scholarly journals Greetings as social action in Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish service encounters – a pluricentric perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Nilsson ◽  
Stefan Norrthon ◽  
Jan Lindström ◽  
Camilla Wide
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Service Encounters ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
Data Share ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Greeting Behavior ◽  
Mutual Gaze ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Swedish Data

Abstract While greetings are performed in all cultures and open most conversations, previous studies suggest that there are cross-cultural differences between different languages in greeting behavior. But do speakers of different national varieties of the same language organize and perform their greeting behavior in similar ways? In this study, we investigate the sequential organization of greetings in relation to gaze behavior in the two national varieties of Swedish: Sweden Swedish spoken in Sweden and Finland Swedish spoken in Finland. In recent years, the importance of studying pluricentric languages from a pragmatic perspective has been foregrounded, not least within the framework of variational pragmatics. To date, most studies have focused on structural differences between national varieties of pluricentric languages. With this study, we extend the scope of variational pragmatics through adding an interactional, micro perspective to the broader macro analysis typical of this field. For this study, we have analyzed patterns for greetings in 297 video-recorded service encounters, where staff and customers interact at theatre box offices and event booking venues in Sweden and Finland. The study shows that there are similarities and differences in greeting behavior between varieties. There is a strong preference for exchanging reciprocal verbal greetings, one at a time, in both. There is also a similar organization of the greeting sequence, where customer and staff establish mutual gaze prior to the verbal greetings, thus signaling availability for interaction. The duration of mutual gaze and the timing of the greeting, however, differ between the two varieties. We have also conducted a multi modal analysis of gaze behavior in correlation to the greeting. We found that the customers and staff in the Finland Swedish data share mutual gaze before and during the verbal greeting, and often avert gaze after the verbal greetings. However, in the Sweden Swedish data, the participants often avert gaze before the verbal greetings. Our results thus indicate that both similarities and differences in pragmatic routines and bodily behavior exist between the two national varieties of Swedish. The present study on greeting practices in Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish should contribute to the field of variational pragmatics and to the development of pluricentric theory.

scholarly journals The Role of the Addressee and Gender Diversity in Greeting Behavior in the Saudi Context

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Huda A. Almushayqih
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Mixed Method Study ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Greeting Behavior ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Practical Implications

The current paper investigates verbal and nonverbal greeting behaviors in the Saudi context. The study aims to identify how Saudi males and females greet their parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends, and what role the addressee plays on the performance of the greeting behavior. The study further distinguishes the similarities and differences between Saudi males and females in their greeting behavior. This study is a mixed method study that adopts qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The participants of the study are 72 Saudi adults, 50 females and 22 males. The findings show that Saudis accommodate their greeting behavior according to their addressee’s gender, age, social (familial) status, and social distance. Moreover, the findings revealed that males and females vary in the way they greet their relatives and friends. This variation is interpreted in the light of previous studies. This study provides some practical implications for the successful and meaningful greeting as well as successful interactions. 

scholarly journals When the Body Belies the Words: Embodied Agency With darf/kann ich? (“May/Can I?”) in German

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnulf Deppermann ◽  
Alexandra Gubina
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
The Body ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Temporal Relationships ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
Embodied Action ◽  
Embodied Agency

Research on multimodal interaction has shown that simultaneity of embodied behavior and talk is constitutive for social action. In this study, we demonstrate different temporal relationships between verbal and embodied actions. We focus on uses of German darf/kann ich? (“may/can I?”) in which speakers initiate, or even complete the embodied action that is addressed by the turn before the recipient's response. We argue that through such embodied conduct, the speaker bodily enacts high agency, which is at odds with the low deontic stance they express through their darf/kann ich?-TCUs. In doing so, speakers presuppose that the intersubjective permissibility of the action is highly probable or even certain. Moreover, we demonstrate how the speaker's embodied action, joint perceptual salience of referents, and the projectability of the action addressed with darf/kann ich? allow for a lean syntactic design of darf/kann ich?-TCUs (i.e., pronominalization, object omission, and main verb omission). Our findings underscore the reflexive relationship between lean syntax, sequential organization and multimodal conduct.

Research as Curriculum Inquiry

2015 ◽  
pp. 272-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lynne Bird ◽  
Eric T. Wanner
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Action Project ◽  
Original Goal ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods ◽  
Answering Questions

Research sometimes leads to new discoveries and new directions other than the ones originally intended. This chapter began as a study using both quantitative and qualitative methods to learn about the connections between writing and healing. College students who wrote in journals throughout the semester as part of normal classroom practices for an education methods class in reading and writing completed surveys answering questions about their writing and their health. The original goal was to add insights to studies completed a quarter century ago by other researchers to assess similarities and differences. Initial analysis of the data echoed the findings of previous studies: writing is healing. However, the more important observation became that on one of the health survey questions, 92% of the subjects reported experiencing anxiety or stress. Consequently, the research evolved into a social action project to help college students cope with stress and anxiety.

Sequential organization of hinting in online task-oriented L2 interaction

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ufuk Balaman
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Geographically Dispersed ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Task Oriented

Abstract This study aims to explore the sequential organization of hinting in an online task-oriented L2 interactional setting. Although hinting has been studied within conversation analysis literature, it has not yet been treated as a distinct type of social action. With this in mind, the study sets out to describe the sequential environment of hinting through the unfolding of the action with pre-hinting sequences initiated through the deployment of interrogatives, knowledge checks, and past references; maintained with base hinting sequences initiated through blah blah replacements, designedly incomplete utterances, and metalinguistic clues; and finally progressively resolved with screen-based hinting. Based on the examination of screen-recorded video-mediated interactions (14 hours) of geographically dispersed participants using multimodal conversation analysis, this study provides insights for an overall understanding of the interactional trajectory of hinting as a context-specific social action and contributes to research on L2 interaction in online settings.

