The main purpose of this research is to discuss the specificity of the microphone as a gestural tool through which the sequence organization of media two-party interviews is accomplished. The study focuses on the practical communicative problems of microphone operations in a media setting where the parties have alternating turns, and addresses the question of who of the participants speaks next and for how long. It is particularly concerned with investigating what the participating parties can do with the microphone, what it accomplishes, and how it is used as a tool for interaction with an audience. We particularly focus on how microphone moves can make use see how how people orient to emergent content structures in talk, and how microphone performs as a device for confirmation of verbal turns.

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]

<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>

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The present study focuses on turn-taking and questions in conversations between deaf-blind persons using tactile sign language, i.e. communicating by holding each others hands, and how sign language utterances change in the tactile mode when the nonmanual signals characteristic of turntaking and interrogative sentences in (visual) sign language are not used. The material consists of six video-recorded conversations (four with deaf-blind pairs and two where one person is deaf and one is deaf-blind). Parts of the material, viz. 168 sequences with questions and answers, has been transcribed and analyzed. The analysis shows that deaf-blind signers use their hands in two different conversation positions. In the monologue position both the signer's hands are held under the hands of the listener, whereas in the dialogue position both participants hold their hands in identical ways: the right hand under the other person's left hand and the left hand on top of the other person's right hand. It is described how the two positions affect the structure of one- and twohanded signs and how back channeling, linguistic as well as non-linguistic (with different kinds of tapping), is used in the two positions. The analysis shows that differences in the vertical and the horizontal planes are used in turn-taking regulation. Using four different conversational levels the signer can signal e.g. turn change by lowering his/her hands from the turn level to the turn change level at the end of his/her turn. The horizontal plane is devided into three different turn zones. The turn holder uses his/her own turn zone close to the body and finishes the turn by moving the hands to the joint zone midway between the interlocutors or into the listener's zone. The analyzed utterances function as questions, yes/no-questions (82) as well as wh-questions (55). It is hypothesized that yes/no-questions are marked with the manual signal extended duration of the last sign of the utterance, one of the interrogative signals of visual signing, but this was only true for 46 % of the yes/no-questions in the material. Since extended duration of the last sign also signals turn change in e.g. statements it is not regarded as an interrogative signal. Additional markers of yes/no-questions are among others the sign INDEX-adr ('you') with its variant INDEX-adr-long, used as a summons signal, and repetitions of signs or sentences. As for the wh-questions a majority are made with a manual wh-sign. Generally, if there are no interrogative signals the context and the content of the utterance will account for its interpretation as a question. To avoid misunderstandings, questions and non-linguistic signals are used in checking turns, where the signer requests back channeling or the listener requests repetition or clarification. / <p>För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se</p>

Die Arbeit widmet sich dem kontroversen Diskurs über den Schutz von Urheberrechten einerseits und den freien Zugang zu Ressourcen über das Internet andererseits. Auf Grundlage eines Korpus aus mündlichen sowie schriftlichen Textdaten werden drei zentrale Ziele verfolgt: Erstens werden die Identitätskonstruktionen der Teilnehmer innerhalb des gewählten Diskursausschnittes analysiert. Zweitens werden Zusammenhänge zwischen Mikro- und Makroebene, d. h. zwischen Identitätskonstruktion auf lokaler Gesprächsebene und solcher auf der globaleren Ebene des schriftlichen Datenmaterials untersucht. Drittens werden die eingesetzten Analyseinstrumente aus verschiedenen sprachwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen auf ihre Anwendbarkeit für eine ebenenübergreifende Studie bewertet. Die Arbeit bewegt sich damit in ihrer Methodik zwischen zwei kommunikationslinguistischen Forschungsperspektiven, der Konversationsanalyse und der Diskursanalyse, die bisher im deutschen Forschungsraum noch eher getrennte Wege gegangen sind. / The master thesis treats the controversial discourse about the protection of copyright on the one hand and free access to data via internet on the other. On the basis of a corpus of oral and written text data three aims are pursued: Firstly, the constructions of identity of the members are analyzed within the selected discourse section. Secondly, relations between micro- and macro level, i. e. between construction of identity on the local level of talk and on the more global level of written data, are examined. Thirdly, the instruments from different linguistic disciplines used for the analysis are evaluated with regard to their usability for a cross-level study. Thus, methodologically this study moves between two communicational linguistic perspectives, namely Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis, which until now went rather separate ways in the German research area.

