:In this paper, the influence of speech act theory and Grice’s the- ory of conversational implicature on the study of argumentation is discussed. First, the role that pragmatic insights play in van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and Jackson and Jacobs’ conver- sational approach to argumentation is described. Next, a number of examples of recent work by argumentation scholars is presented in which insights from speech act theory play a prominent role.

Dialogue has its origins in joint activities, which it serves to coordinate. Joint activities, in turn, usually emerge in hierarchically nested projects and subprojects. We propose that participants use dialogue to coordinate two kinds of transitions in these joint projects: vertical transitions, or entering and exiting joint projects; and horizontal transitions, or continuing within joint projects. The participants help signal these transitions with project markers, words such as uh-huh, m-hm, yeah, okay, or all right. These words have been studied mainly (...) as signals of listener feedback (back-channel signals) or turn-taking devices (acknowledgment tokens). We present evidence from several types of well-defined tasks that they are also part of a system of contrasts specialized for navigating joint projects. Uh-huh, m-hm and yeah are used for horizontal transitions, and okay and all right for vertical transitions. (shrink)

For people to contribute to discourse, they must do more than utter the right sentence at the right time. The basic requirement is that they add to their common ground in an orderly way. To do this, we argue, they try to establish for each utterance the mutual belief that the addressees have understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes. This is accomplished by the collective actions of the current contributor and his or her partners, and these (...) result in units of conversation called contributions. We present a model of contributions and show how it accounts for a variety of features of everyday conversations. (shrink)

The present study reports on the use of a linguistic category "interrogative," which has been traditionally associated with the act of questioning, and its use in argument talk in Japanese. Based on the observation that interrogative utterances in argument data are regularly followed by non-answers, it is argued that interrogative utterances in argument sequences may not be designed/interpreted as doing questioning. Such use of interrogatives can become an orderly practice to which participants orient themselves in social activities recognizable as arguments. (...) However, though an answer is not expected, the recipient invariably provides some form of response, or the initial speaker seeks such a response when none is provided. Thus the nature of interrogatives as a grammatical category seems to reside in the basic structural unit of social interaction [recipient-oriented action]-[response]. In general, this study is intended to show the dynamically interlocking relationship between grammar and interaction by exploring the intricate interplay between a local action for which interrogative grammar is employed, and the sequential environment and activity framework in which the action takes place. (shrink)

We describe how Intuitionistic Linear Logic can be used to provide a unified logical account for agents to find and execute plans. This account supports the modelling of agent interaction, including dialogue; allows agents to be robust to unexpected events and failures; and supports significant reuse of agent specifications. The framework has been implemented and several case studies have been considered. Further applications include human–computer interfaces as well as agent interaction in the semantic web.

Traditional mechanistic accounts of language processing derive almost entirely from the study of monologue. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue. As a result, these accounts may only offer limited theories of the mechanisms that underlie language processing in general. We propose a mechanistic account of dialogue, the interactive alignment account, and use it to derive a number of predictions about basic language processes. The account assumes that, in dialogue, the linguistic representations employed by the (...) interlocutors become aligned at many levels, as a result of a largely automatic process. This process greatly simplifies production and comprehension in dialogue. After considering the evidence for the interactive alignment model, we concentrate on three aspects of processing that follow from it. It makes use of a simple interactive inference mechanism, enables the development of local dialogue routines that greatly simplify language processing, and explains the origins of self-monitoring in production. We consider the need for a grammatical framework that is designed to deal with language in dialogue rather than monologue, and discuss a range of implications of the account. Key Words: common ground; dialogue; dialogue routines; language comprehension; language production; monitoring; perception-behavior link. (shrink)

