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Full-Text Articles in Interpersonal and Small Group Communication

When To Make The Sensory Social: Registering In Face-To-Face Openings, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore Jun 2020

When To Make The Sensory Social: Registering In Face-To-Face Openings, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Faculty Publications

This article analyzes naturally occurring video-recorded openings during which participants make the sensory social through the action of registering—calling joint attention to a selected, publicly perceiv- able referent so others shift their sensory attention to it. It examines sequence-initial actions that register referents for which a participant is regarded as responsible. Findings demonstrate a systematic preference organization which observably guides when and how people initiate registering sequences sensitive to ownership of, and displayed stance toward, the target referent. Analysis shows how registering an owned referent achieves intersubjectivity and puts involved participants’ face, affiliation, and social relationship on the line. A …


When To Make The Sensory Social: Registering In Copresent Openings, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore Jul 2019

When To Make The Sensory Social: Registering In Copresent Openings, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Communication

This article provides the first detailed empirical analysis of naturally-occurring videorecorded openings during which participants make the sensory social through the action of registering – calling joint attention to a selected, publicly perceivable referent so others shift their sensory attention to it. Examining sequence-initial actions that register referents for which a participant is regarded as responsible, this study elucidates a systematic preference organization which observably guides when and how people initiate registering sequences sensitive to both referent ownership and referent value. Analysis shows how choosing to register an owned referent puts involved participants’ face, affiliation, and social relationship on the …


Arriving: Expanding The Personal State Sequence, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore Sep 2018

Arriving: Expanding The Personal State Sequence, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Communication

When arriving to a social encounter, how and when can a person show how s/he is doing/feeling? This article answers this question, examining personal state sequences in copresent openings of casual (residential) and institutional (parent-teacher) encounters. Describing a regular way participants constitute – and move to expand – these sequences, this research shows how arrivers display a non-neutral (e.g., negative, humorous, positive) personal state by both (i) deploying interactionally-timed stance-marking embodiments that enact a non-neutral state, and (ii) invoking a selected previous activity/experience positioned as precipitating that non-neutral state. Data demonstrate that arrivers time their non-neutral personal state displays calibrated …


How To Begin, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore Sep 2018

How To Begin, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Communication

This article introduces the special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction organized around the theme “Opening and Maintaining Face-to-Face Interaction.” The contributions to this special issue collectively consider “how to begin” – either a new encounter, or a new sequence after a lapse in conversation. All articles analyze naturally-occurring, videorecorded episodes of casual and/or institutional copresent interaction using multimodal conversation analytic methods. Though the opening phase of a face-to-face encounter may elapse in a matter of seconds, this article shows it to house a dense universe of phenomena central to sustaining our human sense of self and our …


Ethnolinguistic Convergence And Divergence Within Dyadic Communication, Anna E. Pitman Apr 2018

Ethnolinguistic Convergence And Divergence Within Dyadic Communication, Anna E. Pitman

Honors College Research

This study investigated just one dependent variable within communication: ethnicity. Ethnicity often influences language. The study examined interethnic communication behaviors through the lens of the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), as influenced by one of its offshoots, Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory (ELIT). Communication within CAT is given one of three labels—convergence, divergence, and maintenance. The study included four students at Harding University: two African American females, one Hispanic American female, and one Caucasian American female. The primary participant, an African American woman, had a recorded 20 minute conversation with each of the other three participants. Discussion questions provided were formulated to create …


Preference Organization, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore Mar 2017

Preference Organization, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Communication

Conversation analytic research on “preference organization” investigates recorded episodes of naturally occurring social interaction to elucidate how people systematically design their actions to either support or undermine social solidarity. This line of work examines public forms of conduct that are highly generalized and institutionalized, not the private desires, subjective feelings or psychological preferences of individuals. This article provides a detailed and accessible overview of classic and contemporary conversation analytic findings about preference, which collectively demonstrate that human interaction is organized to favor actions that promote social affiliation (through face-preservation) at the expense of conflict (resulting from face-threat). While other overviews …


Universal Design For Belonging: Living And Working With Diverse Personal Names, Karen E. Pennesi Jan 2017

Universal Design For Belonging: Living And Working With Diverse Personal Names, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

There is great diversity in the names and naming practices of Canada’s population due to the multiple languages and cultures from which names and name-givers originate. While this diversity means that everyone encounters unfamiliar names, institutional agents who work with the public are continually challenged when attempting to determine a name’s correct pronunciation, spelling, structure and gender. Drawing from over a hundred interviews in London (Ontario) and Montréal (Québec), as well as other published accounts, I outline strategies used by institutional agents to manage name diversity within the constraints of their work tasks. I explain how concern with saving face …


