Topic management and opportunities for learning in an advanced Francophone Cultures class

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rémi A. van Compernolle
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Epistemic Stance ◽  
Preference Organization ◽  
Opportunities For Learning ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
University Level ◽  
Response Feedback ◽  
Us University

Drawing on conversation analysis and its extension to classroom discourse studies, this article examines the ways in which topic is managed and opportunities for learning are created in an advanced US university-level Francophone Cultures class. In the analysis, topic is treated as an ongoing interactional achievement rather than a stable “subject” of conversation. A single-case analysis is presented to show how topic is accomplished between the teacher and her students in relation to preference organization and epistemic stance. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates how a prototypical three-turn Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequence is elaborated over multiple turns that expand the teacher’s explicitly announced topic to include a side sequence addressing a metalinguistic problem and a disagreement between two students that results in an expansion of the topic beyond the teacher’s agenda. In the discussion, the results are synthesized in relation to how opportunities for learning emerge in the comanagement of topics. Implications for research and pedagogy are also offered.

A very delayed acceptance to an invitation in a French conversation

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 153-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Barraja-Rohan
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Telephone Conversation ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
Transcription System

Abstract Many studies have been concerned with sequence organisation, adjacency pairs and preference organisation in English conversations. However, there is a need to investigate how these structures apply to other languages, and this paper undertakes such a task in analysing a French telephone conversation. In the conversation analysed, the two base parts of an invitation sequence, the invitation and its acceptance, are separated by 113 turns of talk. The methodology uses the Jeffersonian transcription system and Conversation Analysis techniques. What is remarkable about the data analysed in this study is its striking similarities to an English conversation examined by Schegloff (1990). The parallels with Schegloff’s single case analysis constitute evidence of a phenomenon equally occurring in French, with a massive delay between the first pair part (FPP) and the second pair part (SPP) and the complex local organisation and expansion sequences that result from it.

Interactional management of face-threatening acts in casual ELF conversation: an analysis of third-party complaint sequences

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayu Konakahara
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Politeness Theory ◽  
Face Negotiation ◽  
Face Saving ◽  
Complaint Sequences

AbstractThis paper investigates how English as a lingua franca is used to manage adversarial moments in casual conversation among friends, using conversation analysis and politeness theory. It presents a single case analysis of face negotiation devices utilized in two cases of third-party complaint sequences, in which complaints are made about someone else who is not present. The two cases to be analyzed were extracted from recordings of conversation of international students in British universities. The analysis revealed that the interactants utilize verbal and nonverbal devices, which are sometimes linguistically inexplicit but nonverbally resourceful, in a pragmatically sensitive manner in situ, thereby saving mutual face, intensifying the degree of face-threatening, or expressing disaffiliation in a face-saving way.

scholarly journals At the intersection of text and conversation analysis: analysing asynchronous online written interaction

2018 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Mikko T. Virtanen ◽  
Liisa Kääntä
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Book Club ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Discussion Forums ◽  
Main Motivation ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
The One

This paper demonstrates how two approaches from discourse studies – digital Conversation Analysis (CA) and Textual Interaction Studies (TIS) – can be used in tandem to analyse asynchronous written conversation. The main motivation for this mixed-methods approach is our observation that interaction in many asynchronous platforms, such as blogs and discussion forums, tends to be located somewhere in between the main focuses of digital CA and TIS. On the one hand, the posts in these platforms are often textually complex, multiparagraph entities. Furthermore, the opening posts usually address an imagined audience similarly to mass media texts. On the other hand, interaction within the conversation threads unfolds through the co-operation of at least two participants, and the meaning of each contribution is jointly negotiated by the participants. Our paper illustrates the benefits of combining digital CA and TIS by presenting a case analysis of one conversation thread from a Finnish book club blog.

Research into practice: The influence of discourse studies on language descriptions and task design in published ELT materials

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Gilmore
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Genre Analysis ◽  
Discourse Studies

Discourse studies is a vast, multidisciplinary, and rapidly expanding area of research, embracing a range of approaches including discourse analysis, corpus analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, genre analysis and multimodal discourse analysis. Each approach offers its own unique perspective on discourse, focusing variably on text, context or a range of semiotic modes. Together, they provide foreign language teachers and material designers with new insights into language, and are beginning to have an observable impact on published English Language Teaching (ELT) materials. This paper examines the ways in which the four approaches with the strongest links to the ELT profession (corpus analysis, conversation analysis, discourse analysis and genre analysis) have found their way into language learning materials, and offers some suggestions on how discourse studies may influence ELT classrooms in the future.

Enacting burikko

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-222
Author(s):  
Junichi Yagi
Keyword(s):  
Target Word ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Case Analysis ◽  
Original Activity ◽  
Repair Work ◽  
Japanese Word ◽  
Interactional Analysis ◽  
Oriented Activity

Abstract Adopting a single case analysis, this article examines how the learning of the Japanese word burikko is occasioned in a bilingual lunch conversation through enactments that are employed for three interactional purposes: (a) renewal of laughter, (b) vocabulary explanation (VE), and (c) demonstration of understanding. The interactional analysis is enhanced by Praat to respecify the role of prosody in enactments. I first describe how burikko, the laughable of a humor sequence, becomes a learnable through a repair sequence. I then analyze a reinitiated joking sequence, where the VE recipient categorizes one of the co-participants as burikko and escalates the categorization through multimodal enactments. I argue that this jocular mockery, occasioning a demonstration of understanding, exhibits that the learning opportunity has been taken. Furthermore, I discuss how a repair work embedded within a larger humor-oriented activity may afford resources for language learning outside of the classroom, while sacrificing progressivity for intersubjectivity. The fact that the VE recipient, after intersubjectivity has been achieved, resumes the original activity of pursuing humor through the same means employed for the explanation of the target word offers interesting implications for CA-SLA and pragmatics.

Which epistemics? Whose conversation analysis?

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Raymond
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Context Specificity ◽  
Standard Methods ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Action Sequencing ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
The Relationship

In a Special Issue of Discourse Studies (2016) titled ‘The Epistemics of Epistemics’, contributing authors criticize Heritage’s research on participants’ orientations to, and management of, the distribution of (rights to) knowledge in conversation. These authors claim (a) that the analytic framework Heritage (and I) developed for analyzing epistemic phenomena privileges the analysts’ over the participants’ point of view, and (b) rejects standard methods of conversation analysis (CA); (c) that (a) and (b) are adopted in developing and defending the use of abstract analytic schemata that offer little purchase on either the specific actions speakers accomplish or the understanding others display of them; and (d) that, by virtue of these deficiencies, claims about the systematic relevance of epistemic phenomena for talk-in-interaction breach long-standing norms regarding the relationship between data analysis and generalizing claims. Using a collection of excerpts bearing on the import of epistemics for action formation and action sequencing, I demonstrate that these claims are patently false and suggest that they reflect the authors’ effort to recast CA as a kind of fundamentalist enterprise. I then consider excerpts from a second collection (of occasions involving the pursuit of one party’s ‘suspicions’ about another’s alleged misdeeds) to illustrate how the form of social organization described by Heritage can be used to explicate other phenomena that depend on systematic alterations to its basic features. In conclusion, I suggest that CA’s success in enhancing our grasp of the organization of talk-in-interaction derives from its unique commitment to both generalization and context specificity, collections and single cases, findings plus a continual openness to the ‘something more’ that each particular case can provide.

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