#discourse analysis
I have thoughts about the whole feminist anti-interrupting thing. Like I agree, men do talk over people and it is disrespectful, but I also think there are cultures, specifically Jews, where talking over each other is actually a sign of being engaged in the conversation. It’s something I really struggle with in the south, because up in New York, even non-Jews participated in this cooperative conversation style, but down here, whenever I do it by accident, the whole convo stops and it gets called out and it’s a whole thing. Idk idk I feel like there’s different types of interruptive like there’s constructive interrupting where you add on to whatever is being said - helpful interrupting, and then there’s like interrupting where you just start saying something unrelated because you were done listening. I have ADHD so I’ve def done the latter too by accident, but I’m talking about being more accepting of the former.
I think a lot of the social mores leftists enforce around communication tend to be very white. Like Jews are not the only group of people that have distinct communication styles. Like the enforcement of turn-based communication, not raising your voice (not just in anger but also in humor or excitement), etc. it’s always interesting that the most pushback I get about how I communicate come from white people (mostly women actually, white men just give me patronizing looks because they don’t feel like they can call me out in same way). Like I’ve been teaching these workshops, and a few of them have been primarily black people, and I’ve noticed black people will also engage in cooperative interrupting (and I love it!). This isn’t a developed thought and I welcome feedback. Idk I think there should be space in leftist organizing for more diverse communication styles.
Here’s a source:
As a linguist: overlapping talk is not the same thing as an interruption!
An interruption is specifically intended to stop another person from speaking so you can take over. Other reasons that talk might overlap:
- close latching – how much time should I give between when you stop talking and when I start? Very close latching can feature a lot of overlaps.
- participatory listening – how do I signal to you that I’m engaged with what you’re saying and paying attention? Do I make any noise at all, or do I limit myself to minimal “backchannel” noises (mm-hmm, ah, yeah), or do I fully verbalize my reactions as you’re going? Maybe even chime in along with you, if I anticipate what you’re about to say, to show how well we’re vibing?
- support request – this can shade into interruption as a form of sealioning, but if someone interjects a request like “I didn’t catch that” or “What’s that mean?” it’s not really an interruption, because they’re not trying to end/take my turn away, they’re inviting me to keep going with clarification/adaptation.
- asides – if there’s more than two people involved in a conversation, a certain amount of cross-talk is probably inevitable.
The norms around these kinds of overlaps vary – by context (we all use more audible backchannel on the phone; an interview is not a sermon is not a casual chat), by culture, and yes, by gender, which is why it’s a feminist issue. But gender doesn’t exist in a vaccuum! Some reasons overlaps might be mis-interpreted as interruptions when they’re not intended to be:
- norms about turn latching: someone who’s not used to close-latching conversation might feel interrupted or stepped on when talking to someone who is. The converse is that someone who’s expecting close-latching might feel the absence of it as awkward silence, withdrawal, coldness, etc.
- norms about backchannel: if you’re not expecting me to provide running commentary on your story or finish your sentences (or if I’m doing it wrong) then you might feel interrupted. But if you’re expecting that level of feedback you might feel ignored.
- neurodivergence: If I have auditory processing problems, I might take longer to respond to you than you’re expecting. If I have impulse control problems, I might blurt something out as soon as I think of it, but I don’t necessarily want you to stop. If I have trouble with nonverbal or paralinguistic cues, I might not latch my turns the way you expect, or my backchannel might be timed in a way you don’t expect.
- Non-native speakers of a language may need more time to process speech; may speak more slowly and with pauses in different places than native speakers; may not pick up the same cues about turn-latching and backchannel, resulting in a timing difference; may need to make more requests for support.
Norms around conversation tend to be super white/Western/male/NT; even among linguists, the way we talk about analyzing talk usually presupposes discrete turns, with one person who “has the floor” and everyone else listening. It even gets coded into our technology – I thing the account’s gone private, but someone recently tweeted, “For the sake of my wife’s family, Zoom needs to incorporate an ‘ashkenazi jewish’ checkbox” because the platform is programmed to try to identify a “main speaker” and auto-mute everyone else. Most of the progress on this front in linguistics has been pushed by Black women and Jewish women, or else we’d probably still be acting like Robert’s Rules represent the natural expression of human instincts.
