The dissertation addresses the question, How should we engage with art? The thesis is that a practice of engaging with art ought to be sensitive with and to a work of art, and conversation better suits sensitivity than criticism. Conversation does not merely mean a conversation we may have about art. Instead, the project proposes that we treat artworks as conversational partners. The construction of the thesis involves three philosophical streams coming together. The first is a survey of prominent philosophical studies of criticism from the late 1930s to the 1960s—a watershed period for the philosophy of criticism—through to contemporary views that bear the legacy of that period, summarized and exemplified in Noël Carroll’s philosophy of criticism. Second, the project contrasts the orthodox view with competing accounts, including those of visual art criticism from the late 1980s and 90s, the critical theory of Terry Eagleton, and the “philosophical criticism” of Stanley Cavell. The third stream consists of testing criticism (and conversation) against the criterion of sensitivity. Taken together, this approach looks at engagement in a more general way than what studies on criticism or other familiar practices tend to countenance. Writers and works that exemplify conversation, such as Wendell Berry, The Philadelphia Story (Cukor 1940), and Mary Poppins (Stevenson 1964) help explicate and uncover limits to conversation as well as what procures it. The project culminates by circling back to the criterion of sensitivity, looking at conversation’s advantages in cultivating a suitably sensitive practice of engaging with art. The primary, substantive claim for conversation as the basis for an ethics of engaging with art is that conversation encourages a process of coming to an understanding with a work, where our prejudices and judgments are subject to the claims a work may make upon me at any given moment, without ceding to either the finality of judgment or the incompleteness of understanding provoked by over-familiarity, incessant talk, ‘talking at’ or ‘past,’ or silence. In the shift from criticism to conversation, we gain a clearer, more equitable understanding of what a work is doing. We curtail prejudice and evaluative bias; we respond more sensitively to the context for engaging with art; and, we ask more questions. Is this a setting where criticism is warranted or useful? Who are my interlocutors? What do they have to say? / Philosophy

When entrepreneurs interact and receive feedback they sort through and transform various subjective venture ideas into intersubjective venture concepts. This dissertation examines the dialogue of entrepreneurs in the nascent stages of opportunity development from a process theory approach to understand how entrepreneurs sort, navigate and make sense of ideas they encounter through feedback exchanges. Using conversational analysis, several conversation patterns are identified that shape the emergence process. Legitimacy associations, status quo assertions, experiential actualities, engagement hypotheticals, and deontic declarations contribute to the nonlinear opportunity emergence process. These discourse structures derived from speech acts are attended to, adopted, and implemented as they align with assessment filters of credibility, feasibility, desirability, and identity plausibility which are key elements of the opportunity interpretation process used during ideation and pivoting interactions. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation explores the very early stages of the entrepreneurship processes of ideation and opportunity development. Using speech acts theory and conversation analysis, I describe how entrepreneurs do things with words and how they navigate conversations with others about their idea. I identify different kinds of conversations that can be used to sort through confusing comments and flesh out ideas into venture concepts that make sense to the entrepreneur and those they get feedback from who help shape their ideas. I explain why entrepreneurs listen to some ideas and not others when trying to make sense of a possible pivot.

Yes / Alzheimer’s disease irrevocably challenges a person’s capacity to communicate with others. Earlier research on these challenges focused on the language disorders associated with the condition and situated language deficit solely in the limitations of a person’s cognitive and semantic impairments. This research falls short of gaining insight into the actual interactional experiences of a person with Alzheimer’s and their family. Drawing on a UK data set of 70 telephone calls recorded over a two-and-a-half year period (2006–2008) between one elderly woman affected by Alzheimer’s disease, and her daughter and son-in-law, this paper explores the role which communication (and its degeneration) plays in family relationships. Investigating these interactions, using a conversation analytic approach, reveals that there are clearly communicative difficulties, but closer inspection suggests that they arise due to the contingencies that are generated by the other’s contributions in the interaction. That being so, this paper marks a departure from the traditional focus on language level analysis and the assumption that deficits are intrinsic to the individual with Alzheimer’s, and instead focuses on the collaborative communicative challenges that arise in the interaction itself and which have a profound impact on people’s lives and relationships.

