Download Discourse analysis

Universiteit Gent
2008-2009
Engelse Taalkunde II: Spoken Interaction
Samenvatting
Studentencursussen Filologica
Discourse analysis
07-08: Samenvatting door Joris Vereenooghe (aangevuld door Julie Vandamme)
08-09: Verder uitgewerkt door Tom Van Steendam
1. The study of spoken interaction
History
Long to get there
- Deep ancestry in historical-philological tradition (privilege written word)
- Saussurean inheritance (‘langage and langue’ > ‘parole’)
 Collective/systematic speech > individual/accidental speech
- 1920: Bahtkin circle: dialogical principle (utterance as unit of analysis)
 utterance= evaluative reception of/response to previous utterance
 utterance as the unit for analysis
 Unnoticed in the West until translations (1970-1980)
- 1960: Sociolinguists interested in spoken language
In sociology (second series of facilitating developments)
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Ethnomethodology (H. Garfinkel; A. Cicourel)
 stress on shared understandings; sense-making as routine
accomplishment in everyday situations
 view of language as a social action
Work of E. Goffman
 dramaturgical perspective
 concepts of ‘interaction order’; ‘frame’; ‘footing’
Birth of Conversation Analysis (H. Sacks; G. Jefferson; E Schegloff)
 ‘turn-taking’; ‘sequential implicativeness’; ‘adjacency pair’
 fixed order in language
early critique by Labov, defence of formalisation!
 variationist sociolinguistics <-> linguistic anthropology
all 3 indebted to Shutz his ‘phenomenology of the social world’
Spoken language use (SLU) and social interaction
spoken interaction: more than attending to characteristics of spoken language use
1) SLU = part of and integrated into other forms of social-actional behaviour
2) speakers pay attention to each other’s language use, make sense of each
other’s contributions and display their understanding
3) speakers build sequences in which they take turns at speaking as well as
taking turns at doing other things
 inter-action = interdependent, coordinated action
 inter-action is both responsive and anticipatory ( cfr. turn-taking)
 inter-action is relational, and therefore social
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Context
classic view: context = layered, it has a ‘nested’ structure
recent view: language both reflects and shapes context
context is
1) backdrop to action
2) momentary accomplishment within action
3) a reflexive project
Context is moulded dynamically in the course of social interaction. It is both ‘input
for’ and ‘outcome of’ interaction.
different types of context:
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textual: the text which surrounds the instance of language use (co-text)
extra-textually: those elements in the communicative situation that are
relevant for the production or comprehension of what was said
o situational
o cultural
o actional
o behavioural
focal context
“the macro end of context” (value systems of the wider socio-cultural context)
 it is important to point out that these are no binding distinctions. Note that
there has been an evolution from a more static concern (mostly focused on written
texts) to a more dynamic approach (prioritizes spoken interaction and situated
behaviour)
 as a result, nowadays even the ‘macro context’ is also viewed as
shaped in the progressive unfolding of interaction, and no longer seen as merely
static backdrop
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2. Ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology: Garfinkel & Cicourel
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sociological perspective
stresses the way that people make sense of their social world
suggests that individuals interpret their social world by selectively recognising
facts from a social situation as conforming to a pattern, which subsequently
becomes the framework for interpreting new facts
 doctor asking “how can I help you?” = pattern of starting a medical
consultation.
 competent patient recognises this fact, knowing that this is the normal way
of going, and knows that limited possibilities of answer are expected
 framework of medical consultation is established internationally, displayed
as mutually recognised by participants, making the interpretation of new facts
possible (e.g. “open your mouth”)
social order is produced, recognised and shared
social order is an on-going accomplishment
sociologists are capable of observation on the basis of their insider knowledge
as competent members of the society they study, as well as their ordinary
observational competencies.
Difference between Garfinkel and Cicourel
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Garfinkel: emphasis on social actional dimensions of recognition and display
Cicourel: developed a social cognitive perspective on interpretative procedures
Three methodological steps
1) notice something that is observably the case
2) question “how is it that this observable feature has been produced so that it is
recognizable for what it is”?
3) consider, analyse and describe the methods used in production and
recognition of the feature.
