a person’s utterance, and on the dynamic ways in which 1. “If I had to say what is the main mistake made by philosophers of the present generation... I would say that it is that when language is looked at, what is looked at is a form of words and not the use made of the form of words” (Wittgenstein, 1966, p.2).

 John Shotter

people make use of words in the course of their other actions, as well as on the subtle details of how, as their use of words unfolds in responsive relation to those to whom they are addressed, people adjust their expressions accordingly. This, however, is an approach I came to only slowly. When I first began to study language (Shotter 1968), I was strongly influenced by Chomsky (1957, 1965). Central to his whole approach then was idealization: “Linguistic theory,” he said, “is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener...” (p.3). For, as he then saw it, due to “memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance” (p.3), our utterances, actual acts of speaking were too disorderly to study. Indeed: “A record of natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from rules, changes of plan in mid-course, and so on. The problem for the linguist, as well as for the child learning the language, is to determine from the data of performance the underlying system of rules that has been mastered by the speaker-hearer and that he puts to use in actual performance” (p.4). In other words, his central concern in his theory is with discovering the “mental reality” underlying actual behavior. Now, with reference to Wittgenstein’s (1953) remark above, my interest has switched completely to a focus on the deviations that Chomsky, rightly, sees as standing in the way of conducting a “natural scientific” investigation into the workings of language.2 In the dialogical approach to interaction and interaction analysis I now take, I have been centrally influenced, not by their theories – as they all especially eschew idealizations – but by certain specific utterances or expressions in the writings of Wittgenstein, Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Voloshinov, as well as drawing influences from expressions in Merleau-Ponty’s and Garfinkel’s writings. As I see it, all communication begins in, and continues with, our living, spontaneous, expressive-responsive (gestural), bodily activities that occur in the meetings between ourselves and the others and othenesses around us. Indeed, as living, embodied beings, we cannot not be responsive in some fashion to the expressions of others, as well as to other kinds of events, occurring in our immediate surroundings – hence my 2. “The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty. – We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!” (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.107). In other words, what Chomsky (1965) thinks of as “degraded” examples of language use – which makes the learning of the ideal principles of syntax difficult for a child – exemplify for Wittgenstein the rich details (many of) which contribute to the unique sense we make of a person’s expressions. For him, idealizations strip out essentials, not what is inessential.



Dialogical dynamics 

emphasis above on my own embodied responsiveness to the writings (the expressive-responsive utterances) of others. It is this that leads me to the view that, as I see it, abstract and general theories as such are of little help to us in the unique living of our unique lives together, whether as ordinary people or as professional practitioners. While the specific words of another person, uttered as a ‘reminder’ at a timely moment, can exert a crucial influence in the development and refinement of our ongoing activities and practices. Primarily, as I see it, it is the living, bodily activity of speaking to other people responsively that matters, that ‘moves’ them, not the simply displaying before them of patterned forms. And such spontaneously responsive occurrences can, as Garfinkel (1967) puts it continually occur “for ‘another first time’” (p.9). 1. Joint participation in a flow of spontaneously responsive activity: Shared ‘feelings of tendency’ In taking this approach, I was influenced early on by a remark of Vygotsky’s (1962) about the “basic laws governing human development.” As he saw it, “one of them is that consciousness and control appear only at a late stage in the development of a function, after it has been used and practiced unconsciously and spontaneously. In order to subject a function to intellectual and volitional control we must first possess it” (p.90). In other words, long before we are individually consciously aware of deliberately acting to achieve a goal, we are nonetheless coming to act unconsciously and spontaneously in ways intelligible to those around us. And, as was clear from all the rest of Vygotsky’s work, while we might possess as an aspect of our biological inheritance a great range of ‘lower’ psychological functions, the gradual growth of our voluntary ability to organize them into ‘higher’, more complex forms, comes about through other, already competent members of our verbal community, ‘in-structing’ us verbally in how do so: “All the higher psychic functions are mediated processes, and signs are the basic means used to master and direct them. The mediating sign is incorporated in their structure as an indispensable, indeed the central, part of the total process. In concept formation that sign is the word, which at first plays the role of means in forming the concept but later becomes its symbol” (1962:€56, my emphasis) – and one person’s words, their bodily voicing of an utterance, their expressions, can exert this immediate and spontaneous (gestural) effect on (and in) another person. And later, the speaking of their words to ourselves is “the means by which we [can come to] direct our mental operations, control their course, and channel them toward the solution of the problem confronting us” (Vygotsky 1962:€58).

 John Shotter

Thus, as I see it, from a dialogical point of view, our intellectual lives are not primarily based in picture-like mental representations, i.e., inner structures of only a formal (static patterned) kind, but in ‘inner’ dialogically-structured movements, in a dialogical dynamics giving rise to unfolding movements which shift this way and that in a distinctive fashion, movements whose ‘shape’ can be ‘felt’ or ‘sensed’ but not pictured, or known at all in a propositional form. These sensed or shaped ‘inner movements’ are, I take it, the “linguistic intuition[s] of the native speaker” against which such linguists as Chomsky (1965:€19)3 test their theories of syntactic structure, or other such general and abstract features of our use of language – what he now calls their “I-language” (Chomsky: 2000).4 But here, in talking of such sensed or felt ‘inner movements,’ i.e., of thought as not in any way separate from feeling, I am taking an approach toward these issues very different in kind to Chomsky’s: mine is a practical-descriptive kind of approach rather than a theoretical-explanatory one, as I will explain in a moment. For, in line with Vygotsky’s comments quoted above, from a dialogical point of view, our inner intellectual lives can be seen as consisting in an ‘orchestrated’ intertwining of many different kinds of influence: conscious and unconscious ones, cognitive and affective, deliberate and spontaneous, biologically given and culturally developed ones, and in fact, as we shall see, many others of a much more occasional or momentary kind that are at work in the immediate practical surroundings of a particular utterance. As William James (1980) noted in his famous “The Stream of Thought” chapter, we have failed in the past, in discussing the nature of such dynamic forms, to register “the transitive parts” of the stream and succumbed to an “undue emphasizing of [its] substantive parts [i.e., its resting-places]” (p.237). In so doing, we have tended to confuse “the thoughts themselves... and the things of which they are aware... [But, while] the things are discrete and discontinuous... their comings and goings and contrasts no more break the flow of thought that thinks them than they break the time and space in which they lie” (p.233). To break the stranglehold of this compulsion upon us, James entreats us thus: “Now what I contend for, 3. “... there is no way to avoid the traditional assumption that the speaker-hearer’s linguistic intuition is the ultimate standard that determines the accuracy of any proposed grammar, linguistic theory, or operational test, it must be emphasized, once again, that this tacit knowledge may very well not be immediately available to the user of the language” (Chomsky, 1965, p.21). 4. “... where I is to suggest ‘internalized’ (in the mind/brain) and ‘intensional’ (in that the procedure is a function of enumerating structural descriptions, considered in intension with a particular description)” (Chomsky, 2000, p.70). But he adds later, that he also uses “...’I” to suggest ‘internal’, ‘individual’, since this is a strictly internalist, individualist approach to language” (Chomsky, 2000, p.118) – while I would class my inquiries as ‘internalist’ also, it is in his ‘individualist’ orientation that he and I most obviously diverge.



