LANSI Advanced Studies Virtual Workshop - Analyzing Emotion in Interaction

Our focus will be on analyzing how speakers describe and display emotions, the role that such descriptions and displays have in action formation, and the way emotion displays are receipted and managed. Sessions will comprise primarily small group activities, involving introduction to instructional content and data analysis procedures, working with data from mundane interaction, family mealtimes, medical and clinical encounters, and child protection helplines. Participants will also have an opportunity to refine their transcription skills by working with crying, anger, and pain cries. 

The workshop will be suitable for those with some experience of conducting conversation analysis who seek to consolidate their existing skills. 

Speakers' Bios: 

Alexa Hepburn is a Research Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, and Honorary Professor in the School of Social Science and Humanities at Loughborough University. She has published widely regarding methodological, practical, theoretical, and meta-theoretical frameworks in the social sciences, and on the use and development of conversation analytic methods, particularly with regard to emotional expressions such as upset, anger, and laughter, parents’ strategies for managing children's behaviour, techniques for giving advice, and practitioners’ empathic responses in clinical encounters. A major focus is to develop new insights into profound issues related to emotion, socialization, and influence, and to develop innovative and effective applied research techniques for interaction research. This is reflected in her three books – An Introduction to Critical Social Psychology (2003), Discursive Research in Practice: New Approaches to Psychology and Interaction (2007, with Sally Wiggins), and, her latest co-authored book, Transcribing for Social Research (2017, with Galina Bolden). She has delivered over 40 invited seminars, plenaries, and keynotes, and over 30 specialist workshops on interaction analysis in 12 different countries around the world. She is currently working on a range of projects focused on basic analytic issues in CA, family mealtimes, various clinical encounters, and various types of telephone interaction. 

Jonathan Potter is Distinguished Professor and Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. He has worked on basic theoretical and methodological issues in social science for more than 40 years. He has engaged with, and developed, post-structuralism (in Social Texts and Context, with Margaret Wetherell and Peter Stringer, 1984), discourse analysis (in Discourse and Social Psychology with Margaret Wetherell, 1987), discursive approaches to racism (in Mapping the Language of Racism, with Margaret Wetherell, 1992), discursive psychology (in Discursive Psychology, with Derek Edwards, 1992), and constructionism (systematically reworked in Representing Reality, 1996). He is currently interested in the way conversation analytic method can support a reconfiguration of basic psychological notions such as attitudes, social influence, and emotions, focusing on their role in human practices.