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2006 results in Discourse analysis

Page 65 of 101

  • Chapter 1 - What is Interactional Linguistics?

  • from Introduction
  • Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, University of Helsinki, Margret Selting, Universität Potsdam, Germany
  • Book:
    Interactional Linguistics
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 3-26

  • Summary

    Throughout much of the twentieth century, modern linguistics suffered from a written language bias (Linell 2005): the general thinking about language, as well as the descriptive concepts and categories developed for linguistic research, were tailored to language as it appears in writing. Interactional Linguistics, by contrast, grew out of an interest in spoken language and a desire to see it studied in its natural habitat: in social interaction. Interactional linguists took seriously the observation that “some of the most fundamental features of natural language are shaped in accordance with their home environment in co-present interaction, as adaptations to it, or as part of its very warp and weft” (Schegloff 1996b:54). They pursued this observation to its logical conclusion: namely, that as a consequence language must be analyzed in the home environment of co-present interaction. The idea was to apply the same empirical methods that had been so successful in revealing the structure and organization of everyday conversation, the methods of ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis, to explore the structure and organization of language as used in social interaction. From the cumulative results of such exploration, it was hoped, a new theory of language would emerge.

    Naturally, in order to explore language in its home environment, Interactional Linguistics needed and continues to need an appreciation of the structure and organization of interaction. For this, it is heavily indebted to Conversation Analysis, whose practitioners over the years have laid bare the structural underpinnings of coordinated interaction in social contexts. However, as the “founder” of Conversation Analysis, Harvey Sacks, explained early on, he was not interested in ordinary conversation because he had any “large interest in language,” but rather simply because it was easy to record and because these recordings could be listened to again and again (Sacks 1984:26). Conversation analysts are primarily interested in understanding how interaction works, in uncovering the mechanisms of, for example, how turns at talk are coordinated, how actions are constructed and recognized, and how they are made to cohere in sequences of interaction. Interactional linguists, by contrast, do have a “large interest” in language, because they believe that turns, actions, and sequences are accomplished and made interpretable by the systematic use of linguistic resources; consequently, they make the linguistic forms deployed by ordinary speakers in everyday and institutional encounters the focus of their attention.

  • Chapter 2 - Turn Construction and Turn Taking

  • from Part I - How is Interaction Conducted with Linguistic Resources?
  • Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, University of Helsinki, Margret Selting, Universität Potsdam, Germany
  • Book:
    Interactional Linguistics
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 31-111

  • Summary

    In contrast to monologues or institutionally regulated interaction, it is the local management and negotiation of turn exchange that is crucial for the organization of conversation. In conversation the issue of who takes a turn at what point in time is not predetermined, but is negotiated between the participants at the moment when it becomes relevant in the interaction. In general, there is a normative orientation to a next speaker taking the turn “on time”, i.e., not too early and not too late, with minimal overlap and minimal gap, after the prior speaker has ended his or her turn. Taking over the floor too early or too late can give rise to inferences concerning possible reasons for noticeably deviating from normative expectations. But how is it possible for turn taking to work so smoothly?

    The basic mechanism of turn taking was reconstructed in the seminal paper by Sacks et al. (1974). According to their model, turn taking is organized in two components:

  • i. a turn-constructional component, dealing with the construction of basic units called “turn-constructional units” (TCUs); and

  • ii. a turn-allocation component, dealing with the distribution of turns at the end of each TCU for the next such unit.

    • The system is described as abstract, i.e., context-free, and at the same time adaptable to all kinds of contingencies, thus context-sensitive, locally managed, and party-administered (for an overview see also Levinson 1983 and Sidnell 2010).

    In order to explain how smooth turn taking is possible, Sacks et al. assume that TCUs are projectable, i.e., their first possible completion point can be predicted by the recipient in advance of its occurrence. Such a possible completion point is referred to as a “transition-relevance place” (TRP) (Sacks et al. 1974:703). It is here that the rules of the turn-allocation component become relevant and result either in the transfer of speakership or in a continuation by the same speaker. According to this model, then, the continuation of the same speaker after a first TRP is an interactional achievement resulting from the fact that other participants have refrained from taking the turn themselves.

  • Part II - How are Linguistic Resources Deployed in Interaction?

  • Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, University of Helsinki, Margret Selting, Universität Potsdam, Germany
  • Book:
    Interactional Linguistics
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 355-358

  • Summary

    Preface

    Before the reader embarks on the second part of this book, a word of caution is in order. As pointed out earlier, Interactional Linguistics advocates a cross-linguistic approach to the study of language in social interaction. Yet when examining linguistic resources and their use in interaction, how can we be sure we are talking about the same resource across languages? To take an example, the term clause in English has no satisfactory equivalent in German. If we try to compare an English clause to a German Satz (“sentence”), we will find ourselves comparing two very unlike entities. Moreover, the characteristics of clauses vary significantly across languages: whereas in English, clauses can be either finite or non-finite (Quirk et al. 1985:1120), the Finnish lause (“clause”) is by definition finite (Hakulinen et al. 2004:827). Branching out even further to include other non-Indo-European languages, what we know as, for example, a “relative clause” in English – i.e., a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and is introduced by a relative pronoun linking it to its antecedent – does not exist in Japanese, since Japanese places modifying clauses directly before the word they modify as adjective-like attributive verbs without a relative pronoun: tempura-o tsukutta hito “tempura-OBJ made person” (Kuno 1973). The crux of the matter then is that categories developed for the description of one language do not necessarily transfer to other languages, much less to all other languages.

    Language typologists have thought long and hard about this dilemma. Far from claiming that linguistic categories are universal, they would instead advocate comparing, for example, grammatical relations across languages in terms of comparative concepts: concepts that rely on very basic, general, even primitive notions that can be established independently of specific languages. The comparative concept of relative clause, for instance, might be described as “a clause that is used to narrow the reference of a referential phrase and in which the referent of the phrase plays a semantic role” (Haspelmath 2010:672). This understanding would make it possible to treat both (English) the man who came to dinner and (Japanese) tempura-o tsukutta hito “tempura-OBJ made person”4 as conceptually comparable. The label used to refer to them can be considered of secondary importance.

Metaphorical Stories in Discourse
  • L. David Ritchie
  • Published online:
    20 September 2017
    Print publication:
    14 September 2017
  • When Hillary Clinton conceded in 2008 that she didn't quite 'shatter the glass ceiling', and when Rick Perry in 2012 called Mitt Romney a 'vulture capitalist', they used abbreviated metaphorical stories, in which stories about one topic are presented as stories about something entirely different. This book examines a wide range of metaphorical stories, beginning with literary genres such as allegories and fables, then focusing on metaphorical stories in ordinary conversations, political speeches, editorial cartoons, and other communication. Sometimes metaphorical stories are developed in rich detail; in other examples, like 'vulture capitalist', they may merely be referenced or implied. This book argues that close attention to metaphorical stories and story metaphors enriches our understanding and is essential to any theory of communication. The book introduces a theoretical structure, which is developed into a theory of metaphorical stories and then illustrates the theory by applying it to actual discourse.

Page 65 of 101