9th Meeting (2019)

8:00 – 8:30

Registration and Welcome to the Conference 

8:30 – 8:55

Talking the Talk: Subject-Specific Language Use in EMI Classrooms

Christine Jacknick

Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY

Derya Duran

University of Jyväskylä

This CA study offers insights into how epistemic balance is established in institutional talk, as well as how language emerges as an explicit retrospective device in EMI content classrooms. We show how the teacher reifies students’ contributions and replaces them with technical concepts, expanding students’ academic linguistic repertoires.  

9:00 – 9:25

The Links Between L2 Teacher Actions and L2 Learners' Developing Interactional Repertoires

Su Yin Khor

Joan Kelly Hall

Tianfang Wang

Pennsylvania State University

Drawing on a usage-based understanding of language, this study employs CA/IL to examine teacher questions, specifically information seeking question sequences, in an adult L2 English grammar course. We focus on the social actions that the questions accomplish, the student responses they engender, and their links to learners’ developing interactional repertoires.

9:30 – 9:55

Managing Multiple Demands: Teachers' Simultaneous Use of Verbal and Embodied Resources to Pursue Different Courses of Action

Elizabeth Reddington

Teachers College, Columbia University

Drawing on a database of video-recorded adult English as a Second Language classes, the current study employs CA to examine how teachers manage multiple demands in classroom interaction. Analysis reveals how teachers use verbal and embodied resources, or different embodied resources, to simultaneously pursue different courses of action. 

9:55 – 10:10

Coffee/Tea Break (GDH 177)

10:10 – 10:35

Over-Exposed Self-Correction

Wan Wei

Song Hee Park

Kaicheng Zhan

Galina Bolden

Alexa Hepburn

Jenny Mandelbaum

Lisa Mikesell

Jonathan Potter

Rutgers University

Using CA, this paper examines self-initiated self-repairs in which speakers draw attention to their error (by repeating and/or commenting on it) as they correct it. We show that, in producing these “over-exposed” corrections, speakers enact accountability for the error in the service of managing self-presentation. 

10:40 – 11:05

Laughter in the Interactive Management of Allusive Complaints

Phillip Glenn

Emerson College

Elizabeth Holt

University of Huddersfield

This conversation analytic study investigates the role of laughter in shaping alluded-to complaints. Laughter marks ambiguity, inviting hearers to attend to its referent. Participants may surface the alluded-to actions, or those actions may remain embedded. The laughter provides a resource for navigating moments of epistemic or topical misalignment. 

11:10 – 12:10

Invited Lecture

American English OKAY over Time: Challenge and Chance for Interactional Linguistics

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen

University of Helsinki

12:10 – 2:10

Lunch in the Neighborhood

2:10 – 2:35

Attending to an ESL Student's Non-Answer in the Classroom

Shengqin Jin

Alan Zemel

SUNY Albany

The current research uses conversation analysis to study how students do being bystanders, as well as its interactional consequences, in the conventional classroom interaction. Doing being bystanders is displayed as a constitutive part of the classroom activity. It mobilizes the turn-taking and speakership allocation in an implicit manner. 

2:40 – 3:05

"You Have to Read Them and Read How They are Reading You:" Play Frames and Impression Management in a Community-Based Afterschool Program

Anne Pomerantz

University of Pennsylvania

This paper examines how volunteer educators and children in a community-based afterschool program interactionally navigate the provision of homework help. It explores how movement into/out of various play frames shapes volunteers’ impressions of the children’s academic abilities and characters. Furthermore, it considers the affordances of interaction analysis for volunteer training. 

3:10 – 3:35

Multiple Questions in Secondary School Test Talk

Karianne Skovholt

Maria Njølstad Vonen

Marit Skarbø Solem

University of South-Eastern Norway

This study is based on a data set of 5 hours video-recorded oral examinations in Norwegian and uses conversation analysis to examine in what sequential environment multiple questions occur, their structural properties and interactional consequences. Results show that MQs are commonly used and occur in the sequential environment for topic change and follow up questions. 

3:35 – 3:50

Coffee/Tea Break (GDH 177) 

3:50 – 4:15

Explorations of Diversity in the Adult Second Language Classroom

Nadja Tadic

Teachers College, Columbia University

Using conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, this study examines discussions related to sociocultural diversity in adult second language classrooms. The study shows that participants enact a preference for agreement in their discussions, thus creating a sense of “togetherness” but also reinforcing harmful presuppositions about historically marginalized social groups. 

4:20 – 4:45

Interactional Pivots: First Teacher Contributions in Collaborative Reflection by GP Residents

Marije van Braak

Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Mike Huiskes

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands

Mario Veen

Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Tom Koole

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands

Conversation analysis of collaborative reflection by GP residents shows that first teacher contributions are pivotal: they change the participation frame, restore turn-taking after telling activities, and spotlight a topic for discussion. Raising teachers’ awareness of interactional consequences of first moves will help teachers to tailor their moves to institutional tasks. 

4:50 – 5:15

Work Ethics as a Resource for Ending Breaks at the Workplace

Maarit Siromaa

Pauliina Siitonen

University of Oulu, Finland

We examine Finnish break closings as a transition from break-taking activity to work and show that the participants may utilize two linguistic practices in such closings, namely 1) breathy transition markers such as 'joo' or 'jaa' and 2) the accounts ending the break on a plea for work ethics. 

5:20 – 5:45

Cheese Matters: Negotiating Taste, Distinction, and Alignment in Online Newspaper Comments

Alla Tovares

Howard University

Through the analysis of online newspaper comments posted in reaction to an article discussing “real” vs. “fake” Parmesan, this study contributes to our understanding of how class-linked distinction, masked as “good taste” is (re)constructed in online commentary about cheese and how alignment is achieved through negative evaluative stances. 

