Glenn - Studies in Language and Social Interaction - 2002

Studies in Language
and Social Interaction

In Honor of Robert Hopper
LEAs COMMUNICATION SERIES

Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, General Editors
Selected titles in Language and Discourse (Donald Ellis, Advisory Editor) include:
Ellis From Language to Communication, Second Edition
Haslett/Samter Children Communicating: The First Five Years
Locke Constructing The Beginning: Discourses of Creation Science
Ramanathan Alzheimer Discourse: Some Sociolinguistic Dimensions
Sigman Consequentiality of Communication
Tracy Understanding Face-to-Face Interactions
For a complete list of titles in LEAs Communication Series, please contact Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers
Studies in Language and Social

Interaction
In Honor of Robert Hopper
Edited by
Phillip J.Glenn
Emerson College
Curtis D.LeBaron
Brigham Young University
Jenny Mandelbaum
Rutgers University
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

Mahwah, New Jersey London
Copyright 2003 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
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Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
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Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Studies in language and social interaction/edited by Phillip J.Glenn, Curtis D.LeBaron,
Jenny S.Mandelbaum.
p. cm.
Festschrift for Robert Hopper.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-3732-9 (alk. paper)
1. Sociolinguistics. 2. Interpersonal communication. 3. Social interaction.
4. Conversation. I. Glenn, Phillip J. II. LeBaron, Curtis D. III. Mandelbaum, Jenny S.
IV. Hopper, Robert.
P40.E93 2001
306.44dc21
00054879
ISBN1-4106-0696-1Master e-book ISBN
ISBN0-8058-3732-9(Print Edition)
Dedication
To Robert Hopper (19451998)
Scholar, Teacher, Colleague, Friend
Descriptions are the gifts observers give:

Refraining patterns message bearers live.1
1
From poem by Robert Hopper, Observer: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Communication Theory,
1991, 1, 267268.
Contents
1. An Overview of Language and Social Interaction Research

Curtis D.LeBaron, Jenny Mandelbaum, and Phillip J.Glenn
PART I: ORIENTING TO THE FIELD OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL

INTERACTION
32
2.Extending the Domain of Speech Evaluation: Message Judgments

James J.Bradac
3.Designing Questions and Setting Agendas in the News Interview

John C.Heritage
4.Taken-for-Granteds in (an) Intercultural Communication

Kristine L.Fitch
5. So, What Do You Guys Think?: Think Talk and Process in Student-Led
Classroom Discussions
Robert T.Craig and Alena L.Sanusi
6.Gesture and the Transparency of Understanding

Curtis D.LeBaron and Timothy Koschmann
PART II: TALK IN EVERYDAY LIFE
35
44
77
87
102
113
7. Utterance Restarts in Telephone Conversation: Marking Topic Initiation and

Reluctance
Charlotte M.Jones
8.Recognizing Assessable Names

Charles Goodwin
9.Interactional Problems With Did You Questions and Responses

Susan D.Corbin
116
128
138
10.Managing Optimism
Wayne A.Beach
11.Rejecting Illegitimate Understandings

Samuel G.Lawrence
12.Interactive Methods for Constructing Relationships

Jenny Mandelbaum
13.A Note on Resolving Ambiguity

Gail Jefferson
148
165
175
186
viii Contents
14. The Surfacing of the Suppressed
Emanuel A.Schegloff
204
15. Sex, Laughter, and Audiotape: On Invoking Features of Context to Explain

Laughter in Interaction
Phillip J.Glenn
16. Gender Differences in Telephone Conversations

Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra
234
224
PART III: TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS
246
17. Comparative Analysis of Talk-in-Interaction in Different Institutional

Settings: A Sketch
Paul Drew
18. Conversational Socializing on Marine VHP Radio: Adapting Laughter and

Other Practices to the Technology in Use
Robert E.Sanders
19. Law Enforcement and Community Policing: An Intergroup Communication

Approach
Jennifer L.Molloy and Howard Giles
20.Preventatives in Social Interaction

G.H.Morris
21. The Interactional Construction of Self-Revelation: Creating an Aha

Moment
E.DuffWrobbel
22. A World in a Grain of Sand: Therapeutic Discourse as Making Much of

Little Things
Kurt A.ruder
23.Modeling as a Teaching Strategy in Clinical Training: When Does It Work?

Anita Pomerantz
249
263
277
288
298
308
324
24. Indeterminacy and Uncertainty in the Delivery of Diagnostic News in Internal

Medicine: A Single Case Analysis
Douglas W.Maynard and Richard M.Frankel

334
25. Body Movement in the Transition From Opening to Task in Doctor-Patient
Interviews
Daniel P.Modaff
351
Contents ix
PART IV: EMERGING TRAJECTORIES: BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT
362
26.The Body Taken for Granted: Lingering Dualism in Research on Social

Interaction
Jrgen Streeck
366
27.Action and the Appearance of Action in the Conduct of Very Young Children
Gene H.Lerner and Don H.Zimmerman
377
28.Speech Melody and Rhetorical Style: Paul Harvey as Exemplar
John Vincent Modaff
29.The Body Present: Reporting Everyday Life Performance

Nathan P.Stucky and Suzanne M.Daughton
30. Ethnography as Spiritual Practice: A Change in the Takenf or-Granted (or an

Epistemological Break with Science)
Mara Cristina Gonzalez
31.The Tao and Narrative

Mary Helen Brown
32.Conversational Enslavement in The Truman Show

Kent G.Drummond
33.On ESP Puns

Emanuel A.Schegloff
393
410
422
433
444
452
PART V: ROBERT HOPPER: TEACHER AND SCHOLAR
461
34. Robert Hopper: An Intellectual History

Jenny Mandelbaum
462
35.The Scientist as Humanist: Moral Values in the Opus of Robert Hopper

Sandra L.Ragan
36.The Great Poem

Leslie H.Jarmon
37.Phone Openings, Gendered Talk, and Conversations About Illness

Wayne A.Beach
38.Nothing Promised
James J.Bradac
475
478
483
496
x Contents
39.The Last Word
Robert Hopper
498
APPENDIX TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS
500
CONTRIBUTORS
AUTHOR INDEX
502
508
SUBJECT INDEX
539
1
An Overview of Language and Social Interaction
Research
Curtis D.LeBaron
Jenny Mandelbaum
Rutgers University
Phillip J.Glenn
Emerson College
This book is an edited collection of empirical studies and theoretical essays about human
communication in everyday life. The primary focus is on small or subtle forms of communication that are easily overlooked and too often dismissed as unimportant. Authors examine various features of human interaction (e.g., laughter, vocal repetition, hand gestures)
occurring naturally within a variety of settings (e.g., at a dinner table, a doctors office, an
automotive repair shop), whereby interlocutors accomplish aspects of their interpersonal
or institutional lives (e.g., resolve a disagreement, report bad medical news, negotiate a
raise), all of which may relate to larger social issues (e.g., police brutality, human spirituality, death and optimism). The present collection is bound together by a recognition that
social life is largely a communicative accomplishment, that people constitute the social
realities experienced everyday through small and subtle ways of communicating, carefully
orchestrated but commonly taken for granted.
This volume represents Language and Social Interaction (LSI) perspectives on human
communication. LSI is a popular umbrella term for scholarly work carried out within and
across a number of academic disciplines. The label covers an array of assumptions, methods, and topics, which draw unity from certain family resemblances (discussed later). LSI
research includes studies of speech, language, and gesture in human communication; studies
of discourse processes, face-to-face interaction, communication competence, and cognitive
processing; conversation analytic, ethnographic, microethnographic, ethnomethodological, and sociolinguistic work; dialect and attitude studies, speech act theory, and pragmatics. Within the field of communication, scholarship in LSI has flourished in recent years.
There are large and active LSI divisions within the National Communication Association
(NCA) and the International Communication Association (ICA); the journal Research on
Language and Social Interaction (originally called Papers in Linguistics) is now a mainstay within the field; LSI research appears regularly in books (e.g., Ellis, 1999a) and a host
of mainstream disciplinary journals (e.g., Leeds-Hurwitz, 1992); and a growing number of
communication departments at major universities emphasize LSI in their curricula.
The present volume originated as a Festschrift celebrating the intellectual career of the
late Robert Hopper, a leading LSI researcher and an extraordinary teacher. Hopper completed his doctoral studies in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin and joined the faculty in
Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where he remained until the
end of his career. As author of eight books and dozens of published essays, he was known
2 Studies in language and social interaction

for his innovative thinking, lucid writing, and ability to bring together diverse scholars
and perspectives. He taught more than 60 graduate courses and supervised more than 30
doctoral dissertations1. He received many awards2 for his research and teaching. Over the
course of three decades, Hopper (and his students) pursued a rigorous speech science that
led him to the forefront of approaches to LSI, as they were new to communication. He
worked first with techniques for measuring language attitudes, then with discourse analysis, then conversation analysis, and finally explored microethnographic techniques for
analyzing videotaped data. Each of these research traditions helped to shape the field of
LSI, and each continues to make robust contributions to a rigorous science of speech in
the communication field. By soliciting papers from Hoppers former students and close
colleagues, therefore, we have collected a cross-section of cutting-edge LSI research. This
volume, then, arises out of two interrelated rationales. One, it is designed to showcase the
diversity of contemporary LSI research, altogether allowing for reflection on LSI as an
established and expanding area of study. Two, it celebrates Robert Hopper and the trajectory of his intellectual career, which in many ways paralleled developments in the field of
LSI, for which he provided impetus. To the extent that this volume forwards his ideas and
interests, it will make important contributions to the study of human communication and
social interaction.
The remainder of this chapter explicates these two interrelated themes. First, we describe
the emergence and influence of LSI within the field of communication3. The work of Robert Hopper embodies both the diversity of LSI research and the eclecticism of the communication field. Second, we describe the current state of LSI and discuss seven points
of commonality and contention within the areathat is, seven points around which LSI
scholars tend to rally in one way or another. Third, we preview the main sections of this
book and comment on its organization.
THE EMERGENCE AND INFLUENCE OF LSI WITHIN THE FIELD
OF COMMUNICATION
LSI is a relatively recent area within the field of communication, which has been dominated by rhetorical and psychological approaches for almost a century. The field of communication traces its beginnings to 1914, when a group of speech scholars met in Chicago
A chronological list of Robert Hoppers doctoral students appears in the Appendix to Chapter 34.
For example, in 1983 Hopper became the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Communication
at the University of Texas. In 1990 he was honored as one of three Outstanding Graduate Teachers
at the University of Texas. In 1994 he received ICAs B. Aubrey Fisher Mentoring Award. In 1996
he received the Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award (from the LSI Division of NCA). In 1998
he was first to be honored by NCAs newly established Mentor Fund. Over the years, Hopper made
an impressive collection of audio and video recordings of everyday interaction, known as the University of Texas Conversation Library, which in 1998 was officially named in his memory.
3
By focusing specifically upon the field of-communication, we risk de-emphasizing LSI colleagues
in other disciplines. As the terms language and social interaction suggest, LSI represents a
convergence of concerns originating in linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. Nevertheless, LSI
is especially strong within the field of communication, which is located at the crossroads of these
interdisciplinary movements.
1
2
An overview of language and Social interaction research 3

