Bridging the gap between conversation analysis and ESP – an applied study of the opening sequences of NS and NNS service telephone calls

2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Bowles
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Applied Study ◽  
Telephone Calls

scholarly journals Getting service at the constituency office: Analyzing citizens’ encounters with their Member of Parliament

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 551-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Hofstetter ◽  
Elizabeth Stokoe
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Office Staff ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Institutional Service ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
Member Of Parliament ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

Abstract In this paper, we present an analysis of how constituents procure services at the constituency office of a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom. This paper will investigate how several previously documented interactional practices (e.g. entitlement) combine at the constituency office in a way that secures service. From a corpus of 12.5 hours of interaction, and using conversation analysis, we examine constituents’ telephone calls and meetings with constituency office staff and the MP, identifying practices constituents use. First, constituents opened encounters with bids to tell narratives. Second, constituents presented lengthy and detailed descriptions of their difficulties. These descriptions gave space to manage issues of legitimacy and entitlement, while simultaneously recruiting assistance. Third, we examine ways in which constituents display uncertainty about how the institution of the constituency office functions, and what services are available. The paper offers original insights into how constituency services are provided, and how constituency offices give access and support to ordinary citizens, while expanding the conversation analytic literature on institutional service provision.

scholarly journals Structure, complexity and cooperation in parallel external chat interactions

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (53) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Anette Grønning
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Parallel Time ◽  
Turn Taking ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
Structure Complexity ◽  
Empirical Material

<p>This article examines structure, complexity and cooperation in external chat interactions at the workplace in which one of the participants is taking part in multiple parallel conversations. The investigation is based on an analysis of nine chat interactions in a work-related context, with particular focus on the content of the parallel time spans of the chat interactions. The analysis was inspired by applied conversation analysis (CA). The empirical material has been placed at my disposal by Kristelig Fagbevægelse (Krifa), which is Denmark’s third-largest trade union. The article’s overall focus is on “turn-taking organisation as the fundamental and generic aspect of interaction organisation” (Drew &amp; Heritage, 1992, p. 25), including the use of turn-taking rules, adjacency pairs, and the importance of pauses. Even though the employee and the union members do not know one another and cannot see, hear, or touch one another, it is possible to detect an informal, pleasant tone in their interactions. This challenges the basically asymmetrical relationship between employee and customer, and one can sense a further level of asymmetry. In terms of medium, chat interactions exist via various references to other media, including telephone calls and e-mails.</p>

scholarly journals How categorization impacts the design of requests: Asking for email addresses in call-centre interactions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Marie Flinkfeldt ◽  
Sophie Parslow ◽  
Elizabeth Stokoe
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Marketing Research ◽  
Customer Segmentation ◽  
Call Centre ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
University Admissions ◽  
Membership Categorization ◽  
Actual Interaction ◽  
Telephone Calls

Abstract Marketing research shows that organizations tailor communication for particular customer ‘segments’, but little is known about the live design of interaction for different categories. To investigate this, we examine telephone calls to a holiday sales call-centre (for ‘seniors’) and a university admissions call-centre (for ‘young’ students). While topically different, call-takers in both datasets requested callers’ email addresses in order to progress service. Using conversation analysis, we examine how these requests were designed, where and how ‘age’ was made relevant, and how subsequent service provision was handled in a way that matched callers’ presumed age categories. Contrastive to the static notion of ‘segments’, we show how recipient design is bound up with categorial considerations while being responsive to the live unfolding of actual interaction. The article demonstrates how a comparative collection-based approach can be used to analyse the relevance of social categories in situations where this is implicit or ambiguous. (Membership categorization, customer segmentation, conversation analysis, recipient design, requests, age)*

scholarly journals Overcoming Suicidal Persons’ Resistance Using Productive Communicative Challenges during Police Crisis Negotiations

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rein Ove Sikveland ◽  
Heidi Kevoe-Feldman ◽  
Elizabeth Stokoe
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Emergency Call ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
Call Centres ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
American Police ◽  
Crisis Negotiators

Abstract This paper reveals how negotiators, from the police and emergency call centres, overcome resistance towards the negotiation from suicidal persons in crisis. Communication guidance to hostage and crisis negotiators recommends against challenging the person in crisis, focusing instead on a softer, rapportful approach. Using conversation analysis, we investigate how negotiators deal with resistance, turn by turn, in encounters collected from British police negotiators’ field recordings, and American police 9-1-1 dispatch telephone calls. In contrast to existing communication guidance, we show that and how challenges can be productive for bringing about positive shifts in suicidal persons’ behaviour. We demonstrate how negotiators challenge the reasoning in their interlocutors’ resistant responses and leverage these challenges productively in the next turn. By studying real (rather than hypothetical or simulated) negotiations, the study reveals the tacit expertise of negotiators and the communicative practices that optimize negotiation outcomes. These research findings have significant implications for existing communication guidance showing how negotiations are managed locally through the linguistic design of turns of talk.