The notion of "partnership" dominates contemporary school improvement and educational reform agendas. Most discourse about partnerships between schools and universities historically relates to the apparent divide between practice and theory, between practitioner and academy. This study departs from these traditional perspectives to move beyond the divide between teachers and academics. Designing strategies for re-visioning this historical divide within the education community, between teachers and academics, engages the profession at all levels. Instead of simply re-visioning this divide, however, we can envision a professional place where the divide does not exist. Addressing this divide requires teachers and academics, when they do come together for the purpose of collaborative work of any kind, to actively seek to understand each other's work. This study examines one school and university partnership that was modelled on the principles of a Professional Development School. It investigates the meeting talk between groups of teachers and academics as they plan and report on a collaborative project aimed at improving Mathematics teaching practices in the school. Whereas most research investigating school and university partnerships addresses the outcomes of such partnerships, or attempts to describe and advocate for ideal partnerships, this study considers the actual interactional work of the participants as they engage in the everyday and ongoing activities of partnership. It shows how partnerships are constructed through talk and activity. Instead of considering the partnership as a predetermined and pre-existing phenomenon, this study adopts the view that the work of partnership is an ongoing accomplishment through the activity of the participants. In this way, this study shows the local social order of a partnership as it was built, maintained and transformed through the interactional work of the participants. Both the institutional setting and the participants' enactment of partnership work contribute to the establishment of the social and moral order of the partnership. The principal question addressed in the study asks how participants accomplish the partnership work through their social interactions with one another. It considers the interactional resources that the partners (teachers, interns and academics) use to construct their talk and interactions with one another in the project; and how the partners construct themselves and the other members as members of the partnership, as academics/researchers and as teachers. This study drew on ethnomethodological resources to develop understandings about how the participants accomplish the partnership work through their talk-in-interaction. The specific focus is the talk of partnership that occurred in meetings between members of the school and of the university. These meetings were audio-recorded, transcribed, and finely analysed using the techniques and procedures of conversation analysis and membership category analysis. These methodological resources revealed the social and moral orders at work. Analysis of the meeting talk shows the specific activities and relationships developed by the principal of the school in the accomplishment of the partnership; the ways in which the various participants develop and use their claims to expertise (or lack of it) in doing partnership work; and how participants use the institutional resource of meeting talk to accomplish the partnership work. The study is of significance to educators, teachers and academics. It provides new and rich understandings about how school and university partnerships are accomplished through the participants' meetings. It shows the resources that the participants use to construct and accomplish their different kinds of expertise, to enact the leadership activities required, and to co-construct the various features of partnership. The study offers analytic tools for uncovering the interactional resource of the participants. The ethnomethodological resources, particularly conversation analysis and membership category analysis, can be used to analyse in close detail the social interactions of participants in the institutional talk of meetings. In showing how the social and moral orders of partnerships are revealed and by offering understandings of the pragmatics of school and university partnership, the social structure of school and university partnerships is explicated. The study offers one example of what a school and university partnership can be like. Epistemologically, it explores and exposes the kinds of knowledge produced from this kind of accounting for school and university partnerships. It shows how the work of partnership can be accomplished by participants, rather than attempt to claim how it should be done.