to officially break from their English (and theater) departments at various U.S. universities by organizing the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking (see
ONeill, 1915). Early publications show a division within the field: Many speech scholars advocated standards of positivistic science, with a psychological rather than a sociological bent (e.g., Winans, 1915; Woolbert, 1916, 1917); many others had a humanistic
and rhetorical emphasis, mostly grounded in neo-Aristotelian philosophy (e.g., Hudson,
1923, 1924; Hunt, 1920). Within a few decades, a respectable research literature had been
established (see Simon, 1951), but it was mostly concerned with individual performers
of speech during situations of public address. After 1950, as the field matured, its domain
extended to include a broad array of communicative phenomena within a wide variety of
human activities. Several scholars have documented the unfolding history and nature of the
communication field (see Arnold & Bowers, 1984; Benson, 1985; Bitzer & Black, 1971;
Gouran, 1990; Kibler & Barker, 1969).
In the late 1970s, a series of groundbreaking publications set the stage for LSIs emergence within the field of communication (at that time called speech communication).
Bringing together interpersonal communication and the detailed study of natural language,
Nofsinger (1975, 1976) and Hawes (1976) demonstrated and advocated scientific analyses
of naturally occurring speech without the use of statistical methodsan innovative proposition for the field of communication at that time. For instance, by drawing on conversation analytic work on presequences, Nofsinger (1975) identified a commonplace speech
device he called the demand ticket (e.g., Yuh know what?), whereby a person may
initiate a topic and at the same time secure the conversational floor. Nofsinger went on
to suggest that utterances be understood according to their location within conditionally
relevant sequences of talk, rather than in terms of gross numbers of occurrences per unit
of time or whatever (p. 9). Philipsen (1975) drew on ethnographic methods pioneered by
linguistic anthropologists Dell Hymes and Ethel Albert in his ground-breaking study of
gendered patterns of speech in a blue-collar urban neighborhood (this essay won the NCA/
LSI divisions Outstanding Publication award in 1998). Two years later, in a special issue
of Communication Quarterly (Summer 1977), naturalistic approaches (Pearce, 1977) to
communication research were more thoroughly described, including ethnomethodology
(Litton-Hawes, 1977), conversation analysis (Nofsinger, 1977), discourse analysis (Jurick,
1977), hermeneutic phenomenology (Hawes, 1977), and ethnography (Philipsen, 1977).
Naturalistic methods were soon featured in other mainstream communication journals (e.g.,
Beach, 1982). Jackson and Jacobs (1980) combined detailed study of natural language with
interests in rhetoric: They analyzed the structure of naturally occurring arguments and compared these to theoretical models of argument and the problem of enthymemes (missing
or taken-for-granted premises of arguments), thereby illustrating the utility of discourse
analysis to the field of communication generally and to rhetorical theory specifically. In an
awardwinning essay, Hopper (1981b) expanded upon the issue of the taken for granted
(TFG) in everyday communication and social life. He brought together a wide variety of
linguistic approaches, showing how concern with TFGs is a communication issue. After
reviewing the difficulties that TFGs have caused scholars across a variety of disciplines
(enthymemes for rhetoricians, presuppositions for linguists, etc.), Hopper suggested that
there may exist a functional and principled incompleteness in language use (p. 205) and
he provided a schematic model for how people handle TFGs in everyday situations. In sum,

these early publications pushed naturalistic methods into the mainstream of communication research, providing new ways of conceptualizing and analyzing communication, and
bringing attention to phenomena previously overlooked.
In the early 1980s, Robert Hopper and several other communication scholars interested in everyday language use participated in a series of conferences whereby the new
research area (LSI) took shape. The first communication conference focusing on conversational interaction and discourse processes occurred in 1981 at the University of
Nebraska (cohosted by Wayne Beach, Sally Jackson, and Scott Jacobs). The following
year, two conferences occurred: one on language and discourse processes at Michigan
State University (hosted by Don Ellis and William Donohue); the other on discourse analysis and conversational coherence at Temple University (cohosted by Karen Tracy and
Robert Craig). Participants in the Michigan State conference produced a published volume about contemporary issues in language and discourse processes (Ellis & Donohue,
1986), which represented the wide range of LSI approaches (including speech act theory,
discourse analysis, and conversation analysis) that were emerging at that time within the
field of communication. For example, Hopper, Koch, and Mandelbaum (1986) described
methods of conversation analysis, as the authors were coming to understand them. Participants in the Temple conference produced a published volume of original research (Craig
& Tracy, 1983) that evidenced a scholarly movement [with] radically different methods,
databases, and conceptual frameworks for studying human interaction (Knapp, 1983, p.
7). Each of the authors, including Hopper, examined the same data set: a careful transcription of a lengthy conversation between B and K, two female undergraduate students
who talked casually about their families, friends, food, holiday plans, horses, weather, and
whatever else happened to emerge in the course of their interaction. Authors employed
qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the structures and strategies of B and Ks
talk, providing detailed descriptions and accounts of the orderly and meaningful ways that
competent speakers may show their talk to be coherently connected. For example, Hopper
(1983) showed that coherence is an interactive accomplishment (we can no longer rely
upon a model of communication that emphasizes the role of the speaker over that of the
listener p. 84), across turns at talk (the fundamental unit of interpretation is the pair p.
80), whereby shared meanings systematically emerge and evolve (the ordering of events
in sequential time frequently seems an important tie to the interpretive process p. 92).
During the final decades of the 20th century, LSI scholars in communication brought
together approaches and concerns from a number of related movements. Hoppers research
exemplifies the eclectic interests which contributed to the emergence of LSI as a distinct
area of study. Resonating with the fields origins in rhetorical theory, LSI research on
speech evaluation sought to gauge audience responses to speakers and their messages (e.g.,
Gundersen & Hopper, 1984). Early message research employed sociolinguistic methods
to examine the effects of speech on the listener by focusing on how listeners evaluated
speakers on the basis of characteristics of the talk or the speaker (e.g., de la Zerda & Hopper, 1979; Giles & Powesland, 1975; Zahn & Hopper, 1985). The influence of ordinary
language philosophy (e.g., Austin, 1962; Wittgenstein, 1953) prompted studies of speech
as action (e.g., Hopper, 1981a). Concurrently, sociological studies reflecting the influence of symbolic interactionists directed attention to such topics as accounts and formulations under the umbrella term alignment talk (e.g., Morris & Hopper, 1987; Ragan &

Hopper, 1981). An emphasis on issues of coherence and cohesion drawn from linguistics
(Coulthard, 1977) combined with these other streams under a broader label of discourse
analysis (e.g., Ellis, 1995; Hopper, 1983). At the same time, ethnographic approaches to
communication were drawn from fields such as linguistic anthropology (e.g., Fitch & Hopper, 1983; Philipsen, 1975). Conversation analysis in the ethnomethodological tradition
(e.g., Beach, 1982) provided alternative methods for studying structures and functions of
everyday language use and, through such study, for investigating processes whereby people communicatively constitute everyday activities (e.g., Hopper & Doany, 1989; Hopper
& Drummond, 1990, 1992; Hopper & Glenn, 1994; Hopper, Thomason, & Ward, 1993).
More recently, continued technological developments (e.g., multimedia and digital video)
have opened up new opportunities for conducting detailed studies of embodied interactions, thereby creating a parallel stream to continued research on the organization and
workings of speech-in-interaction (e.g., LeBaron & Hopper, 1999). This parallel stream
furthers a tradition of ethological study and context analysis exemplified in the work of
Kendon (1990). Recent work in LSI also reflects and contributes to theory and research in
performance studies (e.g., Hopper, 1993a, 1993b). For communication researchers using
LSI methods, the essential feature of interest is human communication itself, which contrasts with scholars in related academic disciplines who use LSI methods but display ultimate preoccupation with language, society, or culture.
The relationship between LSI and the field of communication has been mutually influential and beneficial. On one hand, LSI research has increased understanding of what
communication is and how it is done. Arguably, the field of communication has been preoccupied with various factors that influence communication (such as individual dispositions,
contexts, goals, gender, etc.), and with how communication influences a variety of factors
(satisfaction, compliance, persuasion, social support, etc.), at the expense of examining
the actual processes through which communication occurs. The LSI focus on discourse
(or alternate terms such as speech, messages, talk, conversation, or interaction) has helped
shape these issues as central to the communication discipline. On the other hand, traditions
within communication studies have helped to shape LSI research. To illustrate, we identify
the following four areas of mutual influence.
First: Moving Beyond the Sender-Receiver Model
During the telecommunications boom associated with World War II, Shannon and Weaver
(1949) proposed a model of communication based on their knowledge of how the telephone works. According to their model, communication begins with a source or sender,
who encodes thoughts or feelings into a message that is then transmitted across a channel
to a receiver, who in turn decodes the message and thereby understands the information
transmitted. This model had immediate and widespread appeal as it perpetuated a psychological view and at the same time resonated with the traditional rhetorical topoi of speaker,
message, audience, and context. Although the transmission model was useful and fruitful
in many ways, and although it continues to be taken for granted by many social scientists
and laypersons, much communication research acknowledges the importance of moving
beyond the transmission model (e.g., see Goldsmith & Baxter, 1996). Arguably, too much
research on communication has tried to isolate component parts of the transmission model,

at the cost of seeing communication as a constitutive process through which interactants
work together to construct lines of action.
Three decades of LSI research have helped the field of communication to specify the
details of the move beyond the transmission model and toward a social constructionist or
constitutive view of communication. Using an array of empirical methods, LSI researchers
have shown that:
Messages are not discrete from peoplein some ways people are the message;
Notions of self and other are constituted in and through discourse, and the\boundaries between sender, message, and receiver are not always clear;
Meaning is not solely the product of the senderrather, messages and meanings are
joint creations, even if only one person appears to be doing most of the speaking;
Meanings may remain incomplete, emergent, and subject to retrospective modification;
Messages and context are mutually elaborative;
Context is invoked, oriented to, and constituted in interaction;
And conversely, context influences the organization of interaction; and so forth.
Thus, LSI researchers have shown that human interaction is partly or largely constitutive
of the component parts that the sender-receiver model takes for granted. That is to say,
through communication participants perform and realize their relative roles, interactively
negotiating the meanings of so-called messages, orienting toward some symbol systems as
relevant and recognizable, in many ways constituting their communicative context (e.g.,
Hopper, 1992b; Hopper & LeBaron, 1998). (A constitutive view of communication is further discussed later.)
Second: Reexamining Cognitive and/or Theoretical Constructs
Through different sorts of empirical investigation (often involving analysis of audio recordings, video recordings, and/or field notes), LSI researchers have reconsidered and respecified various theoretical constructs associated with the field of communication. Sometimes
specific concepts have been the target of LSI investigation from the outset. That is, LSI
researchers have occasionally set out to examine details of the empirical world with the
express purpose of scrutinizing theoretically derived concepts. For example, researchers
with a specific interest in social identity have collected and examined discourse to learn
more about the interactive construction of identity in everyday life (e.g., Carbaugh, 1993;
Mandelbaum, 1994; Tracy, 1997). Some ethnographers have reexamined the traditional
and monolithic concept of culture, respecifying it as practices whereby culture is constructed through conduct (e.g., Fitch, 1998a). Through analyses of audiotaped and videotaped communication within classrooms and schools (e.g., McHoul, 1990; see also chap.
6, this volume), LSI researchers have shown that human minds extend beyond the skin as
people depend upon social and material worlds to acquire knowledge and display intellectual ability. Therapeutic discourse has also been an object of study (e.g., Bavelas, 1989;
Buttny, 1993, 1996; LeBaron & Hopper, 1999; Morris & Chenail, 1995; Perkyl, 1995) as
LSI researchers have sought to emphasize social aspects of patients mental or psychological states. In this way, theoretical concepts associated with the field of communication have
guided LSI research, which has in turn influenced the field at large.

