Junctions podcast

This report outlines the development process for Junctions, an original, mini-drama podcast that explores racial bias in the context of everyday interaction. The report consists of three sections – The Podcast, Pilot Episode, and Future Episodes – each of which speaks to a different aspect of the program’s framework. It also includes nearly all of the planning documents I created during pre-production, production, and post-production.Radio-Television-Fil

Collaborative Completions in Everyday Interaction: A Literature Review

This article provides an overview of conversation analytic research that investigates the phenomenon of interlocutors “finishing each other’s sentences,” termed collaborative completion, in everyday conversation. The objective is twofold: (1) by reporting on research that examines the formal features and the social actions of collaborative completions, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of both what this practice looks like and what it can achieve in interaction; and (2) in discussing this particular body of work with respect to the larger topic of how language is studied, the author hopes to demonstrate the power of the CA approach to deepen our understanding of the nature of language and how language is used. The paper first reviews the formal features of collaborative completions, namely its syntactic, paralinguistic, and sequential characteristics. Then, the various social actions that can be accomplished with this practice are discussed. Finally, some important themes and suggested directions for future research are mentioned and contextualized within some of the larger objectives of CA research

Definitely indefinite Negotiating intersubjective common ground in everyday interaction in Finnish

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 John Benjamins Publishing Company.This chapter concerns expressions which seem internally contradictory because they consist of both a recognitional and a non-recognitional element. They contain both the Finnish demonstrative se ‘that, the’, a recognitional, as in se ihminen ‘that/the person’, and one of the indefinite determiners yksi ‘one’, semmonen ‘such’, and joku ‘some’, all of which are non-recognitionals, resulting in expressions such as se joku ihminen ‘that/the some person’. The chapter shows that each of these expressions has its own home environment and expresses a distinct epistemic stance. The main findings are that these expressions constitute a fine-grained resource for the negotiation of relative epistemic status and are tools for building intersubjective common ground in interaction.Peer reviewe

REPAIR INITIATION STRATEGIES IN EVERYDAY INTERACTION BY SPEAKERS OF MALAY LANGUAGE

Everyday interaction is not a faultless process. It is possible for the process to experience troubles in speaking, hearing or understanding that can lead to interactional breakdowns between speakers. One available mechanism for speakers to address and resolve trouble is through other-initiated repair (OIR). Majority of OIR studies to date have used English language as data source. This may not entirely describe similar strategies employ by speakers of other languages when they participate in OIR. The present study aims to examine strategies for speakers of Malay language to initiate repair following troubles in everyday interaction. Three parent-child dyads of Malay language speakers were selected as participants. Their interaction over several homely activities (i.e. family meal time) were recorded and later transcribed following Jefferson Transcription System (2004). Analysis on strategies was quantitatively performed following Philip’s (2008) Clarification Request coding scheme. Overall result showed that parents and children employ different types of strategies when they are in position to initiate repair. Children largely depend on the use of open-class word that is known to be a weak repair initiator while parents are consistent with a more specific repair initiator. Result from this study provides novel discovery on how Malay speakers initiate repair in the context of parent-child interaction and it can serve as comparative data for future typological studies

Taste and the algorithm

Today, a consistent part of our everyday interaction with art and aesthetic artefacts occurs through digital media, and our preferences and choices are systematically tracked and analyzed by algorithms in ways that are far from transparent. Our consumption is constantly documented, and then, we are fed back through tailored information. We are therefore witnessing the emergence of a complex interrelation between our aesthetic choices, their digital elaboration, and also the production of content and the dynamics of creative processes. All are involved in a process of mutual influences, and are partially determined by the invisible guiding hand of algorithms. With regard to this topic, this paper will introduce some key issues concerning the role of algorithms in aesthetic domains, such as taste detection and formation, cultural consumption and production, and showing how aesthetics can contribute to the ongoing debate about the impact of today’s “algorithmic culture”

Composite social actions: The case of factual declaratives in everyday interaction

