Handbook of Interpersonal Communication 9783110211399, 9783110188301, 9783110226041

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Handbook of Interpersonal Communication HAL 2

≥

Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Editors

Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos Volume 2

Mouton de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Handbook of Interpersonal Communication

Edited by

Gerd Antos and Eija Ventola In cooperation with

Tilo Weber

Mouton de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of interpersonal communication / edited by Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola in cooperation with Tilo Weber. p. cm. ⫺ (Handbooks of applied linguistics ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-018830-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Interpersonal communication. I. Antos, Gerd. II. Ventola, Eija. III. Weber, Tilo, 1964⫺ P94.7.H36 2008 302.2⫺dc22 2008037812

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN 978-3-11-018830-1 쑔 Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Martin Zech, Bremen. Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde. Printing and binding: Hubert & Co., Göttingen. Printed in Germany.

Introduction to the handbook series

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Introduction to the handbook series Linguistics for problem solving Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos 1.

Science and application at the turn of the millennium

The distinction between “pure” and “applied” sciences is an old one. According to Meinel (2000), it was introduced by the Swedish chemist Wallerius in 1751, as part of the dispute of that time between the scholastic disciplines and the then emerging epistemic sciences. However, although the concept of “Applied Science” gained currency rapidly since that time, it has remained problematic. Until recently, the distinction between “pure” and “applied” mirrored the distinction between “theory and “practice”. The latter ran all the way through Western history of science since its beginnings in antique times. At first, it was only philosophy that was regarded as a scholarly and, hence, theoretical discipline. Later it was followed by other leading disciplines, as e.g., the sciences. However, as academic disciplines, all of them remained theoretical. In fact, the process of achieving independence of theory was essential for the academic disciplines to become independent from political, religious or other contingencies and to establish themselves at universities and academies. This also implied a process of emancipation from practical concerns – an at times painful development which manifested (and occasionally still manifests) itself in the discrediting of and disdain for practice and practitioners. To some, already the very meaning of the notion “applied” carries a negative connotation, as is suggested by the contrast between the widely used synonym for “theoretical”, i.e. “pure” (as used, e.g. in the distinction between “Pure” and “Applied Mathematics”) and its natural antonym “impure”. On a different level, a lower academic status sometimes is attributed to applied disciplines because of their alleged lack of originality – they are perceived as simply and one-directionally applying insights gained in basic research and watering them down by neglecting the limiting conditions under which these insights were achieved. Today, however, the academic system is confronted with a new understanding of science. In politics, in society and, above all, in economy a new concept of science has gained acceptance which questions traditional views. In recent philosophy of science, this is labelled as “science under the pressure to succeed” – i.e. as science whose theoretical structure and criteria of evaluation are increasingly conditioned by the pressure of application (Carrier, Stöltzner, and Wette 2004):

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Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos Whenever the public is interested in a particular subject, e.g. when a new disease develops that cannot be cured by conventional medication, the public requests science to provide new insights in this area as quickly as possible. In doing so, the public is less interested in whether these new insights fit seamlessly into an existing theoretical framework, but rather whether they make new methods of treatment and curing possible. (Institut für Wirtschafts- und Technikforschung 2004, our translation).

With most of the practical problems like these, sciences cannot rely on knowledge that is already available, simply because such knowledge does not yet exist. Very often, the problems at hand do not fit neatly into the theoretical framework of one particular “pure science”, and there is competition among disciplines with respect to which one provides the best theoretical and methodological resources for potential solutions. And more often than not the problems can be tackled only by adopting an interdisciplinary approach. As a result, the traditional “Cascade Model”, where insights were applied top-down from basic research to practice, no longer works in many cases. Instead, a kind of “application oriented basic research” is needed, where disciplines – conditioned by the pressure of application – take up a certain still diffuse practical issue, define it as a problem against the background of their respective theoretical and methodological paradigms, study this problem and finally develop various application oriented suggestions for solutions. In this sense, applied science, on the one hand, has to be conceived of as a scientific strategy for problem solving – a strategy that starts from mundane practical problems and ultimately aims at solving them. On the other hand, despite the dominance of application that applied sciences are subjected to, as sciences they can do nothing but develop such solutions in a theoretically reflected and methodologically well founded manner. The latter, of course, may lead to the wellknown fact that even applied sciences often tend to concentrate on “application oriented basic research” only and thus appear to lose sight of the original practical problem. But despite such shifts in focus: Both the boundaries between disciplines and between pure and applied research are getting more and more blurred. Today, after the turn of the millennium, it is obvious that sciences are requested to provide more and something different than just theory, basic research or pure knowledge. Rather, sciences are increasingly being regarded as partners in a more comprehensive social and economic context of problem solving and are evaluated against expectations to be practically relevant. This also implies that sciences are expected to be critical, reflecting their impact on society. This new “applied” type of science is confronted with the question: Which role can the sciences play in solving individual, interpersonal, social, intercultural, political or technical problems? This question is typical of a conception of science that was especially developed and propagated by the influential philosopher Sir Karl Popper – a conception that also this handbook series is based on.

Introduction to the handbook series

2.

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“Applied Linguistics”: Concepts and controversies

The concept of “Applied Linguistics” is not as old as the notion of “Applied Science”, but it has also been problematical in its relation to theoretical linguistics since its beginning. There seems to be a widespread consensus that the notion “Applied Linguistics” emerged in 1948 with the first issue of the journal Language Learning which used this compound in its subtitle A Quarterly Journal of Applied Linguistics. This history of its origin certainly explains why even today “Applied Linguistics” still tends to be predominantly associated with foreign language teaching and learning in the Anglophone literature in particular, as can bee seen e.g. from Johnson and Johnson (1998), whose Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics is explicitly subtitled A Handbook for Language Teaching. However, this theory of origin is historically wrong. As is pointed out by Back (1970), the concept of applying linguistics can be traced back to the early 19th century in Europe, and the very notion “Applied Linguistics” was used in the early 20th already. 2.1.

Theoretically Applied vs. Practically Applied Linguistics

As with the relation between “Pure” and “Applied” sciences pointed out above, also with “Applied Linguistics” the first question to be asked is what makes it different from “Pure” or “Theoretical Linguistics”. It is not surprising, then, that the terminologist Back takes this difference as the point of departure for his discussion of what constitutes “Applied Linguistics”. In the light of recent controversies about this concept it is no doubt useful to remind us of his terminological distinctions. Back (1970) distinguishes between “Theoretical Linguistics” – which aims at achieving knowledge for its own sake, without considering any other value –, “Practice” – i.e. any kind of activity that serves to achieve any purpose in life in the widest sense, apart from the striving for knowledge for its own sake – and “Applied Linguistics”, as a being based on “Theoretical Linguistics” on the one hand and as aiming at usability in “Practice” on the other. In addition, he makes a difference between “Theoretical Applied Linguistics” and “Practical Applied Linguistics”, which is of particular interest here. The former is defined as the use of insights and methods of “Theoretical Linguistics” for gaining knowledge in another, non-linguistic discipline, such as ethnology, sociology, law or literary studies, the latter as the application of insights from linguistics in a practical field related to language, such as language teaching, translation, and the like. For Back, the contribution of applied linguistics is to be seen in the planning of practical action. Language teaching, for example, is practical action done by practitioners, and what applied linguistics can contribute to this is, e.g., to provide contrastive descriptions of the languages involved as a foundation for

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teaching methods. These contrastive descriptions in turn have to be based on the descriptive methods developed in theoretical linguistics. However, in the light of the recent epistemological developments outlined above, it may be useful to reinterpret Back’s notion of “Theoretically Applied Linguistics”. As he himself points out, dealing with practical problems can have repercussions on the development of the theoretical field. Often new approaches, new theoretical concepts and new methods are a prerequisite for dealing with a particular type of practical problems, which may lead to an – at least in the beginning – “application oriented basic research” in applied linguistics itself, which with some justification could also be labelled “theoretically applied”, as many such problems require the transgression of disciplinary boundaries. It is not rare that a domain of “Theoretically Applied Linguistics” or “application oriented basic research” takes on a life of its own, and that also something which is labelled as “Applied Linguistics” might in fact be rather remote from the mundane practical problems that originally initiated the respective subject area. But as long as a relation to the original practical problem can be established, it may be justified to count a particular field or discussion as belonging to applied linguistics, even if only “theoretically applied”. 2.2.

Applied linguistics as a response to structuralism and generativism

As mentioned before, in the Anglophone world in particular the view still appears to be widespread that the primary concerns of the subject area of applied linguistics should be restricted to second language acquisition and language instruction in the first place (see, e.g., Davies 1999 or Schmitt and CelceMurcia 2002). However, in other parts of the world, and above all in Europe, there has been a development away from aspects of language learning to a wider focus on more general issues of language and communication. This broadening of scope was in part a reaction to the narrowing down the focus in linguistics that resulted from self-imposed methodological constraints which, as Ehlich (1999) points out, began with Saussurean structuralism and culminated in generative linguistics. For almost three decades since the late 1950s, these developments made “language” in a comprehensive sense, as related to the everyday experience of its users, vanish in favour of an idealised and basically artificial entity. This led in “Core” or theoretical linguistics to a neglect of almost all everyday problems with language and communication encountered by individuals and societies and made it necessary for those interested in socially accountable research into language and communication to draw on a wider range of disciplines, thus giving rise to a flourishing of interdisciplinary areas that have come to be referred to as hyphenated variants of linguistics, such as sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, psycholinguistics, conversation analysis, pragmatics, and so on (Davies and Elder 2004).

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That these hyphenated variants of linguistics can be said to have originated from dealing with problems may lead to the impression that they fall completely into the scope of applied linguistics. This the more so as their original thematic focus is in line with a frequently quoted definition of applied linguistics as “the theoretical and empirical investigation of real world problems in which language is a central issue” (Brumfit 1997: 93). However, in the recent past much of the work done in these fields has itself been rather “theoretically applied” in the sense introduced above and ultimately even become mainstream in linguistics. Also, in view of the current epistemological developments that see all sciences under the pressure of application, one might even wonder if there is anything distinctive about applied linguistics at all. Indeed it would be difficult if not impossible to delimit applied linguistics with respect to the practical problems studied and the disciplinary approaches used: Real-world problems with language (to which, for greater clarity, should be added: “with communication”) are unlimited in principle. Also, many problems of this kind are unique and require quite different approaches. Some might be tackled successfully by applying already available linguistic theories and methods. Others might require for their solution the development of new methods and even new theories. Following a frequently used distinction first proposed by Widdowson (1980), one might label these approaches as “Linguistics Applied” or “Applied Linguistics”. In addition, language is a trans-disciplinary subject par excellence, with the result that problems do not come labelled and may require for their solution the cooperation of various disciplines. 2.3.

Conceptualisations and communities

The questions of what should be its reference discipline and which themes, areas of research and sub-disciplines it should deal with, have been discussed constantly and were also the subject of an intensive debate (e.g. Seidlhofer 2003). In the recent past, a number of edited volumes on applied linguistics have appeared which in their respective introductory chapters attempt at giving a definition of “Applied Linguistics”. As can be seen from the existence of the Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée (AILA) and its numerous national affiliates, from the number of congresses held or books and journals published with the label “Applied Linguistics”, applied linguistics appears to be a well-established and flourishing enterprise. Therefore, the collective need felt by authors and editors to introduce their publication with a definition of the subject area it is supposed to be about is astonishing at first sight. Quite obviously, what Ehlich (2006) has termed “the struggle for the object of inquiry” appears to be characteristic of linguistics – both of linguistics at large and applied linguistics. Its seems then, that the meaning and scope of “Applied Linguistics”

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cannot be taken for granted, and this is why a wide variety of controversial conceptualisations exist. For example, in addition to the dichotomy mentioned above with respect to whether approaches to applied linguistics should in their theoretical foundations and methods be autonomous from theoretical linguistics or not, and apart from other controversies, there are diverging views on whether applied linguistics is an independent academic discipline (e.g. Kaplan and Grabe 2000) or not (e.g. Davies and Elder 2004), whether its scope should be mainly restricted to language teaching related topics (e.g. Schmitt and Celce-Murcia 2002) or not (e.g. Knapp 2006), or whether applied linguistics is a field of interdisciplinary synthesis where theories with their own integrity develop in close interaction with language users and professionals (e.g. Rampton 1997/2003) or whether this view should be rejected, as a true interdisciplinary approach is ultimately impossible (e.g. Widdowson 2005). In contrast to such controversies Candlin and Sarangi (2004) point out that applied linguistics should be defined in the first place by the actions of those who practically do applied linguistics: […] we see no especial purpose in reopening what has become a somewhat sterile debate on what applied linguistics is, or whether it is a distinctive and coherent discipline. […] we see applied linguistics as a many centered and interdisciplinary endeavour whose coherence is achieved in purposeful, mediated action by its practitioners. […] What we want to ask of applied linguistics is less what it is and more what it does, or rather what its practitioners do. (Candlin/Sarangi 2004:1–2)

Against this background, they see applied linguistics as less characterised by its thematic scope – which indeed is hard to delimit – but rather by the two aspects of “relevance” and “reflexivity”. Relevance refers to the purpose applied linguistic activities have for the targeted audience and to the degree that these activities in their collaborative practices meet the background and needs of those addressed – which, as matter of comprehensibility, also includes taking their conceptual and language level into account. Reflexivity means the contextualisation of the intellectual principles and practices, which is at the core of what characterises a professional community, and which is achieved by asking leading questions like “What kinds of purposes underlie what is done?”, “Who is involved in their determination?”, “By whom, and in what ways, is their achievement appraised?”, “Who owns the outcomes?”. We agree with these authors that applied linguistics in dealing with real world problems is determined by disciplinary givens – such as e.g. theories, methods or standards of linguistics or any other discipline – but that it is determined at least as much by the social and situational givens of the practices of life. These do not only include the concrete practical problems themselves but

Introduction to the handbook series

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also the theoretical and methodological standards of cooperating experts from other disciplines, as well as the conceptual and practical standards of the practitioners who are confronted with the practical problems in the first place. Thus, as Sarangi and van Leeuwen (2003) point out, applied linguists have to become part of the respective “community of practice”. If, however, applied linguists have to regard themselves as part of a community of practice, it is obvious that it is the entire community which determines what the respective subject matter is that the applied linguist deals with and how. In particular, it is the respective community of practice which determines which problems of the practitioners have to be considered. The consequence of this is that applied linguistics can be understood from very comprehensive to very specific, depending on what kind of problems are considered relevant by the respective community. Of course, following this participative understanding of applied linguistics also has consequences for the Handbooks of Applied Linguistics both with respect to the subjects covered and the way they are theoretically and practically treated.

3.

Applied linguistics for problem solving

Against this background, it seems reasonable not to define applied linguistics as an autonomous discipline or even only to delimit it by specifying a set of subjects it is supposed to study and typical disciplinary approaches it should use. Rather, in line with the collaborative and participatory perspective of the communities of practice applied linguists are involved in, this handbook series is based on the assumption that applied linguistics is a specific, problem-oriented way of “doing linguistics” related to the real-life world. In other words: applied linguistics is conceived of here as “linguistics for problem solving”. To outline what we think is distinctive about this area of inquiry: Entirely in line with Popper’s conception of science, we take it that applied linguistics starts from the assumption of an imperfect world in the areas of language and communication. This means, firstly, that linguistic and communicative competence in individuals, like other forms of human knowledge, is fragmentary and defective – if it exists at all. To express it more pointedly: Human linguistic and communicative behaviour is not “perfect”. And on a different level, this imperfection also applies to the use and status of language and communication in and among groups or societies. Secondly, we take it that applied linguists are convinced that the imperfection both of individual linguistic and communicative behaviour and language based relations between groups and societies can be clarified, understood and to some extent resolved by their intervention, e.g. by means of education, training or consultancy.

