"Are you human beings?" Order and knowledge construction through questioning in primary classroom interaction

This article examines how question-answer sequences are constructed in primary school instructional activities. The interaction between teacher and students in two 3rd-year groups is analyzed using a conversation-analytic approach. Four questioning patterns - yes-no, alternative, wh-questions, and a non-interrogative format very frequently used in this setting which I call the Eliciting Completion Device (ECD) - teachers use to address the class as a whole are examined in relation to their sequential uptakes: in-unison answers and bids to answer. The analysis shows that students recognize the conventions of question construction as methodical practices used by teachers to convey expectations as to whether the answer is accessible to students. Choral responses are produced when the question is constructed as eliciting information which is obviously known to students, while bids to answer are deployed when the answer is less transparent. The findings reveal that the practices used to construct collectively assembled knowledge are closely connected to the organization of the classroom social order. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

On designedly incomplete utterances: What counts as learning for teachers and students in primary classroom interaction

The article analyzes a variety of Koshik's (2002) Designedly Incomplete Utterances (DIU) as they are produced in whole-class, teacher-led instruction sequences held in 2 third-year groups in an Italian primary school. This device, one of whose basic pedagogic functions is to solicit displays of knowledge from students in the shape of utterance completion, is a recurrent feature of teacher-student interaction in this setting. The study focuses on one specific and locally managed use of the device, whereby the teacher's orientation to the pedagogic goals of the organization of interaction surfaces in features of talk. I found systematic features in the construction of what I call main-clause DIUs, which teachers recurrently use to cast students as learners, by treating their verbal behavior as providing evidence that some type of learning has occurred in prior talk. The findings provide grounds for a critique of the Initiation-Response-Evaluation model and for a characterization of questioning in instruction sequences, both of which account for the specific institutional relevancies of interaction in this setting. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Reason-for-calling invitations in Italian telephone calls: Action design and recipient commitment

This paper investigates three main formats for reason-for-calling invitations in Italian telephone calls and shows that these invitation formats are designed to include an informing/descriptive component and a requesting component. These two elements are encoded and foregrounded differently in the design of each format, constructing diverse ways to name, refer to or describe the social occasion that recipients are invited to attend and different ways of requesting the invitees to state their commitment to participate. Our findings provide evidence that, by using one of the three formats, speakers are able to tailor the invitation to the different contextual conditions in which they and their recipients may be when the invitation is made, as well as to the circumstances of the social event, with the inviters often displaying caution in extending the invitation. This paper also investigates the types of constraints on the degree of commitment from the invitation recipient that each format entails, offering a contribution to study preference organisation in first actions

Positive evaluation of student answers in classroom instruction

Within the context of teacher/whole-class instruction sequences, researchers have associated teacher evaluation of pupils' answers to forms of traditional pedagogic discourse, also referred to as 'triadic dialogue', 'monologic discourse', 'recitation' and 'Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences'. Teacher evaluation has also been associated with pupils' low levels of participation. Explanations and solutions offered by prior research are mainly based on functional categories of actions, characterizing forms and functions of teacher questions and follow-up moves in IRE sequences. Using Conversation Analysis to investigate collections of positive evaluations in video-recorded lessons in two primary school classes, we propose an interactional explanation of the phenomenon and of its predominant use. We show that teachers systematically select the formats of their positive third-turn receipts not only to evaluate pupils' answers for their abstract truth value, but also with respect to the role of each question-answer in the whole activity. We demonstrate that, in this way, teachers convey judgements about the question within the activity; thus, adding a constitutive property to the pedagogic practice and providing students with interpretive resources for a common understanding of pedagogic goals and procedures. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis

Reducing asymmetry in doctor-patient interaction: patients' initiatives in specialised clinical encounters

This study identifies and describes a specific multimodal practice that patients use during medical encounters, in which they interact with a team of doctor in an Italian specialized centre for prosthesis construction and application. Focusing on the early stages of these encounters, in which participants are engaged in history-taking and physical examinations, the paper analyses the way in which patients delicately orchestrate their gaze, gesture and verbal behaviour to gain some extra speaking space, beyond that of mere respondents to doctors’ questions. By using the analytic and methodological framework of Conversation Analysis, we show that patients produce this recurrent multimodal pattern, whose features are methodically produced and recognizable. The study shows that, through this specific pattern, patients manage to acquire the interactional role of “action initiators”; thus constraining doctors to respond: for instance, by producing unrequested information about their health status, by correcting implicit assumptions in the doctors’ questions, or by producing independent assessments. Thus, the paper contributes to previous research, which has documented patients’ agency and initiative, revising the notion of asymmetry in medical settings and highlighting the active role of the patient in every stage of these encounters

Agire in lingue diverse: riflessioni sul binomio \u2018forma e azione\u2019 nelle pratiche comparative

Understanding how speakers recognize actions in talk is fundamental both for theories on intercultural communication and for practices involving cross-linguistic analysis (translation, interpreting and mediation). Drawing from Conversation Analysis, recent studies have shown that interactants manage to understand and respond to their interlocutors with precision, speed and no apparent effort, relaying on interactional mechanisms that are universal and contextually-based. Since when the notion action first appeared in Austin\u2019s lectures, scholars from different trends and traditions adopted alternative positions about the relationship between form and context, as well as on the relevance of each in performing and recognizing social actions in talk. The contribution argues for a major role of the second and reflects on possible outcomes for comparative practices

The interactional management of discipline and morality in the classroom: An introduction

This special issue of Linguistics and Education deals with a specific domain of activities related to the management of discipline in classrooms. Matters of authority and discipline have been widely discussed in educational research literature. Yet, only a handful of studies have investigated how matters of discipline and the boundaries of acceptable behaviour are managed and negotiated locally in the interactional activities that constitute the social world of the classroom. This volume addresses the issue of how teachers, and sometimes students, actually deal with the problem of addressing, referring to, and evaluating unauthorized or inappropriate conduct. The focus is on activities through which teachers and students manage expectations concerning the social and moral order of classroom conduct. These are investigated through the detailed analytic lens of conversation analysis. In this introduction we offer a necessarily selective overview of previous work on classroom interaction, present the key principles of conversation analysis, and introduce the contributions included in this volume. © 2011 Elsevier Inc

Teachers' reproaches and managing discipline in the classroom: When teachers tell students what they do 'wrong'

Drawing from a corpus of video-recorded classes in 6 and 7 grade groups in an Italian secondary school and in two 3 grade groups in a primary school, the article investigates one specific format used by teachers to reproach students for their untoward conduct. The analysis focuses on cases where, in contrast to other less explicit formats, teachers refer to students' ongoing behaviour as 'wrong' with direct descriptions of the misconduct. Reproaches of this type employ a conditional structure in which the event and its negative consequences are described in detail. The paper argues for this specific type of reproach as displaying similarities with repair sequences in that it operates retroactively (Schegloff, 2007) to locate in prior courses of actions the source for the reproach (or the 'reproachable'). Building on a detailed analysis of turn construction, word selection, and sequential deployment, the paper shows that a preference organization is in order in the accomplishment of reproaches. In comparison to prior literature on this topic, and in contrast to other documented way of treating recipients' untoward conduct as caused by their inability, the paper documents the way in which other peoples' conduct can be explicitly constructed as wrong and, as such, reproachable; thus holding the recipient as culpable for not having avoided a course of action that is not amendable. The paper argues for further research in the domain of classroom reproaches, as having implications for the understanding both of action formation mechanisms in ordinary and institutional interaction and of the different activities that contribute to the sense of formality of classroom interaction beyond instruction activities and academic talk. © 2011 Elsevier Inc

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