This video-ethnographic study explores how professional actors and a director at the end of a theatrical rehearsal process coordinate transitions between rehearsed scenes. This is done through the development and use ofcues, that is, ‘signals for action’. The aim is to understand how cues are developed and how timing in transitions is achieved by using the designed cues. Work on three different scene transitions is analysed using multimodal Conversation Analysis. The results show that cueing is a central tool for developing (...) well-timed transitions, and how cues serve different purposes in the developing performance. There is no prior plan for how to achieve timely transitions. In all the analysed examples, it is an actor who must produce or act on the given cue who insists on its precise definition, followed by a negotiation on candidate cues, confirmation and specifying the cue. It is also actors who are primarily responsible for the timing of transitions, and the timing is solved through an interplay of clear-cut and embodied actions that allow for temporal variance. Cues are reflexively linked to actors’ observation and interpretation of other actors’ actions, which prevents a mechanical determination of timing in scene transition. (shrink)

This article explores pupils’ responses to addressed questions in two third-year primary school classes, organized as plenary interaction and based on the next-speaker selection. In this context, unaddressed pupils often produce responses of various kinds spontaneously, showing that the next-speaker selection per se does not exclude unaddressed pupils from participating. Analysis of the design and position of these responses show their orderly nature as mainly depending on the following dimensions: the position of the address term in the question and who (...) has primary access to answers. Pupils’ responses display a high level of awareness of the next-speaker selection rule operating in this setting, and more globally, of the turn-taking system. This competence enables pupils to understand and navigate the other-selection rule, often gaining their right to speakership. In line with prior studies on multiparty interactions, the article shows that teachers’ questions pose multiple constraints on responses. (shrink)

BackgroundHealth decisions occur in a context with omnipresent social influences. Information concerning what other patients decide may present certain interventions as more desirable than others.ObjectivesTo explore how physicians refer to what other people decide in conversations about the relevancy of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation or do-not-attempt-resuscitation orders.MethodsWe recorded forty-three physician–patient admission interviews taking place in a hospital in French-speaking Switzerland, during which CPR is discussed. Data was analysed with conversation analysis.ResultsReference to what other people decide in regards to CPR is used five (...) times, through reported speech. The reference is generic, and employed as a resource to deal with trouble encountered with the patient’s preference, either because it is absent or potentially incompatible with the medical recommendation. In our data, it is a way for physicians to present decisional paths and to steer towards the relevancy of DNAR orders. By calling out to a sense of membership, it builds towards the patient embracing norms that are associated with a desirable or relevant social group.ConclusionsIntroducing DNAR decisions in terms of what other people opt for is a way for physicians to bring up the eventuality of allowing natural death in a less overt way. Formulating treatment choices in terms of what other people do has implications in terms of supporting autonomous and informed decision making, since it nudges patients towards conformity with what is presented as the most preferable choice on the basis of social norms. (shrink)

Irregular self-selection is a demonstration of active involvement in interaction. English as a foreign language learners’ talk-in-interaction is one of such cases. Yet, little research has explored when, how, and why learners implement this action. The aim of this article is to address these issues in Chinese postgraduate EFL learners’ conversations from the perspective of multimodal interaction. To this end, we provide descriptive statistics and use multimodal conversation analysis to investigate the detailed process of irregular self-selection. The results show the (...) interactional sensitivity of learners, and all the successful irregular self-selection can be divided into the following three types: turn interruption, turn competition TC), and turn holding abortion. Learners implement this action by using multimodal resources, including lexis, syntax, pitch reset, intensity enhancement, gaze, and so forth. However, their body movements lack diversity, causing behaviors to be constrained and inactive. The main purpose of irregular self-selection is to provide knowledge that contributes to topical development. This study reveals that Chinese postgraduate EFL learners are interactionally competent members. They are able to achieve communicative goals but in a low diversity of body movements. The findings help to understand the detailed process of speakership claiming in EFL learners’ conversations. (shrink)

Speech act theorists tend to hold that the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by one interlocutor alone: either the speaker or the hearer. Yet experience tells us that the force of our utterances is not determined unilaterally. Rather, communication often feels collaborative. In this paper, I develop and defend a collaborative theory of illocutionary force, according to which the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by an agreement reached by the speaker and the hearer. This theory, which (...) builds upon linguistic and sociological work on adjacency pairs and conversational interaction, can accommodate the complexity of speaker intentions (which may be disjunctive, indeterminate, and/or inconsistent over time), and renders speech act theory more compatible with theories of common ground. (shrink)