Yes / Ethnographic audio-visual research data recorded in a busy dementia care environment were initially considered to be ‘contaminated’ by unwanted noise. This included a variety of elements: ambient sound, mechanical noise, non-narrative vocalisation and narrative fragments from parallel conversation. Using the methodological lens of conversation analysis, we present an exploration of the striking temporal and sequential resonances between the narrative of one man with dementia and a group of care staff holding a separate conversation some distance away. We suggest that in this and similar settings, where random and intrusive sounds and conversation form a ubiquitous backdrop, the presence of such ‘noise’ can have a detectable influence on the content and direction of situated narratives. We argue that rather than attempting to filter out these apparently intrusive sounds from micro-interactional data, interference elements can usefully be incorporated into the analysis of interactions.

This project accompanies a TEI transcription of Lady Blessington's Conversations with Lord Byron, currently available on the Life and Times of Lord Byron online archive. Although often cited in biographies of Lord Byron, Lady Blessington's Conversations of Lord Byron has received little critical attention. Further, the genre of Blessington's work, the conversation as a biographical form, suffers the same dearth of critical material. My aims, then, are to 1) present a brief history of the conversation as biographical form; 2) examine the publication history of the Conversations and underscore the social dimensions of its publication; and 3) evaluate Blessington's rhetorical strategies in the Conversations and to argue that Blessington's work is superior to two other accounts of Byron (by James Kennedy and Thomas Medwin) in terms of its psychological depth. / Master of Arts

This study contributes to an understanding of how coherence can be assigned or constructed by participants in authentic multiparty conversational interaction. Coherence is analysed as a type of organisation relevant for the making of meaning in situated interaction, but also in retrospect from a third party's (or analyst's) perspective; it is both constructed and reconstructed. Important questions are: what makes multiparty talk hold together, what do a number of participants in conversation (have to) do in order to sustain coherence, and in what senses can multiparty conversations be argued to be coherent? A notion of episode is (re)introduced as a unit of natural social interaction, manifest at a structurally intermediate, or a global. level of conversation. The use of episode implies that coherence, a pragmatic phenomenon, steadily encompasses text, i.e. talk, context(s) and actions, and sense-making practices invoking contexts during the progression of interaction. This reflects the reciprocal relations between länguage, social interaction, and cognition. Also, a coding method of coherence has been developed, Topical Episode Analysis (abbreviated as TEA). The thesis explores the concept of episode and its place among units of interaction, and describes the episode structure and coherence-making in some specific activity types. The empirical material used, 24 multiparty conversations making up a total of 1500 episodes, consists of dinner conversations among peers, multi-generational family gatherings (involving aphasics), radio talk shows, and conversations recorded at a centre aimed for elderly people (with symptoms of dementia). In all conversations, conversing is a main activity. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses have been carried out. Results include the following points: (i) coherence in multiparty conversation can be regarded as a co-construction; (ii) coherence is accomplished through the invoking of contexts (cotext, situation, and background knowledge), implying that coherence is an attribute of activities in context and not only 'text'; (iii) coherence-making is the unmarked case in authentic conversation and incoherence or non-coherence appear to be theoretical constructs; (iv) coherence patterns are activityspecific; (v) coherence is multilayered, consisting of one local and several global levels; (vi) coherence is constructed through a division of communicative labour, suggesting that also people with communicative impairments contribute to coherence-making.

The aim of this essay was to examine the way preschool teachers and children converse during school meals, and also the way preschool teachers start and develop conversations during meals. The conversations were analyzed from the topic of conversation and the teachers' ways of using language acts such as questions, remarks, exhortations. The study was based on observations, tape recording and contact schedule. The result shows that the topic of conversation is significant for how involved teachers are in conversations during meals. The result also shows how conversations develop or end depending on what language acts teachers use. This is particularly clear when using questions and exhortations. The discussion of this study is mainly about the fact that teachers use of questions does not seem to make conversation progress. In several cases, teachers' shut conversations down by using language acts. The discussion also shows that conversation between children can develop and progress without the help of teachers. / Barns språkutveckling, och närmare bestämt hur förskollärare och barn samtalar vidmåltid är i fokus i följande undersökning. Studien syftar till att undersöka förskolläraressätt att påbörja och vidareutveckla samtal under måltider i förskolan. Samtalenanalyseras utifrån samtalsämne och förskollärarnas sätt att använda sig av olikaspråkhandlingar (frågor, påståenden och uppmaningar). Studien genomförs med hjälpav observationer, bandinspelningar och kontaktscheman. Resultatet visar attsamtalsämnena under måltiderna har betydelse för förskollärarnas delaktighet. Det visarockså hur samtalen vidareutvecklas alternativt stannar av genom de olikaspråkhandlingar, särskilt frågor och uppmaningar som lärarna använder sig av.Diskussionen berör särskilt förskollärarnas användande av frågor vilka inte direkt visarsig vidareutveckla samtalen i någon mening. I flera fall tystar förskollärarna istället nedsamtalen genom sina språkhandlingar. Vi berör även att barnens egna samtal i flera fallutvecklas utan förskollärarens delaktighet.