Other times, theoretical constructs have come under scrutiny in the course of LSI research
on a set of data already collected. Conversation analysts regularly advocate unmotivated
looking (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997; Sacks, 1984), such as through data sessions, a process
whereby data are analyzed in order to see what is going on and how it is getting done,
which routinely leads to discovering phenomena occurring in the wild, perhaps warranting respecification of theoretical constructs in the end. For instance, practices of relationship construction or dismemberment have been respecified after examinations of data have
shown an opportunity for doing so (e.g., Hopper & Drummond, 1992; Mandelbaum 1989).
Processes through which gender becomes socially relevant have been similarly reexamined
(e.g., Hopper & LeBaron, 1998; Lawrence, Stucky, & Hopper, 1990; see also chaps. 15 and
16, this volume). Philipsen (1975) used ethnographic methods to study Teamsterville culture and discovered that (and how) the value of speaking or fighting may vary significantly
from one culture to another. In his book, Conversations About Illness, Beach (1996) noted
that he did not begin with an interest in studying eating disorders or the social construction
of illnessrather, he came across data providing a compelling entry into these issues and
allowing for respecification of them. Through close examination of empirical data, then,
LSI researchers have come upon opportunities to reconsider and respecify conceptual and/
or theoretical constructs within the field of communication.
Third: Bringing Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Together
Within the field of communication (and other social sciences), verbal and nonverbal forms
of communication have traditionally been treated as separable, distinct areas of inquiry.
Although scholars of various stripes have lamented this artificial separation (e.g., see
Streeck & Knapp, 1992, who described the separation as misleading and obsolete), the field
of communication generally has made little progress toward mending the rift. Recently,
however, LSI researchers have employed methods that bring the two modalities togetheror rather, have examined vocal and visible forms of communication without separating
them in the first place. Through methods that rely on videotaped recordings of naturally
occurring interaction, LSI researchers have been able to get at communication as it is
holistically enacted by interlocutors in the first place (e.g., C.Goodwin, 1986; C.Goodwin
& M.H.Goodwin, 1986; LeBaron & Streeck, 1997; Streeck, 1984, 1993, 1994, 1996).
The field of communication and LSI research will undoubtedly continue to be mutually
influential in this area.
Fourth: Appreciating the Poetics of Language
After separating from English (and theater) departments in 1914, scholars attempting to
establish a science of speech tried to distance themselves from the literary and theatrical
traditions. Nevertheless, scholarly interest in performance and other humanistic approaches
has flourished within the field of communication. Contemporary uses of the term performance within communication include (a) a research method for studying communication,
(b) an important feature of communication, and (c) a useful metaphor for talking about
communication. This abiding interest within the field has influenced studies of language
and social interaction. Performance methods have proven useful in sociolinguistic studies

of speech evaluation (Lawrence et al., 1990). Methods in LSI, which are notorious for close
attention to discourse texts, invite noticing of poetic and performative features of everyday
interaction. For example, Hopper (1992b) likened his own transcriptions to stanzas of a
poem, and his scientific work was often inspirited with a poetic sense of social life (e.g.,
Hopper, 1991, 1992a, 1993a, 1995). Hopper and other LSI researchers have explored theoretical and theatrical applications of using transcripts plus recordings of naturally occurring
interactions as scripts for staged performance (e.g., Crow, 1988; Stucky, 1988; see also
chap. 29, this volume). This has led to a substantial body of performed and written scholarship on what has been called everyday life performance (ELP). Repeated applications
have shown that ELP makes for lively and insightful theatrical productions (e.g., Hopper,
1996). Furthermore, the ELP processes help practitioners learn about self and others, about
patterns of interaction, and about production nuances of everyday talk (Stringer & Hopper,
1997). Thus, LSI research has significantly benefited from and contributed to performance
studies within the field of communication (e.g., Gray & Van Costing, 1996).
To summarize, we have briefly described the historical emergence of LSI research
within the field of communication and have discussed a few areas of mutual influence
between the division and the field. Robert Hopper, as much or more than any other scholar,
has been central to this unfolding. We now turn our attention more specifically to current
trends within LSI research. In the following section, we identify and discuss seven points
of commonality and contention within the areathat is, contested points around which
LSI scholars tend to rally in one way or another, points whereby LSI studies bear a family
resemblance (Wittgenstein, 1953) to one another.
CURRENT TRENDS IN LSI: SEVEN POINTS OF COMMONALITY
AND CONTENTION
The field of communication is like a no-host party at an academic convention4. Communication scholars have come together and noisily organized themselves into various
divisions or interest groups where they talk, sometimes to be overheard by other groups.
Membership within each division fluctuates as scholars come and go, sometimes listening,
sometimes talking, arriving after the discussion has already begun and leaving before it is
complete. Although the organization of a particular division may be somewhat arbitrary,
it is nonetheless consequential for those involved: What may be stated and how, who may
state it and when, depends largely upon the participants who subtly negotiate the trajectory
of their conversation and the standards for appropriate participation.
LSI is an eclectic group, boasting various intellectual pedigrees. Not only are a variety
of research methods employedincluding ethnography, discourse analysis, conversation
analysis, sociolinguistics, micro-ethnography, and pragmaticsbut some scholars choose
to blend methods (e.g., Moerman, 1988; Tracy, 1995). Clearly, such diversity has had synergistic outcomes for the discipline, but it has also led to basic disagreements (e.g., see
Beach, 1995a; Sanders & Sigman, 1994; Tracy, 1994) and self-contemplation (e.g., Craig,
1999; Ellis, 1999b; Sanders, 1999; Wieder, 1999) on the nature of the discipline. As we
Our analogy is a crude adaptation of Burkes (1941/1973) parlor metaphor, where the human
condition is likened to an unending conversation (p. 111).

privilege one way of describing here, we recognize that there are countless other ways
that the field could be describedchronologically, topically, ideologically, methodologically, demographically, logistically, and so forth. Our choices (perhaps biases) have consequences for the centers and margins of the field we depict, which may include or exclude
colleagues in odd or unfortunate ways. Nevertheless, occasional stocktaking may help to
promote synergistic outcomes and prevent or reconcile unnecessary fissures within the
field. Despite the risks, our description may help newcomers who are preparing to join the
lively conversation underway, or it may help active LSI scholars assess their discipline and
participation. In recent years, especially with the start of a new millennium, LSI scholars
have seen several stocktaking exercises in the form of papers, panels, and publications
(e.g., see special issues of Research on Language and Social Interaction, such as the Talking Culture issue in 1990, and the Millennium issue in 1999). Because our description is
only one of several, we hope that it will continue dialogue rather than discourage it, invite
and include participants rather than exclude them.
Our description is organized around key pointsor contested conceptswe think
underlie, unify, and galvanize LSI research. Specifically, we propose that LSI researchers
tend to rally around the following interrelated points, agreeing and disagreeing with them
in various ways, whereby LSI studies take on a recognizable relationship to one another:
1. LSI research privileges mundane, naturally occurring interaction within casual and
institutional settings.
2. LSI research adheres to principles of an empirical social science.
3. LSI research describes and explains.
4. LSI research is inductive and abductive.
5. LSI research treats communication as constitutive and consequential.
6. LSI research emphasizes emic, participant perspectives.
7. LSI research focuses on language in use.
Why have we approached our description of LSI in this way? Because work in LSI is
unusually eclectic and faces the ongoing challenge of holding to common ground while
exploring new and different directions for scholarship. We acknowledge that our list of
seven points may be incomplete and may at some stage become obsolete. Moreover, we
strongly emphasize that adherence to any one of the seven points listed is not required for
membership within the LSI family. Rather, each point is a contested site of commonality within the field, and we present (herein) plenty of counterexamples for each point,
showing that each has been contested by the very researchers that these points have generally brought together. As evidenced by the descriptions that follow, these seven points are
interrelatedeven overlapping, though not redundant.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Privileges Mundane, Naturally Occurring
Interaction Within Casual and Institutional Settings
A conversation between two people washing dishes in their kitchen, for example, may
warrant examination as much or more than a televised presidential speech. The term mundane refers to communication that may be commonplace regardless of setting, is usually

uncelebrated, and is too often dismissed as unremarkable or unimportant. The term also
incorporates features of communication that are often ignored or regarded as peripheral,
such as vocal restarts and hesitations (e.g., C. Goodwin, 1980), laughter (e.g., Glenn, 1989,
1992, 1995; Jefferson, 1994), and seemingly insignificant acknowledgment tokens such as
oh (e.g., Heritage, 1984) and okay (Beach, 1993, 1995b). Communication is considered to be naturally occurring if it would have occurred whether or not it was observed
or recorded (see Beach, 1990, 1994). Participant observations, field notes, and audio or
video recordings of everyday speech events are considered premium data from which to
make conclusions about human communication and social life. Sacks (1984) criticized
a common concern among social scientists for finding supposed good data and good
problems. He observed:
Such a view tends to be heavily controlled by an overriding interest in what are in
the first instance known to be big issues, and not those kinds of objects they use to
construct and order their affairs, (pp. 2224)
Such emphasis on mundane and naturalistic communication diverges from a variety of
other research traditions. LSI research contrasts with methodologies that (a) rely upon
hypothetical or imagined exemplars of language use as a basis for linguistic claims, (b)
focus exclusively upon mass-mediated events, such as a television drama, as a basis for
conclusions about culture, (c) concentrate only upon big speech events, such as presidential speeches, which are supposed to be especially important to society, or (d) generate
data through experimental methods, perhaps under laboratory conditions where subjects
are removed from the social and material environments in which they typically interact.
Although LSI research privileges mundane interaction, considerable attention has been
given to popular and publicized speech events. For instance, Atkinson (1984) scrutinized
the behavioral patterns (both vocal and visible) of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan during public speeches, and identified devices whereby the politicians cued audience applause and interactively performed charisma. In a special issue of Research on
Language and Social Interaction, several scholars analyzed patterns of turntaking and
interruption during an explosive television interview (or rather argument) between Dan
Rather and George Bush, when Bush was campaigning for the U.S. presidency in the 1980s
(e.g., Nofsinger, 1988). Bavelas, Black, Chovil, and Mullett (1990) examined equivocal
statements that politicians use to cope with no-win situationsthat is, when all direct
messages would lead to negative consequences. Lynch and Bogen (1996) studied congressional procedure and testimony associated with the Iran-Contra hearings, showing how the
history of illegal activities was contested and interactively produced. Carbaugh (1989)
conducted an ethnographic study of the Donahue television show, depicting it as a portrait of American society. John Modaff (chap. 28, this volume) microanalyzed the speech
melody of radio personality Paul Harvey, and identified rhetorical properties of his vocal
inflections. These citations (and numerous others) notwithstanding, research on language
and social interaction is overwhelmingly concerned with mundane features of mundane
interaction. Although researchers occasionally focus on the communicative behaviors and
cultural furnishings of politicians and other public performers, it is the behaviors and the