When taking a turn at talk, a speaker normally accomplishes a sequential action such as a question, answer, complaint, or request. Sometimes, however, a turn at talk may accomplish not a single but a composite action, involving a combination of more than one action. I show that factual declaratives (e.g., “the feed drip has finished”) are recurrently used to implement composite actions consisting of both an informing and a request or, alternatively, a criticism and a request. A key determinant between these is the recipient’s epistemic access to what the speaker is describing. Factual declaratives afford a range of possible responses, which can tell us how the composite action has been understood and give us insights into its underlying structure. Evidence for the stacking of composite actions, however, is not always directly available in the response and may need to be pieced together with the help of other linguistic and contextual considerations. Data are in Italian with English translation

Everyday interaction in lesbian households: identity work, body behaviour, and action

This thesis is about the resources that speakers can draw on when producing actions, both verbal and non-vocal. It considers how identity categories, gaze and touch can contribute to action in everyday interactions. The study stemmed from an interest in how lesbian identity is made relevant by lesbian speakers in everyday co-present interaction. A corpus of approximately 23.5 hours of video-recordings was gathered: households self-designated as lesbian (including couples, families, and housemates) video recorded some of their everyday interactions (including mealtimes, watching television, and playing board games). Using the tools of Conversation Analysis and working with the video recordings and transcripts of the interactions, several ways of making a lesbian identity relevant through talk were identified. As the analysis progressed, it was found that many references to sexual identity were produced fleetingly; they were not part of or integral to the ongoing talk, and were not taken up as a topic by participants. Rather, this invoking of a participant s sexual identity appears to contribute to a particular action that is being produced. It was found that invokings of other identities, for example relating to occupation, nationality, and race, worked in a similar way, and this is explored in relation to explanations and accounts. Where the first half of the thesis focuses on verbal invokings of identity in relation to action, the second half of the thesis considers some of the non-vocal resources that participants incorporate into their actions. It was found that when launching a topic related to something in the immediate environment, speakers can use gaze to ensure recipiency. Also, when producing potentially face-threatening actions such as teases, reprimands or insults, speakers can use interpersonal touch to mitigate the threat. In addition to showing how identities can be made relevant in everyday interaction, the findings of this thesis highlight the complexity of action design, and that in co-present interaction the physical resources available to participants also need to be taken into account

Thanks, but no thanks: women's avoidance of help-seeking in the context of a dependency-related stereotype

The stereotype that women are dependent on men is a commonly verbalized, potentially damaging aspect of benevolent sexism. We investigated how women may use behavioral disconfirmation of the personal applicability of the stereotype to negotiate such sexism. In an experiment (N = 86), we manipulated female college students’ awareness that women may be stereotyped by men as dependent. We then placed participants in a situation where they needed help. Women made aware of the dependency stereotype (compared to controls who were not) were less willing to seek help. They also displayed a stronger negative correlation between help-seeking and post help-seeking affect - such that the more help they sought, the worse they felt. We discuss the relevance of these findings for research concerning women’s help-seeking and their management of sexist stereotyping in everyday interaction. We also consider the implications of our results for those working in domains such as healthcare, teaching and counseling, where interaction with individuals in need and requiring help is common

Self-description in everyday interaction : Generalizations about oneself as accounts of behavior

This article suggests that there are systematic ways in which the identity of the 'self', as created and performed through first-person markers, can be made relevant and consequential in particular episodes of interaction. More specifically, the study looks at generalizations that people present about themselves in local interactional contexts: displays of the types of people they are and the ways in which they always or never behave ('I am this kind of person', 'I never do this'). It will be shown that such self-generalizations are typically used to account for one's behavior, and that this tendency is tied to the epistemic and moral rights provided by the first-person perspective, having the primary rights to one's own experience. The study suggests that speakers' personal characteristics or habitual behavior can be offered as a locally produced micro-identity, which can come to have interactional significance.Peer reviewe

The practice of everyday life provides supporters and inviters of morally responsible agency

Drawing on research from conversation analysis and developmental psychology, we point to the existence of “supporters” of morally responsible agency in everyday interaction: causes of our behavior that we are often unaware of, but that would make goodenough reasons for our actions, were we made aware of them