And it’s very White Feminism to recognize how conversations styles have disparate impacts across gender lines without also recognizing other axes along which conversation styles vary, once that empower us as well as oppress us. Just because I feelinterrupted doesn’t mean I aminterrupted, and it definitely doesn’t mean I have the right to scream “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!” until I’m the only one talking.
I don’t … have a great way to end this? Just that it’s good to recognize competing needs in communication, and have some humility and intentionality about whose needs gets prioritized and how.
I’m confused now. Studies of >70 ancient genomes published earlier this month confirm that all Native Americans descend from a single source population that crossed into Beringia some 25ka ago.
Shouldn’t that be reflected in the languages? Sure, they are bound to diversify a lot considering the distances and geographic barriers involved, but if they come from a single source population, shouldn’t modern linguistics with computer modelling and AI and all that helpful technology be able to detect a common origin and a convincing tree structure?
Apparently that hasn’t happened yet, and I am wondering why. (The vision that the original intercontinental migrants were a polyglot free-love bunch is very attractive but is it realistic?) @sinretoques?@linguisten ? Anybody ?
The most compelling case is (imho) the Dene-Yenisseian hypothesis by Edward Vajda.
The Dene-Yeniseian proposal is superficially compelling but the data presented so far does not conform to the standards demanded by modern historical linguistics.
The relationship is proposed on the basis of mainly (spurious) extra-linguistic evidence and typological similarities, both of which are not sufficient to establish a linguistic relationship. On this basis Vajda begins his attempts to establish lexical comparisons and sound correspondences, but in this area he is not very convincing. If his arguments in this area are accepted as they are, that would in fact make it implausible that the typological similarities which are found are inherited from a common ancestor.
SeeCampbell (2010) for a good summary of the problems in Vajda’s work. Starostin (2012) also makes some good points, though his conclusions are even further off the mark than Vajda, so read that one with extreme caution.
It may well be that some sort of a relationship between Asian and American language families can be established at some point in the future or that we may be able to reduce the primary language families in the Americas to a smaller number but for that we need a lot more rigorous groundwork based on linguistic arguments (regular sound correspondences, shared morphological innovations) in the reconstruction of each of the proto-languages. Only then we can hope to be able to establish promising long-distance connections.
The problem is (imho) that one cannot apply the “standards demanded by modern historical linguistics”(1) as they came into existence with language families at a much shallower time depth or with “ancient” languages, attested in written records, giving their time depth a boost of 2000 years or more.
The further back we go, the less obvious are sound correspondences and semantic similarities. I am not advocating a Greenbergian “lump it all together” approach here(2), but i believe that we cannot apply the standards of families like Indo-European, Austronesian and other mostly undisputed “major” families to reconstructions that go back in prehistory almost twice as far.
As a matter of fact, I don’t think that purely linguistic methods will ever be able to satisfy such high standards. What we need here is corroborating evidence from population genetics, archaeology and cultural anthropology.
(1) what a lovely pseudo-oxymoron!
(2) Greenberg was probably a genius, but definitely worked too superficially.
Totally agree with @linguisten! The genetics of the native people of the Americas seem to match those of a Siberian population, and apparently Texas was a hotbed of spearhead technology about 15,500 years ago (meaning the geographic distribution of people by that point was already enough to lead to some variation no doubt). Throwing a discourse analysis hat into the discussion, I wonder if a study of the narrative styles or folk tales (thinking of work by Jahrani and Da Silva on IE fairy tale roots) of Native Americans compared to Asian languages with historical access to the Bering Straight (or even Polynesian languages according to Thor Heyerdahl) would shed more light on possible relations. But lots of evidence is needed to make the picture clearer, a little bit at a time!