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Thirdly, we take it that applied linguistics proceeds by a specific mode of inquiry in that it mediates between the way language and communication is expertly studied in the linguistic disciplines and the way it is directly experienced in different domains of use. This implies that applied linguists are able to demonstrate that their findings – be they of a “Linguistics Applied” or “Applied Linguistics” nature – are not just “application oriented basic research” but can be made relevant to the real-life world. Fourthly, we take it that applied linguistics is socially accountable. To the extent that the imperfections initiating applied linguistic activity involve both social actors and social structures, we take it that applied linguistics has to be critical and reflexive with respect to the results of its suggestions and solutions. These assumptions yield the following questions which at the same time define objectives for applied linguistics: 1. Which linguistic problems are typical of which areas of language competence and language use? 2. How can linguistics define and describe these problems? 3. How can linguistics suggest, develop, or achieve solutions of these problems? 4. Which solutions result in which improvements in speakers’ linguistic and communicative abilities or in the use and status of languages in and between groups? 5. What are additional effects of the linguistic intervention?

4.

Objectives of this handbook series

These questions also determine the objectives of this book series. However, in view of the present boom in handbooks of linguistics and applied linguistics, one should ask what is specific about this series of nine thematically different volumes. To begin with, it is important to emphasise what it is not aiming at: – The handbook series does not want to take a snapshot view or even a “hit list” of fashionable topics, theories, debates or fields of study. – Nor does it aim at a comprehensive coverage of linguistics because some selectivity with regard to the subject areas is both inevitable in a book series of this kind and part of its specific profile. Instead, the book series will try – to show that applied linguistics can offer a comprehensive, trustworthy and scientifically well-founded understanding of a wide range of problems, – to show that applied linguistics can provide or develop instruments for solving new, still unpredictable problems,

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–

to show that applied linguistics is not confined to a restricted number of topics such as, e.g. foreign language learning, but that it successfully deals with a wide range of both everyday problems and areas of linguistics, – to provide a state-of-the-art description of applied linguistics against the background of the ability of this area of academic inquiry to provide descriptions, analyses, explanations and, if possible, solutions of everyday problems. On the one hand, this criterion is the link to trans-disciplinary cooperation. On the other, it is crucial in assessing to what extent linguistics can in fact be made relevant. In short, it is by no means the intention of this series to duplicate the present state of knowledge about linguistics as represented in other publications with the supposed aim of providing a comprehensive survey. Rather, the intention is to present the knowledge available in applied linguistics today firstly from an explicitly problem solving perspective and secondly, in a non-technical, easily comprehensible way. Also it is intended with this publication to build bridges to neighbouring disciplines and to critically discuss which impact the solutions discussed do in fact have on practice. This is particularly necessary in areas like language teaching and learning – where for years there has been a tendency to fashionable solutions without sufficient consideration of their actual impact on the reality in schools.

5.

Criteria for the selection of topics

Based on the arguments outlined above, the handbook series has the following structure: Findings and applications of linguistics will be presented in concentric circles, as it were, starting out from the communication competence of the individual, proceeding via aspects of interpersonal and inter-group communication to technical communication and, ultimately, to the more general level of society. Thus, the topics of the nine volumes are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Handbook of Individual Communication Competence Handbook of Interpersonal Communication Handbook of Communication in Organisations and Professions Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication Handbook of Foreign Language Communication and Learning Handbook of Intercultural Communication Handbook of Technical Communication Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity and Change

This thematic structure can be said to follow the sequence of experience with problems related to language and communication a human passes through in the

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course of his or her personal biographical development. This is why the topic areas of applied linguistics are structured here in ever-increasing concentric circles: in line with biographical development, the first circle starts with the communicative competence of the individual and also includes interpersonal communication as belonging to a person’s private sphere. The second circle proceeds to the everyday environment and includes the professional and public sphere. The third circle extends to the experience of foreign languages and cultures, which at least in officially monolingual societies, is not made by everybody and if so, only later in life. Technical communication as the fourth circle is even more exclusive and restricted to a more special professional clientele. The final volume extends this process to focus on more general, supra-individual national and international issues. For almost all of these topics, there already exist introductions, handbooks or other types of survey literature. However, what makes the present volumes unique is their explicit claim to focus on topics in language and communication as areas of everyday problems and their emphasis on pointing out the relevance of applied linguistics in dealing with them.

Bibliography Back, Otto 1970 Was bedeutet und was bezeichnet der Begriff ‘angewandte Sprachwissenschaft’? Die Sprache 16: 21–53. Brumfit, Christopher 1997 How applied linguistics is the same as any other science. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 7(1): 86–94. Candlin, Chris N. and Srikant Sarangi 2004 Making applied linguistics matter. Journal of Applied Linguistics 1(1): 1–8. Carrier, Michael, Martin Stöltzner, and Jeanette Wette 2004 Theorienstruktur und Beurteilungsmaßstäbe unter den Bedingungen der Anwendungsdominanz. Universität Bielefeld: Institut für Wissenschaftsund Technikforschung [http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/iwt/projekte/wissen/ anwendungsdominanz.html, accessed Jan 5, 2007]. Davies, Alan 1999 Introduction to Applied Linguistics. From Practice to Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Davies, Alan and Catherine Elder 2004 General introduction – Applied linguistics: Subject to discipline? In: Alan Davies and Catherine Elder (eds.), The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 1–16. Malden etc.: Blackwell. Ehlich, Konrad 1999 Vom Nutzen der „Funktionalen Pragmatik“ für die angewandte Linguistik. In: Michael Becker-Mrotzek und Christine Doppler (eds.), Medium Sprache im Beruf. Eine Aufgabe für die Linguistik, 23–36. Tübingen: Narr.

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Ehlich, Konrad 2006 Mehrsprachigkeit für Europa – öffentliches Schweigen, linguistische Distanzen. In: Sergio Cigada, Jean-Francois de Pietro, Daniel Elmiger, and Markus Nussbaumer (eds.), Öffentliche Sprachdebatten – linguistische Positionen. Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée/VALS-ASLA-Bulletin 83/1: 11–28. Grabe, William 2002 Applied linguistics: An emerging discipline for the twenty-first century. In: Robert B. Kaplan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 3–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Keith and Helen Johnson (eds.) 1998 Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics. A Handbook for Language Teaching. Oxford: Blackwell. Kaplan, Robert B. and William Grabe 2000 Applied linguistics and the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. In: W. Grabe (ed.), Applied Linguistics as an Emerging Discipline. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 20: 3–17. Knapp, Karlfried 2006 Vorwort. In: Karlfried Knapp, Gerd Antos, Michael Becker-Mrotzek, Arnulf Deppermann, Susanne Göpferich, Joachim Gabowski, Michael Klemm und Claudia Villiger (eds.), Angewandte Linguistik. Ein Lehrbuch. 2nd ed., xix–xxiii. Tübingen: Francke – UTB. Meinel, Christoph 2000 Reine und angewandte Wissenschaft. In: Das Magazin. Ed. Wissenschaftszentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen 11(1): 10–11. Rampton, Ben 1997 [2003] Retuning in applied linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 7 (1): 3–25, quoted from Seidlhofer (2003), 273–295. Sarangi, Srikant and Theo van Leeuwen 2003 Applied linguistics and communities of practice: Gaining communality or losing disciplinary autonomy? In: Srikant Sarangi and Theo van Leeuwen (eds.), Applied Linguistics and Communities of Practice, 1–8. London: Continuum. Schmitt, Norbert and Marianne Celce-Murcia 2002 An overview of applied linguistics. In: Norbert Schmitt (ed.), An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. London: Arnold. Seidlhofer, Barbara (ed.) 2003 Controversies in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, Henry 1984 [1980] Model and fictions. In: Henry Widdowson (1984) Explorations in Applied Linguistics 2, 21–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Widdowson, Henry 2005 Applied linguistics, interdisciplinarity, and disparate realities. In: Paul Bruthiaux, Dwight Atkinson, William G. Egginton, William Grabe, and Vaidehi Ramanathan (eds.), Directions in Applied Linguistics. Essays in Honor of Robert B. Kaplan, 12–25. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank Robert Straube who did an amazing job in copy-editing and proof-reading the typescripts and who taught us what it means to edit 21 reference sections. Gerd Antos, Halle Eíja Ventola, Helsinki Tilo Weber, Halle

Contents Introduction to the handbook series Karlfried Knapp and Gerd Antos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

v

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. Introduction: Interpersonal Communication – linguistic points of view Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola, and Tilo Weber . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

I.

Theories, methods, and tools of Interpersonal Communication research

2. Social Psychology and personal relationships: Accommodation and relational influence across time and contexts Margaret J. Pitts and Howard Giles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

3. Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

4. Interactional Sociolinguistics Susanne Günthner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

5. Interactional Linguistics Dagmar Barth-Weingarten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6. Systemic Functional Linguistics: An interpersonal perspective Geoff Thompson and Peter Muntigl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107

7. Functional Pragmatics Angelika Redder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

133

8. Data and transcription Arnulf Deppermann and Wilfried Schütte . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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II. Linguistic and multisemiotic resources and their interplay in managing Interpersonal Communication 9. Linguistic resources for the management of interaction Margret Selting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

217

10. Dynamics of discourse Barbara A. Fox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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11. Face-to-face communication and body language Paul J. Thibault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 12. Technically-mediated interpersonal communication Caja Thimm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 13. Feeling space: Interpersonal communication and spatial semiotics Louise J. Ravelli and Maree Stenglin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

III.

Interpersonal Communication on-track and off-track

14. Everyday communication and socializing Tilo Weber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 15. Counseling, diagnostics, and therapy Peter Muntigl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 16. Youth, discourse, and interpersonal management Jannis Androutsopoulos and Alexandra Georgakopoulou . . . . . . 457 17. Language and discourse skills of elderly people Anna-Maija Korpijaakko-Huuhka and Anu Klippi . . . . . . . . . . 481

IV.

Working on conversational strategies

18. Relational work, politeness, and identity construction Miriam A. Locher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 19. Humor, jokes, and irony versus mocking, gossip, and black humor Alexander Brock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 20. Praising and blaming, applauding, and disparaging – solidarity, audience positioning, and the linguistics of evaluative disposition Peter R. R. White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 21. Silence and taboo Sabine Krajewski and Hartmut Schröder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 Biographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623 Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629

1.

Introduction: Interpersonal Communication – linguistic points of view Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola, and Tilo Weber

This first volume in the series of nine Handbooks of Applied Linguistics deals with issues concerning individual communication competence, or, in other words, it is concerned with how the individual acquires language and what s/he can do with it, what happens when there are problems in acquisition, and how s/he learns to shift the modes from speaking to writing. These perspectives on individual competences need, however, a closer definition. The reason for this is that as humans we communicate with one another, and so, we speak to each other. This is a fundamental characteristic of the human species. Our linguistic system has often been described as an intrapersonal competence system, but as we use this system for interpersonal communication, the linguistic design must also comprise the means which have been specifically adapted for these purposes. This is the reason why it is necessary to reassess the intra-perspective by capturing the ways interpersonal communication operates. Against this background, this second volume of the handbook series concentrates on examining how interactants manage to exchange facts, ideas, views, opinions, beliefs, etc. by using the linguistic system together with the resources it offers. Interpersonal communication is a continuous game between the interactants – it is a give-and-take situation – a constant, dynamic flow that is linguistically realized as discourse. We can say that interpersonal communication is produced, interpreted, and developed as an ongoing sequence of interactants acting linguistically. In interpersonal communication, the fine-tuning of individuals’ use of the linguistic system and its resources is continuously being probed. In this process, the language used enhances social relations between the interactants and keeps the interaction on the normal track. When interaction goes off the track, linguistic miscommunication may create complications in the flow, which may sometimes even lead to the destruction of social relationships. Thus, the essential theoretical approach and strategy of this volume is that this fine-tuning, for better or worse, is primarily carried out using linguistic methods. This focus is in contrast, for instance, with purely psychological or sociological views. The chapters in the volume represent various theoretical and methodological approaches in linguistics that have developed an interest in interpersonal communication. The volume starts out from some of the fundamental questions:

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Gerd Antos, Eija Ventola, and Tilo Weber

How do interpersonal relations manifest themselves in language? What is the role of language in developing and maintaining relationships in interpersonal communication? What types of problems occur in interpersonal communication and what kind of linguistic strategies and means are used to solve them? How does interpersonal communication that is realized in a linguistic mode interact with other semiotic modes?

The questions presented above override the usual interpersonal perspectives that are commonly presented in many typical interpersonal communication studies of other fields. But linguists also share some common interests with these alternative approaches, as exemplified by the following questions: –

– –

What are the effects produced by the dyadic structure and the simultaneity, typical, e.g., of face-to-face communication, on social behaviors of interactants? How do behavioral patterns change when the communication is, for example, mediated by modern technological media instead of face-to-face, or how is interpersonal communication manifested when various social groups are communicating with each other? How do the ever-changing cultural and intercultural contexts influence the behavior of interactants? What are the effects on interpersonal communication when interactants enforce their strategic goals and purposes (e.g., power, subtle influence, etc.) in interpersonal communication?

Questions like these are typical for specialists working in fields such as social psychology, communication, and media. It is by no means the case that this volume is not interested in these types of questions as well. The contrary is the case, but what the above-mentioned approaches often seem to ignore is that language, as linguistic structures, comprises largely the structures that realize interpersonal communication in the circumstances as described above, and linguists have developed tools for researching these structures. Interpersonal communication is here, to a large extent, seen and researched from the perspective of what is being said or written and how this is manifested in various generic forms, but at the same time attention is also given to other semiotic modes which interact with the linguistic modes. It is not concerned solely with the social roles of interactants in groups nor with the types of media available nor with non-verbal behavior nor varying contextual frames for communication, but our main focus is on the actual linguistic manifestations (if we really want to have a comprehensive picture of what is actually going on in human interpersonal communication). For productive research purposes, we need an interdisciplinary approach with a strong linguistic focus. It is this linguistic perspective that the volume aims to offer to any researcher who may be interested in interper-

Introduction: Interpersonal Communication – linguistic points of view

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sonal communication, so that we can together successfully both analyze and interpret the complexities of this field. Thus, what linguistics has to offer to the other disciplines are aspects such as: – – – – – –

orientation to interaction seen primarily as processes that are realized linguistically expertise on theorizing and analyzing cultural and situational contexts where linguistic processes are realized expertise on handling language corpora expertise on theorizing and analyzing interaction types as genres orientation to an integrated view of linguistic and non-linguistic participant activities and of how interactants generate meanings expertise on researching the successful management of the linguistic flow in interaction.

In short, interpersonal communication is social action – dyadic or multiparty – in various social domains, and it is this unfolding inter-aspect of the communicative process that has interested social psychologists and sociologists. However, it is hard to make this unfolding of social action into “a thing or an object” to be studied without actually investigating and researching the various modes that are at the root of this process, and the linguistic mode is often the main one that we need to look at when studying social interaction in interpersonal communication. The volume thus offers an overview of the theories, methods, tools, and resources of linguistically oriented approaches for the purpose of integration and further development with various other paradigms concerned with interpersonal communication. But we also need a specific applied linguistic perspective when researching this prototypical problem-continuum (on-track versus off-track). It is by means of empirical linguistic research and analysis of interpersonal communication that applied linguists try to offer solutions to interactants’ linguistic problems. They want to help the interactants to understand why communication can go off the track to such an extent that it complicates interpersonal communication, and also to help them to become aware of strategies as to how they can bring it back on-track. The volume is divided into four major parts: I. II. III. IV.

Theories, methods, and tools Linguistic and multisemiotic resources and their interplay Interpersonal communication on-track and off-track Working on conversational strategies

Each of the parts and their chapters will be introduced and summarized briefly below. All the contributions have the following three methodological features in common: 1) they introduce the reader to a particular topic in interpersonal com-

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munication research, 2) they present the most important contributions to the respective research fields, and 3) they outline research perspectives that may be realized in the future.

I.

