<p>This thesis aims to explore the ways in which space patterns regimes of language use and language attitudes among Cameroonian immigrant children in a primary school in Cape Town. The presence of migrants in any classroom represents a significant challenge from the theoretical as well as practical point of view, given that schools are responsible for both socialization and learning (Gajo &amp / Mondada 1996). Most African countries are going through large-scale migration from rural to urban areas as well as increasing transnational migration due to recent socio-economic and socio-political trends. These flows affect the sociolinguistic economy of the places concerned, not only the individuals within them. Thus immigrants&rsquo / movement into an urban area not only affects their repertoires, as they find themselves confronted with the task of acquiring the communicative resources of the autochthonous population, but also those of the autochthonous population who find themselves confronted with linguistic communicative processes and resources &lsquo / alien&rsquo / to their environment. Similar effects are felt by local educational and other institutions, now faced with learners with widely varying degrees of competence in the required communicative skills. The participants in this study are a group of young migrants from Cameroon where English and French are the two official languages. These learners already have some languages in their repertoire, which may include their mother tongue or either of the two official languages. My focus will be on the multilingual resources of these learners and how they make use of these in the daily life of their new spaces, the school, the homes and community spaces, to construct new social identities.</p>

I föreliggande studie undersöktes interaktionen mellan en person med afasi och hennes närstående. Syftet var att identifiera möjliga resurser som används av personen med afasi för att optimera delaktigheten i samtal, dels som aktiv lyssnare men också i situationer där missförstånd uppstår, samt se hur prosodi används som resurs i interaktionen. Datamaterialet som studerades var en två timmar lång videoinspelning i hemmet hos personen med afasi, där samtal med hennes man samt väninna förekom. Materialet analyserades enligt Conversation Analysis för att identifiera mönster i samtalen. Tre olika mönster identifierades och analyserades; återkopplingar för att visa aktivt lyssnarskap, och repetitioner som en begäran om bekräftelse av förståelse, samt begäran om förtydligande då något är otydligt eller felaktigt i föregående yttrande. Resultaten visade på kommunikativa resurser hos personen med afasi gällande att vara en aktiv lyssnare som stödjer talaren genom återkopplingssignaler, samt som en aktiv deltagare i samtalet genom att initiera reparationer för att samkonstruera förståelse.

I denna studie har vardaglig interaktion studerats utifrån ett dialogiskt perspektiv där en av samtalsdeltagarna är en ung man (M) med autism som använder alternativ ochkompletterande kommunikation (AKK). Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur kommunikativa projekt (t.ex. begäran av föremål eller aktiviteter) sekventiellt är konstruerade samt att synliggöra de sociala mönstren som bygger upp kommunikativa projekt vilka möjliggör för en person med autism att delta i en kommunikativ kontext genom bildanvändning och andra kommunikativa resurser. Analysen grundar sig på videoinspelat material av två kvällar då M filmades i sin hemmiljö. Conversation Analysis används som samtalsanalytiskt verktyg, vilket lämpar sig väl för att synliggöra kvalitativa samtalsfenomen. Den generella strukturen i de kommunikativa projekten har setts vara organiserade i tre faser. En prefas vilken består av handlingar där samtalspartnern guidar M till att uttrycka (oftast) en begäran explicit. Denna fas möjliggör för M att öppna upp ett kommunikativt projekt. I huvudfasen samkonstrueras en explicit begäran av deltagarna genom att den talande parten sätter ord på M´s icke verbala uttryck. Avslutningsvis består postfasen av bekräftande och avslutande handlingar. Denna studie visar att deltagarna bygger upp de kommunikativa projekten genom ömsesidiga och samarbetande handlingar som, förutom det kommunikativa projektets funktion, i sig är värdefulla för deltagarna.

After recognizing a lack of children’s voices in the debate about the children’s book Kivi och monsterhund and the gender-neutral pronoun hen that occurred in the beginning of the year of 2012, I decided to interview pre-school children about the same book. My purpose with the study was, using semi-structured group interviews, to examine how 6-year olds talked about the main character Kivi. With the help of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I have studied how the children constructed Kivi’s gender in their speech. I have looked at how they recall the appearance of Kivi to establish their gender, and detected insecurity when the normative gender attribute was questioned. I have also studied which pronouns the children used, and in which contexts they used them. I found that they mixed pronouns during the interviews, which I noted as a possible sign of gender insecurity or a consequence of grammatical immaturity. Lastly I looked at how the children spoke about Kivi in relation to activity and characteristics. My conclusion is that Swedish language as it is now makes it hard to speak about more than two genders, and therefore the word hen could be useful. The incapacity to speak about Kivi as neither a boy nor a girl, or maybe both, generates a need among the children to “decide” their “proper” gender. With hen comes the opportunity to speak beyond these language barriers, and therefore also make it a possible existence.

In conversation, participants operate under the condition that they must demonstrate to each other what they assume to be the nature of their talk. This happens on a sequential basis. Every turn in conversation is typically followed by another one, and therefore it is paramount for the second turn in line, for its own intelligibility, to make clear how it relates to the preceding turn. In this way, by tracing the interpretations that are made `available´ by the participants themselves as they assemble their talk, one can obtain a technical specification from within of the procedures conversationalists use for eo-constructing their encounter. This approach to the study of talk and interaction, heavily influenced by Harold Garfinkel´s (1967) ethnomethodological program, became known as Conversation Analysis (CA). This paper, then, is an attempt to reconceptualize the notion of institutionality in CA. At the same time, because it uses real conversational materials for doing so, it contains a substantive analysis of some of the procedures and situated practices the people in the sample resort to for accomplishing their interaction.

This conversation analytic study basically aimed at unearthing the role of classroom interaction in the construction of classroom order. Rooted in the theoretical and methodological principles of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this study investigated the mechanisms of how the order in the classroom was established, organized and sustained mutually by the teacher and students. From three classrooms in three high schools in Ankara, the study collected a 47 hour video-recording database from 69 different sessions with 15 teachers. The analysis focused on the scenes of trouble that revealed the interactional organization of order with particular reference to the participants&rsquo / demonstrable actions. The scenes of troubles were composed of four particular groups of moments in the classroom life: (a) class beginnings, (b) transitions between activities, (c) post-humor moments, and (d) specific-student calls. The results demonstrated in the details of recordings how the participants in the classroom attributed meaning to order, how they showed their understanding of classroom order through their demonstrable action, and through their actions how they applied their mechanisms of classroom order to other contexts.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis explores the social construction of birth by analyzing the interaction between the participants present in the delivery room. The data is drawn from 79 video recordings of birth. Six are unedited research recordings and the remaining 73 were edited for pedagogical, documentary and entertaining purposes. The theoretical and analytical perspective is Conversation Analysis. With this microanalytic method, a detailed insight is given to the interaction in the delivery room which should be of linguistic, anthropologic and midwifery interest. The thesis demonstrates how different situations are shaped during labor and the first 15 minutes after birth. It reveals how the identities child, girl, boy, mother, father, woman and man are constructed and negotiated in the unfolding interaction between the participants. In this sense, the thesis uncovers the construction of family roles in the delivery room during a delicate interaction between the private persons and the institutional representatives. The latter are charged with the complex task of safeguarding the physical wellbeing of mother and child while also promoting the development of parental identities. The thesis highlights the existence of a social birth work; the institutional interactants make use of a range of linguistic resources to demarcate the progression from second stage labor to birth and to position the newborn as an endeared social creature. Birth is an important liminal situation and is therefore forcefully spoken forth, and, as the thesis shows, enhanced with more or less ritual utterances and actions. Birth is also a matter of bodies, the body in labor, the supporting body of the partner and the appearance of the body of the newborn. The thesis gives insight into how these bodies are managed and stylized in interaction. Further the thesis makes visible the midwife’s use of interactional resources to instill strength into the body of the woman in labor. The results are discussed in light of the socio-cultural circumstances for hospital birth in Sweden.