These three steps imply that
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meaning is contextually made available
meaning is sequentially made available (chronology is important)
meaning is situationally produced (a shown and accepted situation)
contributions are heard in a particular way (seeing the doctor in his counsel
room does not mean you understand the situation)
interpretation is contextually and sequentially made manifest
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Seen-but-not-noticed
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methods of production and interpretation are seen-but-not-noticed
the methods are routinely acted upon
this does not mean that interactants are aware of their organising role in the
construction of a reciprocal perspective in social experience
made clear by breaching experiments (Garfinkel)
 underline the importance of deviance-case analysis
 behave in such a way that the reciprocity and taken-for-grantedness of
perspectives is undermined, in order to make the seen-but-not-noticed
exposed.
 underscores that people expect other party to understand most of what is
being talked about. “you know what I mean”
Three modes of analysis
1) self-reflection
- ethnomethodological analysts are self-reflexive about their own understandings
of the activities which are being observed
- and their own understanding of the methods involved in their production and
accomplishment
2) Analysis of recorded talk-and-action
- they will rely on detailed scrutiny of recorded interactions
- including the structure of their unfolding
3) Acquired immersion and unique adequancy
- they rely on their own capacity to acquire specialist knowledge and
competencies which are not ordinarily available
- Unique adequacy:
- ethnomethodologists use methods that require immersion in the situation
being studied
- they hold it as an ideal that they learn to be competent practitioners of
whatever social phenomena they are studying
- that ideal = unique adequacy (Garfinkel)
Differences between ethnography and ethnomethodology
-Ethnography
= oriented to the study of others, culturally different
= relies on contact with ‘the other’
= participate and observe to detect the perspective of ‘the other’
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-Ethnomethodology
= originates in Western sociology
= focus on own society, its mundane everyday practices and routine forms of
sense-making
= focus on studying the practical methods of members of the ethnie
In common: -
focus on observation
understand meaning making ‘from within’
immersion
contextual dependency
Accountability
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“being able to account for behaviour”
all actions are orientated to the condition of accountability
rational or logical features of action must be treated as contingent
accomplishments
any setting organises its activities to make its properties as an organised
environment of practical activities detectable, countable, recordable,
reportable, tell-a-story-aboutable, analysable, in short: accountable
e.g. a setting of a doctor visit in a medical room with validated documentation
(his certificate on the wall) makes the actions of the doctor accountable, moral
and professional:
 during the consultation he can touch patients, ask specific questions,
ask a person to undress, …
BUT if after the consultation the patient does not think it professional, the
patient feels morally outraged: “it’s a shame!”
 implies that international organisation = a moral order
Not his diploma, but the display of the organisation of his behaviours show
whether the doctor is competent.
Examples of accountable behaviour during a doctor visit:
o Dr can not touch an arm any longer than required
o Dr uses depersonalised language
o Dr communicates categories of experience (“this can hurt a bit”)
o Dr shows sensitivity, empathy, …
o Patient looks away when a body part is examined (Pa transforms into
phenomena under investigation)
Concluding notes
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Talk-in-a-setting is structured predictably (e.g. a normal doctor visit)
 though the encounter itself is not predictable
Talk-in-a-setting is contextually and sequentially amenable
 because actions and settings are mutually constitutive
(e.g. entering a doctor’s room when car has broken down)
Principle of “unless co-interactants offer indications to the contrary, x will be
heard as…”
Social action = “reflexive”
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3. Co-presence in time and space
frame (a frame of reference) Erving Goffman
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the schematic knowledge which language users possess about the
organisation of an event or activity and the significance of specific
contributions within it
 a framework 1) within which certain contributions are being interpreted,
2) within which they can be rendered meaningful,
and this also comes with 3) certain expectations about (un)likely and
(dis)allowable behaviours, verbal and otherwise
organisation of experience, not organisation of society
how we stage-manage activities as part of organizing our experience of the
social world
frame = on one hand object-oriented conditions (a room fit for the purpose of
the action), on the other hand subject-depented actions and moves (naming
the activity e.g. as a press conference)
invites attention to how spaces are typically but not exclusively pre-designed
for a particular range of activities
offers a double outlook on organisation of social experience
o view on the pre-situational
o view on the situationally-produced
Goffman’s theory according to Giddens
- a micro-sociology of co-presence
 centres on physical co-presence (=encounters) rather than on social groups