Abduction, Dialogicality and Prior Text: The Taking on of Voices in Conversational Discourse
By: Deborah Tannen
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Annual Meeting Plenary Address
January 8, 2009
LL Abstract:
In this address, Deborah Tannen outlines a theoretical framework for the notion of dialogicality, or the way that people draw on constructed voices of others to display identities that either display relationship status or hierarchies in a given interaction. Focusing on the constructed dialogue strategy of ventriloquizing, or the practice in which a speaker uses phonological, lexical, and syntactic resources to take on the voice of another or of an alternative personal persona. Illustrating her claims with examples from natural conversation, she argues that this animation allows speakers to negotiate two dynamics shaping conversation: relative closeness or distance on one hand, and relative hierarchy or equality on the other.
LL Summary:
Tannen (2009) begins this address by connecting Penelope Eckert’s work on indexicality and personae to her framework of meaning in interaction, noting the influence of Bateson, Bakhtin, and Becker. Describing her address as dealing with prior text and thus intertextuality, she next introduces her focus on the discursive strategy of reported speech, which she characterizes as “constructed dialogue” due to how speakers use this strategy to “take on the persona” of others. Tannen then outlines her theoretical framework, beginning with Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1952-53 [1986])views on dialogicality (or the interplay between current and previously experienced instances of language). Bakhtin describes every utterance as full of echoes and reverberations of other utterances, so that a current utterance is in “dialogue” with previous utterances. After explaining Gregory Bateson’s (1979) ideas on meaning as relationships from things to other things, Tannen ends this section by adopting A.L. Becker’s (1995) concept of ‘languaging’, where language is context-shaping (in other words, context is created by language) and outlined by a series of six relations. Before moving on to further examples, Tannen explains her own theoretical framework of the ambiguity and polysemy of connection and power. In her concept, every utterance and relationship results from a combination of two dynamics driving conversational discourse: relative closeness vs. distance and relative hierarchy vs. equality. She gives the example of overlapping speech, which can be in some instances be an interruption (or power maneuver) and in others be a cooperative overlap (as an enthusiastic chiming in or “cooperative overlap”, a connection maneuver). In her theory, such a display can be both polysemous (both a connection and power play) or ambiguous (can be either of the two moves). In the next part of her address, Tannen uses examples of ventriloquizing to show how people take on voices of others to introduce a persona, and to borrow characteristics from that persona in a move of creating closeness or distance with their interlocutor. In the family interactions she describes, fathers take on the voices of mothers to downplay directives, mothers voice dogs to get their kids to clean toys, children voice themselves and fathers, and expecting mothers voice their unborn children to chastise fathers-to-be. In these examples, Tannen argues that speakers communicate meaning by taking on voices that create personas, then borrow recognizable characteristics associated with them to negotiate relative connection and hierarchy. She concludes by revealing the role of this linguistic strategy in shaping family relations, arguing that intertextuality plays a key role in shaping discourse and the negotiation of connection and power in interaction.
LL Recipe Comparison:
This address reminds me of the recipe for one-pot Parmesan and Garlic Linguine:
Much as this delicious dish is remarkably easy to make (in one pot!), you will find this address remarkably easy to consume quickly! Tannen raises some thoughtful arguments about the role of prior text in conversation, and you will raise normal arguments with your family about who gets to finish this garlicky, cheesy pasta. I’d recommend adding some sun-dried tomatoes or dried kalamata olives to add a pit of texture to this amazing recipe, and it only takes 15 minutes to make! Good Cooking!
MWV 9/22/18
Rights and Responsibilities in Calls for Help: The Case of the Mountain Glade Fire
By: Geoffrey Raymond and Don Zimmerman
Published by: Research on Language and Social Interaction
Volume 40, Issue 1
Pages 33-61
LL Abstract:
In this article, Raymond and Zimmerman use a corpus of 40 calls to 911 about the same event - a fire on the Pacific coast - to examine how callers and call-takers negotiate rights and responsibilities in their talk and the ways these rights affect actions and trajectories of 911 calls. They identify problems in managing these calls that occur over time, showing how callers and call-takers cannot avoid the institutional constraints posed by the format of an emergency call. Suggesting that institutional resistance to change may stem from such routinized and embodied practices, the authors further consider the impact on emergency services due to shifting presuppositions in multiple calls produced during community-wide events.
