The International encyclopedia of language and social interaction

Formulation is the interactional practice of referring to objects, persons, activities, or previous conversation. This article presents a brief history of formulation in the field of language and social interaction and outlines current knowledge of the practices of formulation. The article also describes three different senses of formulation that appear in the literature on conversation analysis and the relationship of these to each other

Co-Constructing Writing Knowledge: Students’ Collaborative Talk Across Contexts

Although compositionists recognize that student talk plays an important role in learning to write, there is limited understanding of how students use conversational moves to collaboratively build knowledge about writing across contexts. This article reports on a study of focus group conversations involving first-year students in a cohort program. Our analysis identified two patterns of group conversation among students: “co-telling” and “co-constructing,” with the latter leading to more complex writing knowledge. We also used Beaufort’s domains of writing knowledge to examine how co-constructing conversations supported students in abstracting knowledge beyond a single classroom context and in negotiating local constraints. Our findings suggest that co-constructing is a valuable process that invites students to do the necessary work of remaking their knowledge for local use. Ultimately, our analysis of the role of student conversation in the construction of writing knowledge contributes to our understanding of the myriad activities that surround transfer of learning

Creation's Persistent Voice: Critiquing the Secondary Status

Christianity struggles with the concept that nature/creation is truly revelatory of God, and not merely confirmatory of theological conclusions derived from special revelation or deduced from rational reflection. The result is a stilted and narrow conversation between theology and the natural sciences, with the contribution of creation to knowledge of God being limited to certain well-worn paths. If theology is willing to hold a full-fledged conversation with the natural sciences, it may just find that new metaphors and conceptions of God arise that illuminate our understanding of God in ways that scripture alone cannot. Such conversations must be characterized (on both sides) as serious and tentative, with conclusions never considered to be final, but always open to further conversation as new paradigms emerge