Two sorts of self-maintaining behaviour
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response cries
o involve a kind of self-talk
o displayed in public
o at moments where someone’s behaviour may create the impression of
failed competence
o not intended to be conversational, no response expected
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civil inattention
o the convention of polite conduct in public through which we signal that
we do not pay much attention to others around us and what they do
behavioural context
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talk is very important, but is not all
body = anchor of communicative skills, the locus of perception
focus on the physical scene of action
movements act as signifiers and this is what connects us to the world around
us
e.g. leaning forward hints interest
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Social situation
Goffman defines the social situation as a physical arena of co-presence
 no restriction is implied about the relationship of those in the situation
 full physical arena: actions and space beyond the frame of a specific activity is
also within the purview of the analysis
 co-presence in time and space
Frame analysis is about
1) activity-specific ‘frames of reference’ and how they unfold in time and space
2) temporal unfoldings of ‘spatial partitionings’ which go together with specific
activities
3) ‘spaces’ and the activities that typically take place in them (‘pre-defined’  …
 ‘open’)
4) frame-sensitive bodily behaviour in a dynamic spatio-temporal context (inc.
verbal behaviour) MAIN FOCUS
Frame laminations
= the interdependency of frames and the presence of frame layers
 eating in a restaurant (primary frame) while listening and speaking (second. fr.)
- One layer of activity is premised upon the other and the attention demands of
that layer receive priority
- failure to attend to the demands of a base frame upon which another frame
depends is likely to result in a conclusion of social incompetence
- a shift in frame may also be instated by an unexpected piece of information
 this can lead to a shift in participant alignment from ‘role embracement’ to
‘role distancing’ (e.g. Fawlty Towers excerpt pg. 40)
 choice of participant alignment comes with implications at the level of local
exchanges and individual interactional moves.
Keying
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= managing a temporary or more permanent adjustment/transformation of a
frame into something else (e.g. temporarily switching from a medical
consultation to a humorous chat)
key refers to a set of conventions by which a given activity (which is already
meaningful in terms of a primary framework) is transformed into something
patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something else
5 keys: a) make-believe (e.g. a theatre play)
b) contests (e.g. sports as involving keyings of combatative activity)
c) ceremonials (e.g. marriages, funerals)
d) technical (re)doings (e.g. a language session)
e) regroupings (activity performed with motive different from actor’s
ordinary, e.g. princess serving soup for charity)
“key” is reflected in a trajectory of movement, focal gaze and posture
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Frame break
= unexpected move which is alien to the frame, transgresses its boundaries or
causes frame to break
- source of irritation / humour
- often exploited in theatre (e.g. asides)
Competing frames
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actors are invited to establish their engrossment, or display their alignment to
the competing frame
often hesitation what sort of response the situation required at that point
importance of frame attributes (e.g. a camera  tourist frame)
Footing
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how interactants simultaneously are positioned and do positioning work.
a change in footing implies a change in alignment, a change in our frame for
events. (not just verbal, also expressed by behaviour)
footing stands for a speaker’s and hearer’s shifting alignments in relation to
the events at hand, as a combination of production/reception format and
participation status
closely connected to the concept of frame and the taxonomies it has given rise
to
it reiterates Goffman’s interest in boundaries, centre, margin, focus and
(dis)engagement in interaction under conditions where talkers and hearers
share a physical space, while not necessarily engaged in one-and-the-same
conversation or activity
e.g. change in footing towards gossip: spoken faster and more softly
modality and appraisal are obvious examples  someone saying only what he
was authorised to say, and someone mandated to replace an authority in a
speech = two different ways of talking.
o first person: The prime minister said x
o second person: I very much suspect that the prime minister will say x
Reception roles:
ratified: refers to an officially-sanctioned status as a ratified participant in an
encounter
ratified participants: official status of co-present participants
non-ratified participants: accidental overhearers or nosy eavesdroppers
 a ratified overhearer is different from a non-ratified one at the level of
addresseehood
addressed: a matter of who is addressed more directly
addressed participants: actively contribute
non-addressed participants: bystander who witnesses
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subordinating communication
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talk that is manned, timed, and pitched to contribute a perceivedly limited
interference to what might be called “dominating communication” in its vicinity
a more important frame is operative, and remains dominant.