Theories, methods, and tools of interpersonal communication research

This part introduces a variety of different theories that have either been greatly influenced by the linguistic approaches or that have a sound linguistic base for developing the theory and the methodologies involved in the study of interpersonal communication. In chapter 2, Social Psychology and personal relationships: Accommodation and relational influence across time and contexts, Margaret J. Pitts and Howard Giles take a social psychological approach to the field. They place the dynamically realized interplay of language and social cognition at “the nexus of social interaction and interactional competence”. They argue that, by extending our analysis to contextual and temporal influences on social relationships, we will be able to improve our understanding not only of relations across interpersonal contexts but also of how we daily relate to others, whether it be at a great social distance or whether it be at a very intimate interpersonal level. This chapter argues for the need to encompass the intersections of language and cognition in relationships and the need to account for more specialized communication contexts and relationships in everyday settings across the whole human lifespan. At the same time when the common social psychological approaches for investigating and analyzing interpersonal encounters are highlighted, it challenges the current theories, tools, and methods, and suggests that the social psychological study of accommodation and interdependence should be extended to cover the human lifespan. In chapter 3, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner show how these originally sociologically oriented approaches have produced interesting strategies to deal with the issues of linguistic manifestation, conversation development, and maintenance of relationships in interpersonal communication. The central concepts and tools offered for analysis are: turn-taking, indexicality, reflexivity, recipient design, and membership categorization device. In addition, the authors demonstrate how these concepts can be applied by presenting an analysis of an authentic interaction. They show how interpersonal relationships are manifested semiotically via the interlocutors’ coorientations taking place within an emergent, (reflexively and collaboratively) constructed space of social activity. Once the relevance of the interpersonal relationship has been manifested, it is also sustained and extended within the framework of the linguistically realized interaction.

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In the next chapter 4, Interactional Sociolinguistics, Susanne Günthner, introduces us to an alternative sociological approach to social interaction, based on anthropological linguistics. Its perspective in analyzing language use is defined by central operative research concepts and tools including indexicality, inferencing, contextualization, communicative activities, and genres. This empirically based, interpretative approach offers insights into linguistic and cultural diversity that is characteristic to today’s communicative environments. Günthner presents examples of interactional sociolinguistic analyses that focus on relatively simple communicative genres, such as the use of proverbial sayings, and she shows how their combined effect leads to differentiated construction and assessment of various cultural and social identities. The theory presented by Dagmar Barth-Weingarten in chapter 5, Interactional Linguistics, has been influenced by the approaches introduced in the earlier chapters 3 and 4, but it argues for a stronger linguistic orientation. The focus is on the relationship between linguistic resources and interactional activities. By investigating linguistic patterns from a holistic perspective, it studies all cues and the role of linguistic resources available to the interlocutors in the process of sense-making, taking into account recent analyses of the non-linguistic aspects. Language is considered to be a dynamic system, which is adapted to the task of enabling humans to accomplish certain actions. As in the other approaches introduced above, the analyses are empirical and the data consists of collections taken from examples of natural, spontaneous talk. The aim is to inductively uncover the participants’ categories, and the results are supported by the participants’ behavior. In chapter 6, Systemic Functional Linguistics: An interpersonal perspective, Geoff Thompson and Peter Muntigl outline how the lexicogrammatical resources of language are employed in a principled way to convey interpersonal meanings which are motivated both by the immediate situation and by the wider socio-cultural context in which the communication takes place and from which it derives its sense. The main interpersonal systems at the level of grammar and discourse are: mood and speech function, modality, appraisal, and exchange structure. By taking data examples from the contrasting genres of a doctor-patient consultation and a family argument, the authors are able to show how different lexicogrammatical resources are accessed and drawn upon in these two contexts – one where only one of the interactants has a socially validated authoritative role and the other where interactants have to negotiate and contest the knowledge negotiated. The advantages of the systemic, meaning-driven grammatical approach are to be found in the flexibility of the description and the solidness or systematicity of the approach, which has concrete and well-defined categories that make the analysis of the recurrent patterns of language choices both replicable and explicable. In chapter 7, Angelika Redder introduces Functional Pragmatics as “an integrated theory of linguistic action” that, while acknowledging the interpersonal

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function of language, at the same time, aims at accounting for linguistic structures at all levels, including both discourse and text as well as morphology and syntax. Redder offers a summary as to how functional pragmatics has developed in the last 35 years – how it emerged from sources such as Bühler’s semiotic conception and speech act theory. The main emphasis of this approach is firstly, on language as a means to cope with societal needs and secondly, on language use as a form of activity that is sociohistorically motivated. Redder, then, explicates some of the central notions of functional pragmatics, including action pattern and the so called theory of linguistic fields. She ends the chapter with a discussion of various areas of application such as language use in institutions, plurilingualism, and language policy. Part I closes with chapter 8, Data and transcription, where Arnulf Deppermann and Wilfried Schütte give an overview on what it means to do empirical work, what kind of instruments are needed (and are available) for data-collection in a natural setting and, finally, on how to deal with the technical problems that may occur during audio- and video-recordings. They further discuss issues of corpus design and different systems for transcribing discourse data (CA, HIAT, GAT). In addition, they present recently developed transcription editors (EXMARaLDA, ELAN) and analyzing tools (PRAAT). They show examples of transcripts and evaluate the differences of transcription systems and software, used for transcription on the computer. Further, they highlight epistemological problems of the written representation of oral communication via transcripts and address the additional difficulties which arise in the transcription of video data using multimodal interaction.

II.

Linguistic and multisemiotic resources and their interplay in managing Interpersonal Communication

This part has as its common theme the question of how the linguistic and multisemiotic resources work together in interpersonal communication management. In chapter 9, Linguistic resources for the management of interaction, Margret Selting outlines the resources that each individual has at his/her disposal via the linguistic system and how they can be used for meaning-making in interpersonal communication. The theoretical background and methodology is taken from conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. Telephone conversational data are used to illustrate how the analyses function. The general focus includes the following fields: the use of syntax and prosody for unit construction, lexical items for creating information, semantic focusing, various functions of final prosody, the use and functions of voice quality and pauses for signaling interactional mood and modality in interpersonal communication.

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In chapter 10, Dynamics of discourse, Barbara Fox explores how speakers accommodate their informational and interactional needs to their interactional partner(s). The framework used is discourse-functional syntax, an approach that applies conversation analysis to various levels of grammar. The chapter explores four facets of utterance design through which speakers display sensitivity to their recipient(s) in terms of pragmatic organization, syntactic organization, lexical organization, and prosodic organization. Two case studies present new work relevant to the topic of recipient design. Further foci of the chapter include both the prospective and retrospective aspects of discourse; in other words, our abilities to “project” the development of discourses and to account for how the discourse was carried out retrospectively. In chapter 11, Face-to-face communication and body language, Paul Thibault discusses the forms of intra-species (between humans) and inter-species (e.g., languaged bonobos and humans) face-to-face communication. Thibault argues that with the notion of face-to-face communication we can link three kinds of activity, the neuroanatomical capacities of the individual participant organisms, the individual qua social-agent-in-interaction, and the networks of communicative practices and conventions in which individual agents participate. The chapter explores the need to reframe face-to-face communication beyond purely proximate and local processes in the here-and-now, and it suggests the need to abandon the distinction of language and paralanguage in favor of one model based on dynamic processes that are spread across diverse time scales and which involves brain, body, and cultural dynamics. It is further suggested that speech and gesture should not be seen as two separate modalities that are “combined” in interaction but rather as a foundation to all meaning-making and as a central unified system whereby the whole body acts as “the sense-making and signifying body”. In chapter 12 which shifts the focus of body-mediated communication to Technically-mediated interpersonal communication, Caja Thimm discusses the challenges introduced by technological developments in the media for interpersonal communication. Interactants today have various media available for interacting technologically, with or without face-to-face interaction (letters, fax, phone, SMS, PC-chatting, “Skyping”, and videoconferencing). Thimm points out that interpersonal communication through technological mediation is characterized by almost limitless mobility and availability of potential interactants (SMS, mobile phone); spatial distance has become almost irrelevant. Social networking sites and virtual worlds on the internet have (re-)introduced multimodality into technically mediated communication. These technological innovations accompany the phenomenon of profound social change. Since individuals are now in the position of designing their own web-identities (and thus are responsible and accountable for them), new communities are emerging, some of which are economically and socially connected to the “real” reality whereas others constitute independent parallel worlds.

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In chapter 13, the final contribution of Part II of the volume, Feeling space: Interpersonal communication and spatial semiotics, Louise Ravelli and Maree Stenglin discuss a resource that so far is less explored within research on interpersonal communication: space. The focus is on issues in interpersonal communication in relation to questions of spatial semiotics: how a (built) space makes us feel, and how issues of spatial design contribute to the construction of specific interpersonal relations between the interactants within and around the space. The chapter introduces new systems for describing interpersonal meanings in built spaces, in terms of how affective meanings are construed. By taking as their example, the Scientia building, a relatively new “landmark” building for the University of New South Wales, Sydney, the authors examine how such issues as power, social distance, and affect are evoked through the exterior and interior of the building, and what these mean for relations between the university as an institution and its key stakeholder communities: its students and the general public. In turn, this expanded understanding of interpersonal communication returns to questions of language, considering its relevance to a broader understanding of communication.

III.

Interpersonal Communication on-track and off-track

The chapters subsumed under this heading investigate how various factors, such as genre and participants’ age, influence social interaction. In the contributions presented here, the sequences of talk that are used as examples are placed somewhere along the discourse continuum of being “on-track” and “off-track”, a continuum that is typical of everyday discourses. In chapter 14, Everyday communication and socializing, Tilo Weber describes everyday communication as a concept that is based on an ethnocategory, vague and difficult to define and, at the same time, indispensable in the fields of linguistics and the social sciences. Weber suggests a prototype view of everyday communication as a radial category with socializing or small talk as its central member. He reconstructs the history of research in everyday communication from its beginnings in the first half of the 20th century and identifies four different sources that have contributed to the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of everyday communication. Against this background, it seems that both conversation analysis and systemic functional linguistics have in their different ways explicitly focused on everyday conversation and have thus contributed to its study. Finally, it is suggested that what is regarded as everyday communication may at the moment be undergoing a change which has been stimulated by the emergence of new, internet-based media. In chapter 15, Counseling, diagnostics, and therapy, Peter Muntigl explores how detailed linguistic analysis can shed light on interactants in discourse

Introduction: Interpersonal Communication – linguistic points of view

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trouble and on the accomplishments of linguistic focus in therapy and counseling. Analyses of the linguistic details of the talk in sessions can help us to understand how clients and therapists eventually share or diverge in their views of the unfolding of conversational actions. The chapter focuses on the central discursive practice of therapy and counseling, on the diagnosis of problems, a component in most therapeutic activities. The chapter illustrates how problem diagnosis can become derailed or go off-track. An understanding of how language changes over the course of counseling provides clients and therapists with new resources that help them to improve diagnostic practices. In chapter 16, Youth, discourse, and interpersonal management, Jannis Androutsopoulos and Alexandra Georgakopoulou look at interpersonal management in youth communication in specific locations and activities most commonly associated with young people. The discussion centers on the social practices of aligning and converging on the one hand, setting boundaries and misaligning on the other hand, together with the specific linguistic choices these practices evoke. The peer-groups in leisure activities and in institutional settings are focal sites where relations of intimacy and solidarity as well as conflict and hierarchy are discursively affirmed. But “identities” are formed, shaped, and negotiated also in new communicational genres in the new electronic media. In chapter 17, Language and discourse skills of elderly people, Anna-Maija Korpijaakko-Huuhka and Anu Klippi focus on age-related factors that cause changes in the ways elderly citizens do and can participate in different kinds of everyday discourses. Normal aging may bring sensory problems (hearing and sight impairments) that can make it difficult for the old people to maintain their linguistic “normality”. Aging can have linguistic reflections which may hinder their participation in everyday life activities. When aging is accompanied by processes affecting the brain, interpersonal communication with and by the elderly is at risk. With the help of their conversation partners, the normally aging conversationalists can maintain their active role in interaction, but in dementia the cognitive impairment changes their interpersonal communication skills remarkably as the process of dementia advances.

IV.

Working on conversational strategies

It is commonly known that participants in interpersonal communication are very sensitive with regard to the borders of their own sphere and that of their partners. The chapters in this last part deal with different aspects of communicative behavior by which interactants manage to keep the delicate balance between what can and what cannot be talked about and in what way and in what form communication may take place.

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Miriam Locher, in chapter 18, Relational work, politeness, and identity construction, explores the role of language in enhancing, maintaining, and challenging relationships in interpersonal communication. In this, her point of view is that of a “postmodernist”, and it considers social identity to be the unstable and dynamic outcome of an active “social positioning” of participants in interaction. This view is exemplified by applying it to the category of gender. Locher shows that language use, even in cases that mainly serve informative purposes, always involves and modifies the identity of those communicating. She then suggests that the language aspect is but one factor in the process of identity work in general and that it is closely intertwined with other semiotic means. The chapter ends with a discussion on the interrelation between social identity and politeness. The foci of chapter 19, Humor, jokes, and irony versus mocking, gossip, and black humor, by Alexander Brock, are linguistic phenomena that frequently occur in various kinds of discourses, yet lack precise theorization and treatment. Brock outlines some aspects such as the sequential management of conversation, power exertion, information management, maintenance of group norms and the resolution of interpersonal problems and calls for the creation of development of adequate descriptions of these linguistic phenomena. What is needed is a multi-functional treatment, as most of the phenomena have various discoursal functions as communicative devices and may equally cause as well as solve communicative problems. Chapter 20, Praising and blaming, applauding, and disparaging – solidarity, audience positioning, and the linguistics of evaluative disposition, by Peter White, explores the nature and the interpersonal functionality, in written texts, of language which conveys positive/negative viewpoints, and the role of this language in the negotiation of writer/reader solidarity. It outlines an approach to the analysis of such attitudinal language provided by the so called appraisal framework, which is well suited also for analyzing spoken discourse. A methodology is described and applied to two authentic texts for the purpose of identifying different types of attitude, different methods of conveying attitudinal meaning (i.e., explicitly versus implicitly), and different orientations by the writer to other voices and evaluative viewpoints. A discussion is offered on the communicative effects which follow when authors give preference to certain evaluative options over others, and how, by these preferences, they establish different terms by which solidarity may obtain between writer and reader. In chapter 21, Silence and taboo, the final chapter of the whole volume, Sabine Krajewski and Hartmut Schröder characterize silence or, rather, different kinds of silence as a differentiated family of communicative tools and taboo as an equally manifold set of conventions that – in all cultures, if in very different ways – influences interpersonal communication. In addition, the authors elucidate the interrelationship between the two phenomena, e.g., how interac-

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tants deploy silence to deal with taboos. Obviously, taboos imply limits on what can be talked about and in what form the discourse may take place. The focus of this chapter, however, is on the positive functions of taboos, the regulation of behavior, the establishment of boundaries, and the recognition of authority. The chapter closes with views on silence and taboo from an intercultural perspective. It is the editors’ sincere hope that this volume will build bridges between various approaches not only within linguistics but also across all research fields interested in interpersonal communication. The more we know about the ways how language, together with other modes, works, in communication, the better we can keep it on-track when needed and remedy the course of interaction, when it is heading off-track. This enhances our interpersonal communication as social agents and as members of interactive communities across cultures.

I.

Theories, methods, and tools of Interpersonal Communication research

2.

Social Psychology and personal relationships: Accommodation and relational influence across time and contexts Margaret J. Pitts and Howard Giles

1.

