A conversation analytical study of telephone conversation openings between native and nonnative speakers

The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, it contrasts "ritual routines" in telephone conversation openings in Iran and Germany. Specifically, it focuses on the interactional organization of the ritual "how are you" sequence in both cultures. Furthermore, it illustrates how the ritual "how are you" sequence is expanded in Iranian telephone conversation openings: in opening a conversation on the phone, after inquiring about one another's well-being, the Iranian co-participants move one step further and inquire about the well-being of their respective families. Unlike Iranian telephone conversation openings, however, German telephone conversation openings often do not include the ritual "how are you". When German coparticipants do perform a set of a "how are you" sequences, they are not reciprocated. The first part of the "how are you" sequence frequently functions as a topic elicitation. In other words, the response to an inquiry about the co-participant's well-being is usually topicalized. The second part of this paper presents some instances of transfer of the culture specific differences in telephone conversation opening routines in conversations between Iranian normative speakers of German and German native speakers. Specifically, it illustrates how German native speakers understand and orient to the ritual inquiries about themselves and their family as topic elicitation

Instruction Receipt in Face-to-Face Interaction

This paper investigates the role of gesture in instruction giving and in instruction receiving during a cooking lesson. Gestures and embodied actions are not entirely a speaker's phenomenon but are oriented to and also used by listeners as well. We will focus primarily on the recipient and his/her orientation to verbal and embodied instruction giving.Instructions are broken down into smaller sequences (Wright & Hull, 1990). This paper analyzes three relevant next actions which can follow the instruct turn: (1) embodied instinct receipt tokens (head nod); (2) embodied repetition of the embodied instruct; and (3) repair.In general, an embodied action can be coined as an "embodied instruct". And once understood as such by all participants, it is available to all participants in subsequent sequences. Thus an embodied gesture can "travel" from one participant to another

Marking something as unexpected. Prosodically marked ‘no’ in German and Persian

This conversation analytic study compares the use of negation particles in spoken German and Persian, namely nein/nee and na. While these particles have a range of functions in both languages (Ghaderi 2022; Imo 2017), their use in response to news remains understudied. We focus on nein/nee and na in two sequential contexts: (i) after prior disconfirmations (Extract (a)) and (ii) in response to either solicited or unsolicited informings (see Extracts (b) and (c), respectively). In both contexts, nein/nee and na mark unexpectedness and open up an opportunity space for more, but they do so in different ways and with different outcomes. Nein/nee- and na-turns after disconfirming, often minimal responses to first-position confirmable turns mark the prior as unexpected (or even contrasting with the nein/nee/na-speaker’s expectations) and thus as expandable/accountable (cf. Ford 2001; Gubina/Betz 2021). Nein/nee/na-turns after informings (e.g., announcements that display a story teller’s negative emotional stance) differ not only in sequential position but also in prosodic realization. They can be either falling or rising, but all are characterized by marked prosody, i.e., lengthening, very low onset, smiling or breathy voice, or high overall pitch. Through position and turn design features, such nein/nee- and na-turns not only mark a prior turn as counter to (normative) expectations, but may also display the speaker’s affective stance and affiliate with the affective stance of the prior interactant. By comparing the use of nein/nee and na in German and Persian in the two functions illustrated in Extracts (a) and (b/c), we will show (i) how nein/nee- and na-turns shape interactional trajectories after responsive actions and (ii) what role the particles play in managing news and stance-taking as well as epistemic and affective positioning. Apart from revealing similarities in the use of German and Persian negation particles, the results of our crosslinguistic comparison will demonstrate that even if different languages have similar practices for specific actions, the use of these practices is language- and culture-specific. This means that even similar practices in different languages have their own “collateral effects” (Sidnell/Enfield 2012), linguistic and prosodic characteristic features, and, at least sometimes, consequences for social actions accomplished in the specific language (e.g., Dingemanse/Blythe/Dirksmeyer 2014; Evans/Levinson 2009; Floyd/Rossi/Enfield (eds.) 2020; Fox et al. 2009). Our study uses the method of Conversation Analysis (Sidnell/Stivers (eds.) 2013) and draws on more than 80 hours of audio and video recordings of spontaneous interactions (co-present, via video link, and on the telephone) in everyday and institutional contexts