Dialogical dynamics 

and accumulate examples to show, is that ‘tendencies’ are not only descriptions from without, but that they are among the objects of the stream, which is thus aware of them from within, and must be described as in very large measure large measure constituted of feelings of tendency, often so vague that we are unable to name them at all5 “(p. 246). And, in being aware of them from within, i.e., of the transitory parts of the inner stream of thought occurring within us, we find that as they unfold they provided us with both a ‘shaped’ and a ‘vectored’ sense of our moment-by-moment changing placement in our current surroundings. In short, we find such responsive feelings as engendering in us both unique anticipations as to what-next might happen along with, so to speak, ‘action-guiding advisories’ as to what-next we might do – in Wittgenstein’s (1953) terms, they can provide us with an immediate sense of how to “go on” in our current, practical circumstances. Elsewhere (Shotter 2005), I have explored such transitory understandings and action guiding anticipations extensively. But what I must do here, is to note that from a dialogical point of view, it is (mostly) out in the larger flow of inter-activity taking place between people whenever they meet, the flow within which they as individuals are ‘participant parts’, that the momentary dynamic stabilities of interest to us occur – not within the ‘stream of thought’ hidden inside people’s heads. I say ‘mostly’, as the back and forth flow of movement in such inter-activity, its ‘rhythm’, is of such a kind that, if we are being spontaneously responsive to the embodied expressions of others, then we are, so to speak, ‘resonating in tune with them’. And to the extent that we are jointly participating in this common rhythm with our whole being, both our ‘inner’ feelings and our ‘outer’ expressions share in, or partake of, it too. In such a short article as this, I cannot explore at any length the extensive array of complex issues arising out of our participation in dialogically-structured realities (but see Shotter 1996, 2003). But I do want to emphasize here one of its most important consequences: it is only in such meetings – and not in the heads of individuals – that we can find the starting points for our analyses. For it is in such meetings that we can find the beginnings of our language games. As Wittgenstein (1980) puts it: “The origin and the primitive form of the language game is,” he says (p.31), a reaction; only from this can more complicated forms develop.€Language – I want to say – is a refinement, ‘in the beginning was the deed’ (quoting Goethe)’.” “The primitive reaction may have been a glance or a gesture, but it may also have been a word” (1953:€218). “But what is the word ‘primitive’ meant to say here?” he asks, “Presumably that this sort of behavior is pre-linguistic: that a language-game 5. “The truth is that large tracts of human speech are nothing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we nevertheless have an acute discriminatory sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever” (p.244).

 John Shotter

is based on it, that it is the prototype of a way of thinking and not the result of thought” (1981: no.541). In other words – and this is a point of especial importance to practitioners – it is in the once-off, fleeting reactions occurring at the beginning of our meetings with others, that we can find the beginnings of the uniquely new ways of thinking required if we are to come to a grasp of the particular, concrete, never-before-encountered person or circumstances now confronting us. These moments, then, are moments of common reference, shared foundational moments that can function as shared starting points for the further exploration of the unique person or circumstance before us. 2. Developing our practices in practice Indeed, to go further, we clearly do not need to be able to explain our everyday utterances and actions scientifically, i.e., analyze them into a certain set of elements that combine in repetitive patterns to produce observed outcomes, to be able, through everyday reflection and inquiry, to improve them, to gain a more deliberate command of them. And to make this claim is not to reject the value of science in our lives. It is simply to note such facts, for instance, that in the course of their everyday involvements with them, in being spontaneous responsive to their children’s actions in a living, bodily, expressive manner, parents can (informally) teach their children, not only their mother tongue, but also countless other aspects of acceptable and intelligible behavior, without having any idea of the laws by which their children’s minds and bodies are governed. In other words, at work here in the spontaneous, living bodily interactions occurring unceasingly between all of us, not just parents with their children, is another kind of process of understanding and of acting expressively, quite different from that at work when we act deliberately and individually as scientists6 – a process that comes into play in, and can only come into play, in our living meetings with the others and othernesses around us, a dialogical form of understanding. Scientific understandings do work in terms of static, picture-like, inner mental representations, but our everyday, spontaneous, living understandings do not seem to work in this way. If Bakhtin (1986) is right, they work in terms of in inner, dialogically-structured movements, a dialogical dynamics, that gives rise to distinctive ‘movements’ whose shape can be felt or sensed but not pictured, i.e., not known in a propositional form. 6. “Can only logical analysis explain what we mean by the propositions of ordinary language? Moore is inclined to think so. Are people therefore ignorant of what they mean when they say ‘Today the sky is clearer than yesterday’? Do we have to wait for logical analysis here? What a hellish idea!” (Wittgenstein in Waismann, 1979, pp.€129–130).



Dialogical dynamics 

Crucial to this process, is the realization that there are, as Wittgenstein (1953) puts it, “countless different kinds of use of what we call ‘symbols’, ‘words’ ‘sentences’” (no.23), and that, besides people’s talk about states of affairs, in which something is pictured or portrayed, we need also to understand (among its many other uses) the expressive use of our embodied talk. Indeed, unless we can understand how others as 1st-persons, as ‘I’s’, manifest or exhibit crucial aspects of their ‘inner’ lives to us, e.g., their surety and confidence, their uncertainty or humility, their pomposity and arrogance, their respect or contempt for us, their anxiety and sadness, and so on, in the present moment of their acting, we cannot understand how, so to speak, to ‘relate’ to them. Tom Andersen (1996), a world-renowned Norwegian family therapist, in characterizing his therapeutic attitude to his client’s utterances, their words, comments as follows: “The listener who sees as much as he or she hears will notice that various spoken words ‘touch’ the speaker differently. The speaker is touched by the words as they reach his or her own ears. Some words touch the speaker in such a way that the listener can see him or her being moved... one example may clarify this. A woman had felt sad for a long while related that she could never ask for help, even when she was sick. Help had to be given by others, not asked for by her. “Because,” she explained, “independence was a big word in my family. We were supposed to be independent.” [JS: The voice of her father and mother at work in her – see the final sentence in this quote below.] A shift in her face and a drop in the voice when she uttered the word ‘independent’ indicated the meaningfulness of the word. When she was asked: “If you looked into that word ‘independence’, what might you see?” she first said that she did not like the word very much. Asked what she saw that she did not like, she put her hands to her face and said, weeping: “it is so hard for me to talk about loneliness... yes, it means staying alone.” As she told how hard it had been to stay alone in order to fulfill all expectations of her being independent, she cried and her body sank in resignation. She talked for a long while without interruption and started to wonder if she would be able to fulfill those expectations. Being more and more eagerly involved in her own discussion, her voice raised, and her neck and shoulders raised, and she talked more and more angrily as the idea of being-in-theworld as independent was forcefully challenged. Asked what her mother would see in the word, she replied that she would see strength; her father would also see strength, but of another kind. Her sister and grandmother would also see what she did” (p.212). In another case, Andersen (1996) brings to light further influences of (other’s) words on us: “One woman who had been hospitalized at a mental hospital for a year finally came to family therapy. Besides herself and her family and the family therapist, the doctor-in-chief at the hospital and her nurse contact at the ward were present. When she was asked if she had been given any diagnosis, she said: “a manic-depressive