LL Summary:
Raymond and Zimmerman begin by describing the emergency captured by their call corpus: a mountainside fire in a coastal community on the Pacific Coast that affected thousands of residents, allowing the researchers to track an ordered series of calls about the same event. They describe the questions driving their research, outlining their focus on the practices that organize calls and the ways that these practices embody an alignment of identities between a service seeker and service provider. Identifying a directionality to the information flow in emergency calls (where practices are designed to facilitate information into a dispatch center), they introduce three ways that these practices are altered over multiple calls: information flow is reversed, complication of the service seeker/provider relationship, and complication in the rights and responsibilities of that relationship. In the next section of the article, the authors review prior research on the organization and production of emergency calls, beginning with how calls generally have a monofocal character leading to brevity and order as callers are constrained to present service-appropriate matters. They describe the ways that callers are aligned to report problems and answer questions, while call-takers receive the report and ask questions, resulting in the a division of rights and responsibilities that provide the directionality of information they previously discuss. As deviations from the orientations, presuppositions, and activities have consequences for the emergency call, the authors note how the first two turns of a call set up the responsibilities for each party while positioning them to engage in a specific type of activity: reporting an event for the purpose of obtaining help for that problematic event. Using the first call about the fire, Raymond and Zimmerman show how the organization of 911 calls allow callers to use their first turn as a “slot” for presenting the trouble that led them to call (the “caller’s problem). Noting the compact opening and closing sequences of the first call, the authors illustrate the sequencing inherent in emergency calls that facilitates the orientations, presuppositions, and activities that enable callers to report emergencies. Next, Raymond and Zimmerman use examples from several calls to show how callers departed from the norms of an emergency call in reversing the directionality of the calls as the fire emergency progressed, demonstrating that both callers and call-takers maintained a tangential alignment with these norms despite these deviations. Here both call-takers and callers are shown modifying their practices in an effort to see if their call matches previously delivered information, resulting in modified service announcements and orientations to a caller’s right to report an emergency (e.g. when a caller’s first turn opens with a request for a call taker to confirm they already know about the fire, or a call taker provides “candidate locations” for the emergency). In addition to calls where reporting is sustained as the overall activity, the authors next examine calls where other projects are pursued, such as information or advice seeking calls. Here they show that callers orient to their limited rights as reporters yet presuppose that call takers know more about the event in question than the caller, reversing the activities in a typical emergency call. In calls seeking advice, the authors demonstrate that callers use location formulations to establish their proximity to the fire as a basis for pursuing information and advice. They conclude their analysis with two examples of calls where call takers struggled with requests for advice, as in these cases the call takers faced institutional limits on their own rights to provide information or advice (such as encouraging a caller to evacuate). The article ends with a discussion of how the calls systematically changed over time, from reporting the fire to seeking advice or information about the emergency, and the authors note that both the organization and distribution of rights and responsibilities in these calls changed as a result. Despite these changes, they underscore that callers and call takers attempted to preserve the ordinary structure of these calls, suggesting that institutional constraints make resistance to change problematic in such situations.
LL Recipe Comparison:
This article reminds me of the recipe for Feisty Shrimp Linguine:
While the authors of this article discuss different linguistic responses to a fiery situation, you will find yourself loving the fiery flavor of this linguine dish! The shrimp and red pepper of this recipe are a nice twist on the traditional seafood linguine approach, and the thick tomato sauce can be adjusted to your own heat preferences. Even though callers and call takers must deal with problems if an emergency steps outside the norm, you won’t face any problems putting this easy dinner idea together. Good Cooking!