Introduction

Everyday communication can be problematic, but we are relatively good at managing it. How is this accomplished through interaction? As scholars across disciplines move forward in the pursuit of understanding, explaining, and even predicting outcomes and processes related to human interactions, we also become increasingly aware of the intricacies involved in such interpersonal encounters. Relational processing is at the root of most of our daily encounters whether with a long-term relational partner, a stranger with whom we share a brief encounter, or the cashier you greet everyday purchasing your morning coffee. The complexities of interpersonal connections are situated in an array of dynamic human features and personal attributes such as experience, developmental process, and social and personal identity orientations. The question is: What tools can scholars of human interaction use to make sense of these seemingly kaleidoscopic encounters? Scholars tend to investigate encounters grounded in the scholarship and epistemological and ontological positionings of their primary field. Perhaps this is rightfully so. However with this chapter, we urge scholars to move beyond disciplinary borders and into specific sites of human interaction and meaning-making. Along with Knapp and Antos (2008 = this volume), this necessitates that we start by looking at some of the challenges we have with current theories, tools, and methods for understanding interpersonal relationships across contexts and across interactions. Such an approach highlights the imperfection of language and communication behaviors among individuals and between groups (see Coupland, Giles, and Wiemann 1991; Giles, Gallois, and Petronio 1998). And, when applied to the social psychology of interpersonal relationships, it helps to identify locations of disconnect between cognition, language, and communication in everyday encounters and work toward applied manners for mending problems therein. Berger (2005) argues that research that does not seek to problematize the fundamental processes underlying social interaction and goal achievement might be interesting, but does little to promote theories of interpersonal interactions. Our goal with this chapter is to highlight social psychological approaches toward theory, method, and tools for investigating and problematizing interper-

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sonal encounters. We do so first by problematizing traditional approaches to the study of interpersonal relationships. Without careful attention to tools and methods of conducting relationship research, theory development can become constrained. Theories of interpersonal interactions can move forward to help us make sense out of everyday interactions – theories that are relevant to real world, real time encounters. However, they need to account for more specialized communication contexts (e.g., service, health, and family) and relationships (e.g., strangers, acquaintances, lovers, family members, intergroup relationships) in everyday settings across the lifespan (Nussbaum and Coupland 2004; Pecchioni, Wright, and Nussbaum 2005). From this perspective, we echo Knapp and Antos’ (this volume) call for investigators to actively engage in the problematics of blurring applied and basic research and the problematics of engaging in everyday interpersonal encounters – an approach they refer to as “linguistics for problem-solving.” In doing so, we argue that it is time to put interpersonal theories into action and into context. Moreover, we agree with Fiedler (2006) that language is not without social cognition and social cognition is not without language. Understanding language as a problem-solving and problem-evoking instrument heightens the necessity of applied theories of interactional competence. We emphasize the importance of investigating these everyday encounters from a longitudinal, developmental perspective. This can be accomplished by entering and investigating real life encounters where dynamic communication is happening and where we can “see” talk in action.

2.

Interdependent theorizing about personal relationships

The shift of focus, at least in the area of interpersonal communication, from theories of persuasion and social influence to theories of disclosure, development, and dissolution marks the trend over the last four decades toward a more relational focus on interpersonal interactions (Berger 2005). Unfortunately, and perhaps ironically, despite the social and interdependent nature of interpersonal relationships, scholars have systematically explored them from a single-participant, rather than dyadic, research paradigm with a primary focus on selfreported data that situates the participant in a space devoid of any social, environmental, political, and emotional context (Acitelli, Duck, and West 2000; Ickes and Duck 2000). Instead, it is the dynamic interplay between people in relationships that should be explored, as this is where the primary relational functions are being managed and negotiated (e.g., Friesen, Fletcher, and Overall 2005). Surprisingly little attention has been oriented toward how relational partners creatively and communicatively develop “couple” or “family” identities. These

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identities are often distinctive and positive images of themselves as a unit that relational partners can chose to act out in the presence of particular others (Giles and Fitzpatrick 1984). Couple-focused social comparisons necessarily become active and salient for all relational units involved in such conversations. Relatedly, it is fairly uncommon to explore personal and relational contradictions as witnessed in multi-leveled discourse, or discourse with multiple goals, such as marital conflict co-occurring with supportive relational talk (Verhofstadt et al. 2005) or “selfishly” initiating rapport-building while maintaining an otherorientation (Pitts and Miller-Day 2007). Investigations that take such a perspective emphasize the inherent dialectics and dualities in relationships and relating – such as developing a public and private couple identity while maintaining public and private individuality. Relational contradictions are “emergent in the communicative choices of the moment, but those choices reflect, in part, the constraints of socialization and what transpired in the prior history of the relationship” (Baxter and Montgomery 1996: 59). Thus, relationships should be viewed as part of a dialectic system, not just as individuals and dyads, but also as couples and individuals within a larger societal context (Brown, Altman, and Werner 1992). Couples experience dialectical tensions within their relationship as well as between their socio-cultural relationships, including kinship, friendship, and other social relationships (see Rawlins 2004). What we should strive to find are answers to the questions about the dynamic interplay of human interactions across time and context that provide us with a better understanding of the ways in which such subjective and intersubjective interactions influence everyday living (Ickes and Duck 2000). Although theorists are no longer woeful about the lack of theories relating to interpersonal interactions (Ickes and Duck 2000), there is still a need for current and new theories to draw from a more interactional, dynamic theoretic paradigm.

3.

Accommodating to relational partners

Interaction has been described as “a multi-event process that involves the connections between each partner’s observable behaviors and the others’ subjective responses (i.e., thoughts and feelings)” (Surra and Bohman 1991: 282). New and developing theories can gain much from this approach while being pushed to examine the dynamic interaction between communication and cognition shifting, thus providing a link between cognition, communication processes, and intersubjective interpretations across time and across interactions. Here we argue for a shift of attention from intrapersonal processes to interpersonal processes with a focus on language and cognition. Such an approach fosters an understanding that language and behaviors have a cognitive counterpart, and that cognition is structured through language and context. Historically, Kelley

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and Thibaut’s (1978; Kelley 1979) interdependence theory, and later Rusbults’ investment models (Rusbult, Drigotas, and Verette 1994), have maintained a focus on interpersonal processes (Rusbult and Arriaga 2000) from a primarily social psychological perspective, while Giles and colleagues’ (Giles 2008; Giles, Coupland, and Coupland 1991) communication accommodation theory takes a language-focused approach toward understanding interpersonal encounters and mutual influence. Both theories take into account fundamental influences that shape interactions by addressing the self, the cognition/goal, and the actual interaction. However, the triangle of influence is not equilateral in that these two theories do not put the same attention on each of the three influences (i.e., interdependence theory focuses more on the cognitive processes while communication accommodation theory focuses more on the communication and resulting outcome). Moreover, accommodation is at the nexus of each theory determining relational satisfaction, relational closeness, interactional competence, and so forth. However, the core meaning of accommodation in each theory differs. An interdependence perspective on accommodation regards it as a pattern of interaction involving the suppressed desire to match a partner’s destructive interaction in order to respond in a more constructive manner (Rusbult and Arriaga 2000; Rusbult, Yovetich, and Verette 1996). In this way, accommodating to a partner who is behaving negatively by responding in a constructive rather than destructive manner will serve to preserve the relationship, but might come at a significant cost to the accommodating party (Rusbult, Yovetich, and Verette 1996). In a way, by accommodating to the partner (in this sense by responding constructively) a person actively demonstrates her/his affiliation with her/his partner. Communication accommodation theory is primarily concerned with the motivation and social consequences underlying a person’s change in communication styles (verbal and nonverbal features such as accent, volume, tone, language choice) to either accommodate or not accommodate their interactional partners (Giles et al. 2007). In both theories, motivation plays the driving role for accommodating (or nonaccommodating) behaviors. Interactants may take into account such variables as long-term goals, social norms, and/or a desire to preserve the other’s well-being. Kelley (1979) and Rusbult, Yovitch, and Verette (1996) describe this as a transformation of motivation wherein interactants strive to maximize the partner’s outcomes, a joint outcome, to achieve equity, or to defeat the partner. Motivation to accommodate (or not) in communication accommodation theory is derived from similar relational features, but contextual features as well; social power and status are a prerogative of it (Gallois, Ogay, and Giles 2005). Communication accommodation serves both cognitive and affective purposes in interpersonal settings. Cognitive purposes are met when accommodation facilitates comprehension, prevents misattributions, or stimulates a shift in

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communication that is more suitable to a particular context or mode of relational development. Affective needs can be met through convergence so as to appear more likeable, or diverging to reinforce distinctiveness and a sense of positive personal identity. Convergence is typically associated with seeking affiliation, social approval, compliance, and communication effectiveness. Divergence is typically associated with seeking distinctiveness and/or expressing social disapproval (Harwood, Soliz, and Lin 2006). There are exceptions, however, such as when too much convergence, or overaccommodation, results in negative outcomes. For example, when patronizing speech (e.g., simplified grammar and slow enunciations) directed at older people is seen by cognitively-active members of this social group as utterly demeaning and condescending (Williams and Nussbaum 2001). A final feature of communication accommodation theory, for our purposes here, is its capacity to account for compelling intergroup processes not usually accountable under the rubric of “interpersonal communication”, yet are fundamental to it (see Gallois and Giles 1998). Some years ago, Tajfel and Turner (1979) proffered the distinction between encounters – even dyadic ones – that were either “interindividual” or “intergroup”. The former were interactions that are based solely on the personal characteristics of the parties involved (e.g., their personalities and moods) and not at all dependent on their respective social category memberships. Hence, accommodation-nonaccommodation in these cases would be toward or away from the idiosyncratic communication attributes of the other. Intergroup encounters were the converse, and so accommodation-nonaccommodation was pitched vis-à-vis the other’s and one’s own social category memberships (sexual orientation, gang, sorority, religious, political, etc.). This class of interactions was regarded by these authors as constituting and actually defining a very large proportion of all the interpersonal situations we encounter. Even the most intimate communication – such as between spouses who have been married for decades – can, at times, be usefully understood and analyzed in intergroup terms (e.g., talk about who does the cleaning, caring for the children, and shopping und cooking). Rather than construing these dual entities as polar opposites of a single interactional continuum, scholars (e.g., Giles and Hewstone 1982) have felt it prudent to represent conversational possibilities as being located along two orthogonal continua, namely interindividual (high-low) and intergroup (highlow). This lends the possibility of encounters being construed as high on both dimensions, either in sequences within any conversation or between them, as in the case whereby a son first discloses to his mother that he is gay. The history of their relationship dictates that interpersonal salience would be high, with the mother dealing with her son as the unique person she has known since birth. Simultaneously, her son’s homosexuality should be pertinent, potentially shaping the encounter in so many ways.

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Message production in relationships

Other psychological perspectives on interactions, albeit from communication science, such as message production, skill, and design (Greene 1997; Greene and Lindsey 1989; Greene et al. 1997; O’Keefe 1997), interaction goals, and message organization (O’Keefe and Shepherd 1987; Ryan et al. 1996), and conversation planning (Waldron 1997), help us understand the development, output, and adaptation of messages in interaction, but rarely do they take a dyadic perspective. Action assembly theory, for example, attempts to “specify the mechanisms by which output, so conceived, is produced, moment-bymoment, during ongoing interactions” (Greene 1997: 152), but focuses on the behavior of an individual at any moment of time. Moreover, a message-production focus inherently misses perhaps the most important factor when determining message effectiveness (i.e., how it is received and interpreted). Because of the dynamic nature of conversation and cognitive processing, social psychological theories of relationships must move toward a better understanding of the cognitive and language shifts in an interaction. Although message design models, for example, state a focus on message adaptation (O’Keefe 1997), adaptation in this sense refers to developing a message that meets situational and goal needs, but not necessarily message adaptation across an interaction1. A second criticism of planning approaches to message production is that the focus rests too much on the cognitive processing and not enough on the larger social forces (context, relationship, conversational direction) that influence the interaction (Waldron 1997). Conversational and relational goals change in interaction (Greene 1997; Ryan et al. 1996), plans get thwarted (Berger 1995, 1997; Berger and diBattista 1993), and people may simply become distracted or too cognitively overloaded to communicate effectively. Any of which could occur to one person, one time, in one action. Or, more likely, all of which might occur several times, across several interactions, for several interactants.

5.

Methods for investigating interpersonal relationships

The study of the social psychology of interpersonal relationships has been stifled by a persistence to look only narrowly at the act of relating. Methods have myopically focused on single-participant relationship reflections, staged laboratory investigations, and/or solitary case studies in a singular point of time. Yet, relationships develop in context, many in the workplace and others outside of it. In order to appreciate the unique ways in which relationships are socially constructed and maintained, they must be studied from within their larger contexts including the broader socio-cultural history, developmental and relational

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status, emotional, health, family, and social network, as well as economic influences in which they are embedded (Acitelli, Duck, and West 2000). Taking relational and developmental status into account can lend significant insight into the influences interpersonal communication can have on future interpersonal encounters and relationships across the lifespan (Alberts et al. 2005; Nussbaum 2006). We know, for example, that an interaction between long-term partners is influenced by their relational history, the present context, and can have implications for their future interactions as well as a significant influence over each other’s lives (Rusbult and Arriaga 2000). Much of this can be studied through the process of encoding and storing messages across time. For example, partners encode and store past experiences as knowledge structures (Fletcher and Thomas 1996) that later help serve to interpret or guide future interactions. Overtime, interpersonal interactions can work in a self-fulfilling or expectancyconfirming manner, thereby shaping not only the individual, but the relationship as well (e.g., Murray and Holmes 1996). Moreover, interpersonal relationships, even between the same partners, change across the lifespan as partners and individuals shift their life-task focus from, say, becoming good parents to managing a retirement lifestyle (Cantor and Malley 1991). Similarly, Carstensen’s (e.g., 1995) socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that people are searching for different meanings in their relationships with others as they move into the second half of their lives. Socioemotional selectivity theory predicts that when time boundaries (i.e., end of life) are perceived, people prioritize presentoriented and emotionally meaningful goals over future and knowledge-oriented ones. Such shifts in priority influence social preferences, social network composition, emotion regulation, and cognitive processing (Löckenhoff and Carstensen 2004). Accordingly, as people age, they are motivated to reach emotionally meaningful goals and seek out interpersonal relationships and social messages that fulfill that need (Cantor and Malley 1991; Fung and Carstensen 2003). Interpersonal relationships among elder adults or between people in intergenerational relationships are necessarily different than those among younger adults or children, especially in terms of relational maintenance, motivation, and communicative work. Thus, a look at messages across time with a focus on lifespan development gives us insight into quality and expectations of relationships in later life (Pecchioni, Wright, and Nussbaum 2005). In addition to actual interactions, people frequently generate and manage relationships cognitively through series of imagined interactions. Such interactions are often the source of relational expectations, but are also practice realms in which individuals are able to rehearse or replay various relational encounters (Honeycutt and Cantrill 2001). The knowledge structures developed over the course of (real and imagined) relating help interactants to predict, explain, and control interpersonal interactions, while at the same time can serve as relationship-enhancing tools (Fletcher and Thomas 1996). As such, pro-relational modes

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for relating and partner accommodation may become routine after time (Rusbult et al. 1996). This is especially salient among close interpersonal relationships marked by positive illusions and idealization of a romantic partner early in a relationship that not only positively influences relational satisfaction (Murray, Holmes, and Griffin 1996a), but through interaction over time also aids in the social construction of the ideal romantic partner (Murray, Holmes, and Griffin 1996b). Therefore, methods that focus on relating across time and encounters rather than on individuals or relationships are paramount. A lifespan perspective takes into account the consequences and benefits of communicating across time. Moreover, longitudinal studies such as the Marital Instability over the Life Course (Booth, Amato, and Johnson 1998; Kamp Dush, and Amato 2005) help to charter relational change and relational satisfaction across time in close romantic relationships. Using paradigms of interdependence and accommodation might allow scholars the ability to map personal and relational transformations across time. For example, partners or interactants who behave, communicate, and interpret in a relationship-enhancing manner and in ways that maximize individual and relational outcomes positively affect present and future interactions. This type of communication promotes longterm well-being, establishes a sense of trustworthiness, and lays the groundwork for future reciprocal interactions (Rusbult and Arriaga 2000). Methods for developing a more comprehensive view of relationships must center on looking within and outside of personal relationships. A social psychological perspective “implies a focus on the relation between structures and processes at the individual level, with those operative at the dyadic level”, but in doing so, does not deny the importance of investigating interpersonal interactions in their wider social contexts (Fletcher and Fitness 1996: xii). Longitudinal and lifespan approaches toward the study of interpersonal relationships are not the only directions that will advance knowledge. Interpersonal scholars could spend more time developing knowledge surrounding the mundane side of relating and everyday conversations (Alberts et al. 2005). Duck (1992: 69) suggests: In everyday life, we make many snap judgements about people and form instant likes and dislikes. We all know that we can create ‘irrational’ first impressions, sudden lusts and likings, and intense hatreds for strangers. We can like the manner of a person who has not even uttered a word to us. So, paradoxically, the study of initial responses to strangers makes sense as a starting point for understanding long-term human relationships; it is at this point when relationships most often start or fail to start.