 John Shotter

psychosis.” When she was asked if that diagnosis made any difference, she said it changed her life. She could no longer laugh and be happy nor be sad and cry, because she could see on the faces of those around her that they thought she might go manic or she might become depressed. She therefore had a new inner voice speaking to her all the time: “Don’t be happy and don’t be sad! Don’t laugh and don’t cry!” (pp.123–124). As Vygotsky (1962) noted above, words are “the means by which we direct our mental operations, control their course, and channel them toward the solution of the problem confronting us” (p.58). But clearly, as both Andersen’s two cases cited above suggest, and as Wittgenstein suggests throughout his later work, not all the words we learn from others orient us appropriately, many can also disorient or mislead us. Thus, as Wittgenstein (1953) puts it, with respect to the kind of ‘problems’ – or better, difficulties of orientation – we often face (but are often unconscious of) in our own human affairs: “A simile that has been absorbed into the forms of our language produces a false appearance, and this disquiets us. ‘But this isn’t how it is!’ we say. ‘Yet this is how it has to be!’” (no.112), i.e., this is how it has ‘to be’ if we are to be intelligible to, and accepted by, those around us as competent members of our social group.€“‘But this is how it is – ’ I say to myself over and over again. I feel as though, if only I could fix my gaze absolutely sharply on this fact, get it in focus, I must grasp the essence of the matter” (no.113). To cure ourselves of such bewilderments, we require “a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (no.109). But in this struggle, “there is not a philosophical method [JS - a methodology], though there are indeed methods, like different therapies” (no.133). 3. Methods for exploring how to improve our practices from within our conduct of the practices If we cannot work in terms of general theories, in terms of representations, to refine our practices in the unique circumstances of their performance, what can we do? The stance toward spoken words suggested above – that we think of the gestural meaning of our words-in-their-speaking as ordinarily working to draw our attention to the existing connections between our utterances and their circumstances – suggests that they can also be used extraordinarily, to draw our attention to how we do in fact make such connections. To repeat yet again Vygotsky’s (1962) comment that words are “the means by which we direct our mental operations, control their course, and channel them toward the solution of the problem confronting us” (p.58), it is clear that we can use certain ways of talking as



Dialogical dynamics 

psychological ‘tools’7, so to speak, as instruments or implements through which to responsively influence, not only the behavior of others, but our own as well. For these instructive forms of talk can, in practice – in terms of the feelings of tendency they can engender in us if we can dialogically engage with them – ‘move’ us to do something we would not otherwise do. Thus, in ‘gesturing’ or ‘pointing’ toward something in our circumstances, they can cause us to relate ourselves to our circumstances in a different way. This way of talking, however, involves a special form of talk, one that like poetic forms of talk uses quite ordinary words (no special technical words denoting technical concepts) juxtaposed in unusual, and thus ‘striking’ or ‘arresting’ combinations. Hence his remark about his style of philosophical writing: “philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition” (Wittgenstein, 1980, p.24). It is the ‘poetic’, ‘gestural’ function of his ‘instructive’ forms of talk that is their key feature. This is what gives them their ‘life’, their function ‘within’ our lives. He calls the remarks he uses to draw our attention to what is, in fact, already know to us, ‘reminders’. For, as he says: “Something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it [cf.€Augustine], is something we need to remind ourselves of ” (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.89). We are bringing to light what we are already doing spontaneously, in order later to do it deliberately.8 The ‘poetic methods’ he uses in his own writings work, first: (1) To arrest or interrupt (or ‘deconstruct’) the spontaneous, unconscious flow of our ongoing activity, and to give “prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of language easily make us overlook” (1953: no.132). Just as a mother might say to her young son: “Stop, look, see the dirty footmarks you’ve just made... wipe you feet next time you come it,” so his remarks draw our attention to unnoticed, but possibly to further socially significant features in our actions. (2) Then, we can note that is his talk is full of such expressions as “Think of...,” “Imagine...,” “It is like...,” “So one might say...,” “Suppose...,” and so on, all designed “to draw someone’s attention to the fact that he [or she] is capable of imagining [something]” (1953, no.144). They show us other possibilities present in a circumstance, where, in imagining something new, a person is “now... inclined to regard a given case differently: that is, to compare it with this rather than that set of pictures. I have changed his way of looking at things” (Wittgenstein 1953: no.144), he says. In other words, prospectively, he draws our attention to the fact that, from 7. But Mead (1934) also says, regarding gestures: “They became the tools through which the other forms responded” (p.44, my emphasis). 8. See Vygotsky’s (1962) account of one of the “basic laws governing human development” quoted at the beginning of this article.

 John Shotter

our position of involvement in things, there are always other possibilities available to us, other possible ways of ‘going on’.9 This suggests to us a third method that is sometimes important: (3) By the careful use of selected images, similes, analogies, metaphors, or ‘pictures’, he also suggests new ways of talking, new idioms, that not only orient us toward sensing otherwise unnoticed distinctions and relations for the first time, but which also suggest new connections and relations with the rest of our proceedings. This is closely connected with a fourth: (4) By the use of various kinds of objects of comparison, e.g., other possible ways of talking, other “language games” both actual and invented, etc., he tries “to throw light on the facts of our language by way of not only similarities, but also dissimilarities” (1953: no.130). For, by noticing how what occurs differs in a distinctive way from what we otherwise would expect, such comparisons can work, he notes, to establish “an order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order with a particular end in view; one of many possible orders; not the order” (1953: no.132) – where again, the goal is to achieve a kind of understanding that is useful in the ‘going on’ of a practice, the overcoming of a ‘disorientation’, of ‘not knowing one’s way about’.10 Such images, similes, and metaphors, etc., cannot represent any already fixed orders in our use of language, for, by their very nature, in being open to determination only in the context of their occurrence, they do not belong to any such orders. But what such invented concepts can do for us – in artificially creating a fixed order where none before existed – is to make aspects of our situated use of language publicly discussable and accountable. They provide a practical resource: a way of talking that works to draw our attention, in different ways in different contexts, to what otherwise we would not know how to attend. Other ways of talking, other relational stances or style (i.e., orientations), will function to bring out other connections. One can imagine many different aims. Though what is at stake in them all, is not so much the grasp by isolated individuals, of an inner ‘mental picture’ of a state of affairs, but a grasp of the actual, practical connections between aspects of our own communicative activities - influences that are present and at work in ‘shaping’ what we say in a particular circumstance.

9. Again, taking a practical stance toward the problems we face in human affairs, Wittgenstein (1953) suggests that “a philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’” (no.123). In practice, to understand something simply means being able to continue appropriately out in the practice, in the judgment of others, irrespective of what might be happening in one’s head as an individual. 10. But note, the order produced is not the order, but merely an order. It is the imposing of a single order of connectedness onto ongoing, complex, multi-dimensional, still developing, human phenomena, in the service of achieving a final explanation, that renders their living, dynamic nature rationally-invisible.



Dialogical dynamics 

These methods all contribute to the achievement of what he calls a “perspicuous representation” (German: übersichtliche Darstellung).” (5) It is as if the task is like the task we face in coming to feel ‘at home’ in a new town or city, so that we ‘know our way around’ within it without getting lost. Thus, as he puts it: “A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of our use of words. – Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’,” he says (Wittgenstein 1953: no.122). Where the kind of understanding he is after here is a practical understanding, an understanding that allows one to ‘go on’ in practice with one’s activities. In other words, a “perspicuous presentation” is a presentation in which “problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known” (Wittgenstein 1953: no.109) – so as we can move easily from one part of a landscape of possibilities to another. Thus, if we are ‘to find our way about’ inside our own linguistic forms of life, we need to grasp, to sense, their inner ‘landscape’, their ‘grammatical geographies’, so to speak. We might call all the methods above, ‘positive’ methods, in that they can perhaps lead us into new ways of acting that are a refinement or elaboration of our old ways. But some of his methods are, so to speak, ‘negative’ in that they are aimed at preventing us from ever again taking certain paths. (6) Thus, with respect to our temptation to look for hidden inner mental processes, he remarks: “Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all. – For that is the expression which confuses you,” he says (Wittgenstein 1953). “But ask yourself: in what sort of case, in which circumstances, do we say, ‘Now I know how to go on’...” (no.154). For, if it is our task ‘move about’ anywhere within a particular landscape of possibilities, anywhere where there might be new connections, new relationships, etc., to be made. For the task is not to map the old already established paths, but to trail blaze new ones. Lacking the appropriate sensibility to notice these relational phenomena, we have felt in the past that they require explanation in terms of special, mysterious, hidden factors, already existing either within us somewhere, or, within our circumstances - hence, our tendency to seek theories, and to search for something beyond our own human forms of life. But, suggests Wittgenstein (1953): “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one’s eyes.). The real foundations of his (sic) enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. – And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful” (no.129). However, we do not need theories to explain these phenomena, to explain our meaning in our talk, for there is nothing to be explained, because... there is nothing hidden or concealed. “How do sentences do it?” Wittgenstein (1953) asks rhetorically. And he