Speech act theorists tend to hold that the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by one interlocutor alone: either the speaker or the hearer. Yet experience tells us that the force of our utterances is not determined unilaterally. Rather, communication often feels collaborative. In this paper, I develop and defend a collaborative theory of illocutionary force, according to which the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by an agreement reached by the speaker and the hearer. This theory, which (...) builds upon linguistic and sociological work on adjacency pairs and conversational interaction, can accommodate the complexity of speaker intentions (which may be disjunctive, indeterminate, and/or inconsistent over time), and renders speech act theory more compatible with theories of common ground. (shrink)

Whereas “professional vision” has been mostly analyzed in apprenticeship and other settings where knowledge is made explicit or reflected upon, I focus on how expertise tacitly plays out in task-oriented interaction among practitioners. The paper considers orientation both to the coworker’s and one’s own expertise in the collaborative accomplishment of airport security work. I show how screeners recruit action from colleagues in largely underspecified ways, based on shared access to the visibility field and expected professional vision. Requesting is tacitly accomplished (...) via “highlighting,” which also accounts for one’s request. Accepting is silently achieved via locomotion, which also serves as a display of understanding. Embodied action is systematically preferred to verbal one. Talk is employed in larger proportions when the domain of scrutiny is not equally accessible to interactants, and when “face-work” is required. (shrink)

Sticker use is an increasingly popular part of daily messaging activity. However, little is known regarding the types, functions, and outcomes of sticker use in authentic online communications. To investigate these phenomena, we analysed sticker use in five small mobile-messaging-facilitated discussion groups initiated by students for course projects in an Asian university. The students used four types of stickers, among which ‘animated picture without text’ was the most frequent. Sticker functions fell into two main categories: as a tone indicator with (...) scope over a textual message, and as a stand-alone illocutionary act. Based on interviews with seven participants, we found disparities between the sender’s intention and the receiver’s interpretation for 34.7% of the stickers, but these disparities did not adversely affect the communication. Implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Eye gaze plays an important role in communication but understanding of its actual function or functions and the methods used to elucidate this have varied considerably. This systematized review was undertaken to summarize both the proposed functions of eye gaze in conversations of healthy adults and the methodological approaches employed. The eligibility criteria were restricted to a healthy adult population and excluded studies that manipulated eye gaze behavior. A total of 29 articles—quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods were returned, with a (...) wide range of methodological designs. The main areas of variability related to number of conversants, their familiarity and status, conversation topic, data collection tools—video and eye tracking—and definitions of eye gaze. The findings confirm that eye gaze facilitates turn yielding, plays a role in speech monitoring, prevents and repairs conversation breakdowns and facilitates intentional and unintentional speech interruptions. These findings were remarkably consistent given the variability in methods across the 29 articles. However, in relation to turn initiation, the results were less consistent, requiring further investigation. This review provides a starting point for future studies to make informed decisions about study methods for examining eye gaze and selecting variables of interest. (shrink)

Face-to-face interaction is a primordial site for human activity and intersubjectivity. Empirical studies have shown how people reflexively exhibit a face orientation and work to establish a formation in which everyone is facing each other in local participation frameworks. The Face has also been described by, e.g., Levinas as the basis for a first ethical philosophy. Humans have established these Face-formations when interacting since time immemorial, but what happens when one of the participants is present through a telepresence robot? Based (...) on ethnomethodology, Peircean/goodwinian semiotics, multimodal conversation analysis and video data from a Danish residential rehabilitation center, the article shows the ways in which participants manage to interactively, cooperatively, and moment by moment achieve an F-formation in situ. The article contributes a detailed analysis and discussion of the kind of participant a telepresence robot is, in and through situated interactions: I propose that we term this participant the RoboDoc, given that it is an assemblage of a doctor who controls a robot. By focusing on the affordances of mobility, the article contributes to a renewed understanding of the importance and relevance of establishing Face-orientations in an increasingly technofied telepresence world. (shrink)