A “problem-solving” approach also necessitates a focus on interpersonal relationships as they naturally occur in a variety of everyday contexts (i.e., relationships in action). While there has been a strong focus on investigating romantic and other close interpersonal relationships, less attention has been paid to other

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types of interpersonal encounters such as those between strangers, acquaintances, service personnel, and others with whom we interact on a frequent basis but have not developed a particularly close relationship (for an exception see Ventola 1979). Even within the domain of close interpersonal relationships, romantic relationships among primarily young adults have received the majority of attention while relationships among older adults, some family relationships, and friendships have received less attention (Pecchioni, Wright, and Nussbaum 2005). Research that neglects to account for changes across the lifespan is missing most of the relating that is happening. To remedy this requires a focus on stability and change in personal relationships and a look at life transitions beyond just ageing, adolescence, or college transitions, and into other life course changes such as parenting, relocating, changes in career or health status, or personal milestones.

6.

Research tools for investigating relationships in action

Relationships are dynamic entities, on-going processes that are influenced by everything that is around them (Planalp and Rivers 1996). Acitelli, Duck, and West (2000) argue that when investigating the social there are three quintessential relational elements that must be attended to: the psychological congruence and empathic understanding between two people, the interdependence of their behaviors, and the larger social contexts in which the interactions are embedded. Because social relationships are experienced subjectively and change across time, the tools we use to explore those relationships must be sensitive to capture relational nuances as they occur. In addition to investigating communication across relational or lifespan transitions Nussbaum (2006), Acitelli, Duck, and West (2000) and others (e.g., Alberts et al. 2005) suggest researchers should attend to even those relational enactments that appear to be trivial or routine in nature, paying more attention to the subjective and intersubjective nature of relationships and relating. Routine ways of relating has received very little attention from scholars across disciplines (Berger 2005), but are rich areas to explore in an effort to uncover how relationships are accomplished. Indeed, how often have we heard responses like “same old, same old” to the question, “how are things going?” – a response that is often verbalized by other parties as being a healthy state of affairs given the presumed and valued stability together with a lack of stress and uncertainty.

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Relating in real time: Charting interpersonal goals and emotions

Contributions from the field of cognitive psychology have provided evidence that people’s on-line processing is inextricably related to knowledge structures developed through relating in interpersonal encounters (Fletcher and Thomas 1996). The availability and accessibility of knowledge structures and relational elements, such as commitment and accommodation, can have an incredible influence on present and future thoughts and communicative behaviors (Etcheverry and Le 2005). Language in action develops, modifies, enhances, and perhaps even dissolves the knowledge structures we can access. For example, rewriting negative scripts for self- or other-talk into positive ones can serve to generate new knowledge structures of self and other and over time if negative scripts are not accessed they can weaken. Knowledge structures that develop over the course of relating and relationships help us to create scripts and schema that guide both verbal and nonverbal interactions. These relationally constructed scripts also provide information about the nature and course of various emotions in their relationships (Fitness 1996). Unfortunately, ascertaining some of the cognitive influences on the message output in an interaction poses the most difficult challenge. This challenge has been met in present times through convenient digital media methods such as digital recording and replay (e.g., Verhofstadt et al. 2005), unobtrusive audio recordings of daily conversations (e.g., Alberts et al. 2005), and through more traditional methods such as maintaining a diary across interactions (Duck et al. 1991; Goldsmith and Baxter 1996), or at the very least comparing self-report data with observations (e.g., Qualter and Munn 2005). These research tools provide the researcher with the important ability to capture talk in action, and in the case of diary studies offer longitudinal insight. Researchers (and participants) can take a discursive psychological approach to charting shifts in cognition and language outcomes by looking closely and reflecting on interactional goals in a moment-by-moment manner (see Wetherell, Taylor, and Yates 2001). Warner (2002) suggests a microanalytic approach (e.g., detailed information about the behavior, affect, and/or physiology of social interaction among participants) to capture the moment-to-moment exchange of behaviors that occur as partners are relating in everyday contexts. The widespread availability of the internet and computer-mediated interfacing offers yet another tool for the examination of on-line processing. “Lurking” in a chat room or instant-messaging forum where the researcher provides participants with changing goals in an interaction could be a useful way of charting language shifts as they relate to new interpersonal goals. In addition to investigating dynamic interaction goals, Berger (2005) suggests social interaction researchers should take more interest in the role of emotions in both close relationships and more impersonal relationships to glean a

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better understanding of how emotions shape our communication and how context and rules for communicating shape our display of emotions. A recent special issue on emotions in personal relationships (Fitness and Planalp 2005) points to the inextricable, yet complicated ways that emotions influence relationships and vice-versa. Moreover, a lifespan focus on emotions and relationships provides evidence that older and younger adults experience and process emotions differently (Carstensen et al. 2000). Fitness (1996) argues that an emotion-script analysis provides insight into the on-line processing of relational interactions and would be useful in providing an additional link between relational cognition and communication. This could be particularly insightful across age cohorts and across relationship types. Research that does take an interaction-focus moves a step closer to understanding the dynamic as well as dialectical nature of language and behavior, but often does so in ways that are limited in terms of time and task (Rusbult, Yovetich, and Verette 1996).

8.

Conclusion

With this chapter, ways in which we can better investigate, better understand and, as a result, better relate across interpersonal contexts are highlighted. By taking a “linguistics for problem-solving” approach, we first argued that interpersonal relationships and the contexts in which they flourish (or falter) are dynamic and complicated. Linguistics for problem-solving involves socially accountable applied research (Knapp and Antos this volume) designed to bring the research focus out of laboratory and to the actual sites of linguistic and cognitive behavior. People relate through various forms of talk (self-talk, relational talk, computer-mediated talk, public discourse, etc.) simultaneously forging and auditioning different personal, relational, and social identities. Thus, we must strive to capture relating where the vast majority of relating is occurring. That is, we should focus our attentions toward everyday contexts across a variety of relationships from impersonal encounters to our most intimate ones. Moreover, the changing social psychology of individuals, relational partners, and even social groups over time warrants a life-span approach. For example, investigating the long-term influence of communication and accommodation across time and across relational context is an important next step in understanding the social psychology of personal and intergroup relationships as they develop over time. More and more, scholars are investigating the interdependence between communication and cognition. However, as we argue earlier, researchers tend to approach social interaction primarily from either a communication or a cognition perspective, rather than emphasizing their powerful mutual influence. We hope to have successfully argued for a shift in focus that includes the dynamic interplay of communication and cognition. We further hope that the perspec-

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tives, methods, and tools for investigating the social psychology of interpersonal relationships offered herein provide a fertile ground for future research and theory development.

Notes 1. This is in comparison with communication accommodation theory which does take into account shifts in accommodative strategies within a single interaction (Gallois, Ogay, and Giles 2005).

References Acitelli, Linda K., Steve W. Duck and Lee West 2000 Embracing the social in social psychology and personal relationships. In: William Ickes and Steve Duck (eds.), The Social Psychology of Personal Relationships, 215–227. Chichester: Wiley. Alberts, Jess K., Christina G. Yoshimura, Michael Rabby and Rose Loschiavo 2005 Mapping the topography of couples’ daily conversation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 22: 299–322. Baxter, Leslie A. and Barbara M. Montgomery 1996 Relating Dialogues and Dialectics. New York: Guilford Press. Berger, Charles R. 1995 A plan-based approach to strategic communication. In: Dean E. Hewes (ed.), The Cognitive Bases of Interpersonal Communication, 141–179. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Berger, Charles R. 1997 Planning Strategic Interaction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Berger, Charles R. 2005 Interpersonal communication: Theoretical perspectives, future prospects. Journal of Communication 55: 415–447. Berger, Charles R. and Patrick di Battista 1993 Communication failure and plan adaptation: If at first you don’t succeed, say it louder and slower. Communication Monographs 60: 220–236. Booth, Alan, Paul R. Amato and David R. Johnson 1998 Marital Instability over the Life Course: Methodology Report for Fifth Wave. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Bureau of Sociological Research. Brown, Barbara, Irwin Altman and Carol Warner 1992 Close relationships in the physical and social world: Dialectical and transactional analysis. Communication Yearbook 15: 508–521. Cantor, Nancy and Janet Malley 1991 Life tasks, personal needs, and close relationships. In: Garth J.O. Fletcher and Frank D. Fincham (eds.), Cognition in Close Relationships, 101–125. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Carstensen, Laura L. 1995 Evidence for a life-span theory of socioemotional selectivity. Current Directions in Psychological Science 4: 151–156. Carstensen, Laura L., Monisha Pasupathi, Ulrich Mayr and John R. Nesselroade 2000 Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79: 644–655. Coupland, Nikolas, Howard Giles and John Wiemann (eds.). 1991 “Miscommunication” and Problematic Talk. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Duck, Steve 1992 Human Relationships. 2nd edition. Newbury Park: Sage. Duck, Steve, Deborah J. Rutt, Margaret H. Hurst and Heather Strejc 1991 Some evident truths about conversations in everyday relationships: All communications are not created equal. Human Communication Research 18: 228–267. Etcheverry, Paul E. and Benjamin Le 2005 Thinking about commitment: Accessibility of commitment and prediction of relationship persistence, accommodation, and willingness to sacrifice. Personal Relationships 12: 103–123. Fiedler, Klaus 2006 The art of exerting verbal influence: being informative but subtle. Keynote speech presented at the International Conference on Language and Social Psychology, Bonn, Germany. Fitness, Julie 1996 Emotion knowledge structures in close relationships. In: Julie Fitness and Garth J.O. Fletcher (eds.), Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach, xi–xv. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Fitness, Julie and Sally Planalp (eds.) 2005 Special issue on emotions. Personal Relationships 12. Fletcher, Garth J.O. and Julie Fitness 1996 Introduction. In: Julie Fitness and Garth J.O. Fletcher (eds.), Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach, xi–xv. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Fletcher, Garth J.O. and Geoff Thomas 1996 Close relationships lay theories: Their structure and function. In: Julie Fitness and Garth J.O. Fletcher (eds.), Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach, 3–24. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Friesen, Myron D., Garth J.O. Fletcher and Nickola C. Overall 2005 A dyadic assessment of forgiveness in intimate relationships. Personal Relationships 12: 61–77. Fung, Helene and Laura L. Carstensen 2003 Sending memorable messages to the old: Age differences in preferences and memory for advertisements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85: 163–178. Gallois, Cindy and Howard Giles 1998 Accommodating mutual influence in intergroup encounters. In: Mark. T. Palmer and George A. Barnett (eds.), Progress in Communication Sciences 14: 135–162. Stanford: Ablex.

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Gallois, Cindy, Tania Ogay and Howard Giles 2005 Communication accommodation theory: A look back and a look ahead. In: William B. Gudykunst (ed.) Theorizing about Intercultural Communication, 121–148. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Giles, Howard 2008 “When in Rome … or not!”: An accommodating theory. In: Leslie A. Baxter and Dawn O. Braithwaite (eds.), Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication, 161–173. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Giles, Howard, Nikolas Coupland and Justine Coupland (eds.) 1991 The Contexts of Accommodation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Giles, Howard and Mary Anne Fitzpatrick 1984 Personal, group and couple identities: Towards a relational context for the study of language attitudes and linguistic forms. In: Deborah Schiffrin (ed.), Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, 253–277. Washington D.C., Georgetown University Press. Giles, Howard, Cindy Gallois and Sandra Petronio (eds.) 1998 (Mis)communicating across boundaries. Communication Research 25(6): 571–720. Giles, Howard and Miles Hewstone 1982 Cognitive structures, speech, and social situations. Language Sciences 4: 187–219. Giles, Howard, Michael Willemyns, Cindy Gallois and Michelle Chernikoff Anderson 2007 Accommodating a new frontier: The context of law enforcement. In: Klaus Fiedler (ed.), Social Communication, 129–162. New York: Psychology Press. Goldsmith, Deanna J. and Leslie A. Baxter 1996 Constituting relationships in talk: A taxonomy of speech events in social and personal relationships. Human Communication Research 23: 87–114. Greene, John O. 1997 A second generation of action assembly theory. In: John O. Greene (ed.), Message Production: Advances in Communication Theory, 151–170. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Greene, John O. and A. E. Lindsey 1989 Encoding processes in the production of multiple-goal messages. Human Communication Research 16: 120–140. Greene, John O., Marianne S. Sassi, Terri L. Malek-Madani and Christopher N. Edwards 1997 Adult acquisition of message-production skill. Communication Monographs 64: 181–200. Harwood, Jake, Jordan Soliz and Mei-Chin Lin 2006 Communication accommodation theory: An intergroup approach to family relationships. In: Dawn O. Braithwaite and Leslie A. Baxter (eds.), Engaging Theories in Family Communication: Multiple Perspectives, 19–34. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Honeycutt, James M. and J. James G. Cantrill 2001 Cognition, Communication, and Romantic Relationships. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Ickes, William and Steve Duck 2000 Personal relationships and social psychology. In: William Ickes and Steve Duck (eds.), The Social Psychology of Personal Relationships, 1–8. New York: Wiley. Kamp Dush, Claire M. and Paul R. Amato 2005 Consequences of relationship status and quality for subjective well-being. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 22: 607–627. Kelley, Harold H. 1979 Personal Relationships: Their Structures and Processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kelley, Harold H. and John W. Thibaut 1978 Interpersonal Relations: A Theory of Interdependence. New York: Wiley. Knapp, Karlfried and Gerd Antos 2008 Introduction to the handbook series. Linguistics for problem solving. In: Gerd Antos and Eija Ventola in cooperation with Tilo Weber (eds.), Interpersonal Communication, v–xv. (Handbooks of Applied Linguistics 2.) Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Löckenhoff, Corinna and Laura L. Carstensen 2004 Socioemotional selectivity theory, aging, and health: The increasingly delicate balance between regulating emotions and making tough choices. Journal of Personality 72: 1395–1424. Murray, Sandra L. and John G. Holmes 1996 The construction of relationship realities. In: Julie Fitness and Garth J.O. Fletcher (eds.), Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach, 195–217. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Murray, Sandra L., John G. Holmes and Dale W. Griffin 1996a The benefits of positive illusions: Idealization and the construction of satisfaction in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70: 79–98. Murray, Sandra, John G. Holmes and Dale W. Griffin 1996b The self-fulfilling nature of positive illusions in romantic relationships: Love is not blind, but prescient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71: 1155–1180. Nussbaum, Jon F. 2006 Lifespan communication and quality of life. Presidential speech presented at the International Communication Association, Dresden, Germany. Nussbaum, Jon F. and Justine Coupland (eds.) 2004 Handbook of Communication and Aging Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. O’Keefe, Barbara J. 1997 Variation, adaptation and functional explanation in the study of message design. In: Gerry Philipsen and Terrance L. Albrecht (eds.), Developing Communication Theories, 85–118. New York: State University of New York Press. O’Keefe, Barbara J. and Gregory J. Shepherd 1987 The pursuit of multiple objectives in face-to-face persuasive interactions: Effects of construct differentiation on message organization. Communication Monographs 54: 396–419.