 John Shotter

answers: “Don’t you know? For nothing is hidden.” (no.435). For, in his view, words do not in themselves have a hidden meaning underlying them. Words in their speaking are just different ‘means’ or ‘devices’ that we can use in our making of meanings, with different words (like different tools) making available a range of different possible uses. Or better: We can use our words in their speaking in further specifying, in refining or making a difference to, the meanings already present in any circumstance in which people are in each other’s living presence. Where the words we use draw their power – their ability to change the whole character of the living flow of language entwined activity between us – very little from the words themselves. They merely function to make a crucial difference at a crucial moment, a moment that arises due to what we count as the history of its flow so far. 4. Conclusions: From ‘aboutness-thinking’ to ‘withness-thinking’ As professional academics, we have all been trained into a certain style of ‘rational’ thought, modeled on thinking in the physical sciences, a style aimed at discovering a supposed ideal ‘reality’ hidden behind appearances. When confronted with a perplexing (or astonishing) circumstance, we take it that our task is to analyze it (i.e., dissect it) into a unique set of separate elements, to find a pattern among the elements, and then to try to invent a theoretical schematism, functioning in terms of rules, laws, or principles, to account for the pattern so observed. In the arts, we express this method by seeking ‘the content’ supposed to be hidden in the ‘forms’ before us, by offering ‘interpretations’ supposed to ‘represent’ this content. In short, we formulate the circumstance in question as a ‘problem’ requiring a ‘solution’ or ‘explanation’ that those sitting in classrooms or seminar rooms can ‘see’, can ‘picture’. To the extent that this style of thought is based in mental representations of our own creation, it leads us into adopting a certain relationship to the phenomena before us: instead of looking into them more closely, we at first to turn ourselves away from them while we cudgel our brains in the attempt to construct an appropriate theoretical schematism into which to fit them, and only then to turn back toward them again, but now with an action in mind suggested to us by our theoretical representation of their nature. It achieves a very limited, selective account of nature – one in fact to do with becoming “masters and possessors of nature” (Descartes 1968:€78). Clearly, this Cartesian method of inquiry is a violent method that ignores all the already existing relations in virtue of which living things grow, develop, flower, die, but still reproduce others of their kind, thus to continue the unbroken stream of life on our planet. In it, living wholes are torn asunder (“We murder to dissect” – Wordsworth), and all the spontaneously responsive living activities occurring



Dialogical dynamics 

between us are excluded from our considerations. It is a style of thinking that ignores the fact that people’s meanings and understandings are in their responsive expressions and focuses only on hidden events supposedly occurring in their heads somewhere. Instead of thinking in terms of mastery and possession, in terms of a wholly controlling agency, what is it to think merely in terms of being a participant, a being that is as much controlled by one’s surroundings as controlling of them? According to Bakhtin (1993), those who know how to think in this way, “know how not to detach their performed act from its product, but rather how to relate both of them to the unitary and unique context of life and seek to determine them in that context as an indivisible unity” (footnote p.19). In other words, we do not think about an event or circumstance from afar, but think with it, as if feeling over its contours, in a comprehensive, responsive exploration of its living, expressive, surface(s). Thus, following Bakhtin, while resonating also with Wittgenstein, we can outline a distinction between what we might call ‘withness-‘ and ‘aboutness-thinking’ as follows: Withness (dialogic)-thinking is a form of reflective interaction that involves coming into living contact with an other’s living being, with their utterances, with their bodily expressions, their words, their ‘works’. It is a meeting of outsides, of surfaces, of ‘skins’ or of two kinds of ‘flesh’ (Merleau-Ponty 1968), such that they come into ‘touch’ with each other. They both touch and are touched, and in the relations between their outgoing touching and resultant incoming, responsive touches of the other, the sense of a ‘touching’ or ‘moving’ difference emerges. In the interplay of living movements intertwining with each other, new possibilities of relation are engendered, new interconnections are made, new ‘shapes’ of experience can emerge. A reflective encounter of this kind is thus not simply a ‘seeing’ of objects, for what is sensed is invisible; nor is it an interpretation (a representation), for it arises directly and immediately in one’s living encounter with an other’s expressions; neither is it merely a feeling, for carries with it as it unfolds a bodily sense of the possibilities for responsive action in relation to one’s momentary placement, position, or orientation in the present interaction. In short, we are spontaneously ‘moved’ toward specific possibilities for action in such thinking. While in aboutness (monologic)thinking, “(in its extreme pure form) another person remains wholly and merely an object of consciousness, and not another consciousness... Monologue is finalized and deaf to the other’s response, does not expect it and does not acknowledge in it any decisive force” (Bakhtin 1984:€293). It works simply in terms of ‘pictures’, thus, even when we ‘get the picture’, we still have to decide, intellectually, on a right course of action. Interpretation is necessary. But in thinking ‘with’ an other’s voice, with their utterances, in mind, we can begin to see another very different way in which

 John Shotter

what we call ‘theory’ can be an influence in, literally, ‘instructing’ us in our practical actions out in the world of our everyday, practical affairs. Instead of turning away from the events before us to bury ourselves in thought, in an attempt to fit them into an appropriate theoretical scheme in order to respond to them later in its terms, we can turn ourselves responsively toward them, to find in our reactions to them the beginnings of new language games. This opens up to possibility of our responding to them in their terms. But more than this, we can begin an intensive (i.e., detailed) and extensive, exploratory interaction with them, approaching them this way and that way, ‘moved’ to act in this way and that, in accord with the beneficial “reminders”11 issued to us by others as a result of their explorations. In other words, seeing, thinking, and acting with another’s words in mind can itself be a thoughtful, feelingful, way of seeing, thinking, or acting; while thinking with another’s words in mind can also be a feelingful, seeingful, way of thinking – a way of seeing and thinking that brings one into a close and personal, living contact with one’s surroundings, with their subtle but mattering details. In this, of course, there is no end to the ways in which we can find the words of others helpful to us in our practices. This, then, is a style of seeingful and feelingful thought that can be of help to us in our practical daily affairs, and in further explorations of our own human lives together – in ordinary interpersonal communication, psychotherapy, intercultural communication, management, administration, government, etc., and, in fact, in science, in understanding how ‘aboutness (monological)-thinking’ actually works. Thus, in psychotherapy, therapists may, at a moment of indecision of next to ‘go on’ in their practice with a client, might find Tom Andersen’s (1996) words reminding them of something to attend to: “The speaker is touched by the words as they reach his or her own ears. Some words touch the speaker in such a way that the listener can see him or her being moved...” And as a result, regain their lost orientation. In other words, as Wittgenstein (1953, no.98) remarked above, it is only because our ordinary everyday talk is ‘in order as it is’ that psychotherapists such as Tom Andersen can work as they do.12

11. “The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose” (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.127). 12. Tom Andersen tragically died on May 15, 2007 from injuries when he fell on the rocky Norwegian coast while walking his dog Chico. The first draft of this article was written before his death. He was a much beloved friend whom I miss enormously.