5:45 – 6:45

Reception (GDH 177)

8:30 - 8:55

Quoting Media and Reinforcing Heteronormativity in Everyday Conversation among Millennial Friends

Sylvia Sierra

Syracuse University

Integrating discursive studies on sexuality and gender, theories of intertextuality in everyday conversation, and media studies, this study analyzes humorous intertextual references to media portraying ideologies of sexuality and gender by a group of millennial friends, showing how media references reinforce heteronormativity in their talk.

9:00 – 9:25

Journalists versus President Trump? Positioning in the Trump/Media Conflict

Nicole Tanquary

Syracuse University

This study utilizes positioning theory (with its interrelated stances and [dis]alignments between conversation participants) and applies it to interactions between President Trump and members of the press. It challenges simplistic “Journalists versus Trump” assessments and illustrates the complexities journalists face when working with (or against) Trump’s comments regarding media “hostility.”  

9:30 – 9:55

Interacting with Whiteness: Constructing and Resisting Stereotypes of Whiteness in Interaction

Hayden Blain

Chloé Diskin

Tim McNamara

University of Melbourne

In this paper we draw on conversation analysis (CA) and subjectivity theory to analyse a single case where co-participants navigate the incitement of a discourse of whiteness. We argue that the participants interactionally co-achieve a reconstitution of this discourse, with implications that talk-in-interaction is a key site for producing subjectivities.

9:55 – 10:10

Coffee/Tea Break (GDH 177)

10:10 – 10:35

"I'm Asking You a Very Direct Question": Using Metalinguistic Commentary to Resist Transformative Responses

Marissa Caldwell

Joshua Raclaw

West Chester University

Using conversation analysis, this paper examines how Senators resist transformative responses (Stivers & Hayashi, 2010) during U.S. Senate confirmation hearings. In particular, we examine how Senators use four types of metalinguistic commentary to explicitly orient to the inadequacy of the recipient’s response and pursue another. 

10:40 – 11:05

Talking in the Present: A Way to Resist Questions During Congressional Hearings

Mary Kim

University of Hawaii at Manoa

An examination of seven Korean congressional hearings shows that one of the routine practices deployed by the witnesses is to transform questions by shifting the time frame. When legislators ask about possibly improper past actions, the witnesses often respond using the present tense, which allows them to evade the question without refusing to answer it. 

11:10 – 12:10

Invited Lecture

Journalistic Questioning and Sociocultural Change:  The Case of Marriage Equality in the U.S.

Steven Clayman

UCLA

12:10 – 2:10

Lunch in the Neighborhood 

2:10 – 2:35 

Epistemics or Alignment? A Conversation Analytic Study on Lie Witness News 

Yingliang He

Tianfang Wang

Pennsylvania State University

This study, through addressing the importance of epistemic relations in conversation, casts doubt on the omnirelevance of epistemics proposed by Heritage (2012a, b), and considers alignment as an alternative explanation. Data include 30 episodes of Lie Witness News where participants claim knowledge on non-existent subjects.

2:40 – 3:05

“But You are Talking Inglese Papà”: Doing Language Ideologies in Transnational Family Interactions

Kinga Kozminska

Zhu Hua

Birkbeck, University of London

This talk investigates interactions within a multilingual family video-recorded as part of a larger project on family language policy and practice. By comparing flexibility of language choices in different everyday activity types, we discuss how language ideologies are talked into being and its implications for children’s multiple language development. 

3:10 – 3:35  

Skepticism in Talk-in-Interaction: An Analysis of Disbelief Sequences

Ariel Vázquez Carranza

Universidad de Guadalajara

The presentation examines a particular type of informing sequence where the new information is received with a disbelief turn, indexing some sort of skepticism. The analysis shows how the disbeliever’s knowledge about the matter at hand relates to the degree of disbelief expressed in his or her disbelief turn design; that is, it shows the relationship between turn design, epistemics and skepticism.

3:35 – 3:50

Coffee/Tea Break (GDH 177) 

3:50 – 4:15

Moving out of View: The Practice of Temporary Leavings in Family Video-Mediated Communication

Yumei Gan

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Darcey Searles

Northeastern University

This paper examines the practice of temporary leavings in family video calls. We show that temporary leavings can contribute to ongoing communication in three main ways: showing objects, complying with remote requests, and attempting to create focal conversation opportunities for others. 

4:20 – 4:45

On the Multimodal Resolution of a Search Sequence in Virtual Reality

Nils Klowait

Maria Erofeeva

Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences

Using multimodal analysis, we analyze a search sequence unfolding between two interactants in virtual reality. Since neither has a microphone, the exit from an outwardly ambiguous sequence has to be achieved voicelessly. We show how disambiguation is gracefully achieved and discuss the applicability of multimodal analysis to VR-based interaction.

4:50 – 5:15

Investigating Collaborative Peer Interactions among Preschoolers Using a Literacy iPad App: Challenges for Discourse Analysis

Iva Li

Lancaster University

This ethnographic case study investigates the collaborative social interactions among peers, as well as exploring how children may apply literacy information acquired from iPad activity to the preschool classroom. The data samples demonstrate development of collaborative literacy practices and cognitive skills and an increase of productive exploratory behaviors.

5:20 – 5:45

Category Attribution during Police Encounters: How Officers Assess Mental Health-Related Phenomena

Andre Buscariolli

UC-Santa Barbara

Drawing from a conversation analytical approach, this paper analyzes police dashcam videos aiming to a) identify the interactional mechanisms through which officers assess civilian's cognitive capacities during police encounters; and b) discuss the implication of a “mentally ill” social category for the ongoing interaction.

5:45-6:00

Closing