This article reports on ethnographic research into the practical and ethical consequences of the implementation and use of telecare devices for older people living at home in Spain and the United Kingdom. Telecare services are said to allow the maintenance of their users’ autonomy through connectedness, relieving the isolation from which many older people suffer amid rising demands for care. However, engaging with Science and Technology Studies literature on “user configuration” and implementation processes, we argue here that neither services nor (...) users preexist the installation of the service: they are better described as produced along with it. Moving beyond design and appropriation practices, our contribution stresses the importance of installations as specific moments where such emplacements take place. Using Etienne Souriau’s concept of instauration, we describe the ways in which, through installation work, telecare services “bring into existence” their very infrastructure of usership. Hence, both services and telecare users are effects of fulfilling the “felicity conditions” of an achieved installation. (shrink)

Sometimes it is thought that there are serious differences between theories of discourse that turn on the role of cognition in the theory. This is largely a misconception: for example, with its emphasis on participants’ own understandings, its principles of recipient design and projection, Conversation Analysis is hardly anti-cognitive. If there are genuine disagreements they rather concern a preference for ‘lean’ versus ‘rich’ metalanguages and different methodologies. The possession of a multi-levelled model, separating out what the individual brings to interaction (...) from the emergent properties of interaction, would make it easier to resolve some of these issues. Meanwhile, these squabbles on the margins distract us from a much more central and more interesting issue: is there a very special cognition-for-interaction, which underlies and underpins all language and discourse? Prime facie evidence suggests that there is, and different approaches can contribute to our understanding of it. (shrink)

This article offers an anthropological perspective on autism, a condition at once neurological and social, which complements existing psychological accounts of the disorder, expanding the scope of inquiry from the interpersonal domain, in which autism has been predominantly examined, to the socio-cultural one. Persons with autism need to be viewed not only as individuals in relation to other individuals, but as members of social groups and communities who act, displaying both social competencies and difficulties, in relation to socially and culturally (...) ordered expectations of behavior. The article articulates a socio-cultural approach to perspective-taking in autism in three social domains: participating in conversational turn-taking and sequences; formulating situational scenarios; and interpreting socio-cultural meanings of indexical forms and behavior. Providing ethnographic data on the everyday lives of high-functioning children with autism and Asperger syndrome, the article outlines a cline of competence across the three domains, from most success in conversational turn-taking to least in inferring indexical meanings. Implications of these abilities and limitations are considered for theoretical approaches to society and culture, illuminating how members of social groups are at once shaped by, and are agents of, social life and cultural understanding. (shrink)

This article explores the properties of formulations in a corpus of Hebrew radio phone-ins by juxtaposing two theoretical frameworks: conversation analysis and dialogic syntax. This combination of frameworks is applied towards explaining an anomalous interaction in the collection – a caller’s marked, unexpected rejection of a formulation of gist produced by the radio phone-in’s host. Our analysis shows that whereas previous CA studies of formulations account for many instances throughout the corpus, understanding this particular formulation in CA terms does not (...) explain its drastic rejection by the caller. We therefore turn to an in-depth examination of strategies for lexical and syntactic resonance as a stance-taking device throughout the interaction. In so doing, we not only shed light on the anomalous interaction, but also offer an answer to a provocative question previously put forward by Haddington concerning which of the two – stances or actions – have more meaningful consequences for the description of the organization of interaction. In the particular interaction analyzed here, stances play the more significant role. We propose that the intersubjective stance-taking of participants may be viewed as a meta-action employed among participants as they move across actions, sequences, and activities in talk. (shrink)

This article investigates account episodes in Italian family dinner conversations and illustrates how sequential patterns and participation are organized in terms of preferences indexical of moral ideology and moral order. Accounts have been mostly examined as speech acts abstracted from embedding sequential environment; this article shows that different design features of the priming move in account episodes retrospectively define different aspects of a situation as problematic and prospectively activate the relevance for distinctive remedial moves. On an ideological level, narrative elicitations (...) as priming moves and accounts as remedial moves index a moral perspective that promotes moral reasoning and thus the negotiation of norms. In addition, such moves realize a practice of morality that tends to be inquisitory vs condemnatory, offering the benefit of the doubt prior to guilt allocation. In conclusion, the discursive mechanics of accountability constitutes a medium for reproduction of, and innovation in, the moral order. (shrink)