furnishings themselves that warrant the LSI studynot the celebrities, nor their histories.
Studies of the spectacular may inform us about what is commonplace.
Mundane interaction (as we defined it) occurs in both casual and institutional settings.
Beach (1996) argued that families are the primordial institutional systems (p. xi) and
that interactions between, say, a grandmother and a granddaughter might reveal patterns of
interrogation like those found in a courtroom. LSI researchers have entered an array of
social institutions and organizations to explicate the everyday behaviors whereby institutions are interactively formed and sustained (e.g., Atkinson & Drew, 1979; Atkinson &
Heritage, 1984; Drew & Heritage, 1992; Houtkoop-Steenstra & Antaki, 1997; Metzger &
Beach, 1996; Morris & Cheneil, 1995; Tracy, 1995, 1997). For example, recent research
on medical interviewing has addressed significant moments between doctors and patients
(e.g., Beach & Dixson, 2000). Conversations about health and illness also occur at home,
such as when family members discuss a loved ones diagnosis and treatment for cancer
(chap. 10, this volume).
Recently, the notion of naturally occurring has been indirectly and directly called into
question. For instance, Pratt and Wieder (1993) conducted an ethnography of public
speaking among the Osage Nation, a Native American community. Not only were public
speeches prepared or scripted in advance, these researchers asked subjects to reperform
speeches that they had given before during some prior ceremony or event of the Osage
Nation. Pratt and Wieder argued that their data were sufficiently natural because the focus
of their study was on the formal features of the original speeches and not the in-themoment contingencies (p. 358). Bavelas (1999) worked to broaden notions of naturalistic
within the field of LSI. She argued that laboratory data should not be dismissed out of hand,
because when people communicate under laboratory conditions, they necessarily employ
the sorts of vocal and visible behaviors whereby they communicate everydaythere is
no other way to interact. Moreover, Bavelas suggested that a laboratory may need to be
recognized as a special site (with its own social and material affordances), but it should not
be rejected as artificial just because it is built to serve researchers endsafter all, every
built space serves some social and micropolitical end.
The notion of naturalistic has also been stretched by literary inclinations. In his
book on gender and gender talk, for example, Hopper (in press) supplemented his tape
recordings of naturally occurring talk with exemplars from other sources, including the
following:
Fiction. For obvious reasons, there are few candid recordings of moments involving
sexuality, sexual harassment, codependent family interaction, and so forth. Films regularly portray such dialogue in a way that resembles everyday social interaction, which
may serve as a resource for scientific inquiry.
Self-reports. Ethnographers routinely interview people about their speech practices.
Self-report data show few discourse features and they may be replete with socialdesirability biases, but participants recollections of social interaction have proven to
be a useful resource.
Hypothetical examples. In the absence of recorded data or firsthand observation, a
writer may fabricate a hypothetical example to illustrate (precisely) a particular
argument. Such fabrications often stand up through replication and critical scrutiny,

perhaps due to the incredible overdetermined orderliness of language use and social
interaction.
Hopper openly acknowledged the risk of mixing evidence types. Of course scientists must
be wary of generalizing from film to life, and self-report findings should be confirmed
by fuller discourse renderings. Nevertheless, by mixing evidence types Hopper was able
to address areas of theory and general concern for which limited data could be found. In
another study, Drummond (chap. 32, this volume) participated in the dialogue between
real and fiction: Using Hoppers (198 la; 1981b) notion of taken-for-granted, Drummond
explicated the idea of interactional enslavement within the movie The Truman Show.
Points suggested by more literary sorts of evidence may be taken as a stimulus to collect
more naturalistic examples of similar phenomena.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Adheres to Principles of an Empirical
Social Science
Research conclusions about communication, culture, and social life are properly supported
by firsthand observations of human interaction. When LSI researchers present their findings in papers or reports, they usually include examples or excerpts of the phenomenon
under investigation. Careful descriptions, field notes, transcriptions, photographs, videotapes, and other sorts of recordings are taken to represent the audible and visible behaviors
that social interactants made available to each other (in the first place) and to analysts (who
acted as overhearers and onlookers). Hence, all arguments are based on evidence that must
pass the test of intersubjective agreement among researchers and readers (see Beach, 1990,
1994; Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997). A particular phenomenon is taken to exist, to the extent
that data, analyses, and conclusions are reproducible or verifiable by others.
At the same time that most language and social interaction researchers maintain an
empirical stance toward their objects of study, we suggest that they necessarily engage in
an ongoing interpretive process. Researchers are participants in the social world they analyze, both creating and interpreting human experience, moment to moment and day to day.
Researchers do more than document patternsthey appraise the significance of behaviors
documented. Geertz(1973) wrote:
Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance
he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of
meaning, (p. 5)
To some extent, all research on language and social interaction has kinship with the work
of Geertz, who sought to understand human cultures through thick descriptionrather
than explain them through theories of causation or natural law. Research on language and
social interaction is itself suspended within the webs of culture that it brings to light. Forms
of communication that may be empirically ascertained are also interpreted and thereby
made meaningful to participants and analysts alike.
Within the field of language and social interaction, some methods flaunt their interpretive stripes more than others. On one hand, ethnographers seek presence and participation

within the speech communities they study, acknowledging their interpretive role and even
relishing the flavor of their own influence. Their basis for selecting objects of ethnographic
study is sometimes unsystematic and rather intuitiveby design. For instance, Fitch
(1994) observed that some ethnographers choose to examine cultural sites and communicative practices that contrast strikingly with their own. The best way to understand and
accurately report on a culture, the ethnographic argument goes, is to fully experience and
interpret it as do the cultural members themselves. In a study of culture within the southern
United States, Fitch (1998b) recorded a conversation in which she participated; she then
transcribed and analyzed the talk (including her own); and finally she contemplated (as part
of her ethnographic report) the difference between her in-the-moment (subjective) experience and her later (objective) microanalysis of it. Hence, to change the ethnographer would
be to alter the ethnographic outcome.
On the other hand, conversation analysts may downplay and even deny their interpretive role. They rarely appear as participants within the data they choose to examine; they
seldom rely on in-the-moment observations of speech events, choosing instead to focus
on audio or video recordings; and they present their findings as being empirically evident,
independent of the particular analyst. Hopper et al. (1986) described conversation analysis
(CA) as a search for patterns in the mode of natural science. As paleontology describes
fossils to understand geological history, CA describes recordings to understand structures of
conversational action and members practices for conversing (p. 169). Despite the empirical rigor that conversation analysts insist on (see also, Sacks, 1984, 1992), they ought to
also recognize their subtle but substantive interpretive moves. Even before recorded messages are analyzed, recording itself is an interpretive act: Cameras and tape recorders must
be placed, pointed, and turned on, which is to make decisions about what is important or
worth recording; transcripts are necessarily selective. Moreover, conversation analysts rely
on members knowledge (i.e., the interpretations that interactants show to one another in
the course of their interaction) to understand what is being displayed within data. Some
conversation analysts accept and even embrace their interpretive bent. For example, Hoppers (1992b) analysis of telephone conversation often waxed poetic. He encouraged readers to attune themselves to a primordial voicethe voice of poetry in conversation, the
great Poem, speaking us (p. 190). Thus, even the most rigorous empiricist may orient to,
listen to, and be inspired by the humanist within.
Despite these variations within the field of LSI, there is a general commitment to
empirical methods. After acknowledging the role of intuition in ethnographic research,
Fitch (1994) recommended more systematic bases for ethnographic choices. And Hoppers
(1992b) poetic treatment of telephone conversations was constantly based upon empirical
details displayed by participants to one another (p. 20). Overwhelmingly, LSI researchers treat what they are doing as meriting scientific status, affirming the need for clear and
repeatable methods to produce replicable results.
Research on Language and Social Interaction
Describes and Explains
By carefully and thoroughly describing human interaction, researchers begin to understand
and explain it. Most LSI research provides straightforward (even matter-of-fact) accounts

of phenomena, written as if the features of human interaction exist in the social world to be
documented and interpreted. Nevertheless, description is not a neutral activity and data are
not self-explicating. The item(s) chosen for analysis represent important choices (whether
conscious or unconscious) by the researcher. For this reason, LSI researchers tend to be
reflexive about word choice, writing style, and presentation of data, recognizing that these
are in part constitutive of the social phenomena under investigation. Conversation analysts
seem especially particular about terminology. For example, when Pomerantz (1989) suggested that conversation analysts translate CA jargon into more commonsense lay terminology, so as to make it more accessible to more readers, Jefferson (1989) disagreed. Jefferson
insisted that CA terminology is not just a complicated way of saying what otherwise can
be said with lay, commonsense, interactants terminology (p. 427); rather, she insisted, CA
terms are imbued with special ways of looking at and describing the social world.
Data presentation is also an ongoing concern. Ochs (1979) observed that presentation
tools such as transcription systems are inherently theoretical and should not be regarded
as one-to-one representations of reality. Jacoby and Ochs (1995) emphasized that human
interaction is contingently dynamic and unfolding in interactional time (p. 179) and that
researchers who use recordings and transcriptions should not treat communication as a
freestanding text. Jarmon (1996a) became frustrated with the presentational constraints
of transcriptions and written descriptions, so she began using multimedia technology and
eventually produced a dissertation on CD-ROM. Her dissertation proposed an amendment
to the turn-taking model published by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974), who based
their model on analysis of audio recordings. Through analysis of videotaped recordings,
Jarmon concluded that embodied actions (such as facial expressions) are in some ways
similar to grammatical units and may alter the projectability of turn boundaries or even
function as a complete turn. Thus, the distinction between good description and good
analysis blurs, as description documents and characterizes phenomena, providing both the
basis and the impetus for analysis that follows in the wake. Even the term description
may prove misleading or unduly limiting, to the extent that it buys into a representative
view that there is a reality out there that may be described, in contrast to a social constructionist perspective that the act of attempting to write about something discursively
constitutes that something.
Within the field of language and social interaction, description and explanation are
regarded as worthwhile research goals or achievements in and of themselves. This contrasts with a hypothetico-deductive approach to communication research, which views
description as only a first step that is incomplete unless followed by more substantive steps
of developing theory, deriving hypotheses, and testing them experimentally. Descriptive
research also contrasts with critical research, for which description may precede and set up
a move to evaluation by practical, aesthetic, political, or moral standards. A third contrast
is with applied research, for which description provides a starting point allowing a move
to prescription, training, or pedagogy. There are plenty of examples of LSI research that
do make critical or applied turns. Van Dijks critical discourse analyses (1993, e.g.), like
Conquergoods (1991) critical ethnography, seek to apply naturalistic methods to social
problems. Likewise, LSI research on discourse within institutional settings (e.g., Drew
& Heritage, 1992; Houtkoop-Steenstra & Antaki, 1997; Tracy, 1995, 1997) either explicitly makes or leads closer to deriving prescriptive applications from research findings.