Rethinking format: An examination of requests

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Fox ◽  
Trine Heinemann
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
American English ◽  
Service Encounters ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Emergent Grammar ◽  
Grammatical Variation ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThis study explores the formulation of requests in an American English-speaking shoe repair shop. Taking prior work on request formats as our starting point, we explore the two primary syntactic moods (declarative and interrogative) in our collection and two of the commonly noted subtypes of these moods,need/want-declaratives andcan-interrogatives. While our findings in very general terms match those of previous studies, we also find significant grammatical variation within each of these formats, and note interactional uses for each variation. Our examination yields insight into facets of requesting that were previously undescribed. We offer an Emergent Grammar perspective on the complexity of lexicosyntax in the social action of requesting. (Requests, formats, Emergent Grammar, Conversation Analysis, American English, service encounters)*

One More Phenomenology of the Social World?

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Ingeborg K. Helling ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social World ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Subjective Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
Similarities And Differences

In his “Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt” (1932; engl. tr. 1967) Alfred Schutz refers frequently and mostly positively to the author Fritz Sander. In contrast to other members of the Viennese social science milieus in interwar Vienna, Sander has been neglected in the abundant literature on Schutz. Following Henrich’s (1991) Konstellationsforschung approach, Schutz and Sander are placed in the setting of interwar Viennese social science. Explicit references to Sander made by Schutz will be described, similarities and differences in their treatments of Max Weber’s concepts of social action and subjective meaning will be examined, and their respective views of a phenomenological grounding of social science will be discussed.

The expression of non-alignment in British and German political interviews

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Fetzer
Keyword(s):  
Negotiation Of Meaning ◽  
British English ◽  
Data Share ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
Preference Pattern ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Validity Claims ◽  
The Status ◽  
General Elections ◽  
German Data

Political interviews are defined as question- and answer sequences in which interviewers and interviewees negotiate validity claims. Looked upon from an interpersonal angle, the interviewer sets up a position and requests the interviewee to ratify their claim by expressing alignment or non-alignment. This contribution examines the expression of non-alignment in a corpus of 12 interviews between journalists and the losers of the general elections in Britain (1997) and Germany (1998). The data share identical external parameters, very similar contextual features and almost identical argumentation strategies. In spite of that, the expression of non-alignment differs significantly. This is primarily due to language-specific preferences for the realization of turn-initial positions and their functions as interpersonal, topical and textual themes. In the British data, multiple themes are more frequent for the expression of non-alignment and thus assigned the status of a preferred variant; their sequential organization adheres to the sequence [[textual theme] [interpersonal theme] [topical theme]], which indicates that a negotiation of meaning is intended. Single topical themes are less frequent and therefore assigned the status of a dispreferred variant indicating that a negotiation of meaning is not intended. In the German data, the sequential organization of multiple themes does not display that kind of preference pattern and multiple themes do not necessarily indicate that a negotiation of meaning is intended. Regarding possible perlocutionary effects, the expression of non-alignment in British English is more process-oriented and thus more dynamic, while its German counterpart is more product-oriented and thus more abrupt.

Material Culture Texts and Social Change: A Theoretical Discussion and some Archaeological Examples

1988 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 67-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hodder
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Similar Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
European Neolithic ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Ritual Text

Material culture meanings are transferred between objects on the basis of similarities and differences. In order to fix the potential ambiguity of meanings, experience is bracketed within bounded contexts. New acts always refer back to existing organized experience or texts. It can be argued that text comes before action. This idea is used in a discussion of the appearance of agglomerated and bounded settlements in the European Neolithic. It is shown that occupied settlements are often preceded by non-domestic enclosures which sometimes have a ritual nature. Ritual text seems to prefigure practical event. A similar relationship between formalized ritual texts and social action is shown in a wide range of other examples. Finally some of the potential reasons for the observed relationship between text and action are discussed.

scholarly journals A Cross-Cultural Study on Attachment and Adjustment Difficulties in Adolescence: The Mediating Role of Self-Control in Italy, Spain, China, and Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (16) ◽  
pp. 8827
Author(s):  
Elisa Mancinelli ◽  
Hanna D. Liberska ◽  
Jian-Bin Li ◽  
José P. Espada ◽  
Elisa Delvecchio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Process Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Paternal Attachment ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Adjustment Difficulties ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Conditional Process Analysis

From a socio-ecological perspective, individuals are influenced by the interplay of individual, relational, and societal factors operating as a broader system. Thereby, to support youth adjustment during the critical adolescence period, the interplay between these factors should be investigated. This study aimed to investigate cross-cultural differences in adolescents’ maternal and paternal attachment, adolescents’ adjustment difficulties and self-control, and in their association. N = 1000 adolescents (mean (M) age = 16.94, SD = 0.48; 45.90% males) from China, Italy, Spain, and Poland participated by completing self-report measures. Results showed cross-country similarities and differences among the considered variables and their associative pattern. Moreover, conditional process analysis evaluating the association between maternal vs. paternal attachment and adjustment difficulties, mediated by self-control, and moderated by country, was performed. Maternal attachment directly, and indirectly through greater self-control, influenced adjustment difficulties in all four countries. This association was stronger among Spaniards. Paternal attachment influenced directly, and indirectly through self-control, on adolescents’ adjustment difficulties only in Italy, Spain, and Poland, and was stronger among Polish adolescents. For Chinese adolescents, paternal attachment solely associated with adjustment difficulties when mediated by self-control. Thus, results highlighted both similarities and differences across countries in the interplay between maternal vs. paternal attachment and self-control on adolescents’ adjustment difficulties. Implications are discussed.

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