MWV 7/13/18
By: Cynthia Gordon
Published in: Narrative Matters in Medical Contexts across Disciplines
Edited by: Franziska Gygax and Miriam A. Locher
Pages 117-140
LL Abstract:
In this chapter, Gordon applies computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) methods to explain how participants in a single thread on a medical discussion board jointly work to address the first poster’s description of an interaction where a doctor criticizes her weight. Using a small stories perspective, she identifies six intertextual linking strategies that posters use to co-create a small story that works through the first poster’s dilemma: posing information-seeking questions, paraphrasing and reframing, creating “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007), using the board’s quotation function, pointing (i.e. using the ^ sign), and advice-giving. In mapping these strategies, this chapter shows how participants use linguistic strategies to attribute responsibility for a problematic interaction to both the doctor and original patient/poster.
LL Summary:
Gordon (2015) opens this chapter by introducing online discussion boards as similar to what Ochs, Smith, and Taylor (1989) suggest about dinner tables, in that both act as “opportunity spaces” for the possibility of joint action of participants. In the introduction, she situates her research focus on this discussion board thread by describing her small stories approach to exploring the metadiscourse in this thread about a doctor’s unwelcome comments. Gordon next gives an overview of the chapter, then reviews previous research on online discussion boards, small stories, and intertextuality. Describing a range of studies making up the theoretical background of the study, she begins this section by discussing research showing how online discussion boards often feature participants engaging in storytelling to manage health-related issues while connecting with others. Gordon then reviews the “small stories” perspective in narrative analysis, wherein collaborative, fragmented, or incomplete “narrative-like formats of talk” have been demonstrated to act as a form of problem-solving behavior. The theoretical background section ends with a discussion of intertextuality - the relationships linking language meaning to prior instances of that language - and current research on linking/quoting others while revealing awareness of language through metadiscourse (language about language). In the next section of the chapter, the author describes “FriendInFitness/FIF”, an app and website geared to users attempting to track their caloric consumption and expenditure (aka food intake and exercise). Gordon describes how she applied Herring’s (2004) sampling methods to identify a thread with 46 posts by 24 participants beginning with a post by “Alma_Michelle” about a doctor-patient interaction about her body weight. The chapter then presents Gordon’s analysis, starting with a description of the linguistic strategies used by “Alma_Michelle” in her original post, such as the use of constructed dialogue to voice the doctor and the providing of details and information about her personal health statistics. Next, Gordon provides an analysis of the 6 intertextual strategies she identifies in the thread responding the original post. The first, asking information-seeking questions, occurs early in the thread and is typical of problem-solving narrative episodes. With the second strategy - paraphrasing and reframing - Gordon finds that participants recontextualize select elements of the first poster’s language, sometimes reinforcing her perspective and sometimes offering new understanding. The author finds that posters use the third strategy of constructed dialogue to create hypothetical utterances, re-create past utterances from outside of the thread, and to tie back to words used earlier in the thread, essentially suggesting the reinterpretation of information. Related to constructed dialogue, Gordon next shows how the fourth strategy - using the board’s built in quotation function - to link posts and create coherence on the thread. The fifth strategy of pointing echoes the previous two strategies, as Gordon reveals that posters use symbols and deictic pronouns to vividly link back to prior posts and introduce advice by modifying understandings of those previous posts. Finally, the sixth strategy of advice-giving is presented by Gordon as an interconnected activity with narration, as she finds that posters move their tellings into the future (similar to what has been found for small stories in other contexts) via advice that helps solve the original poster’s dilemma. Gordon ends the analysis section by summarizing her findings about the six strategies realizing posters’ co-telling or co-problem-solving via narration, suggesting that these strategies facilitate the gradual gathering and sharing of information and multiple perspectives. The chapter ends with a discussion of the larger themes referenced by the small story evoked in this thread (aka about how doctors should communicate with patients), tying Gordon’s analysis to questions of identity and narrative problem-solving online and the ways that online discussion forums provide opportunities for collaborative sense-making.