Dialogical dynamics 

References Anderson, Tom. 1996 “Language is not innocent.” In Handbook of Relational Diagnosis and Dysfunctional Family Patterns. F.W.Kaslow (ed.) New York: John Wiley. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1984 Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and trans. by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1986 Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. by Vern W. McGee. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M Mikhail M. 1993 Toward a Philosophy of the Act, with translation and notes by Vadim Lianpov, edited by Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1957 Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton & Co. Chomsky, Noam. 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2000 New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McGuiness, Brian F. Ed. 1979 Ludwig Witttgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friederich Waismann. Oxford: Blackwell. Mead, George Herbert. 1934 Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968 The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press. Shotter, John. 1968 “A note on a machine that “learns” rules.” British Journal of Psycholology, 59: 173–177. Shotter, John. 1997 “Dialogical realities: the ordinary, the everyday, and other strange new worlds.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 27: 345–357. Shotter, John. 2003 “Real presences: Meaning as living movement in a participatory world.” Theory & Psychology, 134: 435–468. Shotter, John. 2005 “Inside processes: transitory understandings, action guiding anticipations, and withness thinking.” International Journal of Action Research, 11: 157–189. Vygotsky, Lew S. 1962 Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953 Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1966 Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Cyril Barrett (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1980 Culture and Value. Introduction by Georg Hendrik Von Wright, translated by Peter. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell.

Author index A Andersen╇ 263, 268 Auroux╇ 17 B Bakhtin╇ 262 Bateson╇ 16, 223-224 Blumer╇ 172 C Carlson╇ 25 Chomsky╇ 258, 260 Cowley╇ 51, 60 D Davies╇ 132-133 E Edwards╇ 111-112 G Garfinkel╇ 12

Giddens╇ 127-128 Goffman╇ 11, 173-174, 179, 245 Gumperz╇ 1, 12, 16, 48, 63-64, 84, 131, 145 H Halliday╇ 103 Harré╇ 132-133 Heidegger╇ 236-237 J James╇ 258 L Lerner╇ 99 Levinson╇ 72, 238 M McIntosh╇ 176 Mead╇ 225 Merleau-Ponty236

O Ochs╇ 244 P Prevignano╇ 1, 8, 48 S Sacks╇ 73, 102, 130-131 Schegloff╇ 1, 11, 14-15, 16-17, 18, 100-101, 145 T Thibault╇ 1, 8, 48 V Vygotski╇ 258, 259, 264 W Weigand ╇ 15 Wittgenstein╇ 258, 262, 264, 265

Subject index A aboutness thinking╇ 268–269 activity analysis╇ 178–180, 192 adjacency pair╇ 74–78 anticipative dynamics╇ 51 B body in communication╇ 235–237 C category entitlements╇ 105 cognitive resource╇ 52 collective intentionality╇ 26 communication disorders╇ 199, 201, 206 communicative approach to interaction╇ 158 compliment╇ 78–79, 81–86 context╇ 83–86, 106, 223–226 context analysis╇ 245 contextualization╇ 63–64 contextualization cues╇ 48, 159, 223, 246 conversation analysis╇ 129, 160–161, 204 D debate╇ 31 dialogical point of view╇ 261 discourse╇ 147 disciplinary╇ 156 discursive architecture╇ 27 discursive psychology╇ 103 distributed cognition╇ 47, 60–61 distributed language╇ 61 dynamical system╇ 239 E enslavement╇ 53, 63–64 expertise╇ 167–168, 170–172 expert system╇ 167–169 F face-work╇ 78–80, 90

feelings of tendency╇ 261, 265 formulation╇ 110 G genetic counseling╇ 180–191 gesture╇ 223–226, 237 greeting╇ 75, 78, 82–83, 87–89 group interaction╇ 154 H human agency╇ 64 I interaction order╇ 12–16 interactinal analysis╇ 214 interactionist paradigm╇ 10–12, 16 interactionist turn╇ 172 interpretation╇ 80–83, 91–93 inter-subjectivity╇ 126, 130 L lay expert╇ 170 lexico-grammatical difficulties╇ 204 listener╇ 243 M meaning ideational╇ 114 interpersonal╇ 111 textual╇ 116 metafunction╇ 107 misunderstandings╇ 200–202 move╇ 75–76 P patterns of already spoken words╇ 257 pico scale╇ 48, 52, 57, 58 politeness╇ 72 positional sensitivity╇ 103 positioning theory╇ 126, 132, 133 practical theory╇ 147

praxeology╇ 236–237 preference╇ 74 preference organization╇ 78–80 psychological functions higher╇ 259 lower╇ 259 R real-time dynamics╇ 66 rhythmic entrainment╇ 53 S sense-making ╇ 50 sequence╇ 74, 77 sequentiality╇ 82–84 script formulation╇ 111 speech acts╇ 22, 74–75 storyline╇ 132, 133, 137, 138, 141, 143 structuration theory╇ 127–128 symbolic interactionism╇ 127 systemic-functional framework╇ 205–206 T theme╇ ╇ 106 third-position repair╇ 14 transcription╇ 244, 246–253 traumatic brain injury╇ 200–201, 206 U units╇ 74 V voice dynamics╇ 48 W withness thinking╇ 268–269 Wittgenstein’s poetic methods╇ 265 words in their speaking╇ 257

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series A complete list of titles in this series can be found on www.benjamins.com 203 Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo, Marjut Johansson and Mia Raitaniemi (eds.): Discourses in Interaction. ca. 300 pp. Expected December 2010 202 Hasegawa, Yoko: Soliloquy in Japanese and English. ix, 223 + index. Expected November 2010 201 Zufferey, Sandrine: Lexical Pragmatics and Theory of Mind. The acquisition of connectives. 2010. ix, 192 pp. 200 Mullan, Kerry: Expressing Opinions in French and Australian English Discourse. A semantic and interactional analysis. xvii, 279 pp. + index. Expected October 2010 199 Hoffmann, Christian R. (ed.): Narrative Revisited. Telling a story in the age of new media. vii, 265 pp. + index. Expected October 2010 198 Limberg, Holger: The Interactional Organization of Academic Talk. Office hour consultations. 2010. xiv, 397 pp. 197 Dedaić, Mirjana N. and Mirjana Mišković-Luković (eds.): South Slavic Discourse Particles. 2010. ix, 166 pp. 196 Streeck, Jürgen (ed.): New Adventures in Language and Interaction. 2010. vi, 275 pp. 195 Pahta, Päivi, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.): Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English. 2010. viii, 241 pp. 194 Kühnlein, Peter, Anton Benz and Candace L. Sidner (eds.): Constraints in Discourse 2. 2010. v, 180 pp. 193 Suomela-Salmi, Eija and Fred Dervin (eds.): Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Academic Discourse. 2009. vi, 299 pp. 192 Filipi, Anna: Toddler and Parent Interaction. The organisation of gaze, pointing and vocalisation. 2009. xiii, 268 pp. 191 Ogiermann, Eva: On Apologising in Negative and Positive Politeness Cultures. 2009. x, 296 pp. 190 Finch, Jason, Martin Gill, Anthony Johnson, Iris Lindahl-Raittila, Inna Lindgren, Tuija Virtanen and Brita Wårvik (eds.): Humane Readings. Essays on literary mediation and communication in honour of Roger D. Sell. 2009. xi, 160 pp. 189 Peikola, Matti, Janne Skaffari and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen (eds.): Instructional Writing in English. Studies in honour of Risto Hiltunen. 2009. xiii, 240 pp. 188 Giltrow, Janet and Dieter Stein (eds.): Genres in the Internet. Issues in the theory of genre. 2009. ix, 294 pp. 187 Jucker, Andreas H. (ed.): Early Modern English News Discourse. Newspapers, pamphlets and scientific news discourse. 2009. vii, 227 pp. 186 Callies, Marcus: Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English. The syntax–pragmatics interface in second language acquisition. 2009. xviii, 293 pp. 185 Mazzon, Gabriella: Interactive Dialogue Sequences in Middle English Drama. 2009. ix, 228 pp. 184 Stenström, Anna-Brita and Annette Myre Jørgensen (eds.): Youngspeak in a Multilingual Perspective. 2009. vi, 206 pp. 183 Nurmi, Arja, Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-Collin (eds.): The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800). 2009. vii, 312 pp. 182 Norrick, Neal R. and Delia Chiaro (eds.): Humor in Interaction. 2009. xvii, 238 pp. 181 Maschler, Yael: Metalanguage in Interaction. Hebrew discourse markers. 2009. xvi, 258 pp. 180 Jones, Kimberly and Tsuyoshi Ono (eds.): Style Shifting in Japanese. 2008. vii, 335 pp. 179 Simões Lucas Freitas, Elsa: Taboo in Advertising. 2008. xix, 214 pp. 178 Schneider, Klaus P. and Anne Barron (eds.): Variational Pragmatics. A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. 2008. vii, 371 pp. 177 Rue, Yong-Ju and Grace Zhang: Request Strategies. A comparative study in Mandarin Chinese and Korean. 2008. xv, 320 pp. 176 Jucker, Andreas H. and Irma Taavitsainen (eds.): Speech Acts in the History of English. 2008. viii, 318 pp. 175 Gómez González, María de los Ængeles, J. Lachlan Mackenzie and Elsa M. González Ælvarez (eds.): Languages and Cultures in Contrast and Comparison. 2008. xxii, 364 pp.