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Pecchioni, Loretta L., Kevin B. Wright and Jon F. Nussbaum 2005 Life-Span Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pitts, Margaret J. and Michelle Miller-Day 2007 Upward turning points and positive rapport development across time in researcher-participant relationships. Qualitative Research 7: 177–201. Planalp, Sally and Mary Rivers 1996 Changes in knowledge of personal relationships. In: Julie Fitness and Garth J.O. Fletcher (eds.), Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach, 299–324. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Qualter, Pamela and Penny Munn 2005 The friendships and play partners of lonely children. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 22: 379–397. Rawlins, William K. 2004 Friendships in later life. In: Jon F. Nussbaum and Justine Coupland (eds.), Handbook of Communication and Aging Research, 273–299. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Rusbult, Caryl E. and Ximena Arriaga 2000 Interdependence in personal relationships. In: William Ickes and Steve Duck (eds.), The Social Psychology of Personal Relationships, 79–108. New York: Wiley. Rusbult, Caryl E., Steve M. Drigotas and Julie Verette 1994 The investment model: An interdependence analysis of commitment processes and relationship maintenance phenomena. In: Daniel J. Canary and Laura Stafford (eds.), Communication and Relational Maintenance, 115–139. San Diego: Academic Press. Rusbult, Caryl E., Nancy A. Yovetich and Julie Verette 1996 An interdependence analysis of accommodation process. In: Julie Fitness and Garth J.O. Fletcher (eds.), Knowledge Structures in Close Relationships: A Social Psychological Approach, 63–90. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ryan, Richard M., Kennon M. Sheldon, Tim Kasser and Edward L. Deci 1996 All goals are not created equal: An organismic perspective on the nature of goals and their regulation. In: Peter M. Gollwitzer and John A. Bargh (eds.), The Psychology of Action: Linking Cognition and Motivation to Behavior, 7–26. New York: The Guilford Press. Surra, Catherine A. and Thomas Bohman 1991 The development of close relationships: A cognitive perspective. In: Garth J.O. Fletcher and Frank D. Fincham (eds.), Cognition in Close Relationships, 281–305. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tajfel, H and John C. Turner 1979 An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In: William G. Austin and Stephen Worchel (eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, 33–53. Monterey: Brooks/Cole. Ventola, Eija 1979 The structure of casual conversations in English. Journal of Pragmatics 3: 267–298.

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Verhofstadt, Lesley L., Ann Buysse, William Ickes, Armand De Clercq and Olivier J. Penne 2005 Conflict and support interactions in marriage: An analysis of couples’ interactive behavior and on-line cognition. Personal Relationships 12: 23–42. Waldron, Vincent R. 1997 Toward a theory of interactive conversational planning. In: John O. Greene (ed.), Message Production: Advances in Communication Theory, 195–220. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Warner, Rebecca M. 2002 What microanalysis of behavior in social situations can reveal about relationships across the life span. In: Anita L. Vangelisti, Harry T. Reis and Mary Anne Fitzpatrick (eds.), Stability and Change in Relationships, 207–227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wetherell, Margaret, Stephanie Taylor and Simeon J. Yates (eds.) 2001 Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis. London: Sage. Williams, Angie and Jon F. Nussbaum 2001 Intergenerational Communication across the Lifespan. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

3.

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner

1.

Introduction

The fundamental questions addressed in this volume – the manifestation, development, and maintenance of interpersonal relationships as a function of language and other semiotic resources in interpersonal communication – will in this chapter be explored using methods from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Complying with the data driven method of research in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, we will use a fragment of a naturally occurring interaction to illustrate the unique perspectives these two approaches have to offer. Specifically, we will address how the interlocutors in the fragment, through the positioning of particular linguistic and non-linguistic signs, manifest to each other the relevance of a variety of interpersonal relationships and how they thereafter develop and maintain those relationships within their interaction. In doing this, we will introduce the following conceptual tools: turn-taking, indexicality and reflexivity, and recipient design and membership categorization device. These notions will enable us to view interpersonal relationships in light of how they are manifested semiotically through interlocutor’s co-orientations within an emergent, reflexively and collaboratively constructed spate of social activity. Interpersonal relations are ordinary people’s concerns, therefore the focus for the analysis is their own methods for manifesting, developing, and maintaining these relations. This is to say that rather than trying to “correct” these methods by reformulating them as issues of, for example, cognitive dissonance or face considerations, the perspective of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis is to stay within the language, actions, and common sense of interlocutors.

2.

History of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis

Historically, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology emerged in the California of the 1960’s, when Harold Garfinkel (1967, 2002; Heritage 1984) questioned the credo in sociology that social order is created by the institutions of human society. By studying social order as a practical (empirical) achievement, Garfinkel could demonstrate that social order is created in interactions by the participants – as are social institutions (see Section 3.2. below about indexicality and reflexivity). Garfinkel’s work in Los Angeles was akin to the work of

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others close by at Berkeley, especially Erving Goffman (1967) and John Gumperz (Gumperz and Hymes 1964), who rethought the relationship between activity, social order and language. This is the environment in which conversation analysis took form as the most advanced study of the details of social order and human interaction. In the early studies (e.g., Sacks 1972; Schegloff 1968; Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974), conversation analysis described social order as a recognizable social practice where turn taking and repair secure intersubjective understanding. In these early years, data were mainly – but not always – collected in mundane everyday interactions which were – and still are – seen as the richest environment for human interaction. In the later years, conversation analysis has expanded considerably out of sociology into other fields as communication (e.g., Nofsinger 1991), psychology (e.g., Antaki 2004; Potter and Edwards 2001) anthropology (e.g., Moreman 1988), and applied linguistics (e.g., Gardner and Wagner 2004). More than analyzing recordings of telephone talks, new studies try to understand the fine-grained work of participants in multimodal interactions where gesture, gaze, talk, and the body’s placement in space demonstrably are one contingent phenomenon (Goodwin 1981, 2003). More than analyzing everyday interaction, institutional communication has taken a central position in conversation analysis (Drew and Heritage 1992) and results from conversation analysis are used in professional environments, such as medical care (Maynard 2003; Heritage and Maynard 2006), media and journalism (Clayman and Heritage 2002), the law (Atkinson and Drew 1979), business (Boden 1994), helplines (Baker, Emmison, and Firth 2005), and others. Ethnomethodology has, through the years, not been so concerned with conversation as such, but has rather incorporated it into an interest in human social activity generally, from giving directions (Psathas 1986) to the discovery of astronomical phenomena (Garfinkel, Lynch, and Livingston 1981). Of late, researchers from a variety of disciplines have been keen to follow ethnomethodological pursuits into the study of work, particular work as it is carried out in technologically complex environments (e.g., Button 1992; Heath and Luff 2000). In the remainder of this chapter we will demonstrate the procedural approach of conversation analysis by an analysis of a fragment of talk (Section 3.). Before highlighting differences between conversation analysis and ethnomethodology (Section 5.) we will, in Section 4., briefly discuss the interactional context of the extracts used in Section 3.

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Analysis of a fragment of talk

Throughout this chapter we will illustrate our arguments with fragments of a telephone call.1 The first 50 lines of the transcription are printed as Appendix 1 to this chapter. Transcriptions are intended to document features of spoken interactions to which written language normally does not attend. Therefore, transcriptions differ significantly from ordinary written texts. The main features of a transcript are often a modified orthography (ello instead of Hello), indication of pauses, prosodic features, and overlapping talk. Further, a workable transcription will note sublexical elements such as breathing noise and laughter. A list of transcription conventions is included as Appendix 2. Gail Jefferson (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974) developed these features of transcriptions in the founding years of conversation analysis.2 Detailed transcriptions allow the analyst to describe interactions as developing in real time and as interplay between different speakers. For example, when Jefferson, instead of just indicating “laughter” in the margin of the transcript as everybody had done before her, started to capture the hearable features of laughter as ‘·hh ·hh ·hhh’ or ‘hhe hhe hha’, she made the sequential architecture of laughing available for analysis and showed how laughter is created in cooperation between the speakers over a spate of time. Transcription symbols may make reading more difficult, but at the same time – as a kind of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt (‘defamiliarization effect’) – remind the readers that they are not just reading a written text and that the interactions, represented by the raw audio or visual signals, are the real object of the analysis. During the later years, digital technology has made access to sound and video easy at any point of the transcription; and conversation analysis is increasingly using these digital tools for corpus construction and for making data used in the analysis available for the reader. 3.1.

Turntaking

A major focus of conversation analysis has been the study of talk as it emerges in its sequential environment. Telephone openings, as in the following fragment, illustrate nicely the mechanics of turn-taking and its role in the overall activity. Fragment 1 Gailport, Golf 1 2 3 4 5 6

MsA: Guy: MsA: Guy: MsA:

’Ello:? ’Ello is Curly there? (.) Oo jis (.) Who:? Johnny?h An[ville?] [Oo j]ist↑a minnih,

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When reading the first lines of the fragment, we can easily recognize what appears to be the beginning of a phone call (“’Ello:? – ’Ello”), in which a caller requests to talk to someone other than the call-taker. Further, the caller refers to a person using a term (“Curly”) which is not immediately recognized by the call-taker (“Who:?”) and which is repaired to a fuller reference (“Johnny?h Anville?”). We may note as well that the recognition of the person asked for by the call taker in line 6 might have taken place even a bit earlier than it does. “Johnny?h”, as indicated by the transcription, is delivered as one possibly freestanding unit with rising final intonation and might have triggered recognition by the call taker on its own before the family name is offered. In other words, we can see the caller offering the family name since the call taker does not indicate recognition after the first name. As a member of a society in which such phone calls are regularly conducted, we are immediately able to produce the sensible context for the talk and understand the impact of what somebody is doing when offering a nickname (“Curly”). With its use, the caller, Guy, is indicating a particular social relationship he holds with Johnny Anville which we will gloss for the time as being friends. We will discuss below how one might pursue an analysis of such phenomena and what they portend for an understanding of interpersonal relationships as they are coordinated cumulatively throughout the call. Some 15 seconds after MsA’s last turn in line 6, Johnny picks up the phone. Fragment 2 Gailport, Golf 19 20 21 22 23 24

Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy:

Hello:? Johnny? Ye:h. Guy Hoffmeyer. Hi Guy how you doin.= =Fine.

As MsA in the first segment, Johnny offers an “Hello?”. Schegloff (1968, 1979, 1986) has shown that this first utterance is actually a response, an answer to the summons represented by the ringing of the phone. Its main purpose is to indicate that there is a call taker available to talk to. At the same time, the “Hello?” gives a voice sample which allows the caller the opportunity to identify the call-taker. Hearing the “’Ello” in Fragment 1, the caller can decide that the call-taker is not the person he wants to talk to while “Hello” in Fragment 2 is enough for him to launch an other-identification, “Johnny”. This gives Johnny the information that the caller knows him well enough to identify him and makes at the same time the voice of the caller available. If Johnny had recognized the caller, he could simply have mirrored other-identification with a “Hi Guy”. But Johnny is apparently not able to identify Guy and replies with a confirmation of the other-identi-

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fication, leaving the floor to Guy who self-identifies with first and family name. We will discuss later in detail how this cline of moving from a reference by nickname to self-identification by full name can be analyzed, but at the moment we want here to indicate three different aspects of turntaking which this sketchy analysis of the first few lines in phone interaction reveals. Firstly, the fragments illustrate the fundamental sequential nature of talkin-interaction. All talk occurs in time and occupies a spate of time. This affords certain possibilities to the participants in an interaction. Any contribution to an interaction, as for example the initial Hellos in fragment 1 and 2, occur on the basis of a preceding event, here the phone ringing. Taking the phone and saying “hello” sets the stage for a certain next activity by the caller. Taking the phone and producing “just a minute” sets the stage for another activity. As we have seen, depending on who the call-taker is, the “hello” opens up for several possible next actions by the caller, but all of them are bound to be heard as a “next” to the hello. Conversation analysts have studied the sequentiality of talk in great detail and shown that a contribution to the talk will always be heard as following and in some way responding to the immediately preceding contribution.3 And it will open up for the next contribution. In general, a next contribution to the talk will be heard as indicating the way in which the immediately preceding contribution has been taken to mean (the principle of contiguity in talk) and creates itself a possible space for the next contribution. As we do not have the space to discuss both fragments in detail, we ask the reader to give it a go on his/her own. The reader will discover that some utterances project a range of immediately possible “nexts” of a certain type. A question, for example is a first pair part and projects an answer (second pair part). Very often, the answer will be followed by an acknowledgment of the answer by the questioner (sequence closing). Other utterances do not project action on behalf of the next speaker, but pave the way for later actions by the same speaker as, for example “My son-in-law is down here and I thought we may play a little golf” opens for an invitation to join the game (cf. Fragment 3, lines 30–33, below). Secondly, the form of a turn at talk is produced in relation to its sequential environment. When Guy uses the term “Curly” he builds his reference to be understood by somebody who knows that Johnny may be referred to by this nickname. Not having been successful, he produces in a second attempt, “Johnny? h Anville?”, hearable as a possibly free-standing unit, including the family name after there is no immediate uptake by the call-taker. Note that Guy does not repair his first try as “Is Johnny Anville there” or “I would like to speak with Mr. Anville” since the repair initiation “Who:?” in line 4 specifies exactly what MsA needs to get repaired. In other words, a turn at talk does a certain “job” in the talk; and its form is sensitive to the local environment in and for which it is being built.

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Thirdly, Fragments 1 and 2 demonstrate how technology influences interaction. The traditional land line phone creates the possibility to meet other people through voice only. The first tasks which participants in a phone call face is to secure that the line is established (summons – answer) and who caller and calltaker are to each other (self- and other identification). In a face-to-face meeting, these activities are either not done or done very differently because the participants share time and space. They can see each other and they share the conditions for hearing each other. Interestingly, Guy and Johnny make exactly these technological constraints an issue in the talk which follows Fragment 2. 3.2.

Indexicality and reflexivity

In Fragment 2, Johnny and Guy get through the opening phase of the call very straightforwardly. They identify themselves and Johnny initiates a short “how are you”. So far, the call could go anywhere but then, Johnny comments on Guy’s appearance, a comment which may strike one as very odd. Fragment 3 Gailport, Golf 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy:

Joh:

Guy: Joh:

(.) Yer lookin goo:d, ↑Grea:t.hhh So’r you:.hh-hh °Grea:t. Gotta° nice smile on yer face[’n erry]th’ng. smile on yer face[°( )°]↑ Ye↓ah.hh ·hh ·hh ·hhh Hey uh,hhwhhkhh My ↑son’law’s down’n:d uh:↓::,hh thought w’might play a li’l golf:: ↓eether this af’ernoon er duhmorruh wouldju like tuh (0.3) hhhh (0.3) git out? uhh (.) Well this af’noon’d be alright but I don’t think ah’d better to↑ morrow, (0.6) We:ll? (0.6) Cuz (.) we don’t My sister’s gonna come do:wn t’morrow

In a face-to-face meeting, line 26 may follow up on the (normatively expected) positive response to a how are you sequence. We do not know why Johnny is using this phrase in a phone call but we can see what he achieves by it. Its absurdity moves the call from the slightly stiff way the opening phase has been produced into a “jokey” mood and opens up for a non-serious topic. Note that the micro-pause at line 25 is sequentially a place where Guy might reciprocate Johnny’s how are you, for example with an and how are you.

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Another possibility for Guy – as the caller – would be to introduce his reason for the call and to get down to business. But what we witness is rather something we can hear as an “inside joke”. We cannot know the history of the joke, nor are there any other details concerning it provided. Given the affordances of this land line telephone, however, we can understand it as describing an impossible physical state which is not problematic in the least for Guy and Johnny, i.e., as something people with a particular sort of relationship might share. Returning briefly to the inside joke’s sequential placement and the work these turns at talk accomplish, we can note that Johnny has taken a turn allowed to him by a pause which we can hear as “owned” by Guy, i.e., it was Guy’s “turn” to talk. Johnny uses this opportunity to initiate what can be heard as the mutual telling of an inside joke. And, when this is completed, the business of the call is embarked upon (line 30). We see at play quite poignantly here a central pair of features of interactions, namely, indexicality and reflexivity. Together, these terms account for how any utterance in its sequential environment is built on earlier context (indexicality) and itself creates a new context for what is possibly coming up (reflexivity). Johnny builds on the preceding how are you sequence which is standard in a phone opening. But doing this with an absurd formulation, he invokes a specific relationship, which we discuss below in Section 6., he and Guy have built in earlier encounters. In this way, the joke creates the context for what turns out to be the business of the call, a suggestion for Johnny to join Guy and his son-in-law for golf. As in line 25, it is Guy’s turn to speak in line 3. According to the principle of contiguity, whatever he says should be heard as having to do with the preceding turn, Guy might take Johnny’s “?Ye?ah.hh.” as an enthusiastic response to Guy’s reciprocal joke and might go on joking – or Guy might deem the time right to move forward, and treat line 29 as a sequence closing. In line 30, Guy produces hearable breathing sounds. This can be heard as him taking the turn without speaking and creating a distance between the last turn (line 29) and the upcoming turn. In other words, he moves the upcoming turn away from the last turn, weakening the contiguity between the turns. This delay and the turn’s first word “Hey” prepares the grounds for a change of topic. We will just encourage the reader to register the way the suggestion for playing golf is produced: Guy might have done this in all kind of ways “Wanna play a little golf today?”, “I thought about playing golf, what about you?”, the possibilities of making this suggestion are countless. How does he do it in lines 30–33 and what is he achieving by the way he is doing it? And at what point might Johnny respond to the suggestion? He does it rather late although Guy’s words in line 32 “wouldju like” are already recognizable as a suggestion for joining them. What does Johnny achieve hereby?