LL Recipe Comparison:
This chapter reminds me of the recipe forLinguine with Kale and Tomatoes:
While Gordon finds that many discussion board participants had to work together to solve a poster’s dilemma, you will find that this recipe only requires one participant to make and will have no dilemmas about reaching for seconds! The fresh kale and tomatoes pair quite nicely with the light garlic sauce in this dish, much as online discussion boards pair nicely with soliciting advice about health. Good cooking!
MWV 6/3/18
Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry
By: John Heritage
Published by: Language in Society
Volume 27
Pages 291–334
LL Abstract:
In this article, Heritage (1998) looks at the appearance of the discourse marker “oh” in a particular context - turn-initial position in responses to questions - and demonstrates how the use of “oh” generally suggests a change of state in the speaker. He shows how this oh-prefacing may mark a previous question as problematic or indicate that a speaker is reluctant to pursue a conversational topic. After exploring a wide range of examples where oh-prefaced turns are produced, the article concludes that while “oh” generally shows its producer has undergone a cognitive “change of state,” people rely on the contextual aspects of their utterances to determine the sense of this change.
LL Summary:
Heritage begins with several examples from conversations to show how “oh” generally shows or registers that its producer has undergone a change in state of knowledge or information. He then specifies the focus of this paper: oh-prefaced turns that are produced as the second pair in a sequence, aka those that are produced in response to a question. The author continues by characterizing “oh” as indicating that a question has occasioned a marked shift of attention, meaning it was unexpected or problematic in some way. In this section, Heritage discusses an interview with Princess Margaret and excerpts between students and teachers to conclude that one function of “oh” prefaced responses is to indicate that the question to which they respond is inapposite. In the next section, he expands on inapposite inquiries by distinguishing between cases where the question indexes something “already known” by participants because of prior talk or joint understandings, and cases where questions are poorly fitted to the sequential context they are produced in. The author looks at examples of women and men and finds a pattern of assertion -> query -> oh-prefaced reassertion that is produced when matters from prior talk are questioned. Looking at reported speech, Heritage shows how some oh-prefacing indicates that a question’s answer is self-evident from the physical or cultural/individual knowledge context, or that there is some element of the social environment that makes the question problematic. After using examples of the functions of oh-prefacing in troubles-telling, questions, and problematic questions, he notes that in some contexts, the exploitation of oh-prefacing as a method of emphatic response to questions has become quite common. In the following section, the article explores cases where oh-prefacing is used to project reluctance to talk about the topic raised by an inquiry. Heritage identifies three ways that this reluctance is shown in the data: oh-prefaced responses are minimal or unelaborated in the matter of the inquiry, producers of oh-prefaced responses unilaterally shift topic immediately after the response or shortly after, or these producers withhold on-topic talk (aka remain silent). In the final section of the article, Heritage examines responses to personal state inquiries like “How are you?” Building on Jefferson’s (1980) work on troubles talk, where she proposes that this troubles talk is marked by a general tension between attending the trouble or “business as usual,” the author shows that oh-prefacing can intensify the downgrading of downgraded responses (like “oh pretty good”). Finally, Heritage concludes by restating his argument that oh-prefacing uniformly conveys the sense that the prior question has occasioned a shift in attention to the matter of the question, so that its central use is implying the inappositeness of this question.
LL Recipe Comparison:
This article reminds me of the recipe for Lemon-Asparagus Linguine with Garlicky Panko:
While Heritage identifies multiple functions of oh-prefaced responses in his article, the recipe for this dish will leave you swooning over its simple steaming ingredients! Much as we use oh-prefaced responses to suggest a range of social cues, this dish has a range of flavors - asparagus, lemon, garlic, that suggest a crisp and zesty bite. Good cooking!
MWV 2/12/18
PS Apologies for the delays in posting, all! About to finish a qualifying review paper by March so going underground until that’s done- will post short updates until that’s over! Bon Appétit until then!