This study examines interactional sequences in which students make assertions about topic-relevant matters in classroom interactions. Using a Conversation Analytical approach, I show how the students’ knowledge claims lead to negotiations of sequential and epistemic rights to make such claims. Through these negotiations, the students upgrade their epistemic stance by repeating or backing their claims with accounts and providing evidence of them. The teachers’ acceptance or rejection of the students’ initiatives displays an orientation to the sequential and topical relevance of (...) the information provided by the students. This study contributes to a better understanding of student initiatives in the classroom, a topic that until now has received scarce attention. Additionally, it contributes knowledge about the negotiation of epistemic authority in relation to assertions and their responses, which may have more general implications for the study of talk-in-interaction. (shrink)

This article presents a study of the discourse characteristics of interaction within a virtual community. The data are from the text-based chat forum of an online community of learners and teachers of English. The forum is the meeting place for community members, and is an international site of language use with participants from a range of linguistic backgrounds. Within this context, some pertinent themes are investigated which relate to a relatively recent form of discourse, synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication. The discussion (...) centres on the interplay between the technological attributes of the medium and the linguistic, discourse and sociocultural conditions within which the participants interact. How do these elements combine to shape the discourse? This question is addressed with reference to the cohesive feature of conversational floor. Because there is a lack of coordination of turn transfer in SCMC interaction, conversational floor emerges as an organizing principle in preference to models of conversation based on turn taking. (shrink)

Previous cross-cultural research has not undertaken in situ analysis of conversational style between groups in severe political conflict. The present study is a quantitative and ethnographic study of conversational interruptions in one Israeli-Palestinian `dialogue' event which took place during the Palestinian Uprising. Findings indicate that the previously documented divergent cultural styles of the two groups underwent a process of change. Specifically, the Israeli dugri interruptive style dominated interactions between Israelis and between Israelis and Palestinians. However, fewer interruptions were found in (...) the intergroup interaction. Conversely, the Palestinian musayra style of non-interruptions was more significant in the intragroup Palestinian-Palestinian interaction than in interaction with Israelis, where Palestinian interruptions dominated. The political context of events and the erosion of the musayra style are suggested as factors that explain results. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

This article reviews arguments that, in the process of action formation and ascription, the relative status of the participants with respect to a projected action can adjust or trump the action stance conveyed by the linguistic form of the utterance. In general, congruency between status and stance is preferred, and linguistic form is a fairly reliable guide to action ascription. However incongruities between stance and status result in action ascriptions that are at variance with the action stance that is otherwise (...) conveyed in the turn. This argument is presented, first, in relation to epistemic status and stance where the process is argued to be both fundamental and universal across all declarative and interrogative utterances. Some consequences of this way of viewing action are discussed. The argument is then briefly extended to deontics and benefactives. (shrink)

Employing conversation analysis, this article investigates instructions in lessons for guitar and Japanese calligraphy. In receiving an instruction, the students in the guitar lessons are expected to immediately follow the instruction. In contrast to the guitar lessons, the students in the calligraphy lessons are not institutionally expected to immediately follow the teacher’s instructions but to receive them. However, the students often gesticulate what they learned from and could make sense of the prior instruction upon completion of an instruction activity. I (...) call this phenomenon embodied solitary confirmation. By demonstrating the interactional procedure for this practice, this article respecifies reflection as an interactional phenomenon and elucidates an organization of multiactivity. (shrink)