Nevertheless, even in these examples of LSI research, description and explanation remain
the central tasks.
Research on Language and Social Interaction is Inductive and Abductive
There is a general commitment among LSI scholars to avoid premature theory building.
Rather than begin with a research question or hypothesis (from which data collection,
analysis, and conclusions would logically follow), LSI researchers regularly begin with
data: Naturally occurring communication is observed or recorded and analyzed, and from
this process new (sometimes revolutionary) claims and conclusions emerge. Ethnographers
have a long tradition of selecting speech communities to study without knowing in advance
what sorts of findings might arise. Sacks (1984) recommended the following bottom-up
approach to research:
When we start out with a piece of data, the question of what we are going to end up
with, what kind of findings it will give, should not be a consideration. We sit down
with a piece of data, make a bunch of observations, and see where they will go. Treating some actual conversation in an unmotivated way, that is, giving some consideration to whatever can be found in any particular conversation we happen to have our
hands on, subjecting it to investigation in any direction that can be produced from it,
can have strong payoffs, (p. 27)
Although some readers may think Sacks is being idealisticthat is, to what extent can any
examination be truly unmotivated?many LSI studies indeed begin in this way. Soon
researchers notice and take interest in some phenomenon, and unmotivated looking gives
way to directed examination and explanation. As a research project takes shape, inductive
methods tend to become more abductive. Analysts go looking for instances within naturally occurring data that may support a particular claim. The field of LSI is notorious for socalled bottom-up inquiry and inductive proof, whereby claims are consistently grounded
by reference to evidence in data.
Technology not only supports naturalistic research, it facilitates inductive inquiry and
insight. A primary challenge for LSI researchers is to recognize what is commonly taken
for granted: Because researchers are themselves embedded every day within forms of communication and culture, it may be difficult for them to look at the social world that
they are accustomed to looking through. Field notes, transcripts, photographs, audiotapes, films, videotapes, multimedia, and other forms of technology help to make the social
world strange, enabling researchers to perceive it, as Garfmkel would say, for another
first time. Bateson and Mead (1942) reported using photographs in their ethnographic
work because photographs could capture and present behavioral events better than verbal
descriptions. Sacks founded the field of CA after discovering recordings of telephone conversations, which provided the proximate source for the focused attention to talk itself
perhaps the most critical step toward the development of conversation analysis (Schegloff,
1992a, p. xvi). Kendon studied talk until 1963, when he discovered film and began to
analyze embodied interaction: It became apparent at once that there were complex patterns and regularities of behavior, and that the interactants were guiding their behavior,

each in relation to the other (Kendon, 1990, p. 4). Using multimedia technology, LeBaron
(1998) digitized and then microanalyzed video recordings, and found recurring hand gestures that were identifiable because the computer provided a nonlinear environment within
which to work, making it possible to analyze multiple videotaped images simultaneously,
juxtaposing them on the computer screen. Moreover, technology allows for detailed and
repeated examination of messages. It also affords the opportunity to manipulate messages
so that analysts can see how the interaction changes when they slow it down or zoom in on
different features of a visual image.
Induction can serve both as a pattern for the research process and a pattern for the written research report (although these need not parallel each other). Reports tend to take shape
as either (a) claims based on a collection of occurrences, each documented and discussed,
that altogether warrant some subsuming claim about LSI within a speech community or
culture (e.g., Coutu, 2000; C.Goodwin, 1980; ten Have, 1999), or (b) a detailed explication of some single, perhaps singular, occurrence that reflects upon the language and social
interaction of a speech community or culture (e.g., C.Goodwin, 1979; Philipsen, 2000).
What occurrence(s) a researcher chooses to reportor is able to reportdepends on the
LSI method being employed. With roots in a sociological method Znaniecki (1934) called
analytic induction, conversation analysts may assume the responsibility of identifying a
structural pattern in a way that shows recurrence in the routine instances but also shows
orientation to the regularity in the deviant cases (e.g., Schegloff, 1986). The aim is to
provide an account of the phenomenon that holds beyond the particular instance, such an
account thereby being both context sensitive and context free (Sacks et al., 1974). Discourse analysts choices may be informed by a wide variety of influences, from linguistic categorizations and structures to whatever themes or beliefs subjects manifest through
their situated discourse or through interviews with the researcher (e.g., Tracy & Muller,
1994). Ethnographic choices may be guided by the researchers intuition or reflection, the
subjects disclosures or interpretations of occurrences, the community members overall
insights and reflections (as gleaned through interviews), or some universal theory (e.g.,
politeness theory) against which the ethnographer may work (Fitch, 1994). Despite obvious differences in these inductive methods, there is an abiding assumption that a priori
theorizing risks diverting attention away from the central tasks of describing and explaining phenomena based on observable details (see Sanders & Sigman, 1994). A combined
emphasis on description, explanation, induction, and abduction gives LSI work a basis for
its empirical grounding.
Not all LSI research is inductive. In his early programmatic statements about the ethnography of speaking, Hymes (1978) asserted that descriptive accounts of cultural ways
of speaking could and should be followed by subsequent research in which hypotheses
are developed and tested in the field. Sociolinguistic research on power and speaker style
often operates under a deductive framework, drawing on preceding research to generate
hypotheses for testing (chap. 2, this volume). Mulac, Bradac, and Gibbons (2001) draw on
previous research to generate (and subsequently test) research questions and a hypothesis
regarding gender-based differences in language use. Discourse analytic, conversation analytic, and ethnographic reports may make use of previous research to explicate features
within a present set of data, and as findings accumulate, opportunities increase for applying
generalized claims in making sense of newly encountered particular instances. Periodically

a researcher may take stock of some line of research and make a generalized statement
about a phenomenon (e.g., Morris, White, & Iltis, 1994). Moreover, some research focuses
on a theory question that the data did not in the first place suggest; some analyses rely on
data having turned up that happen to relate to a particular question or theory or practice.
For example, Hopper and Drummond (1990) joined a theoretical discussion about romance
turning points only after they found a telephone recording that happened to include a
dating break-up. Nevertheless, the primary goal of most LSI research involves careful
description and explanation, accomplished through the inductive and abductive process of
gradually building generalized claims from analysis of particular cases of a phenomenon.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Treats Communication as
Constitutive and Consequential
The transmission model of communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), discussed earlier,
typifies a representative view of communication, which sees language as reflecting a preexisting and external reality. Although the transmission model was widely accepted and
continues to be taken for granted by most social scientists and laypersons, it has been
repudiated by three decades of research on LSI, which shows that human interaction is
partly or largely constitutive of the component parts that the transmission model presupposes. Even social conditions thought to be stable are contingent and constantly shifting
as interlocutors co-construct their social worlds (Jacoby & Ochs, 1995)including gender (Sheldon, 1996), ethnic identity (He, 1995), and individual competence (C. Goodwin,
1995). Setting aside the assumption that context exists a priori and that context unilaterally
shapes communication, LSI research has shown how context may be invoked, oriented
to, and constituted through social interaction at the same time that context may influence
the organization of communication (e.g., see Drew & Heritage, 1992; Tracy, 1998). The
LSI perspective that communication and context are mutually elaborative contrasts with
more representative, static, or external to message (Hopper, 1992b) approaches. According to a constitutive view, then, communication is a primary means whereby social realities, cultural contexts, and the meanings of messages are interactively accomplished and
experienced (Stewart, 1995).
Commitments to a representative or constitutive view can operate at two levels. The first
level is the extent to which researchers treat interactants as themselves constituting their
social realities. Ethnomethodology, with its focus on how people construct social order, has
informed conversation analysis and allied methods. Expounding on the work of Garfinkel,
Heritage (1984) observed that messages are not inherently meaningful, because communicative behaviors are subject to inference and open to negotiation among participants:
Utterances accomplish particular actions by virtue of their placement and participation
within sequences of action (p. 245). In an examination of a videotaped business meeting, Streeck (1996) found that material objectsnot just spoken and written messages
may become (situated) symbols through their appropriation and physical placement during
face-to-face interaction. Among the things that interaction may accomplish is the instantiation of social roles (Schegloff, 1992b), everything from sender-receiver to mother-daughter
(Hopper, 1992b). In analyses of storytelling, C. Goodwin (1984) and Mandelbaum (1987)
identified patterns of talk whereby the roles of storyteller and hearer were jointly achieved.

Button (1992) examined recordings of job interviews and identified question-and-answer
structures of speech whereby people may perform the roles of interviewer and interviewee.
Even built spaces (i.e., physical structures made of brick and steel) are given shape and
significance through social interaction. LeBaron and Streeck (1997) examined a videotaped
police interrogation in which participants moved their bodies in strategic ways, appropriating and interpreting the physical features of their interrogation room, making possible
certain vocal arguments that eventually moved the suspect toward confession.
The second level is the extent to which researchers explicitly acknowledge or problematize how research itself represents or constitutes the social phenomena under investigation.
In other words, do researchers discover and represent the objects of their study, or does the
research process itself bring phenomena into being? It is difficult to find examples of LSI
research that take a radically constitutive stance at this second level by explicitly focusing on the researchers role in constituting the objects of study. This provides a point of
divergence for ethnographers working in the Hymesian ethnography of speaking tradition
and those engaging in autoethnography (e.g., Bochner & C.Ellis, 1995). Likewise, some
ethnomethodologists have criticized conversation analysts for failing to practice radical
reflexivity (Pollner, 1991). Many discourse analytic, conversation analytic, and sociolinguistic studies tend to employ a reporting vocabulary and posture that minimizes explicit
attention to the researcher as an active creator of meaning (see item 3, earlier).
The ethnomethodological roots of some methods could nudge researchers toward viewing their work as constitutive. Conversation analysts, for example, avoid invoking labels or
categories or contexts unless those are demonstrably relevant for participants. For instance,
Button (1992) said that in the face of multiple categorization possibilities for any person
(an interviewer may be a father as well, for instance), the warrantable use of a categorization by a researcher resides in the participants orientation to and constitution of their
activities (p. 230). Although such self-awareness among researchers has the blush of a
constitutive view, conversation analysts regard their reflexivity as a form of rigor and see
themselves as all the more accurate in their reporting. Occasionally LSI researchers turn
their cameras and recording devices on themselves. For instance, Jarmon (1996b) examined videotapes of conversation analysts at work. While participating in a data session,
the analysts performed with their bodies what they saw in their data, tailoring their performances to display specific analyses and arguments. Jarmon discussed the degree to which
performance may play a part in how research is conducted (p. 16), but her conclusions
stopped short of a radically constitutive view of research. In another study, Modaff and
Modaff (1999) talked to each other on the telephone, recorded their conversations at both
locations, transcribed both recordings, and then analyzed both transcriptions using conversation analytic methods. After finding substantive differences between the transcriptions,
the researchers questioned the accuracy of mainstream recording devices and hence the
accuracy of LSI research that depends on such devices. Thus, Modaff and Modaff took a
representative stance by arguing for more accuracy in LSI research methodsthey did not
assume a radically constitutive view of the researcher as one who more or less creates the
phenomena under investigation.
In practice, the representative view and the constitutive view are not mutually exclusive, freestanding alternatives; rather, they are ways of conceptualizing communication
that have points of convergence. Within the division of LSI, or even within a particular