Three types:
1) cross-play
- communication between ratified participants and bystanders across the
boundaries of the dominant encounter
- subordinate communication across the boundaries of a spatially-dominant frame
e.g. student waives to other student who appears in the door
2) by-play
- subordinated communication of a subset of ratified participant
- most often subordinate, can be dominanet
e.g. a private conversation between two students
3) side-play
- respectfully hushed words exchanged entirely among bystanders
- always subordinate
e.g. two students who do not take course, appear in the doorway, comment on
lecture
Production roles
a) Animator: - speaker as a sound-box
- produces the words
b) Author: - speaker as the entity who comes up with the words, utterances and
phrases
- who has selected the sentiments for expression
c) Principal: - speaker as the one whose position is established by the words which
are spoken
- who is committed to what is being said
=> television advertising:
a = professional actors hired as voice or face
b = advertising agency (=TV channel)
c = manufacturer who ordered the advertisement
but: TV channel is also principal: as they can refuse the add!
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Two comments
1) when quoting:
The person who quotes = animator and ‘suspended principal’ ( authorship
attributed to someone else)
2) contemporary television
- has its own co-present ratified audience
- audience in front of TV = future overhearers, but at the same time become ratified
primary addressees when program is broadcasted.
- studio audience: role in shaping the interaction concerning making the TV format
- home audience: raison d’être for the gathering in the studio
Scollon: decompose the concept of ‘listener’ into three roles
1) receptor
2) interpreter
3) judge
Concluding notes
Goffman:
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dramaturgical perspective
fabric of social is to be understood interactionally and stage-managed
the social is actional and sequential
Collins describes Goffman as empiricist and Durkheimian.
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careful description which informs theory
the ‘self’ and its interactional expression are centrally at stake. The
organisational structure of social experience is bound both to the natural
spatial environment and its conditions of co-presence as well as to human
behaviour under such circumstances
in Durkheimian fashion, ‘maintaining the self’ can be identified as a sacred
object in ritualised interaction, both central and unreal.
 not private experience is primary, but the social is the centre of action and
attention.
 the organisation of personal experience (cognitively and morally) derive
from this ‘social entity’
the organisational structure of social experience is bound to
o natural spatial environment
o conditions of co-presence
o human behaviour under certain circumstances
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4. Conversation analysis (Sacks, Schegloff)
CA = E
- share the sense of social order as an on-going accomplishment on the basis of
everyday actions with which members make manifest to one another their
understanding
- share the assumption that interactional meaning is contextually and
sequentially made available
- share the insistence on detecting the perspective of the “competent
participant”
CA ≠ E
- CA never sought to develop an intellectual chapter on the adequacy of the
analyst other than acquiring the tools and concept of CA
- CA doesn’t focus the need to immerse oneself in a situation so as to acquire
and observe the competencies of the insider
- CA did not come with an interest in how turns, utterances, moves,… are heard
in a situation-specific way, other than the hearings which are apparent from
the surface of the recorded data
- Unlike E, CA has gone into great detail when it comes to studying the minute
mechanism of interactional organization
- CA: scope of inquiry narrowed to verbal domain
4 principles of CA by Seedhouse
1) there is order at all points of interaction
- talk in interaction is organized systematically, it is methodic and ordered
- this has resulted in detailed attention to the minutiae of turn-per-turn forms of
interactional organisation as well as intra-turn design
2) no order of detail can be dismissed as disorderly, accidental or irrelevant
this follows the first principle
3) contributions to interaction are both context-renewing and context-shaped
- context is viewed as emerging out of the participants’ own actions
- context = something which is made manifest in the talk
- it is produced locally and can be transformed at any moment
- the production of context counts as a reflexive process
- each move in a conversation = a response to the preceding talk (a turn
is context-shaped) and entails an anticipation of the kind of talk which is to
follow (context-renewing)
 sequential implicativeness
= in formulating a present turn, speakers show their understanding of the
previous turn and reveal their expectations about the next turn
=> actors display to each other their understanding of what they are doing
BUT comment: if data scope only consists of transcriptions  risk of
narrowing context to merely co-text!