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3.3.

Recipient design and membership categorization

Turns are built to be heard by specific recipients. Recipient design is the achievement by the speaker to fit the ongoing talk not only to the sequential environment, but to the expected knowledge and here-and-nows of the addressee. In this way, the design of a turn-at-talk indicates who the speakers take the addressee to be. We have of course seen this in action throughout our analysis thus far. MsA’s “’Ello” at line 1 is designed for someone who has summoned the household on the telephone, Guy’s response at line 2 is likewise designed for a “call-taker”, and so forth. It is obvious that this aspect of recipient design is very closely tied to the particular turns at talk within this particular activity. Within these turns, however, there are “mentionings” of other people. These mentionings are similarly constrained by recipient design such that their adequacy as referring devices is determined by the extent to which the speaker has fitted his/her talk to the expected knowledge of the addressee. The failure in reference in line 2 by Guy with his referring expression “Curly” indicates a failure in recipient design. Harvey Sacks (1974) introduced the notion of membership categorization device referring to the way in which categorizations rely on social categories, e.g., policeman, mother, deviant, and how these and associated social categories might be organized into collections, known as membership categorization devices, sharing family resemblance to each other. Furthermore, such categories may provide for particular sorts of predicates, for example typical actions or other characteristics, to be made of candidate members of a category. Such actions or other characteristics are referred to as being category-bound (Sacks 1992; Jayusi 1984). Of special interest to Sacks, and those who have followed him, has been the following problem: Given that a person may be described “correctly” in an infinite number of ways on a given occasion, what are the principles of a “proper” description? One such principle by which a description becomes proper is through it being heard as relevant in lieu of it falling under a membership categorization device which is relevant to the talk at hand. Sacks describes a certain type of device which may be of use here, namely devices which are duplicatively organized: If some population has been categorized by use of categories from the same device whose collection has the “duplicative organization property” (e.g. “family”, “baseball team”, etc.) and a member is presented with a categorized population which can be heard as “coincumbents” of a case of that device’s unit, then hear it that way (Sacks 1974: 221).

The classic example from Sack’s, derived somewhat atypically from a book of stories by children, is how we understand the expression “The baby cried, the mommy picked it up”. Sacks contends, and the reader is encouraged to try this on their own, and we hear the “mommy” as the “baby’s mommy”. While the full

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analysis would be too lengthy here, the basic idea is that if we can hear the rendering of the categories, mommy and baby, as belonging to the device, members of a family, we hear them that way. We may say that picking up their babies is a category bound predicate of mommies, something mommies are expected to do. Thus, when offered a description of some mommy picking up some baby, we infer they are members of the same family unless of course we know of some reason not to do so. Membership categorization analysis, along with the analysis of turn sequencing and recipient design, provide a powerful analytic toolkit with which relationships between interactants can be understood (Sacks 1992; Antaki and Widdicombe 1998; Hester and Eglin 1997a). Fundamental, and perhaps most distinctive, in this regard is the injunction in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to “stay within the talk”. For our case here, this implies that whatever Guy and Johnny’s relationships may be outside of the talk, they are only relevant if demonstrably consequential for the particulars of this talk. Recall from above how context is created through indexicality and reflexivity. Something previous in the talk, or even outside the talk, altogether may be “pointed to” indexically and create a context reflexively for some next action. In this way, a description of Guy and Johnny as “friends” may become a “proper” description. This is to say that their friendship must be something which they point out, for example by the use of particular categorizations, here and now. Guy and Johnny may be correctly described in a vast number of ways but their proper description as friends demands orientation to this on their part. If we are to maintain that “Curly” signifies Guy’s contention of friendship with Johnny, then we may say the relevant device in use is the duplicatively organized friends device. Friends must come in, at least, pairs or, in semantic terms, friend is a converse term. Using a nickname, “Curly” can be heard as a category-bound predicate of the friends device, that is using nicknames to refer to each other is hearable as “something friends do”. Others may recognize a nickname, in the sense that it may adequately refer, but not themselves be incumbent to the category, i.e., a member of the friends group. Johnny’s wife, MsA, could be an example of such a person, however, here “Curly” does not accomplish reference with her. For the time being, one might envisage that the sort of friends that Guy and Johnny are effectively excludes members of other, similar relations, here husband – wife. We would now like to draw your attention to Fragment 2. As discussed above, we have a similar identification sequence as initially in the call. Worth noting is that identification is not accomplished by voice recognition, both Johnny and Guy use their names to identify themselves. Furthermore, Guy does not use the term Curly. One could then hear the earlier attempt to refer to Johnny by using Curly as an unsuccessful attempt to demonstrate closeness to Johnny which is not repeated here.

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In lines 31–36, we witness the reason for Guy’s call – he wants Johnny to join him in a game of golf. Guy begins in line 31 by offering a reason for his wanting to play, his son-in-law has come for a visit, and in asking Johnny if he’d like to “git out”, offers two possible times, this afternoon or tomorrow. Johnny, at line 34, responds affirmatively to the afternoon, but negatively to tomorrow. In the same way as Johnny’s “°( )°?Ye?ah.hh” at line 29 allowed Guy to continue, the ensuing pause at line 36 and Guy’s subsequent “well” following it can be heard as calling for the following account by Johnny as to why he is not available for golf tomorrow. Concerning what sorts of “friends” Johnny and Guy are, or alternatively what comprises our friends device, we can, at this point in the conversation, conclude that they are the sorts of friends who have a history of some note, indicated by the “inside joke”. They play golf together. Visiting male family members is a viable reason to play golf, as in Guy’s case, and visiting female family members is a viable reason not to play golf, as in Johnny’s case. The relationship between Guy and Johnny is an ongoing affair demanding interactive work between the two of them. Our own common-sense allows us easily to see they are some sort of friends. Just what sort of friends they are, what sorts of incumbencies their particular friendship entails, is a negotiated matter. Further, this category negotiation is not an end in itself, but embedded within and contingent upon turns at talk, with their own practical tasks and sequential contingencies. Describing the work Guy and Johnny do in order to “do being friends” allows us to go beyond our own common-sense and into the intricate architecture of a common social structure, namely friendship relations. While people may be friends for life, in interaction with each other their friendship is, nonetheless, contingent upon bringing that friendship into the interaction. The same is of course true for any other social relation of which one may be a part.

4.

Practical activities

Although Guy and Johnny’s friendship is, for us, a thoroughly endogenous affair, i.e., it is a collaboratively manifested within the boundaries of this interaction, this does not entail that our interest in Guy and Johnny need stop there. Guy and Johnny’s telephone call is, for them, not an isolated island of activity in their daily lives, rather an activity which is undoubtedly motivated by previous activities and one which, in its turn, is prerequisite to future activities. Furthermore, the call itself has most likely interrupted ongoing activities in Johnny’s home. Later in the call not shown here, Guy momentarily leaves the call to search a phone number to a golf course. That the search was unsuccessful prompts a later

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call to directory assistance for the number. Guy then calls the course to book a tee-time for their upcoming match and calls back to Johnny to give him driving directions. With regard to these post-call activities, we can see the call under investigation here as task-setter whereby a host of future activities are launched as a response to a problem in the call, i.e., the unavailability of the golf course’s phone number, or a consequence of work done in the call, i.e., Johnny’s acceptance of Guy’s invitation. These activities involve the establishment or maintenance of relationships between people, not least what is implied by the assignment of task responsibility between Guy and Johnny. These activities also involve the competent use of communication technologies with their concomitant affordances which, in their turn, may involve changes in modality and media (see, for example, Hutchby 2001; Heath and Luff 2000). While a consideration of, in this case, a telephone call and how it is part of what we may call an assemblage of activities is relatively rare in conversation analytic and ethnomethodological studies, we feel it is a fruitful line of inquiry. Concerning interpersonal relationships, it would be quite interesting to see how relationships established in one activity, for example between Johnny and Guy, impinge upon quite different relationships in another activity, for example between Guy and the golf-course personnel. Recall how an analysis of a similar sort was offered above concerning Guy and Johnny vis a vis Johnny’s wife, MsA. Also of interest would be how relationships develop over various communicative technologies as well as over various modalities and media. For this call, it would be interesting to explore how “friends” actually go about their golf game, particularly the relationship work between Johnny and Guy vis-à-vis their “guest”, i.e., Guy’s son-in-law. Finally, pursuing such a study within the framework offered by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis generally, and membership categorization analysis specifically, would, in contrast to more abstract procedures such as semantic field analysis or social network analysis, firstly allow the analyst to stay close to the lived world of the people in whom s/he is interested, secondly, allow accounts for these phenomena in relation to other systematicities of social interaction, and thirdly allow, through careful documentation of observations by way of audio/video files and transcriptions, the possibility of replicability of findings.

5.

On some differences between conversation analysis and ethnomethodology

Throughout our demonstration above, we have expended little effort in discerning whether a particular analytic resource derives from conversation analysis or ethnomethodology. We have not done so for the simple reason that such a task,

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whatever its merits, would be exceedingly difficult and often speculative. Historically, ethnomethodology came first and its treatment of indexicality and reflexivity are still today cornerstones of ethnomethodological as well as conversation analytical research. An interest in the everyday lives of “ordinary” societal members, consistent with Garfinkel’s (1967) critique of Parsonian sociology as a sociology of deviance and Goffman’s (1983) interest in the interaction order, soon led, however, to an interest by many followers in how members interact through talk. Not only is such interaction postulated as the “primordial” site of sociality, convenience also played a role by way of the availability of cheap sound recording equipment. While conversation analysis obviously grew out of ethnomethodology, there were and are differences between the two. Already in 1988, Atkinson noted: In the current state of its development, “ethnomethodology” in general is not easily distinguished from the more specific development of “conversation analysis.” The latter pays special attention to the fine-grained analysis of naturally occurring spoken interaction (and, more rarely, to the coordination of spoken and nonverbal activities); this is the most consistent and productive area in the tradition. Not totally distinct from other domains of ethnomethodological work (much of which draws on its findings), conversation analysis has its own characteristic set of concerns and procedures. […] However, in certain respects conversation analysis has diverged from ethnomethodology’s original inspiration. In particular a tension exists between the specific treatment of conversation’s sequential order and more general interests in mundane reasoning (Atkinson 1988: 442).

Have (2002) sees the distinction between a general interest in mundane reasoning and conversation’s sequential order from a methodological perspective. The latter is seen as relying on mediated observation through recordings and the former as relying on direct observation by the researcher. Thus findings from conversation analysis and ethnomethodological studies are reported quite differently: conversation analytical studies generally include a collection of instances of a phenomenon found in a data set of transcripted recordings. Ethnomethodological studies, on the other hand, look very much like ethnographies, relying to great extent on the description of a setting and its events as witnessed by the researcher. More fundamental discrepancies between conversation analysis and ethnomethodology have, however, been forwarded. Returning to Atkinson’s point above, Crabtree (2001) discusses the ethnomethodological critique of conversation analysis’ reliance on “rendering practices”, here the coding of conversational phenomena through the application of rigorous procedures quite foreign to the “lived” work of interactants. Thus, what is lost is insight into interactants’ everyday, mundane reasoning and competencies. Membership categorization analysis is another case in point in its somewhat equivocal status “between” conversation analysis and ethnomethodology (see, for example, Wowk and Car-

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lin 2004). How interactants categorize themselves and the world around them, provides rich insights into everyday reasoning. Moreover, membership categorization analysis is often grounded in the analysis of everyday talk. Many practitioners of conversation analysis, however, have been critical of membership categorization analysis for not dealing sufficiently with the sequential environment of members’ categorization (see, for example, Schegloff 2007). Interestingly, despite these significant and reciprocal critiques, there appears to be an ensuing opportunity for closer cooperation between ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in their more applied strands of research. Applied Conversation Analysis (see, for example, Gardner and Wagner 2004, Richards and Seedhouse 2004 and works therein), and its counterpart in ethnomethodology known as hybrid studies (see, for example, Crabtree 2004) seem dedicated to the assistance of practitioners in real world settings. Such work may very well demand more “empiricism” from ethnomethodologists as well as a re-engagement with the “ordinary” from conversation analysts.

6.

Further reading

There are several introductions to conversation analysis, for example Hutchby and Wooffit (1998) and Have (1999). Harvey Sacks’ lectures, published in Sacks (1992), are an invaluable resource for conversation analysis as well as ethnomethodology. Atkinson and Heritage (1984) and Boden and Zimmerman (1991) are examples of classic anthologies within conversation analysis. For membership categorization analysis, there are introductions, for example by Lepper (2000) and Hester and Eglin (1997b) as well as anthologies, for example Hester and Eglin (1997a) and Antaki and Widdicombe (1998). For Ethnomethodology, there are introductions, for example Have 2004 and Heritage 1984. Foundational works by Garfinkel are Garfinkel (1967) and (2002).

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Appendix 1 Fragment 1 (Gailport: 1–6Golf) (transcription Gail Jefferson) (simplified) 1 2 3 4 5 6

MsA: Guy: MsA: Guy: MsA:

’Ello:? ’Ello is Curly there? (.) Oo jis (.) Who:? Johnny?h An[ville?] [Oo j]ist↑a minnih,

(several lines omitted during which Johnny is called to the phone) 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy:

Joh:

Guy: Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy: Joh: Guy: Guy: Joh:

Hello:?s Johnny? Ye:h. Guy Hoffmeyer. Hi Guy how you doin.= =Fine. (.) Yer lookin goo:d, ↑Grea:t.hhh So’r you:.hh-hh °Grea:t. Gotta° nice smile on yer face [’n erry]th’ng. [°( )°]↑Ye↓ah.hh ·hh ·hh ·hhh ↑Hey uh,hhwhhkhh My ↑son’law’s down’n:d uh:↓::,hh thought w’might play a li’l golf:: ↓eether this af’ernoon er duhmorruh wouldju like tuh (0.3) hhhh (0.3) git out? uhh (.) Well this af’noon’d be alright but I don’t think ah’d better to↑morrow, (0.6) We:ll? (0.6) Cuz (.) we don’t My sister’s gonna come do:wn t’morrow (Yih weh?) Ah ha:h? Oh. ·t ·hhh Where d’yuh wanna ↑go↓:. Oh I d’know,hhh ·hhhhh Wut about dat SAN JUAN ↑HILLS down ’ere. Yuh think we c’get on ’ere? (.) Ye:s I think so:,

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis 50 Guy: 51 Joh: 52 Guy:

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Do ↑yuh? ·h Ya:h? ·hhhhhh (0.3) d-Dihyou have a phone number for’m,h

Appendix 2 Transcript conventions (cf. Jefferson, Gail (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In: Gene H. Lerner (Hg.). Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation, 13–31. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.) [] Left and right brackets indicate beginning and end of overlap. (0.0) Numbers in parentheses indicate silence by tenths of seconds. (.) Micropause. :: Colons indicate prolongation of the immediately prior sound. The longer the colon row, the longer the prolongation. ↑↓ Arrows indicate shifts into especially high or low pitch. . , ?¿ Punctuation markers are used to indicate intonation: , level intonation ; slightly falling intonation . falling intonation to low ¿ slightly rising intonation ? rising intonation to high WORD Upper case indicates especially loud sounds relative to the surrounding talk. °word° Degree signs bracketing a sound, word, phrase, and so on, indicate especially soft sounds relative to the surrounding talk. ·hhh A raised dot-prefixed row of h’s indicates an inbreath. Without the dot, the h’s indicate an outbreath. Underlining indicates stressed syllables word = Latching between turns or parts of turns

Notes 1. The data are part of the GAILPORT corpus. The full transcript and access to the sound is available at TALKBANK.ORG 2. For an alternative transcription system ‘GAT’ cf. Selting et al 1998 3. Instead of providing a long list of references we refer to Paul ten Have’s CA bibliography at http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/emca/resource.htm (last access: November 16, 2007).