research report, combinations of these views may be evident (e.g., see Tracy, 1998, who
edited a special journal issue on Analyzing Context, in which LSI researchers aligned
with representative or constitutive views in various ways). To illustrate, consider the extent
to which culture determines or is determined by everyday communication. Some LSI
researchers (e.g., ethnographers) may implicitly or explicitly recognize that communication at any one moment is responsive to the history of interactional moments experienced
by participants individually and collectively over time. Others (e.g., conversation analysts)
may ignore or downplay the impact of established cultural or linguistic resources on a
particular moment of interaction or on a phenomenon under investigation unless interactants show that they take them to be relevant. Moerman, who combined ethnographic and
conversation analytic methods (e.g., 1988), observed that the work of producing ethnicity
and identity involves both durable culture and the momentary contingencies of interaction
(1993, p. 85). Sequeira (1993) conducted an ethnographic study of address terms (e.g.,
you, mom, doctor, etc.), which were used in both conventional and unconventional
ways, whereby social participants both reinstantiated their culture and constituted it anew.
Thus, the interplay between representative and constitutive views within LSI research may
be seen to resonate with the interplay among social interactants themselves.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Emphasizes Emic,
Participant Perspectives
Social scientists who study communication and culture sometimes make the distinction
between emic and etic forms of research5. The first (emic) reports the members (or
subjects) view of their communication and community; the second (etic) reports the outsiders (or researchers) view. This distinction has been important within the LSI tradition,
among scholars who avoid imposing their own theorized views on the social phenomena they examine, who strive instead to ground their descriptions and arguments within
the social displays that the participants constitute and at the same time experience. Emic
understandings may be uncovered in a number of ways. Through participant observation,
ethnographers are able to speak and move within a speech community, pursuing depth and
breadth of understanding through extended involvement, literally assuming the perspectives of those that they study. Some ethnographic work is coupled with detailed explications of small moments, whereby the many strands of members understandings may
be both teased apart and brought together within an ethnographic report. For example,
Liberman (1995) explained:
When doing studies of intercultural communication it is important to present to the
reader the looks of the world for the participants, for that is what the participants are
The terms emic and etic were derived from the linguistic words phonemic and phonetic
(Pike, 1966). When a sound difference between two words produces a meaning difference, the linguistic difference is said to be phonemic. When a sound difference between two words does not
produce a meaning difference, the linguistic difference is phonetic. Hence, emic research reports
what is meaningful to the cultural member or participant, and etic research reports what is primarily
meaningful or recognizable to the researcher or outsider.

attending to and so are the only sociological facts worthy of the name. A faithful
recordingfaithful not to sociological (including ethnomethodological) principles
but to the looks of the world for the participants themselvesnecessitates laying out
the contingent details of interactional events to a precision that readers may find tiresome. Some readers may be presented with more detail than they care to know. But
there are no shortcuts to the lived world of social participants, (p. 119)
Ethnographers and sometimes discourse analysts choose to interview interactants about
their experiences and understandings. Tracy and Muller (1994) studied academic discourse
(e.g., during departmental meetings or colloquia) by recording and transcribing it, but
they also interviewed the participants to more fully ascertain the beliefs, attitudes, and
evaluative expectations (p. 321) that the participants brought to their social interaction.
Moreover, these researchers attended closely to discourse that occurred after a particular
speech event, because it might be especially revealing:
We would expect the beliefs to be most directly visible in peoples aftertalk, the
postmortem analyses of discussion occasions that occur in offices and hallways. That
is, beliefs about what is appropriate (or what is not appropriate) would repeatedly
be asserted, or implicitly assumed, in the criticisms and complaints people make
about actual occasions. In this sense, the language of aftertalk is more similar to the
language of interview-talk, (p. 344)
In response to Tracy and Muller, the journal editors (Sanders & Sigman, 1994) questioned
whether interviewing was an appropriate way to study social interaction. The editorial
comments displayed a preference by many LSI researchers to recover meanings and understandings as they are displayed or oriented to in situ by interactants (e.g., chaps. 14, 21, 22,
this volume). Such focus on how communicators understandings are located in specific
characteristics of talk is sometimes called the message-intrinsic view of communication
(Hopper, 1992b; Mandelbaum, 1991). In short, different notions of meaning and understanding result in different sorts of LSI research, all devoted to emic accounts of social
interaction.
Some strands of LSI research do not explicitly focus on participants perspectives. In
some discourse analytic approaches, where the goal is to lay out the usage of a conversational object, recovering participants meanings may not be a principal objective. Rather,
format may be seen as somewhat independent of the local situation in which they are
found (e.g., van Dijk, 1993). Other research that does not explicitly focus on participants
perspectives nonetheless addresses issues of how the communication of one participant
impacts another. For instance, research on speech evaluation shows how characteristics of
a speakers speech may result in particular evaluations of that speaker (e.g., chap. 2, this
volume).
Research on Language and Social Interaction Focuses on Language in Use
Although different approaches to LSI research may have different agendas, virtually all
approaches regard language in use as central to communication and hence the study of

communication. Ethnographers, discourse analysts, and conversation analysts typically
start from the premise that language is used in orderly ways to enact particular activities, roles, and relationships. For example, Katriels (1993) ethnographic study of Israeli
communication and culture included consideration of lefargena way of speaking that
some cultural members adopt. She wrote:
Whereas parsing out the semantic features of lefargen would in itself be an interesting analytic taskmy main interest lies in reflecting upon the larger contextual
issues associated with the adoption (through lexical borrowing) and spread of the
term as part of Israeli social semantics. I submit that in commending a person as
someone who knows how to express supportspeakers give voice to an ethnosociological model in which social relations and interpersonal patterns of a particular
kind are verbally reified and valorized, (p. 33)
What some form of communication means, Katriels study illustrates, is largely what it
is being used to do. The doing of communication is the means by which social life is constituted, moment to moment and turn by turn. Each LSI approach uses different research
strategies to uncover the orderly ways that language is used. Studies of language attitudes
take it that specific structures or features of language create certain impressions of speakers. Some approaches pay particular attention to how a given activity is undertaken. Others are more interested in why it is done. Nevertheless, a common feature of work within
the LSI rubric is that its focus is on situated language, rather than language as an abstract
commodity (e.g., Searle, 1979).
Recently, LSI researchers have extended notions of language in use to include embodied
processes, recognizing that verbal and nonverbal behaviors necessarily occur together,
providing for their mutual performance and interpretation, making suspect any isolated
examination or treatment of one (Moerman, 1990; Streeck and Knapp, 1992; chaps. 6, 25,
26, 27 and 29, this volume). Several researchers have documented peoples orchestrated
use of what have traditionally been regarded as separate channels of behavior. For example, C. Goodwin (1980) explicated subtle forms of coordination between utterance-initial
restarts and shifts in participants eye gaze (hence attention) toward the speaker. Heath
(1986) studied the organization of speech and body movement (especially shifts in posture
and eye gaze) during medical consultations, whereby patients may direct their doctors
attention toward parts of their bodies that need medical attention. Streeck (1993) showed
how hand gestures may be exposed (i.e., made an object of attention during moments of
interaction) through their coordination with indexical forms of speech (e.g., words such as
this) and eye gaze (which may perform pointing functions). C. Goodwin (1996) examined grammar as interactionally situatednot limited to phenomena within the stream of
speech, but encompassing structures and organization associated with the endogenous
activity systems within which strips of talk are embedded (p. 370). (See also Atkinson,
1984; Bavelas, 1994; Curley, 1998; C. Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986; Kendon, 1972, 1980, 1987; LeBaron & Streeck, 2000; Schegloff, 1984.) In an analysis of girls
playing hopscotch, C. Goodwin (2000) went beyond the human body to consider the entire
contextual configuration, which included a range of structurally different kinds of sign
phenomena in both the stream of speech and the body, graphic and socially sedimented

structure in the surround, sequential organization, encompassing activity systems, etc.
(p. 1). In sum, recent LSI research has taken up a more constitutive and holistic view of
language in use.
It is clear that LSI has emerged over the past two decades as a lively and substantive
area within the study of human communication. There is no one principle that consistently
unites or defines LSI research in contrast to other research traditions. The seven points we
have outlined here represent recurrent and interrelated issues within LSI work. Altogether,
they are more central to LSI identity than they are for those working in other traditions,
topics, or methods. Nevertheless, plenty of counterexamples exist within LSI for each point
that we have discussed. Thus, it is most helpful to think of the seven points presented, not
as universally guiding principles within LSI, but as points of ongoing attention or concern.
Call these, if you will, prominent themes in the conversation going on within the area of
Language and Social Interaction.
OVERVIEW OF THE VOLUME
This volume includes 32 original articles, which are grounded in LSI perspectives, research
questions, and methods, plus 6 short pieces in the final section reflecting on Robert Hoppers teaching and scholarship. A majority of the articles employ conceptual and methodological approaches of ethnomethodological CA. This reflects Robert Hoppers legacy, for
he as much as anyone worked to connect CA with the study of human communication. It
also reflects the prominence of CA research within LSI. Other approaches that have kinship with CA and that are represented in the book include ethnography of communication,
discourse analysis, sociolinguistic studies of language and power, and performance studies.
Most of these report research on naturally occurring interaction. Others make theoretical
or conceptual arguments.
Some edited volumes begin with a conceptual scheme then invite individual articles to
reflect component parts, resulting in a strong thematic coherence. In the present case, the
call for papers invited authors to submit work they thought fitting for a tribute to Robert
Hopper. We did not attempt from the outset to select pieces based on their relevance to a
prearranged scheme. Rather, the organization of the book arose from an inductive process
of sorting the articles by various similarities. We decided on five parts, clustering around
distinct interests and approaches that related in particular ways to LSI as a field and to
Hoppers work.
The first part includes articles we selected to represent major research traditions within
LSI. The second features studies of talk in everyday life, primarily casual discourse. The
third part features studies of institutional discourse, particularly talk concerned with health
and medical settings. The fourth part contains a relatively eclectic group of articles under
the theme of future trajectoriesin various ways, these articles move beyond current
research topics and practices to explore and advocate innovative directions. The fifth part
is a set of personal tributes to Robert Hopper.
There are other ways to group the articles in this book, and it may be useful to the reader
to consider some of these:

Empirical studies: reports of new findings. Beach, Corbin, Craig and Sanusi, Fitch,
Glenn, Goodwin, Heritage, Jefferson, Jones, Lawrence, LeBaron and Koschmann,
Lerner and Zimmerman, Maynard and Frankel, Mandelbaum, Maxwell, Dan Modaff,
John Modaff, Morris, Pomerantz, Sanders, Schegloff, Wrobbel.
Review articles: summarizing areas of research, calling for new directions. Bradac,
Brown, Drew, Gonzalez, Houtkoop-Steenstra, Molloy and Giles, Streeck, Stucky and
Daughton.
Theory pieces: working with or developing theoretical or philosophical positions.
Brown, Drummond, Gonzalez, LeBaron and Koschmann, Molloy and Giles, Streeck,
Stucky and Daughton.
Applied research: dealing directly with practical life problems. Bruder, Maynard and
Frankel, Daniel Modaff, Molloy and Giles, Pomerantz, Wrobbel.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Wayne Beach, Bob Craig, and Karen Tracy, who reviewed an earlier version of
this chapter and provided many helpful suggestions. Bob Craig, Kent Drummond, Kristine
Fitch, Anita Pomerantz, Jrgen Streeck, and Karen Tracy served as outside reviewers for
the articles in this book. Alexander Kozin, Sam Thomas, and Stephanie Poole Martinez,
doctoral students at SIU Carbondale, have been helpful in editorial assistant capacities.
Thanks to the Department of Speech Communication and the College of Liberal Arts at
Southern Illinois University Carbondale for providing office space, equipment, and staff
support. We also thank the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University
for providing office space, computer equipment, and support staff for this project. We are
grateful to Rachael Deceuster of BYU for her assistance, as well as Hank Marew and Paul
Kennis for their support. Our appreciation to Linda Bathgate, Marianna Vertullo, and Art
Lizza for their assistance in bringing this project to completion. We are grateful to June
Hymas (Robert Hoppers sister) for providing the photo of Robert. Thanks to Kay Hopper
for ongoing encouragement throughout the development of this book. We were pleased that
Robert Hopper was able to see an earlier version of it shortly before his death in December
1998. It is because of his ongoing influence in the lives of so many people that this book
has come to fruition.
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I
Orienting to the Field of Language
and Social Interaction
The first section of this volume includes five articles that represent major research traditions
within the interdisciplinary field of language and social interaction (LSI): sociolinguistics,
conversation analysis, ethnography, discourse analysis, and microethnography. Sociolinguists typically take some aspect of the social dimensions of everyday life (class, ethnicity,
gender, etc.) and pair it with some aspect of spoken language (accent, rate, dialect, etc.),
exploring the extent to which variation in social dimensions correlates with variations in
language use (for an overview, see Fasold, 1990; for a foundational collection see Baugh
& Sherzer, 1984). James Bradacs piece (chap. 2) summarizes work on speech evaluation,
concerned with identifying features of speech that contribute significantly to hearers judgments about speaker credibility, competence, and so forth. Based on his review, Bradac
recommends that future research in this area shift from examining the evaluations hearers
make of speakers under various conditions to more direct studies of perceptions of features
of messages themselves. In this way, speech evaluation research would pay more attention
directly to messages and less to peoples perceptions thereof.
Conversation analysis, in the ethnomethodological tradition, exemplified by John Heritages article (chap. 3), treats audio- and videotaped naturalistic interactions as primary
data. Recordings and transcripts provide resources for constructing detailed accounts of
the activities interactants undertake in and through interaction. Heritages early work on
formulations opened the way for a growing body of research about the organization and
accomplishments of news interviews (Heritage & Watson, 1979). In the current essay, he
examines how interviewers employ questioning to take up particular positions vis a vis
interviewees while managing competing pressures of the interview situation. These pressures include on the one hand taking a somewhat adversarial stance, so as not to operate as a mouthpiece for the interviewee, while on the other hand maintaining a neutral
stance, avoiding making their own opinions available in the way their questions are structured. He shows how news interviewers questions are in fact neutralistic: They have the
appearance of neutrality but actually in various ways are not quite neutral.
Researchers in the ethnography of communication tradition move from thick description of communicative phenomena to identifying underlying speech codes or cultural patterns (for overview, see Saville-Troike, 1989; also Carbaugh, 1990; Fitch & Philipsen,
1995). Kristine Fitch (chap. 4) advocates grounding claims about communication and culture in details of particular interactions. This echoes Michael Moermans (1988) call for
a culturally contexted conversation analysis. Moermans proposal for a union between
ethnography and conversation analysis spawned much discussion, including a special issue
Part I: Orienting to the Field of Language 33

of Research on Language and Social Interaction (1990/1991) edited by Robert Hopper,
to which Fitch contributed an article. In the present piece, Fitch analyzes a transcript of a
family mealtime conversation. It is an everyday life dramatic moment, a child negotiating
a raise in allowance. Fitchs analysis shows that such critical moments in interaction where
culture becomes an issue for participants may provide a resource for analysts to reexamine
this elusive concept.
Although discourse analysis is a term that means many different things (Tracy, 2001),
here we use it to encompass studies that identify particular speech acts and their functions,
focus on coherence as a feature of talk, or trace the actions performed through particular
lexical items that occur commonly in everyday talk. Much contemporary LSI research
(including some studies in the ethnography of communication tradition) reflects grounding
in discourse analytic approaches and specifically in speech act theory. Why do speakers
sometimes choose to say I think that as preface to expressing an opinion? If we assume
that all speech is connected in some way to cognitive activity, then conceivably one could
precede anything one says with I think. What gets marked at moments when speakers
use the verb think? Robert Craig and Alena Sanusi (chap. 5) pursue these issues in videotaped data collected during student group discussions. Think is one of a number of items
by which speakers can indicate standpoint or footing (Goffman, 1983) in relation to the
words they are uttering. The authors show that uses of think include displaying online
thought process to others, marking transition from presentation of canned to spontaneous
material, inviting expression of online thinking from other participants, and displaying
process when sense of process seems to be threatened. Their analysis links to the study of
argument in everyday discourse.
The fifth chapter in this section represents a strain of LSI research we refer to as microethnography. By that term is meant close attention to details of embodied actions as a
means of characterizing emic, participant-grounded ways of enacting and interpreting
meaning in actions. Curtis LeBaron and Timothy Koschmann (chap. 6) examine the coordination of talk, body orientation, gaze, and gesture within small groups working toward
a shared understanding about some issue or topic at hand. For example, when a group of
medical and nursing students read and discuss the symptoms of a hypothetical patient, they
encounter new clinical terms that some members dont understand. By gesturing in relation to their own bodies, informed students explain the new terms to uninformed students,
who then perform the same gestures in the process of coming to understand. Participants
achieve shared understanding (or at least shared understanding is displayed) only after (and
arguably through) gestures repeatedly performed. The authors suggest a socially mediated
and embodied notion of humans coming to understand.
REFERENCES
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34 Studies in language and social interac tion

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(Eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis. Maiden: Blackwell.
2
Extending the Domain of Speech Evaluation:
Message Judgments
James J.Bradac
University of California, Santa Barbara
THE SCOPE OF SPEECH EVALUATION IN THEORY
There is a flourishing research tradition in which the major objects of scrutiny are the kinds
of evaluations that hearers make of speakers and the factors that affect these evaluations.
Factors that have been examined include communication context, for example, formality
of the situation in which a message is delivered (Street & Brady, 1982), and (crucially)
speech style, for example, speaker accent and dialect (Cargile, 1997; Giles & Powesland,
1975; Hopper & de la Zerda, 1979). Evaluation is a basic, even primitive, psychological process, at its core entailing approach-avoidance tendencies and behaviors apparent
in humans, canines, felines, reptiles, and unicellular organisms alike. In humans (at least),
evaluation has a cognitive component in that thought, and more particularly verbalization,
is often, even typically, inextricably bound to the process of acceptance or rejection of
evaluationtriggering stimuli. Speech evaluation research has always exploited this cognitive component by using respondents who are aware of what they are doing, that is,
evaluating speakers, and by asking respondents to make their judgments via verbal, often
semantic-differential-type, scales (Bradac, 1990).
Any stimulus or imagined stimulus can activate the evaluation process. In the arena of
human communication, message recipients can evaluate speakers, their styles of speech,
their messages, specific message features such as arguments, and more specific or idiosyncratic variables, for example, physical aspects of the communication situation and
responses of other message recipients (booing or applause). Evaluations of communication
stimuli or of any stimuli are made at specific times and places; that is, evaluation has a temporal/spatial dimension. This can be important because evaluations can vary systematically
as a function of variations in occasions. For example, message recipients may be relatively
negative when they are fatigued and they may be less attentive to message details, relying on various peripheral or heuristic cues to make judgments of communicators (Petty &
Cacioppo, 1986); or a message that follows an initial message may be evaluated differently
than if it had been presented in the initial position, as a result of perceptual contrast effects
(Bradac, Davies, & Courtright, 1977). Additionally, evaluations have consequences for
both evaluators and the persons (or other organisms) evaluated. A positive evaluation made
of a communicator on one occasion may predispose the evaluator to respond positively on
a second occasion as a result of a commitment effect; the positively evaluated communicator may view the message recipients positive response as a signal to persist.
Thus, in theory, speech evaluation covers the whole communication process, that is,
any communication-related stimulus; it is affected by temporal/spatial variables; and it has
consequences.

SPEECH EVALUATION RESEARCH IN PRACTICE
In practice, research on speech evaluation has had a narrow focus, which has not been
entirely disadvantageous because it has allowed a good deal of concerted effort resulting
in some highly reliable findings. But there is room for expansion. Some of the earliest
pertinent studies were conducted by Lambert and associates who investigated the effects
of language and dialect differences on respondents evaluations of speakers. For example,
in an initial study Frenchand English-speaking monolingual respondents heard audiotapes
of readings of a prose passage recorded in French and English by bilingual speakers and
subsequently rated the speakers in terms of a number of traits, for example, intelligence
and sociability (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, & Fillenbaum, 1960). The English guises
received more positive ratings on several traits from both groups of respondents. In a
later study, Arab and Jewish respondents rated speakers who read passages in Arabic and
Hebrew (Lambert, Anisfeld, & YeniKomshian, 1965). In this case, Arab respondents evaluated the Arabic guises more positively, whereas the Hebrew guises were evaluated more
positively by the Jewish respondents, an example of ingroup favoritism. These (and other)
studies were precursors of contemporary language-attitudes research, which has continued
to investigate evaluative consequences of different languages, dialects, and accents (Giles
& Coupland, 1991; see also chap. 3, this volume).
More recently, Mulac and associates have examined the gender-linked language
effect, a relationship among gender, language, and perception that demonstrates that there
is a pervasive tendency for persons to rate womens language as high in Socio-Intellectual
Status and Aesthetic Quality and mens language as high in Dynamism (e.g., Mulac, 1998;
Mulac & Lundell, 1986). The research on this effect has used as an evaluation instrument
the Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale (SDAS), which reflects the three general dimensions
just mentioned, uncovered through factor analysis (Mulac, 1975). Factor analysis was also
used by Zahn and Hopper (1985) in their attempt to design an instrument that would be
broadly useful in research on speech evaluation (the Speech Evaluation Instrument or SEI).
Employing a variety of communication stimuli and a wide range of evaluative items to
which persons responded following exposure to the stimuli, these researchers obtained three
general factors, which they labeled Superiority, Attractiveness, and Dynamism. Despite the
different communication stimuli and respondents used in constructing the two instruments,
the factor structures of SDAS and SEI are quite similar, although SEI exhibits a relatively
large number of items representing each factor. Both Superiority and Socio-Intellectual
Status include items such as literate/illiterate and white collar/blue collar; Attractiveness
and Aesthetic Quality include sweet/sour and nice/awful; and the two Dynamisms include
strong/weak and active/passive.
The first two factors of both instruments appear to be specific manifestations of the
highly general Evaluation factor obtained by Osgood and associates in their semanticdifferential research on the connotative meanings of a diverse array of concepts (Osgood,
May, & Miron, 1975). The two Dynamism factors appear to combine Osgood, May, and
Mirons Activity and Potency factors. The factor structures of SDAS and SEI are also
similar in some respects to factor structures obtained in early studies of communicator
credibility and attitude change; for example, Authoritativeness, Character, and Dynamism
(or variants thereof, e.g., Competence, Trustworthiness, and Dynamism) are dimensions
Extending the domain of speech evaluation 37