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4) analysis is bottom-up and data-driven
- analysis should not be accompanied by a priori theoretical assumptions or
assumptions about relevant background detail
- researcher can only take into account that which participants attend to,
as revealed in the verbal data
- this forms the basis for claiming that the interactional organisation which is
revealed through study coincides with the participant’s construct
turn-taking
some
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apparent facts:
speaker-change recurs, or at least occurs
one party talks at a time
turn order is not fixed, but varies
turn size is not fixed, but varies
length of conversation is not specified in advance
number of parties can vary
=> three norms which determine who speaks next:
1. current-speaker selects next-speaker in the current turn
2. next-speaker self-selects
3. current speaker may, but need not continue
adjacency pairs
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many conversational actions are paired
with turns which stand in a particular relationship of functional appropriacy
e.g. question/answer, complaint/apology, greeting/greeting
consists of firsts and seconds (two types of seconds, whether supportive or
destructive of social solidarity)
First
Request
Compliment
Blame
Preferred second
Acceptance
Acceptance
Denial
Dispreferred second
Refusal
Rejection
Admission
Dispreffered seconds are ‘interactionally marked’, i.e. they require more of a staging
and often also an account. If not, the reply may be rude or hostil and lead to social
discord.
Note that these are not binding! Sometimes the ‘disprefferred second’ is the
preferred one. e.g. P1: “I am so ugly” P2: “No you’re not”
 P2 disagrees with P1’s self-deprecating assessment in order to maintain social
solidarity
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Speech exchange systems
Levinson: some pair types cannot be argued to be conclusively dealt with in their
own right and therefore invite the analyst to look beyond the “second”
=> ‘summons’ (calling for someone’s attention)
a summons/answer-pair would turn out to be a very strange interactional
accomplishment, if it stood on its own and was not followed by a third turn which
provides the reason for the summoning
pre-sequences
= clear the ground for the established adjacency pairs
e.g. ask the waiter if they have hot chocolate, then order it
post-sequences
= subordinate to and follows a previous sequence
it remedies some unresolved matter relating to the more dominant sequence
e.g. answering “I guess so” when asked ‘will you do x for me’ hints at some doubt
about the compliance of the request. It also has a hint of dispreferredness: not about
willingness, but about circumstances.
 extra interactional effort is invested in maintaining the social solidarity
repair sequences
= the treatment of trouble occurring in interactive language use which impedes
communication in some sort of way
- may involve delicate repositioning work  roles may be re-negotiated
ethnomethodological perspective: repair is a vital mechanism for the maintenance of
reciprocity of perspective and intersubjectivity
- self-initiated self-repair: typically occurs within the same turn
- self-initiated other-repair: often integrated into a singular pair
- other-initiated self-repair: typically involves an additional pair
- other-initiated other-repair: will require an additional turn and may be
followed by an acknowledgement
Weaknesses of CA (Duranti)
-
a reliance on a rather rudimentary notion of speech (only standard
transcriptions)
a disregard for participant interpretations (no interviews with the interactants)
repeated disinterest in the larger context (sin of noncontextuality (Goffman))
 assumption that stretches of conversation can be analysied in their own
right, independently of what was occurring at the time and place. In its turn,
CA’s rebuttal has focused mostly on how the search for context should begin
with the micro aspects of the talk.