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References Antaki, Charles 2004 Reading minds or dealing with interactional implications. Theory and Psychology 14: 667–683. Antaki, Charles and Sue Widdicombe (eds.) 1998 Identities in Talk. London: Sage. Atkinson, Paul 1988 Ethnomethodology: A critical review. Annual Review of Sociology 14: 441–465. Atkinson, John M. and Paul Drew 1979 Order in Court: The Organisation of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings. London: Macmillan. Atkinson, John M. and John Heritage (eds.) 1984 Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, Carolyn, Michael Emmison and Alan Firth (eds.) 2005 Calling for Help: Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Boden, Deirdre and Don H. Zimmerman (eds.) 1991 Talk and Social Structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press. Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. Button, Graham 1992 Answers as interactional products: Two sequential practices used in job interviews. In: Paul Drew and John Heritage (eds.), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, 212–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clayman, Steven and John Heritage 2002 The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crabtree, Andy 2001 On the practical availability of work-practice. Ethnographic Studies 6: 7–16. Crabtree, Andy 2004 Taking technomethodology seriously: Hybrid change in the ethnomethodology-design relationship. European Journal of Information Systems 13: 195–209. Drew, Paul and John Heritage (eds.) 1992 Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garfinkel, Harold 1967 Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Garfinkel, Harold 2002 Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working Out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Edited and introduced by Anne Rawls. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

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Garfinkel, Harold, Michael Lynch and Eric Livingston 1981 The work of a discovering science construed with materials from the optically discovered pulsar. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 11: 131–158. Gardner, Rod and Johannes Wagner (eds.) 2004 Second Language Conversations. London: Continuum. Goffman, Erving 1983 The interaction order. American Sociological Review 48 (February): 1–17. Goodwin, Charles 1981 Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, Charles 2003 Pointing as situated practice. In: Sotaro Kita (ed.), Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet, 217–242. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gumperz, John and Dell Hymes (eds.) 1964 The Ethnography of Communication. Special issue 66(6,2) of American Anthropologist. Have, Paul ten 1999 Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: Sage. Have, Paul ten 2002 The notion of member is the heart of the matter: On the role of membership knowledge in ethnomethodological inquiry. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3(3): http:// www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-02/3-02tenhave-e.htm (last access: November 2, 2007). Have, Paul ten 2004 Understanding Qualitative Research and Ethnomethodology. London: Sage Publications. Heath, Christian and Paul Luff 2000 Technology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, John 1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Heritage, John and Douglas W. Maynard (eds.) 2006 Communication in Medical Care: Interaction Between Primary Care Physicians and Patients. (Studies in interactional sociolinguistics 20.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hester, Stephen and Peter Eglin (eds.) 1997a Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Hester, Stephen and Peter Eglin 1997b Membership categorization analysis: An introduction. In: Stephen Hester and Peter Eglin (eds.), Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis, 1–24. Washington, DC: University Press of America:. Hutchby, Ian 2001 Conversation and Technology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Hutchby, Ian and Robin Wooffitt 1998 Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Oxford: Polity Press. Jayyusi, Lena 1984 Categorization and the Moral Order. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lepper, Georgia 2000 Categories in Text and Talk: A Practical Introduction to Categorization Analysis. London: Sage. Maynard, Douglas W. 2003 Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moerman, Michael 1988 Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Nofsinger, Robert E. 1991 Everyday Conversation. Newbury Park: Sage. Potter, Jonathan and Derek Edwards 200l Discursive social psychology. In: William P. Robinson and Howard Giles (eds.), The New Handbook of Language and Social Psychology, 103–118. London: Wiley. Psathas, George 1986 Some sequential structures in direction-giving. Human Studies 9(2–3): 231–246. Richards, Keith and Paul Seedhouse (eds.) 2004 Applying Conversation Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sacks, Harvey 1974 On the analyzability of stories by children. In: Roy Turner (ed.) Ethnomethodology, 216–232. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sacks, Harvey 1992 Lectures on Conversation. 2 volumes. Edited by Gail Jefferson with an introduction by Emanuel A. Schegloff. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, Gail Jefferson 1974 A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation. Language 50: 696–735. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1968 Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70: 1075–1095. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1979 Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In: George Psathas (ed.), Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, 23–78. New York: Irvington. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1986 The routine as achievement. Human Studies 9: 111–152. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007 A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 462–482.

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Selting, Margret, Peter Auer, Birgit Barden, Jörg Bergmann, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Susanne Günthner, Christoph Meier, Uta Quasthoff, Peter Schlobinski, Susanne Uhmann 1998 Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem (GAT). Linguistische Berichte 173: 91–122. Wowk, Maria T. and Andrew P. Carlin 2004 Depicting a liminal position in ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis: The work of Rod Watson. Human Studies 27: 69–89.

4.

Interactional Sociolinguistics1 Susanne Günthner

1.

Introduction

Imagine the following scene: You are working as a visiting lecturer/professor at a Chinese university. One late afternoon you are taking a walk around campus, when a Chinese colleague approaches you: “Good afternoon Ms. X (Mr. Y). Have you eaten yet?” You might interpret this utterance as a pre-sequence to a following invitation for dinner. Full of expectation you answer: “No, not yet”. You are, however, quite puzzled when your colleague responds with: “Well, then I do not want to disturb you any longer. I am sure, you must be hungry. Bye-bye.” What happened in this interaction? The Chinese colleague translated the Chinese greeting formula Chi guo le ma? (‘Have you eaten yet?’), intending to convey something like English How are you?. You, however, interpreted the utterance as a possible pre-sequence of a following invitation for dinner. In China the expression Chi guo le ma? addressed to someone in the street simply functions as a form of greeting. If the co-participant reacts by answering ‘No, not yet’, s/he indicates that s/he is in a hurry and not up for a chat. In case s/he answers with something like ‘Don’t worry; I just had my meal. I am not hungry’, s/he conveys her/his interest in having a chat.2 Instead of analyzing the propositional content of constituent utterances and reducing language to an abstract structure, Interactional Sociolinguistics aims at studying the interpretation and function of linguistic forms in socially and culturally situated discourse. In the case of the introductory episode, this perspective implies questions like: What greeting routines do speakers use with whom in which cultural and social contexts? What do reactions to someone’s remarks reveal about their willingness to talk? Do differences in greeting (who greets whom with what formula in which situation?) reveal anything about the relevant community of speakers?3 As part of Anthropological Linguistics, Interactional Sociolinguistics “is concerned with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, its role in constructing and sustaining cultural practices and social structures” (Foley 1997: 3). Focusing on communicative practices “as the real world site where societal and interactive forces merge” (Gumperz 1999: 454), Interactional Sociolinguistics – a term proposed by the anthropologist and linguist John J. Gumperz – seeks to forge links between Linguistics and the Social Sciences.4

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In the following, I will present an outline of the most important theoretical issues underlying current work in Interactional Sociolinguistics. Central concepts of Interactional Sociolinguistics (i.e., indexicality, inferencing, contextualization, communicative activities, or genres as well as social, ethnic and cultural identities) will be introduced. In order to show how these concepts can be applied in actual analyses, I shall discuss various examples from my own research.

2.

Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS): Its background and goals

Interactional Sociolinguistics is grounded in earlier studies in the Ethnography of Communication. It can be described as “an approach to discourse analysis that has its origin in the search for replicable methods of qualitative analysis that account for our ability to interpret what participants intend to convey in everyday communicative practice” (Gumperz 2001: 215). A basic underlying assumption in Interactional Sociolinguistics, one that is widely shared by students of any language use, is that grammar and lexicon, while necessary, are not sufficient for participation in discursive interaction. Interpretation of what is intended at any one point always depends on additional inferences based on background knowledge, including among other things, beliefs and values of the surrounding community, applicable principles of speech etiquette and shared understandings of what communicative ends the interaction is designed to achieve. Whereas Ethnography of Communication initially relied on ethnographic observations to find out how language is used in social/cultural events, Interactional Sociolinguistics has focused directly on turn by turn interpretative processes in interactions and on analyzing how interactants communicate meaning in social situations, concentrating on interactants’ own context-bound, situated, on-line processing of information. Similar to interpretative approaches within social theory (e.g., Ethnomethodology, Goffman’s studies on the “interaction order”, the Sociology of Knowledge), Interactional Sociolinguistics assumes that social processes are ultimately constructed in everyday interactions, that social activities are interactively organized, and that social and cultural knowledge (including communicative knowledge) is reproduced, confirmed, and modified in interactions. Interactional Sociolinguistics, thus, aims at studying the interrelationship between language, language use, and sociocultural processes by focusing on situated, context-bound processes of interpretation. During the last 20 years, research in Interactional Sociolinguistics and Anthropological Linguistics in general has refined its insights into the interplay of language use and social/cultural processes and developed aspects of a theory of communicative practice dedicated to analyze the complex relationship between language structure, language use, contexts/situations, and cultural knowledge

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(Gumperz 1982; Hanks 1996; Günthner 2000, 2003). The focus on communicative practices provides a perspective that attempts to integrate cultural knowledge of communicative situations and actions into a wider approach to analyzing cultural presuppositions involved in human interactions (Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 2007). This raises questions such as the following: How do interactants infer what others intend to convey? How are linguistic (i.e., phonological/prosodic, morphosyntactical, semantic, pragmatic) elements used to construct communicative meaning and activities? How can we account for interactants’ ability to negotiate meaning and construct communicative activities? How do communicative practices relate to interactants’ social, cultural and communicative background? How is the interplay between linguistic, social, and cultural aspects constrained by universal as well as locally-specific organizational principles?

3.

Central concepts of Interactional Linguistics

As Interactional Sociolinguistics has drawn on concepts such as indexicality, inferencing, contextualization, communicative activities, or genres as well as social, ethnic, and cultural identities to provide analytical tools for understanding how communicative processes are interactively constituted, I shall introduce those concepts and provide examples from my own research in order to illustrate how to work with them. 3.1.

Inferencing, contextualizing, and indexicality

In order to account for participants’ ongoing process of communicating meaning in interactions and, thus, for methods participants use to perform and interpret social activities, John J. Gumperz and Jenny Cook-Gumperz have developed the theory of contextualization.5 Its theoretical and methodological implications combined with its insistence on empirical analysis makes it a powerful approach for the in-depth-analysis of inference processes in intercultural as well as intracultural communication. The concept of contextualization implies that interactants relying in part on their background knowledge construct the contextual presuppositions they orient to in carrying out their interactive activities: by producing verbal or nonverbal activities, speakers enact the particular context for the interpretation of these particular activities.6 Contrary to structuralist notions of context as a “given entity”, the theory of contextualization suggests a flexible, dynamic, partly interactionally negotiated concept of context. The relationship between context and discourse (or text) is a reflexive one; i.e., one in which talk in interaction is in part determined by context as it is commonly understood, but at the

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same time talk also contributes to the construction of context. Thus, speakers do not just produce utterances in order to transmit referential meaning and information, they also contextualize them and make them interpretable by the use of certain empirically detectable features – the so-called contextualization cues.7 “As metapragmatic signs, contextualization cues represent speakers’ ways of signaling and providing information to interlocutors and audiences about how language is being used at any one point in the ongoing stream of talk” (Gumperz 1996: 366). As indexical signs, contextualization cues (based on prosodic, morphosyntactic, lexical, stylistic, code-bound options as well as on mimic and gesture) do not always have referential meaning. Their communicative function is mostly relational; i.e., they cannot be assigned context-free interpretations (such as “high pitch register signals indignation” or “codeswitching into Standard German means social distancing”); but they play a major role in constructing social action. Due to their inherent vagueness, speakers often use several co-occurring cues situated on various linguistic levels. The ways we contextualize meaning and interpret contextualization cues are shaped by socioculturally specific conventions: in order to interpret the utterances of their counterpart adequately, interactants have to recognize the present communicative situation and the embedded contextualization cues as an instance of typified schemata and relate them to my stored sociocultural knowledge. A shared repertoire of contextualization conventions is an essential prerequisite for communicative cooperation. Interactants in intercultural communication often do not share the same contextualization cues. As various studies in intercultural communication have shown (Gumperz 1982; Tannen 1984; Hinnenkamp 1989; Erickson and Shultz 1982; Günthner 1993; Scollon and Scollon 1995; di Luzio, Günthner and Orletti 2001; Kotthoff 2002), systematic cultural differences in the conventions and principles evolve that guide the way a conversational intention is signaled. For example, what may sound like a reproachful voice for Southern German ears (such as falling terminal pitch, rising-falling pitch movements, narrow or verum-focus, global increase of loudness, lengthening and glide on the verb, etc.) may not necessarily sound reproachful to Northern German or even Shanghai ears (Günthner 1996). Let us now look at a specific example to illustrate how contextualization works in interaction and how inferencing processes – i.e., interpretative procedures by which participants assess what is communicatively intended at any one point in an interaction and on which they rely to plan and produce their responses (Gumperz 1999: 458) – are taking place within ongoing interaction. The transcript segment is taken from a German dinner conversation among friends (Hanna, Urs, Fritz, Klara, and Gerd). After Hanna (line 1) mentions Mustafa, a Turkish friend of hers and Urs’, Urs reports news about Mustafa, who has just received the “MUS ter(.)BÜR ger PREIS” (‘the prize for a model citizen’):

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(1) MUSTAFA8 01 Hanna: des hat doch hi MUS(h)tafa(h) au schon hi festge(h)stellt.

‘Actually hee Mus(h)tafa(h) already hee no(h)ticed that.’ 02 Urs:

MUStafa hat den (.) MUS ter(.)BÜR ger PREIS bekommen.

‘Mustafa got the (.) model (.) citizen prize.’ 03 Hanna:

haha[haha

↑↓NEI::N.]

[hahahaha No.]’ [hahahahaha

04 Fritz:

↑↓NEI::N]

‘[hahahahaha NO::.] 05 (…) 06 Urs:

also daß es sOwas über↑HAUPT gibt,

‘Actually, it’s astonishing that they would do something like this.’ 07

also es gibt irgendwie jeder LANDkreis darf also vorbildliche bür[ger,]

‘Every county is allowed to choose model cit[izens,]’ [hhm]

08 Hanna:

‘[hhm]’ 09 Urs:

so ein, zwei pro LANDkr[eis aussuchen.]

‘about one or two per [county.] [↑oh:::::oh::]

10 Hanna:

‘[oh:::::oh::]’ 11 Urs:

und die kriegen dann die

12

]

‘And these people receive a ’ ‘]’ [hm.]

13 Gerd:

‘[hm.]’ 14 Urs:

[natürlich sEIn dorf]schultes hihi in BER(h)gen(h)dorf hat gedAcht,

15 Gerd:

[(

16 Urs:

17

‘[Of course, his mayor] heehee in Ber(h)gen(h)dorf thought:’ ‘[(

)]

)]’

‘’

‘’

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Susanne Günthner

18

]

‘]”’ [haha]

19 Gerd:

‘[haha]’ 20 Urs:

[der sich ANpasst kriminierung;

] und gleichzeitig gegen dIs-

‘“[who conforms] to German life and at the same time is against discrimination.”’ 21 Gerd:

[hahahahahahahahahahha]

22 Urs:

[

]

‘[hahahahahahahahahahha]’ ‘[

]’ 23 Klara: [AU:::::

↑↓nei::::n.]

‘[oh no]’ 24 Urs:

‘’ = ‘=’ 26 Hanna: = ‘=’ 27 Urs: [zur (.)]

25

‘[to (.)]’ (-) ‘