Counseling and new media technologies: A comparison of problem presentations in e-mail and in chat

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wyke Stommel ◽  
Fleur Van der Houwen
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Online Counseling ◽  
Counseling Program ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Email Counseling ◽  
Counseling Clients ◽  
E Mail ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
New Media Technologies

In this article, we examine problem presentations in e-mail and chat counseling. Previous studies of online counseling have found that the medium (e.g., chat, email) impacts the unfolding interaction. However, the implications for counseling are unclear. We focus on problem presentations and use conversation analysis to compare 15 chat and 22 e-mail interactions from the same counseling program. We find that in e-mail counseling, counselors open up the interactional space to discuss various issues, whereas in chat, counselors restrict problem presentations and give the client less space to elaborate. We also find that in e-mail counseling, clients use narratives to present their problem and orient to its seriousness and legitimacy, while in chat counseling, they construct problem presentations using a symptom or a diagnosis. Furthermore, in email counseling, clients close their problem presentations stating completeness, while in chat counseling, counselors treat clients’ problem presentations as incomplete. Our findings shed light on how the medium has implications for counseling.

Formulating another’s report of troubles in peer support

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Pudlinski
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Community Mental Health ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Peer Support ◽  
Mental Health System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Telephone Support ◽  
Healthcare Settings ◽  
Professional Perspective

This study stems from an interest in peer support talk, an underexplored area of research, and in how supportive actions such as formulated summaries function in comparison to more professional healthcare settings. Using conversation analysis, this study explores 35 instances of formulations within 65 calls to four different ‘warm lines’, a term for peer-to-peer telephone support within the community mental health system in the United States. Formulations can be characterized across two related axes: client versus professional perspective, and directive versus nondirective. The findings show that formulations within peer support were overwhelmingly nondirective, in terms of meeting institutional agendas to let callers talk. However, formulations ranged from client-oriented ones that highlight or repeat caller reports to those which transform caller reports through integrating past caller experiences or implicit caller emotions. These tactics are found to have similarities to how formulations function in professional healthcare settings.

Managing uncertainty in healthcare interpreter-mediated interaction

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-164
Author(s):  
Claudio Baraldi ◽  
Laura Gavioli
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Social Systems Theory ◽  
Intercultural Mediators ◽  
Or History

This paper analyses healthcare interactions involving doctors, migrant patients and ‘intercultural mediators’ who provide interpreting services. Our study is based on a collection of 300 interactions involving two language pairs, Arabic–Italian and English–Italian. The analytical framework includes conversation analysis combined with insights from social systems theory. We look at question-answer sequences, where (1) the doctors ask questions about patients’ problems or history, (2) the doctors’ questions are responded to and (3) the doctor closes the sequence, moving on to another question. We analyse the ways in which mediators help doctors design questions for patients and patients understand and eventually respond to the doctors’ design. While the doctor’s question design aims at obtaining details which are relevant for the patients’ care, it is argued that collecting such details involves complex interactional work. In particular, doctors need help in displaying their attention to their patients’ problems and in guiding patients’ responses into medically relevant directions. Likewise, patients need help in reacting appropriately. Mediators help manage communicative uncertainty both by showing the doctor’s interest in what the patient says, and by exploring and rendering the patient’s incomplete, extended and ambiguous answers to the doctor’s questions.

Patients’ practices for taking the initiative in decision-making in outpatient psychiatric consultations

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuya Kushida ◽  
Takeshi Hiramoto ◽  
Yuriko Yamakawa
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Treatment Decision ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Important Resource ◽  
Treatment Decision Making ◽  
The Way

In spite of increasing advocacy for patients’ participation in psychiatric decision-making, there has been little research on how patients actually participate in decision-making in psychiatric consultations. This study explores how patients take the initiative in decision-making over treatment in outpatient psychiatric consultations in Japan. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, we analyze 85 video-recorded ongoing consultations and find that patients select between two practices for taking the initiative in decision-making: making explicit requests for a treatment and displaying interest in a treatment without explicitly requesting it. A close inspection of transcribed interaction reveals that patients make explicit requests under the circumstances where they believe the candidate treatment is appropriate for their condition, whereas they merely display interest in a treatment when they are not certain about its appropriateness. By fitting practices to take the initiative in decision-making with the way they describe their current condition, patients are optimally managing their desire for particular treatments and the validity of their initiative actions. In conclusion, we argue that the orderly use of the two practices is one important resource for patients’ participation in treatment decision-making.

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