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5. Contextualisation
Interactional sociolinguistics=
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the domain of communication across social and cultural groups
bring together lines of enquiry
show how diversity affects interpretation
development of a meso-perspective
data from verbal interactions characterised by social and linguistic diversity
concentrates on various layers of explanation which may apply at the same
time
Four lines on inquiry
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Gumperz sees Garfinkel as mainly concerned with the practical interpretative
processes through which interactional outcomes are accomplished
Gumperz sees Goffman as particularly promoting the idea that we pay
attention to specific instances of externalised behaviour which establish and
transform “frames” and “structures of participation”
 but Gumperz argues that speech events must be defined as culturallyframed but interactionally constituted
Gumperz sees CA as stressing that 1) speakers display their understanding of
other-contributions to one another and 2) that talk is crucially made up of
sequentially-organized strings of turns
Gumperz sees Grice’s work on conversational implicature as setting an agenda
for the study of meaning as an inferential process. Interactants derive
meaning from what is perceptibly said through inference on the basis of
contextual assumptions
Questions raised in interactional Sociolinguistics
-
ethnic prejudice at work?
Different inferences as to what is meant and what is required next?
e.g. a bad job interview may point to
- cultural explanation: reluctance to dwell on “presentation of self”
- institutional explanation: lack of experience with job interviews
- linguistic explanation: applicant’s failure to pick up accenting or cues.
Main empirical-methodological analytical strategies used
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record and transcribe interactions
careful and detailed sequential analysis
“triangulation”: seeks corroboration in:
o independently-obtained interviews with interlocutors
o analyses by others
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Contextualisation cues
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any sign that serves to retrieve frames which channel the interpretative
process and limit the range of possible understandings
any verbal sign, which when processed in co-occurrence with symbolic
grammatical and lexical sings serves to construct the contextual ground for
situated interpretation and thereby affects how constituent messages are
understood
e.g. code-switching, intonation, stress, rhythm, tempo,…
often indirectly
interpretative weight often exceeds their linguistic import
Two types of inferencing (Gumperz):
1) local inferencing: inferencing related to “what is required next?”
i.e. oriented to “preference organisation” and “adjacency structure”
 what is established and what is required as response?
2) global inferencing: inferencing related to “what activity is this?”
i.e. oriented to “frames” and “participation structure”
 what exchange is about, which topics can be brought up
 this means that on-line interpretation involves a dual track!
- what came immediately before and what follows next?
- which type of frame and type of activity is this?
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6. Indexicality
Charles Peirce, three types of sign,
 depending on relationship signifier - signified
1) symbol: conventional meaning relationship (numbers, course words)
2) icon: meaning relationship is one of resemblance (portrait, cartoon)
 can also be seen on another level: e.g. the twin towers = icon for NY
3) indices: meaning relationship is existential, the sign is directly connected in
some way to the signified (arrows, smoke indexes fire)
Garfinkel: the documentary method
-
indexicality shows that the meaning of specific items is to be understood in
relation to its context
the meaning of specific items is to be understood in relation to a specific
situation or occasions of use
main principle: utterances index participant understandings
Linguistic Anthropology: different views on indexicality
- Hanks: indexical-referentials are culturally-constituted
 because languages vary in the way they use deictics
- Gumperz: indexicality =
- the meaning relationships which inform contextualisation practice
- signalled by contextualisation cues
- Silverstein [sti:n]: indexicality in the area of ideologically productive assumptions
which constitute context.
- ‘indexicality’ brings out that context is always an interactional construct
- ‘indexicality’ brings out that context is reflexively attended to
 indexicality as a dialectical process of extrapolation of meaning
e.g. if a variety is associated with authority of court, it may come to be
heard as authoritative language. Persons using this language – now
perceived as authoritative – can project themselves as being authority
e.g. white youths talking like black rappers  align themselves with
and display their knowledge of popular culture
 Features of language and interaction may index (sets of) social meaning!
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Indexicality: 3 points
-
indexicality invites attention to particular clusters of contextual assumptions
around perceived features of communicative behaviour
o e.g. stylised Cockney in a classroom
o importance of indexical valency
o  potential indexing <-> actual indexing
-
the same set of forms within an encounter may receive divergent
indexicalities, depending on participant roles
o e.g. indexicalities of non-comprehension (Spanish workers in US hotel)
-
reflexivised collectivities and professionally-constituted contextual assumptions
o e.g. notions on Albanian in an immigrant health care centre
Silverstein: scalar conception of indexicality
 “the unavoidable referentiality of language” consist of 2 aspects
- appropriateness-to contextual parameters already established
- effectiveness-in bringing contextual parameters into being
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