174 Heyd, Theresa: Email Hoaxes. Form, function, genre ecology. 2008. vii, 239 pp. 173 Zanotto, Mara Sophia, Lynne Cameron and Marilda C. Cavalcanti (eds.): Confronting Metaphor in Use. An applied linguistic approach. 2008. vii, 315 pp. 172 Benz, Anton and Peter Kühnlein (eds.): Constraints in Discourse. 2008. vii, 292 pp. 171 Félix-Brasdefer, J. César: Politeness in Mexico and the United States. A contrastive study of the realization and perception of refusals. 2008. xiv, 195 pp. 170 Oakley, Todd and Anders Hougaard (eds.): Mental Spaces in Discourse and Interaction. 2008. vi, 262 pp. 169 Connor, Ulla, Ed Nagelhout and William Rozycki (eds.): Contrastive Rhetoric. Reaching to intercultural rhetoric. 2008. viii, 324 pp. 168 Proost, Kristel: Conceptual Structure in Lexical Items. The lexicalisation of communication concepts in English, German and Dutch. 2007. xii, 304 pp. 167 Bousfield, Derek: Impoliteness in Interaction. 2008. xiii, 281 pp. 166 Nakane, Ikuko: Silence in Intercultural Communication. Perceptions and performance. 2007. xii, 240 pp. 165 Bublitz, Wolfram and Axel Hübler (eds.): Metapragmatics in Use. 2007. viii, 301 pp. 164 Englebretson, Robert (ed.): Stancetaking in Discourse. Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction. 2007. viii, 323 pp. 163 Lytra, Vally: Play Frames and Social Identities. Contact encounters in a Greek primary school. 2007. xii, 300 pp. 162 Fetzer, Anita (ed.): Context and Appropriateness. Micro meets macro. 2007. vi, 265 pp. 161 Celle, Agnès and Ruth Huart (eds.): Connectives as Discourse Landmarks. 2007. viii, 212 pp. 160 Fetzer, Anita and Gerda Eva Lauerbach (eds.): Political Discourse in the Media. Cross-cultural perspectives. 2007. viii, 379 pp. 159 Maynard, Senko K.: Linguistic Creativity in Japanese Discourse. Exploring the multiplicity of self, perspective, and voice. 2007. xvi, 356 pp. 158 Walker, Terry: Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues. Trials, Depositions, and Drama Comedy. 2007. xx, 339 pp. 157 Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda: The Language of Business Studies Lectures. A corpus-assisted analysis. 2007. xvi, 236 pp. 156 Vega Moreno, Rosa E.: Creativity and Convention. The pragmatics of everyday figurative speech. 2007. xii, 249 pp. 155 Hedberg, Nancy and Ron Zacharski (eds.): The Grammar–Pragmatics Interface. Essays in honor of Jeanette K. Gundel. 2007. viii, 345 pp. 154 Hübler, Axel: The Nonverbal Shift in Early Modern English Conversation. 2007. x, 281 pp. 153 Arnovick, Leslie K.: Written Reliquaries. The resonance of orality in medieval English texts. 2006. xii, 292 pp. 152 Warren, Martin: Features of Naturalness in Conversation. 2006. x, 272 pp. 151 Suzuki, Satoko (ed.): Emotive Communication in Japanese. 2006. x, 234 pp. 150 Busse, Beatrix: Vocative Constructions in the Language of Shakespeare. 2006. xviii, 525 pp. 149 Locher, Miriam A.: Advice Online. Advice-giving in an American Internet health column. 2006. xvi, 277 pp. 148 Fløttum, Kjersti, Trine Dahl and Torodd Kinn: Academic Voices. Across languages and disciplines. 2006. x, 309 pp. 147 Hinrichs, Lars: Codeswitching on the Web. English and Jamaican Creole in e-mail communication. 2006. x, 302 pp. 146 Tanskanen, Sanna-Kaisa: Collaborating towards Coherence. Lexical cohesion in English discourse. 2006. ix, 192 pp. 145 Kurhila, Salla: Second Language Interaction. 2006. vii, 257 pp. 144 Bührig, Kristin and Jan D. ten Thije (eds.): Beyond Misunderstanding. Linguistic analyses of intercultural communication. 2006. vi, 339 pp. 143 Baker, Carolyn, Michael Emmison and Alan Firth (eds.): Calling for Help. Language and social interaction in telephone helplines. 2005. xviii, 352 pp. 142 Sidnell, Jack: Talk and Practical Epistemology. The social life of knowledge in a Caribbean community. 2005. xvi, 255 pp.