Utskrivningssamtalet är den sista kontakten mellan läkare och patient innan patienten åker hem ifrån avdelningen. Syftet med den föreliggande studien är att undersöka ifall det förligger kommunikativa utmaningar i ett utskrivningssamtal mellan en läkare och en patient med afasi.  Den konkreta frågeställningen för studien var hur de potentiella problem som uppkom i samtalet hanterades och vilket utrymme som skapades för patientens deltagande i samtalet samt hur samtalsdeltagarna använde sig av icke-verbal kommunikation för att uppnå förståelse. Den valda metoden för att undersöka detta var Conversation Analysis, CA. I studien deltog två läkare, två patienter med afasi, samt två närstående till patienterna. Patienterna som deltog hade mild till måttlig afasi, svenska som modersmål och var 50 år och 70 år gamla. Läkarna som deltog hade varit anställda på avdelningen och arbetat med patienter med afasi i 2.5 år respektive 3.5 år och hade svenska som andraspråk. Resultatet av analysen var en identifiering av kommunikativa handlingar som ledde till sekvenser i samtalet som deltagarna orienterade mot som problematiska. Dessa var bland annat när läkaren inte följde upp på patientens förfrågan för mer information eller patient-initierade ämnen och inte redde ut missförstånd som uppkom. I resultatet identifierades även sekvenser där samtalsdeltagarna använde sin kommunikativa kompetens för att hantera kommunikativa utmaningar, samt sekvenser där samtalsdeltagarna använde sig av icke-verbal kommunikation för att underlätta den gemensamma förståelsen. Resultatet stämde överens med tidigare forskning om hur patienter med afasi och vårdpersonal organiserar interaktion i samtal.

<p> </p><p>The aim of this essay was to examine the way preschool teachers and children converse during school meals, and also the way preschool teachers start and develop conversations during meals. The conversations were analyzed from the topic of conversation and the teachers' ways of using language acts such as questions, remarks, exhortations. The study was based on observations, tape recording and contact schedule. The result shows that the topic of conversation is significant for how involved teachers are in conversations during meals. The result also shows how conversations develop or end depending on what language acts teachers use. This is particularly clear when using questions and exhortations. The discussion of this study is mainly about the fact that teachers use of questions does not seem to make conversation progress. In several cases, teachers' shut conversations down by using language acts. The discussion also shows that conversation between children can develop and progress without the help of teachers.</p> / <p>Barns språkutveckling, och närmare bestämt hur förskollärare och barn samtalar vidmåltid är i fokus i följande undersökning. Studien syftar till att undersöka förskolläraressätt att påbörja och vidareutveckla samtal under måltider i förskolan. Samtalenanalyseras utifrån samtalsämne och förskollärarnas sätt att använda sig av olikaspråkhandlingar (frågor, påståenden och uppmaningar). Studien genomförs med hjälpav observationer, bandinspelningar och kontaktscheman. Resultatet visar attsamtalsämnena under måltiderna har betydelse för förskollärarnas delaktighet. Det visarockså hur samtalen vidareutvecklas alternativt stannar av genom de olikaspråkhandlingar, särskilt frågor och uppmaningar som lärarna använder sig av.Diskussionen berör särskilt förskollärarnas användande av frågor vilka inte direkt visarsig vidareutveckla samtalen i någon mening. I flera fall tystar förskollärarna istället nedsamtalen genom sina språkhandlingar. Vi berör även att barnens egna samtal i flera fallutvecklas utan förskollärarens delaktighet.</p>

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