The dissertation deals with acquisition and development of conversation between a child and parents. The main objective of the study was to define the development of conversation between a child and parents: to analyse how a child acquires the structure of conversation (learns initiating and closing a conversation, continuing topics, turn-taking, repairing conversation breakdowns), learns certain speech acts (the main focus is on the acquisition of directives and questions), and how the communicative behaviour of parents influences the acquisition of the native language grammar. To achieve these goals the following research methods were applied: a longitudinal observation, a method of corpus linguistics, an analytical method, a descriptive method and a comparative method. A research material contains a corpus of conversations between a child (a Lithuanian girl) and her parents. The corpus has been transcribed and annotated for a multipurpose linguistic analysis using a longitudinal observation method (2000–2002) and tools of the program CHILDES. The size of the corpus is 128,517 running words, which comprises 27 hours of records of the child’s (1;8–2;8) conversations with her parents. A linguistic diary kept 1999–2002 was analysed as an additional material. The results of the analysis has reflected most typical features of conversation between a child and parents, as well as the development of the features as a child grows, such as: the acquisition of initiating and closing... [to full text] / Disertacijoje nagrinėjama vaiko ir tėvų pokalbio ypatybės ir raida. Analizuojama, kaip vaikas įsisavina pokalbio struktūrą (išmoksta savarankiškai pradėti, plėtoti ir baigti pokalbį, keisti pokalbio temą, spręsti komunikacinius nesklandumus, keistis kalbėtojo ir klausytojo vaidmenimis), kaip išmoksta atpažinti ir kurti tam tikrus kalbos aktus (daugiausia dėmesio skiriama nurodymų ir klausimų įsisavinimui) ir kaip komunikacinis tėvų elgesys veikia gimtosios kalbos gramatikos išmokimą. Tyrimas atliktas taikant ilgalaikio stebėjimo, tekstynų lingvistikos, analitinį, aprašomąjį ir lyginamąjį metodus. Empirinę tyrimo medžiagą sudaro ilgalaikio stebėjimo metodu (2000–2002 m.) sukauptas, CHILDES programa transkribuotas ir įvairiapusei kalbinei analizei paruoštas 128 517 žodžių (27 val.) apimties tiriamojo vaiko (1;8–2;8) ir tėvų pokalbių įrašų tekstynas. Papildomai analizuotas 1999–2002 m. rašytas 11 tūkst. žodžių apimties tiriamojo vaiko kalbos dienoraštis. Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidžia būdingiausias vaiko ir tėvų pokalbio ypatybes ir jų kaitą vaikui augant: pokalbio pradžios ir pabaigos taisyklių įsisavinimą, gebėjimų plėtoti pokalbio temą, keistis kalbėtojo ir klausytojo vaidmenimis formavimąsi, taip pat – tėvų komunikacinio elgesio poveikį vaiko gimtosios kalbos gramatinės sistemos įsisavinimui. Remiantis šiais rezultatais, galima numatyti tolesnių vaiko komunikacinės kompetencijos tyrimų gaires, panaudoti šiuos rezultatus kaip pagrindą ir / ar lyginamąją medžiagą tolesniems... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Disertacijoje nagrinėjama vaiko ir tėvų pokalbio ypatybės ir raida. Analizuojama, kaip vaikas įsisavina pokalbio struktūrą (išmoksta savarankiškai pradėti, plėtoti ir baigti pokalbį, keisti pokalbio temą, spręsti komunikacinius nesklandumus, keistis kalbėtojo ir klausytojo vaidmenimis), kaip išmoksta atpažinti ir kurti tam tikrus kalbos aktus (daugiausia dėmesio skiriama nurodymų ir klausimų įsisavinimui) ir kaip komunikacinis tėvų elgesys veikia gimtosios kalbos gramatikos išmokimą. Tyrimas atliktas taikant ilgalaikio stebėjimo, tekstynų lingvistikos, analitinį, aprašomąjį ir lyginamąjį metodus. Empirinę tyrimo medžiagą sudaro ilgalaikio stebėjimo metodu (2000–2002 m.) sukauptas, CHILDES programa transkribuotas ir įvairiapusei kalbinei analizei paruoštas 128 517 žodžių (27 val.) apimties tiriamojo vaiko (1;8–2;8) ir tėvų pokalbių įrašų tekstynas. Papildomai analizuotas 1999–2002 m. rašytas 11 tūkst. žodžių apimties tiriamojo vaiko kalbos dienoraštis. Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidžia būdingiausias vaiko ir tėvų pokalbio ypatybes ir jų kaitą vaikui augant: pokalbio pradžios ir pabaigos taisyklių įsisavinimą, gebėjimų plėtoti pokalbio temą, keistis kalbėtojo ir klausytojo vaidmenimis formavimąsi, taip pat – tėvų komunikacinio elgesio poveikį vaiko gimtosios kalbos gramatinės sistemos įsisavinimui. Remiantis šiais rezultatais, galima numatyti tolesnių vaiko komunikacinės kompetencijos tyrimų gaires, panaudoti šiuos rezultatus kaip pagrindą ir / ar lyginamąją medžiagą tolesniems... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The dissertation deals with acquisition and development of conversation between a child and parents. The main objective of the study was to define the development of conversation between a child and parents: to analyse how a child acquires the structure of conversation (learns initiating and closing a conversation, continuing topics, turn-taking, repairing conversation breakdowns), learns certain speech acts (the main focus is on the acquisition of directives and questions), and how the communicative behaviour of parents influences the acquisition of the native language grammar. To achieve these goals the following research methods were applied: a longitudinal observation, a method of corpus linguistics, an analytical method, a descriptive method and a comparative method. A research material contains a corpus of conversations between a child (a Lithuanian girl) and her parents. The corpus has been transcribed and annotated for a multipurpose linguistic analysis using a longitudinal observation method (2000–2002) and tools of the program CHILDES. The size of the corpus is 128,517 running words, which comprises 27 hours of records of the child’s (1;8–2;8) conversations with her parents. A linguistic diary kept 1999–2002 was analysed as an additional material. The results of the analysis has reflected most typical features of conversation between a child and parents, as well as the development of the features as a child grows, such as: the acquisition of initiating and closing... [to full text]