141 Zhu, Yunxia: Written Communication across Cultures. A sociocognitive perspective on business genres. 2005. xviii, 216 pp. 140 Butler, Christopher S., María de los Ængeles Gómez González and Susana M. Doval-Suárez (eds.): The Dynamics of Language Use. Functional and contrastive perspectives. 2005. xvi, 413 pp. 139 Lakoff, Robin T. and Sachiko Ide (eds.): Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. 2005. xii, 342 pp. 138 Müller, Simone: Discourse Markers in Native and Non-native English Discourse. 2005. xviii, 290 pp. 137 Morita, Emi: Negotiation of Contingent Talk. The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa. 2005. xvi, 240 pp. 136 Sassen, Claudia: Linguistic Dimensions of Crisis Talk. Formalising structures in a controlled language. 2005. ix, 230 pp. 135 Archer, Dawn: Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640–1760). A sociopragmatic analysis. 2005. xiv, 374 pp. 134 Skaffari, Janne, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen and Brita Wårvik (eds.): Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past. 2005. x, 418 pp. 133 Marnette, Sophie: Speech and Thought Presentation in French. Concepts and strategies. 2005. xiv, 379 pp. 132 Onodera, Noriko O.: Japanese Discourse Markers. Synchronic and diachronic discourse analysis. 2004. xiv, 253 pp. 131 Janoschka, Anja: Web Advertising. New forms of communication on the Internet. 2004. xiv, 230 pp. 130 Halmari, Helena and Tuija Virtanen (eds.): Persuasion Across Genres. A linguistic approach. 2005. x, 257 pp. 129 Taboada, María Teresa: Building Coherence and Cohesion. Task-oriented dialogue in English and Spanish. 2004. xvii, 264 pp. 128 Cordella, Marisa: The Dynamic Consultation. A discourse analytical study of doctor–patient communication. 2004. xvi, 254 pp. 127 Brisard, Frank, Michael Meeuwis and Bart Vandenabeele (eds.): Seduction, Community, Speech. A Festschrift for Herman Parret. 2004. vi, 202 pp. 126 Wu, Yi’an: Spatial Demonstratives in English and Chinese. Text and Cognition. 2004. xviii, 236 pp. 125 Lerner, Gene H. (ed.): Conversation Analysis. Studies from the first generation. 2004. x, 302 pp. 124 Vine, Bernadette: Getting Things Done at Work. The discourse of power in workplace interaction. 2004. x, 278 pp. 123 Márquez Reiter, Rosina and María Elena Placencia (eds.): Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish. 2004. xvi, 383 pp. 122 González, Montserrat: Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative. The case of English and Catalan. 2004. xvi, 410 pp. 121 Fetzer, Anita: Recontextualizing Context. Grammaticality meets appropriateness. 2004. x, 272 pp. 120 Aijmer, Karin and Anna-Brita Stenström (eds.): Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora. 2004. viii, 279 pp. 119 Hiltunen, Risto and Janne Skaffari (eds.): Discourse Perspectives on English. Medieval to modern. 2003. viii, 243 pp. 118 Cheng, Winnie: Intercultural Conversation. 2003. xii, 279 pp. 117 Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina: Stance in Talk. A conversation analysis of Mandarin final particles. 2004. xvi, 260 pp. 116 Grant, Colin B. (ed.): Rethinking Communicative Interaction. New interdisciplinary horizons. 2003. viii, 330 pp. 115 Kärkkäinen, Elise: Epistemic Stance in English Conversation. A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. 2003. xii, 213 pp. 114 Kühnlein, Peter, Hannes Rieser and Henk Zeevat (eds.): Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium. 2003. xii, 400 pp. 113 Panther, Klaus-Uwe and Linda L. Thornburg (eds.): Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing. 2003. xii, 285 pp. 112 Lenz, Friedrich (ed.): Deictic Conceptualisation of Space, Time and Person. 2003. xiv, 279 pp. 111 Ensink, Titus and Christoph Sauer (eds.): Framing and Perspectivising in Discourse. 2003. viii, 227 pp.

110 Androutsopoulos, Jannis K. and Alexandra Georgakopoulou (eds.): Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. 2003. viii, 343 pp. 109 Mayes, Patricia: Language, Social Structure, and Culture. A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America. 2003. xiv, 228 pp. 108 Barron, Anne: Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. 2003. xviii, 403 pp. 107 Taavitsainen, Irma and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.): Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. 2003. viii, 446 pp. 106 Busse, Ulrich: Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus. Morpho-syntactic variability of second person pronouns. 2002. xiv, 344 pp. 105 Blackwell, Sarah E.: Implicatures in Discourse. The case of Spanish NP anaphora. 2003. xvi, 303 pp. 104 Beeching, Kate: Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. 2002. x, 251 pp. 103 Fetzer, Anita and Christiane Meierkord (eds.): Rethinking Sequentiality. Linguistics meets conversational interaction. 2002. vi, 300 pp. 102 Leafgren, John: Degrees of Explicitness. Information structure and the packaging of Bulgarian subjects and objects. 2002. xii, 252 pp. 101 Luke, K.K. and Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou (eds.): Telephone Calls. Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures. 2002. x, 295 pp. 100 Jaszczolt, Katarzyna M. and Ken Turner (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 2. 2003. viii, 496 pp. 99 Jaszczolt, Katarzyna M. and Ken Turner (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 1. 2003. xii, 388 pp. 98 Duszak, Anna (ed.): Us and Others. Social identities across languages, discourses and cultures. 2002. viii, 522 pp. 97 Maynard, Senko K.: Linguistic Emotivity. Centrality of place, the topic-comment dynamic, and an ideology of pathos in Japanese discourse. 2002. xiv, 481 pp. 96 Haverkate, Henk: The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood. 2002. vi, 241 pp. 95 Fitzmaurice, Susan M.: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A pragmatic approach. 2002. viii, 263 pp. 94 McIlvenny, Paul (ed.): Talking Gender and Sexuality. 2002. x, 332 pp. 93 Baron, Bettina and Helga Kotthoff (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on femininity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. 2002. xxiv, 357 pp. 92 Gardner, Rod: When Listeners Talk. Response tokens and listener stance. 2001. xxii, 281 pp. 91 Gross, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. 2001. xxviii, 341 pp. 90 Kenesei, István and Robert M. Harnish (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. xxii, 352 pp. 89 Itakura, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. xviii, 231 pp. 88 Bayraktaroğlu, Arın and Maria Sifianou (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. The case of Greek and Turkish. 2001. xiv, 439 pp. 87 Mushin, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative Retelling. 2001. xviii, 244 pp. 86 Ifantidou, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. 2001. xii, 225 pp. 85 Collins, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. xx, 384 pp. 84 Andersen, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. ix, 352 pp. 83 Márquez Reiter, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. xviii, 225 pp. 82 Khalil, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. x, 274 pp. 81 Di Luzio, Aldo, Susanne Günthner and Franca Orletti (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. 2001. xvi, 341 pp. 80 Ungerer, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. xiv, 286 pp. 79 Andersen, Gisle and Thorstein Fretheim (eds.): Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude. 2000. viii, 273 pp. 78 Sell, Roger D.: Literature as Communication. The foundations of mediating criticism. 2000. xiv, 348 pp. 77 Vanderveken, Daniel and Susumu Kubo (eds.): Essays in Speech Act Theory. 2002. vi, 328 pp. 76 Matsui, Tomoko: Bridging and Relevance. 2000. xii, 251 pp.