Nurses need to adapt to various interactional situations and design their talk for different recipients. One essential communicative task for nurses is to transmit information on test and measurement results both to the patient and to the physician. This article examines how nurses design their talk on numerical values according to the recipient and the activity. The nurse can deliver the information either plainly through numbers or by formulating some type of qualitative description of the value. The data consist of (...) 7.5 hours of video-recorded interaction in a Finnish hospital. Using conversation analysis, we demonstrate how the institutional roles and the ongoing activity sequence affect how nurses formulate their talk. When nurses discuss results with their patients, they typically use qualitative descriptions, whereas when they talk with doctors, the typical turn involves numeric information. It will be demonstrated that nurses construct their professional identity involving both care and medical expertise through their linguistic-interactional choices. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo describe una tipología de saludos y despedidas del español de México basada en datos observacionales de hablantes jóvenes del municipio de Metepec. El artículo también hace un contraste de datos observacionales y datos intuitivos referentes a los formatos de saludos y despedidas. En cuanto a la tipología, los saludos y las despedidas reportados se categorizan en tres y cuatro tipos respectivamente (saludos: hola, vocativos, la construcción interrogativa ¿Qué …?; despedidas: adiós, bye, imperativo del verbo cuidar y (...) despedidas temporales), y cada categoría cuenta con características y subcategorías particulares. La comparación entre los datos observacionales y los intuitivos en general indica que los datos observacionales no coinciden con los datos intuitivos; sin embargo, al ahondar en su contraste se identifican algunas similitudes particulares. (shrink)

Compared to other animals, humans appear to have a special motivation to share experiences and mental states with others (Clark, 2006; Grice, 1975), which enables them to enter a condition of ‘we’ or shared intentionality (Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005). Shared intentionality has been suggested to be an evolutionary response to unique problems faced in complex joint action coordination (Levinson, 2006; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005) and to be unique to humans (Tomasello, 2014). The theoretical and empirical bases for (...) this claim, however, present several issues and inconsistencies. Here, we suggest that shared intentionality can be approached as an interactional achievement, and that by studying how our closest relatives, the great apes, coordinate joint action with conspecifics, we might demonstrate some correlate abilities of shared intentionality, such as the appreciation of joint commitment. We provide seven examples from bonobo joint activities to illustrate our framework. (shrink)

When people are engaged in social interaction, they can repeat aspects of each other’s communicative behavior, such as words or gestures. This kind of behavioral alignment has been studied across a wide range of disciplines and has been accounted for by diverging theories. In this paper, we review various operationalizations of lexical and gestural alignment. We reveal that scholars have fundamentally different takes on when and how behavior is considered to be aligned, which makes it difficult to compare findings and (...) draw uniform conclusions. Furthermore, we show that scholars tend to focus on one particular dimension of alignment (traditionally, whether two instances of behavior overlap in form), while other dimensions remain understudied. This hampers theory testing and building, which requires a well‐defined account of the factors that are central to or might enhance alignment. To capture the complex nature of alignment, we identify five key dimensions to formalize the relationship between any pair of behavior: time, sequence, meaning, form, and modality. We show how assumptions regarding the underlying mechanism of alignment (placed along the continuum of priming vs. grounding) pattern together with operationalizations in terms of the five dimensions. This integrative framework can help researchers in the field of alignment and related phenomena (including behavior matching, mimicry, entrainment, and accommodation) to formulate their hypotheses and operationalizations in a more transparent and systematic manner. The framework also enables us to discover unexplored research avenues and derive new hypotheses regarding alignment. (shrink)

Cet article propose deux mises à l’épreuve d’une modélisation du rôle du contexte dans l’interprétation des actes de parole. Selon notre modèle, les processus interprétatifs se déroulent généralement à partir d’hypothèses contextuelles sur le genre de discours pratiqué par le ou les énonciateur(s) du texte. Ces hypothèses sont activées à l’aide d’indices pluri-sémiotiques péritextuels et textuels. Un intertexte générique est alors mobilisé et oriente les processus interprétatifs, en particulier s’agissant de l’attribution des valeurs illocutoires et interactives probables des actes de (...) parole. La récurrence de ces valeurs constitue en retour des indices potentiels du genre de discours en cours. La première mise à l’épreuve de ces hypothèses s’appuie sur l’analyse « globale » de trois corpus : vingt-quatre interactions télévisées, leur péritexte et le péritexte des émissions les incluant. Cette analyse nous a permis d’observer des correspondances entre différentes configurations lexicales et morphosyntaxiques et quatre schémas d’actes de parole mis en évidence dans une précédente recherche. Dans un second temps, nous mettons en évidence certaines incidences interprétatives plus « locales » des prescriptions génériques, à l’aide d’une analyse des parcours probables de nos interprétations au palier de la période. (shrink)