Towards A Computational Model Of Frame Of Reference Alignment In Swedish Dialogue, Simon Dobnik, Christine Howes, Kim Demaret, John D. Kelleher Nov 2016

Towards A Computational Model Of Frame Of Reference Alignment In Swedish Dialogue, Simon Dobnik, Christine Howes, Kim Demaret, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

In this paper we examine how people negotiate, interpret and repair the frame of reference (FoR) in online text based dialogues discussing spatial scenes in Swedish. We describe work-in-progress in which participants are given different perspectives of the same scene and asked to locate several objects that are only shown on one of their pictures. This task requires participants to coordinate on FoR in order to identify the missing objects. This study has implications for situated dialogue systems.


Providing Objective Metrics Of Team Communication Skills Via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms, Celine De Looze, Brian Vaughan, Finnian Kelly, Alison Kay Sep 2015

Providing Objective Metrics Of Team Communication Skills Via Interpersonal Coordination Mechanisms, Celine De Looze, Brian Vaughan, Finnian Kelly, Alison Kay

Conference Papers

Being able to communicate efficiently has been acknowledged as a vital skill in many different domains. In particular, team communication skills are of key importance in the operation of complex machinery such as aircrafts, maritime vessels and such other, highly-specialized, civilian or military vehicles, as well as the performance of complex tasks in the medical domain. In this paper, we propose to use prosodic accommodation and turn- taking organisation to provide objective metrics of communica- tion skills. To do this, human-factors evaluations, via a coordi- nation Demand Analysis (CDA), were used in conjunction with a dynamic model of prosodic accommodation …


Being A "Good Parent" In Parent-Teacher Conferences, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore Feb 2015

Being A "Good Parent" In Parent-Teacher Conferences, Danielle M. Pillet-Shore

Communication

This research advances our understanding of what constitutes a "good parent" in the course of actual social interaction. Examining video-recorded naturally occurring parent-teacher conferences, this article shows that, while teachers deliver student-praising utterances, parents may display that they are gaining knowledge; but when teachers’ actions adumbrate student-criticizing utterances, parents systematically display prior knowledge. This article elucidates the details of how teachers and parents tacitly collaborate to enable parents to express student-troubles first, demonstrating that parents display competence -- appropriate involvement with children’s schooling -- by asserting their prior knowledge of, and/or claiming/describing their efforts to remedy, student-troubles. People (have to) …


Toward A Biocommunicable Cartography Of Health Decision-Making In The Amazon Basin Of Ecuador, James Cartwright Jun 2014

Toward A Biocommunicable Cartography Of Health Decision-Making In The Amazon Basin Of Ecuador, James Cartwright

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This paper comprises a critical, ethnographic study of health communication in a rural community of Amazonian Ecuador. By synthesizing approaches from anthropology, discourse studies, and public health, the study explores how conversations influence health decisions, how communities understand health systems, and how macrostructural discourse changes the political economy of healthcare in Ecuador. My work draws on the recent theoretical development of ‘biocommunicability’ in anthropology as well as earlier sociological research on knowledge construction. Most importantly, this paper offers a critique of current interventions by NGOs in the region.


English In South Asia And Pedagogical Implications, Brittany R. Ehret Apr 2014

English In South Asia And Pedagogical Implications, Brittany R. Ehret

Senior Honors Theses

English at present maintains a significant role as a second or foreign language in the region of South Asia as well as globally. In a discussion of this topic, it is important to explore a brief history of the expansion of English and its origins in South Asia. It is also essential to provide a background of South Asian English and its unique linguistic characteristics as well as its use in different contexts of South Asia. The perspectives of linguists and educators who are native to the region of South Asia should be included as much as possible in this …


A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of Face-Threat And Face-Management In Potential Complaint Situations, Laura Hartley Jan 1998

A Sociolinguistic Analysis Of Face-Threat And Face-Management In Potential Complaint Situations, Laura Hartley

Faculty Publications - Department of World Languages, Sociology & Cultural Studies

Within the pragmatics literature, a number of studies have investigated the speech act of complaining. In most cases, the researchers have failed to define a "complaint" before proceeding with analysis. The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical definition of a "complaint" and to examine in-depth the linguistic details of the speech act of complaining, with a particular view to illuminating the linguistic devices employed in managing the "face" of the participants involved in Potential Complaint Situations. In addition to dealing with micro-level questions regarding how complaints are realized in various circumstances, this study also sheds light on …