75 Pilkington, Adrian: Poetic Effects. A relevance theory perspective. 2000. xiv, 214 pp. 74 Trosborg, Anna (ed.): Analysing Professional Genres. 2000. xvi, 256 pp. 73 Hester, Stephen K. and David Francis (eds.): Local Educational Order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. 2000. viii, 326 pp. 72 Marmaridou, Sophia: Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. 2000. xii, 322 pp. 71 Gómez González, María de los Ængeles: The Theme–Topic Interface. Evidence from English. 2001. xxiv, 438 pp. 70 Sorjonen, Marja-Leena: Responding in Conversation. A study of response particles in Finnish. 2001. x, 330 pp. 69 Noh, Eun-Ju: Metarepresentation. A relevance-theory approach. 2000. xii, 242 pp. 68 Arnovick, Leslie K.: Diachronic Pragmatics. Seven case studies in English illocutionary development. 2000. xii, 196 pp. 67 Taavitsainen, Irma, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta (eds.): Writing in Nonstandard English. 2000. viii, 404 pp. 66 Jucker, Andreas H., Gerd Fritz and Franz Lebsanft (eds.): Historical Dialogue Analysis. 1999. viii, 478 pp. 65 Cooren, François: The Organizing Property of Communication. 2000. xvi, 272 pp. 64 Svennevig, Jan: Getting Acquainted in Conversation. A study of initial interactions. 2000. x, 384 pp. 63 Bublitz, Wolfram, Uta Lenk and Eija Ventola (eds.): Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to create it and how to describe it. Selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24-27 April 1997. 1999. xiv, 300 pp. 62 Tzanne, Angeliki: Talking at Cross-Purposes. The dynamics of miscommunication. 2000. xiv, 263 pp. 61 Mills, Margaret H. (ed.): Slavic Gender Linguistics. 1999. xviii, 251 pp. 60 Jacobs, Geert: Preformulating the News. An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases. 1999. xviii, 428 pp. 59 Kamio, Akio and Ken-ichi Takami (eds.): Function and Structure. In honor of Susumu Kuno. 1999. x, 398 pp. 58 Rouchota, Villy and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.): Current Issues in Relevance Theory. 1998. xii, 368 pp. 57 Jucker, Andreas H. and Yael Ziv (eds.): Discourse Markers. Descriptions and theory. 1998. x, 363 pp. 56 Tanaka, Hiroko: Turn-Taking in Japanese Conversation. A Study in Grammar and Interaction. 2000. xiv, 242 pp. 55 Allwood, Jens and Peter Gärdenfors (eds.): Cognitive Semantics. Meaning and cognition. 1999. x, 201 pp. 54 Hyland, Ken: Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. 1998. x, 308 pp. 53 Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt: The Function of Discourse Particles. A study with special reference to spoken standard French. 1998. xii, 418 pp. 52 Gillis, Steven and Annick De Houwer (eds.): The Acquisition of Dutch. With a Preface by Catherine E. Snow. 1998. xvi, 444 pp. 51 Boulima, Jamila: Negotiated Interaction in Target Language Classroom Discourse. 1999. xiv, 338 pp. 50 Grenoble, Lenore A.: Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse. 1998. xviii, 338 pp. 49 Kurzon, Dennis: Discourse of Silence. 1998. vi, 162 pp. 48 Kamio, Akio: Territory of Information. 1997. xiv, 227 pp. 47 Chesterman, Andrew: Contrastive Functional Analysis. 1998. viii, 230 pp. 46 Georgakopoulou, Alexandra: Narrative Performances. A study of Modern Greek storytelling. 1997. xvii, 282 pp. 45 Paltridge, Brian: Genre, Frames and Writing in Research Settings. 1997. x, 192 pp. 44 Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca and Sandra J. Harris: Managing Language. The discourse of corporate meetings. 1997. ix, 295 pp. 43 Janssen, Theo and Wim van der Wurff (eds.): Reported Speech. Forms and functions of the verb. 1996. x, 312 pp. 42 Kotthoff, Helga and Ruth Wodak (eds.): Communicating Gender in Context. 1997. xxvi, 424 pp. 41 Ventola, Eija and Anna Mauranen (eds.): Academic Writing. Intercultural and textual issues. 1996. xiv, 258 pp. 40 Diamond, Julie: Status and Power in Verbal Interaction. A study of discourse in a close-knit social network. 1996. viii, 184 pp. 39 Herring, Susan C. (ed.): Computer-Mediated Communication. Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives. 1996. viii, 326 pp.

38 Fretheim, Thorstein and Jeanette K. Gundel (eds.): Reference and Referent Accessibility. 1996. xii, 312 pp. 37 Carston, Robyn and Seiji Uchida (eds.): Relevance Theory. Applications and implications. 1998. x, 300 pp. 36 Chilton, Paul, Mikhail V. Ilyin and Jacob L. Mey (eds.): Political Discourse in Transition in Europe 1989–1991. 1998. xi, 272 pp. 35 Jucker, Andreas H. (ed.): Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. 1995. xvi, 624 pp. 34 Barbe, Katharina: Irony in Context. 1995. x, 208 pp. 33 Goossens, Louis, Paul Pauwels, Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen and Johan Vanparys: By Word of Mouth. Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in a cognitive perspective. 1995. xii, 254 pp. 32 Shibatani, Masayoshi and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.): Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics. In honor of Charles J. Fillmore. 1996. x, 322 pp. 31 Wildgen, Wolfgang: Process, Image, and Meaning. A realistic model of the meaning of sentences and narrative texts. 1994. xii, 281 pp. 30 Wortham, Stanton E.F.: Acting Out Participant Examples in the Classroom. 1994. xiv, 178 pp. 29 Barsky, Robert F.: Constructing a Productive Other. Discourse theory and the Convention refugee hearing. 1994. x, 272 pp. 28 Van de Walle, Lieve: Pragmatics and Classical Sanskrit. A pilot study in linguistic politeness. 1993. xii, 454 pp. 27 Suter, Hans-Jürg: The Wedding Report. A prototypical approach to the study of traditional text types. 1993. xii, 314 pp. 26 Stygall, Gail: Trial Language. Differential discourse processing and discursive formation. 1994. xii, 226 pp. 25 Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth: English Speech Rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. 1993. x, 346 pp. 24 Maynard, Senko K.: Discourse Modality. Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. 1993. x, 315 pp. 23 Fortescue, Michael, Peter Harder and Lars Kristoffersen (eds.): Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Papers from the Functional Grammar Conference, Copenhagen, 1990. 1992. xiii, 444 pp. 22 Auer, Peter and Aldo Di Luzio (eds.): The Contextualization of Language. 1992. xvi, 402 pp. 21 Searle, John R., Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren: (On) Searle on Conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren. 1992. vi, 154 pp. 20 Nuyts, Jan: Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. 1991. xii, 399 pp. 19 Baker, Carolyn and Allan Luke (eds.): Towards a Critical Sociology of Reading Pedagogy. Papers of the XII World Congress on Reading. 1991. xxi, 287 pp. 18 Johnstone, Barbara: Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. 1991. viii, 130 pp. 17 Piéraut-Le Bonniec, Gilberte and Marlene Dolitsky (eds.): Language Bases ... Discourse Bases. Some aspects of contemporary French-language psycholinguistics research. 1991. vi, 342 pp. 16 Mann, William C. and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.): Discourse Description. Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text. 1992. xiii, 409 pp. 15 Komter, Martha L.: Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews. A study of talks, tasks and ideas. 1991. viii, 252 pp. 14 Schwartz, Ursula V.: Young Children's Dyadic Pretend Play. A communication analysis of plot structure and plot generative strategies. 1991. vi, 151 pp. 13 Nuyts, Jan, A. Machtelt Bolkestein and Co Vet (eds.): Layers and Levels of Representation in Language Theory. A functional view. 1990. xii, 348 pp. 12 Abraham, Werner (ed.): Discourse Particles. Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German. 1991. viii, 338 pp. 11 Luong, Hy V.: Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings. The Vietnamese system of person reference. 1990. x, 213 pp. 10 Murray, Denise E.: Conversation for Action. The computer terminal as medium of communication. 1991. xii, 176 pp. 9 Luke, K.K.: Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation. 1990. xvi, 329 pp. 8 Young, Lynne: Language as Behaviour, Language as Code. A study of academic English. 1991. ix, 304 pp. 7 Lindenfeld, Jacqueline: Speech and Sociability at French Urban Marketplaces. 1990. viii, 173 pp.

6:3 Blommaert, Jan and Jef Verschueren (eds.): The Pragmatics of International and Intercultural Communication. Selected papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 1987. Volume 3: The Pragmatics of International and Intercultural Communication. 1991. viii, 249 pp. 6:2 Verschueren, Jef (ed.): Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. Selected papers from the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 1987. Volume 2: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. 1991. viii, 339 pp. 6:1 Verschueren, Jef (ed.): Pragmatics at Issue. Selected papers of the International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, August 17–22, 1987. Volume 1: Pragmatics at Issue. 1991. viii, 314 pp. 5 Thelin, Nils B. (ed.): Verbal Aspect in Discourse. 1990. xvi, 490 pp. 4 Raffler-Engel, Walburga von (ed.): Doctor–Patient Interaction. 1989. xxxviii, 294 pp. 3 Oleksy, Wieslaw (ed.): Contrastive Pragmatics. 1988. xiv, 282 pp. 2 Barton, Ellen: Nonsentential Constituents. A theory of grammatical structure and pragmatic interpretation. 1990. xviii, 247 pp. 1 Walter, Bettyruth: The Jury Summation as Speech Genre. An ethnographic study of what it means to those who use it. 1988. xvii, 264 pp.