In “Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language” (2003), Joshua Knobe reported an asymmetry in test subjects’ responses to a question about intentionality: subjects are more likely to judge that a side effect of an agent’s intended action is intentional if they think the side effect is morally bad than if they think it is morally good. This result has been taken to suggest that the concept of intentionality is an inherently moral concept. In this paper, we draw attention to (...) the fact that Knobe’s original interpretation of the results is based on an abstract rendering of the central scenario that is significantly different from the vignettes presented to the survey participants. In particular, the experimental vignettes involve temporal and social dimensions; they portray sequences of social actions involving an agent and an interlocutor, rather than a lone agent making a momentary decision in light of certain attitudes. Through textual analyses of a set of vignettes used to study the Knobe effect, drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive psychology, we show that there are many differences between the experimental conditions besides the moral valence of the side effect. In light of our textual analyses, we discuss vignette methodology in experimental philosophy and suggest an alternative interpretation of Knobe’s original experimental results. We also argue that experimental philosophy could benefit from considering research on naturally occurring social interaction as an alternative source of empirical findings for discussions of folk-psychological concepts. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new category of linguistic harm: that of illocutionary frustration. I argue against Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton’s notion of illocutionary silencing by challenging their claim that silencing occurs when there is a lack of uptake of the speaker’s illocutionary act. I look at two scenarios that their view treats differently and argue that these scenarios warrant the same kind of analysis; Hornsby and Langton’s notion of silencing can’t capture the purported difference they want it to capture. (...) I propose that we should look instead to standing to explain the phenomenon that illocutionary silencing intends to explain. I explicate the role of standing in terms of illocutionary frustration, then consider street harassment as an example of a linguistic interaction that is best explained by my proposed view. (shrink)

Albert and De Ruiter provide an introduction to the Conversation Analytic approach to ‘repair’: the ways in which people detect and deal with troubles in speaking, hearing and understanding in conversation. They explain the basic turn‐taking structures involved, provide examples, explain recent developments in the field and highlight some important points of contact and contrast with work in the Cognitive Sciences.

On "Revolutionary Road": A Proposal for Extending the Gricean Model of Communication to Cover Multiple Hearers The paper addresses the problem of multiple hearers in the context of the Gricean model of communication, which is based on speaker meaning and the Cooperative Principle, together with its subordinate maxims, legitimately flouted to yield implicatures. Grice appears to have conceived of the communicative process as taking place between two interlocutors, assuming that the speaker communicates meanings, while the hearer makes compatible inferences. A (...) thesis propounded here is that this dyadic account must undergo a number of fundamental modifications to cover a variety of hearer types, both ratified and unratified, partaking in polylogic interactions. (shrink)

The article is the first Russian translation of the most well-known piece in conversation analysis, written by the founders of CA Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. It has become a milestone in the development of the discipline. The authors offer a comprehensive approach to the study of conversational interactions. The approach is based on the analysis of detailed transcripts of the records of natural conversations. The authors show that in the course of the conversation co-conversationalists use a number (...) of techniques to organize the turn-taking. These techniques are combined in four rules: the first option is the transfer of speakership via allocation of the next speaker by the current speaker; if this first option is not realized, turn-taking may happen via the self-selection by one of the participants; if the second option remains unrealized too, the current speaker continues speaking, with all three options being recurrently provided at all next transition relevant places. The result of the operation of these rules is an orderly conversation based on the principle “one speaker at a time.” According to the authors, this model is compatible with obvious observations concerning conversational practices that they make. The authors show that in every conversation there is a turn-taking system in operation, which provides for a flexible adaptation of the every conversation’s structure to any possible topics and any possible speakers’ identities. Such approach considers how the participants in social interactions order their communication with each other, achieving a sense of normally occurring interaction. (shrink)