Although internet chat is a significant aspect of many internet users’ lives, the manner in which participants in quasi-synchronous chat situations orient to issues of social and moral order remains to be studied in depth. The research presented here is therefore at the forefront of a continually developing area of study. This work contributes new insights into how members construct and make accountable the social and moral orders of an adult-oriented Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel by addressing three questions: (1) What conversational resources do participants use in addressing matters of social and moral order? (2) How are these conversational resources deployed within IRC interaction? and (3) What interactional work is locally accomplished through use of these resources? A survey of the literature reveals considerable research in the field of computer-mediated communication, exploring both asynchronous and quasi-synchronous discussion forums. The research discussed represents a range of communication interests including group and collaborative interaction, the linguistic construction of social identity, and the linguistic features of online interaction. It is suggested that the present research differs from previous studies in three ways: (1) it focuses on the interaction itself, rather than the ways in which the medium affects the interaction; (2) it offers turn-by-turn analysis of interaction in situ; and (3) it discusses membership categories only insofar as they are shown to be relevant by participants through their talk. Through consideration of the literature, the present study is firmly situated within the broader computer-mediated communication field. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis were adopted as appropriate methodological approaches to explore the research focus on interaction in situ, and in particular to investigate the ways in which participants negotiate and co-construct social and moral orders in the course of their interaction. IRC logs collected from one chat room were analysed using a two-pass method, based on a modification of the approaches proposed by Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) and ten Have (1999). From this detailed examination of the data corpus three interaction topics are identified by means of which participants clearly orient to issues of social and moral order: challenges to rule violations, ‘trolling’ for cybersex, and experiences regarding the 9/11 attacks. Instances of these interactional topics are subjected to fine-grained analysis, to demonstrate the ways in which participants draw upon various interactional resources in their negotiation and construction of channel social and moral orders. While these analytical topics stand alone in individual focus, together they illustrate different instances in which participants’ talk serves to negotiate social and moral orders or collaboratively construct new orders. Building on the work of Vallis (2001), Chapter 5 illustrates three ways that rule violation is initiated as a channel discussion topic: (1) through a visible violation in open channel, (2) through an official warning or sanction by a channel operator regarding the violation, and (3) through a complaint or announcement of a rule violation by a non-channel operator participant. Once the topic has been initiated, it is shown to become available as a topic for others, including the perceived violator. The fine-grained analysis of challenges to rule violations ultimately demonstrates that channel participants orient to the rules as a resource in developing categorizations of both the rule violation and violator. These categorizations are contextual in that they are locally based and understood within specific contexts and practices. Thus, it is shown that compliance with rules and an orientation to rule violations as inappropriate within the social and moral orders of the channel serves two purposes: (1) to orient the speaker as a group member, and (2) to reinforce the social and moral orders of the group. Chapter 6 explores a particular type of rule violation, solicitations for ‘cybersex’ known in IRC parlance as ‘trolling’. In responding to trolling violations participants are demonstrated to use affiliative and aggressive humour, in particular irony, sarcasm and insults. These conversational resources perform solidarity building within the group, positioning non-Troll respondents as compliant group members. This solidarity work is shown to have three outcomes: (1) consensus building, (2) collaborative construction of group membership, and (3) the continued construction and negotiation of existing social and moral orders. Chapter 7, the final data analysis chapter, offers insight into how participants, in discussing the events of 9/11 on the actual day, collaboratively constructed new social and moral orders, while orienting to issues of appropriate and reasonable emotional responses. This analysis demonstrates how participants go about ‘doing being ordinary’ (Sacks, 1992b) in formulating their ‘first thoughts’ (Jefferson, 2004). Through sharing their initial impressions of the event, participants perform support work within the interaction, in essence working to normalize both the event and their initial misinterpretation of it. Normalising as a support work mechanism is also shown in relation to participants constructing the ‘quiet’ following the event as unusual. Normalising is accomplished by reference to the indexical ‘it’ and location formulations, which participants use both to negotiate who can claim to experience the ‘unnatural quiet’ and to identify the extent of the quiet. Through their talk participants upgrade the quiet from something legitimately experienced by one person in a particular place to something that could be experienced ‘anywhere’, moving the phenomenon from local to global provenance. With its methodological design and detailed analysis and findings, this research contributes to existing knowledge in four ways. First, it shows how rules are used by participants as a resource in negotiating and constructing social and moral orders. Second, it demonstrates that irony, sarcasm and insults are three devices of humour which can be used to perform solidarity work and reinforce existing social and moral orders. Third, it demonstrates how new social and moral orders are collaboratively constructed in relation to extraordinary events, which serve to frame the event and evoke reasonable responses for participants. And last, the detailed analysis and findings further support the use of conversation analysis and membership categorization as valuable methods for approaching quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication.