Units Of Talk Units Of Action

In this volume leading academics in Interactional Linguistics and Conversation Analysis consider the notion of units for the study of language and interaction. Amongst the issues being explored are the role and relevance of traditionally accepted linguistic units for the analysis of naturally occurring talk, and the identification of new units of conduct in interaction. While some chapters make suggestions on how existing linguistic units can be adapted to suit the study of conversation, others present radically new perspectives on how language in interaction should be described, conceptualised and researched. The chapters present empirical investigations into different languages (Danish, English, Japanese, Mandarin, Swedish) in a variety of settings (private and institutional), considering both linguistic and embodied resources for talk. In addressing the fundamental question of units, the volume pushes at the boundaries of current debates and contributes original new insight into the nature of language in interaction.

The chapters in this volume focus on how we might understand the concept of ‘unit’ in human languages. It is an analytical notion that has been widely adopted by linguists of various theoretical and applied orientations but has recently been critically examined by both typologically oriented and interactional linguistics. This volume contributes to and extends this discussion by examining the nature of units in actual usage in a range of genetically and typologically unrelated languages, English, Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Mandarin, engaging with fundamental theoretical issues. The chapters show that categories originally created for the description of Indo-European languages have limited usefulness if our goal is to understand the nature of human language in general. The authors thus question the status of traditionally accepted linguistic units, especially their static understanding as a priori entities, and suggest instead that an emergent and interactional view of both structure and function offers a better fit with the data from the languages examined. Originally published as special issue 43:2 (2019) of Studies in Language.

Intonation units have been notoriously difficult to identify in natural talk. Problems include fuzzy boundaries, lack of exhaustivity, and the potential circularity involved when studying their interface with other language-organizational dimensions. This volume advocates a way to resolve such problems: the ‘cesura’ approach. Cesuras, or breaks in the flow of talk, are created by discontinuities in the prosodic-phonetic parameters of speech that cluster to various extents at certain points in time. Using conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology, the volume identifies the parameters creating cesuras in talk-in-interaction and proposes ways to notate them depending on the researcher’s goal. It also offers a way to study the role of cesuras at the prosody-syntax interface non-circularly, which leads to new insights concerning language variation and change. The volume will thus be of major import to anyone working with natural spoken language, its chunks, its various dimensions, and its variation and change.

Introducing original methods for integrating sociocultural and discourse studies into science and engineering education, this book provides a much-needed framework for how to conduct qualitative research in this field. The three dimensions of learning identified in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) create a need for research methods that examine the sociocultural components of science education. With cutting-edge studies and examples consistent with the NGSS, this book offers comprehensive research methods for integrating discourse and sociocultural practices in science and engineering education and provides key tools for applying this framework for students, pre-service teachers, scholars, and researchers.

The Handbook of Applied Linguistics is a collection of newly commissioned articles that provide a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the field of Applied Linguistics. Provides a comprehensive and current picture of the field of Applied Linguistics. Contains 32 newly commissioned articles that examine both the applications of linguistics to language data and the use of real world language to ameliorate social problems. Valuable resource for students and researchers in applied linguistics, language teaching, and second language acquisition. Presents applied linguistics as an independent discipline that unifies practical experience and theoretical understanding of language development and language in use.

Silence takes on meaning based on the contexts of its occurrence. This is especially true in social interactions: consider the difference between silence after "lemme think," and silence after "will you marry me?" This book examines a particular form of silence, the conversational lapse. These regularly appear in conversations when all interactants pass up the opportunity to speak, and are moments when talk seems to falter or give way to matters extraneous to the conversation. What are these silences for the participants who, by virtue of not speaking, allowed them to develop? Elliott M. Hoey here offers the first in-depth analysis of lapses in conversation. Using methods from Conversation Analysis, the author explores hundreds of lapses in naturally occurring social occasions with each chapter focusing on a different aspect of how participants produce and locate order in lapses. Particular emphasis is given to how lapses emerge, what people do during the silence, and how they restart conversation afterwards. This research uncovers participants' methods for organizing lapses in their everyday affairs such that those silences are rendered as understandable periods of non-talk. By articulating participants' understandings of when and where talk is relevant, necessary, or appropriate, the research brings into focus the borderlines between talk-in-interaction and other realms of social life. This book shows lapses to be a particular and fascinating kind of silence with unique relevancies for the social situations of which they are a part.

This volume offers recent developments in pragmatics and adjacent territories of investigation, including important new concepts such as the pragmatic act and the pragmeme, and combines developments in neighboring disciplines in an integrative holistic pragmatic approach. The young science of pragmatics has, from its inception, differentiated itself from neighboring fields in the humanities, especially the disciplines dealing with language and those focusing on the social and anthropological aspects of human behavior, by focusing on the language user in his or her societal environment.This collection of papers continues that emphasis on language use, and pragmatic acts in their context. The editors and contributors share a perspective that essentially considers language as a system for communication and wants to look at language from a societal perspective, and accept the view that acts of interpretation are essentially embedded in culture. In an interdisciplinary approach, some authors explore connections with social theory, in particular sociology or socio-linguistics, some offer a political stance (critical discourse analysis), others explore connections with philosophy and philosophy of language, and several papers address problems in theoretical pragmatics.