This paper responds to Maria Wowk’s (Human Studies, 30, 131–155, 2007) critique of “Kitzinger’s feminist conversation analysis”, corrects her misrepresentation of it, and rebuts her claim to have cast doubt on whether it is “genuinely identifiable” as conversation analysis (CA). More broadly, it uses Wowk’s critique as a springboard for continuing the development of feminist conversation analysis through: (i) discussion of appropriate methods of data collection and analysis; (ii) clarification of CA’s turn-taking model and an illustrative deployment of it in (...) the analysis of a single case and of a collection (of if/then compound TCUs); (iii) exposition of a feminist CA understanding of “participants’ orientations”, and of the relevance of the distinction between participants’ and analysts’ orientations for feminist work. Finally, I suggest that feminist work in CA makes important contributions to the development of CA as a discipline. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the everyday practice of authority and knowledge in a group home for adults with intellectual disability. Based on fieldwork, the group home is understood as a workplace, which provides a model of organizational participation as a dilemma of freedom rather than a problem of power. Three kinds of work are observed in the everyday know-how of counselors and residents. First, Michael Lipskys concept of street-level bureaucracy is used to understand the inherently indeterminate and conflictual nature (...) of counselor work. Second, the competent participation of residents is also organized as work, often explicitly, as the work they must do to become more independent. The group home is therefore understood as a setting of governmentality because it reflects the indirect practice of authority characteristic of contemporary liberal societies. Finally, the ethnomethodological insight about the accomplished character of local order is the basis for the observation of everyday life itself as a third kind of work. (shrink)

In this article we present the bases for a computational theory of the cognitive processes underlying human communication. The core of the article is devoted to the analysis of the phases in which the process of comprehension of a communicative act can be logically divided: (1) literal meaning, where the reconstruction of the mental states literally expressed by the actor takes place: (2) speaker's meaning, where the partner reconstructs the communicative intentions of the actor; (3) communicative effect, where the partner (...) possibly modifies his own beliefs and intentions; (4) reaction, where the intentions for the generation of the response are produced; and (5) response, where an overt response is constructed. The model appears to be compatible with relevant facts about human behavior. Our hypothesis is that, through communication, an actor tries to exploit the motivational structures of a partner so that the desired goal is generated. A second point is that social behavior requires that cooperation be maintained at some level. In the case of communication, cooperation is, in general, pursued even when the partner does not adhere to the actor's goals, and therefore no cooperation occurs at the behavioral level. This important distinction is reflected in the two kinds of game we introduce to account for communication. The main concept implied in communication is that two agents overtly reach a situation of shared mental states. Our model deals with sharedness through two primitives: shared beliefs and communicative intentions. (shrink)

Withholding and pursuit are well-documented phenomena in talk between adults and in talk with children. They have been described as working to perform various functions that emerge locally between speakers in a variety of interactional contexts both in ordinary conversation and in institutional talk.In this paper I explore further the actions of pursuit and withholding in interaction between parents and their very young children, first described in Filipi (2003, 2009) by going beyond description and by examining how these features might (...) be implicated in learning. Longitudinal change is thus a focus of the analysis. Examples of talk are drawn from one child aged from 11 to 24 months interacting with members of her family.Applying the microanalytic approach of Conversation Analysis, the study reports four contexts in which pursuit emerges as an important resource. They are pursuit relevant to sequence structure, linguistic pursuit, pursuit of understanding and pursuit of a particular response token. Analysis shows that while the adults orient to the need to move the action forward, particularly observable in the Summons/Response adjacency pair, withholding of completion can occur at any time in order for parent and child to work on particular skills. Finally, I argue that the micro details of the actions of withholding and pursuit provide a particularly useful lens with which to observe the dynamic qualities of asymmetry. Keywords: parent child interaction; Conversation Analysis; language development; asymmetry; withholding; pursuit. (shrink)