that emerged in factor analytic research and were used subsequently to measure attitudes
toward message sources (McCroskey & Mehrley, 1969).1
The research on speech evaluation measurement (coupled with the work on source
credibility) reveals a strong pattern: Speaker status and attractiveness (in a general sense)
are pervasive evaluative dimensions, as is perceived dynamism. The status/attractiveness
distinction is related to two basic dimensions of interpersonal relationships: power and
solidarity (Brown & Oilman, 1960). Giles and Ryan (1982) noted the importance of the
status and attractiveness dimensions and suggested that when collectivistic concerns are
salient, hearers will perceive speakers in terms of social status and group solidarity; on
the other hand, when individualistic concerns are prominent, hearers will focus on speaker
competence and attractiveness.
The similarity of the dimensions of status/competence and solidarity/attractiveness to
the major dimensions of communicator credibility call attention to the likelihood that in
the many studies of speech evaluation that have used SDAS or SEI (or related items),
respondents were making judgments of or attributions about speakers rather than evaluating speech per se: The speaker was intelligent, likable, active, and so on. It may be much
more usual for persons to judge message sources than to judge messages or message style;
there may be something like a fundamental attribution error in the realm of speech evaluation, where message sources are unduly prominent (Bradac, 1989; Nisbett & Ross, 1980).
But, on the other hand, sometimes message recipients focus on messages per se or features
of messages; in some important communication contexts, message sources are obscure or
unknown, as in the case of reading newspapers, and sometimes even where sources are
known, messages will be examined closely and judged. It may be useful to think about and
investigate message judgments in order to correct an imbalance in our research that has
tipped the scales in favor of message sources.
FILLING THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND
PRACTICE: MESSAGE EVALUATION
The bias toward source evaluation may be to some extent a product of the research paradigm exploited in speech evaluation studies. Prototypically, respondents hear one or more
audiotaped messages delivered by a speaker (or speakers) exhibiting a standard or nonstandard dialect or accent and subsequently they complete evaluative scales representing
the dimensions described in the previous section. The content of the messages processed is
bland (sometimes described as neutral) and respondents have little involvement with this
content or with its evaluation. An underlying belief seems to be that the use of neutral
message content will allow respondents to focus on the stylistic variable of interest, which
may be the case, but this use also heightens the attributional prominence of the speaker.
And specific scales representing the dimensions of status/competence and solidarity/attractiveness force a speaker attribution, for example, intelligent, friendly, and trustworthy.
Zahn and Hopper (1985) also noted similarities between Osgood and associates Activity dimension and the Dynamism dimension of speech evaluation, and between source credibility measures
and measures of speech evaluation.

But in some communication contexts, persons are inclined to scrutinize the substance
of an utterance or utterances, to attend to how an utterance is constructed, or to make a
global judgment of message quality. The specialized context of a public-speaking class is
one example; here evaluators, for example, instructors, examine arguments, message structure, and message style as a consequence of their training. Indeed, Becker (1962) factor
analyzed 10 speech quality rating scales designed for speech classes and found evidence
of three dimensions: content, delivery, and language.2 In this case no speaker factor was
obtained. In less specialized contexts also, given particular constraints, the focus will be on
messages, not speakers.
The meaning of speaker (and the attached attributes of status, etc.) is clear, but the
meaning of message is less obvious, although this is not the place to offer a detailed discussion of definitional issues. Bradac, Hopper, and Wiemann (1989) suggested that messages,
compared to other entities, are high in symbolicity (to use Cronkhites 1986 term), coherence, and intentionality. Additionally, messages often have a point or points that are inferred
by message recipients. The notion of coherence suggests that messages are perceived as
units; they are bundles of significance. But the boundaries of these bundles shift or even
change drastically as message recipients change perspectives and purposes. For example, a
film constitutes a message for many casual viewers, and global judgments of this message
are made: The Negotiator was really good. On the other hand, for film students analyzing
a film closely, particular scenes will constitute messages, even short scenes: That visual
transition is excellentit establishes appropriate expectations. A film analysts significant scene may not even be noticed by the casual viewer. Messages are meaningful units,
the boundaries of which vary across occasions, purposes, and recipients; these units are
sometimes evaluated.
Although message judgments have been neglected compared to judgments of speakers, some exceptions and suggestive possibilities are apparent in communication research
and theory. The message variable argument strength is one example. When exposed to
persuasive messages, persons may attend to arguments that are offered and evaluate them
along a strong-weak dimension. In research on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
of persuasion (Gibbons, Busch, & Bradac, 1991; Holtgraves & Lasky, 1999), respondents
evaluations of argument strength have constituted merely a manipulation check of strongand weak-argument messages. These messages are ultimately intersected with high- and
low-relevance conditions, for example, to create differential message processing in respondents (specifically, central and peripheral processing). Evaluations of argument strength
have been subservient to attitudes toward the speakers proposal, the theoretically important measure from the standpoint of ELM, but they demonstrate that arguments are, or at
Beckers (1962) study represents a particular tradition of speech evaluation research with a long
history, namely, research on evaluation in the communication classroom. This is applied research
designed to investigate problems pertaining to evaluating public-speaking effectiveness and effectiveness in group discussion, for example, the reliability and validity of speech ratings scales used
by communication teachers, halo effects in the rating process, and effects of order of presentation
of speeches (Becker, 1953). Most of this research involves judgments reflecting special training and
special conceptions of effective speech, in contrast to the naive social judgments that are the focus
of this essay, so this research tradition will not be discussed at length.

least can be, evaluated along the dimension of strength; strong arguments are better than
weak ones for most purposes.
Judgments of argument strength pertain to a specific message feature. Other message
judgments are globalgeneral impressions of a message as a whole. In special cases,
global judgments are made of clusters of messages: I thought the debate was uninteresting. Referring to a specific class of messages, Dillard, Wilson, Tusing, and Kinney
(1997) suggested that social actors naturally evaluate influence messages in terms of three
distinct and conceptually orthogonal features: explicitness, dominance, and argument (p.
317). Explicitness refers to the directness of the influence attempt, dominance refers to the
level of control attempted, and argument refers to the extent to which reasons are offered
in support of a proposal. Dillard et al. further suggested that [t]hese three constructs lie
midway between the relatively microscopic objective features of messages (such as word
choice) and more macroscopic evaluations of messages (such as judgments of politeness)
(p. 303). Perhaps explicitness, dominance, and argument are best conceptualized as qualities of influence messages that social actors naturally perceive, rather than as evaluations
that naturally occur, because it is difficult to think of these qualities in terms of an unambiguous good-bad criterion that is a necessary feature of all evaluations; indeed, at one
point, Dillard et al. referred to the three qualities as percepts (p. 320). It is useful to
distinguish between perception and evaluation in research on message processing (Street
& Hopper, 1982). On the other hand, politeness, which is Dillard et al.s criterion variable
in the research that they reported, is clearly evaluative. Dillard et al. found that there was
a negative association between perceived dominance in influence messages and judgments
of politeness; by contrast, there was a positive association between judgments of politeness
and perceptions of both explicitness and argument.
A dimension of message perception that is closely related to the dominance dimension
just discussed is power. There is evidence that messages exhibiting hedges, hesitations,
and tag questions are rated as relatively low in power (Bradac & Mulac, 1984; Holtgraves
& Lasky, 1999). It may be that a perception of high- or low-power messages is more
accurately described as an evaluation, because in the particular case of linguistic power
it appears that connotations of good-bad are inevitably attached; a good deal of research
on high- and low-power styles indicates that what is powerless is bad. In any case, a
high-power style appears to produce judgments of high communicator competence and
attractiveness, whereas Dillard et als dominant messages produced judgments of low message politeness. Is this contradictory? Or is it possible for a communicator to be judged
as attractive when delivering an impolite message? Probably yes to the latter. It would be
useful to obtain politeness ratings of high- and low-power styles in future research; it may
be that a high-power style will trigger perceptions of high dominance, which will reduce
politeness ratings.
Kellermann and associates have proposed two additional types of message judgments
that revolve around the meaning of messages. The first is coherence judgments, which
occur when activated knowledge structures are consonant with the perceived nature of the
discourse processed by message recipients (Kellermann & Sleight, 1989, p. 122); coherence is an evaluative judgment of meaningfulness of discourse (p. 105). In most contexts
most people expect communicators to make sense, to produce meaningful utterances, so
a judgment that takes the form That message was coherent is probably rare, occurring

mainly when for whatever reasons persons expect an incoherent message. A judgment
of incoherence probably occurs more frequently because of the pervasive expectation of
coherence; incoherence is the marked case, so it will be noticed and evaluated negatively.
Also there are degrees of incoherence: The last part of the film was baffling or The
statement wasnt completely clear. Another type of message judgment is informativeness,
which is a judgment that is concerned with the importance or relevance of either the parts
or whole of a message (Kellermann & Lim, 1989, p. 118). It is also probably the case that
messages that are judged to be informative are substantively novel: I never would have
guessed that. So, the perceptions of importance, relevance, and novelty may contribute to
evaluations of informativeness. There may be an inverse relationship between perceptions
of novelty and judgments of coherence such that something that is radically unfamiliar may
make little sense; a particular message may be judged to be quite informative and relatively
incoherent (perhaps like this essay).
Another message judgment that seems to occur fairly frequently can be labeled stimulation-value. Some messages are arousing or exciting, whereas others are soothing or
dull. There appear to be positively and negatively valenced high arousal (exciting and
grating, respectively) and positively and negatively valenced low arousal as well (relaxing and boring), so this is a relatively complex message judgment (cf. J.K.Burgoon,
Kelley, Newton, & Keeley-Dyreson, 1989). Stimulation-value judgments are not bound to
messages uniquely in the way that politeness judgments, for example, appear to be. Both
roller coaster rides and action films are potentially exciting. Also the judgment made by a
given message recipient will depend on her preexposure level of arousal; when preexposure arousal is high, a stimulating message may be evaluated more negatively than when
preexposure arousal is low. This message judgment appears to be more clearly dependent on the cognitive and emotional states of message recipients than are the judgments
discussed previously.
As a final example, some messages may be evaluated along a sociability dimension.
This judgment corresponds to the speaker attribution of solidarity, but it is a messagecentered evaluation: That was a kind remark or That was a friendly overture. An interesting possibility is that a speaker judged to be generally low in solidarity may produce
a message judged to be extremely high in sociability. Such an occurrence may cause the
message recipient to reassess the judgment of low speaker sociability or to search for an
explanation for the discrepancy between the message judgment and the judgment of the
speaker. Probably more typically, at least in first-impression situations, a highly sociable
message will lead directly to a judgment of high speaker solidarity, unless this message is
perceived as manipulative or patronizing (Giles, Fox, & Smith, 1993).
Thus, a given supermessage may be evaluated as polite, powerful, coherent, informative, stimulating, and sociable, whereas its dark opposite may be judged to be impolite,
powerless, incoherent, uninformative, boring, and unsociable. Probably in most situations
most message recipients would approach the former message and avoid the latter, although
no doubt across the globe there are scattered individuals who generally prefer impoliteness,
powerlessness, incoherence, a lack of information, boredom, and unfriendliness. Informativeness and coherence seem to be at the base of a message-judgment hierarchy because
they are pertinent to all messages; stimulation-value is at the next level because it is pertinent to many types of messages; and at the level above that are politeness, power, and

sociability, which appear to be relevant to specific message types. There are certainly other
levels, and within levels there are other judgment types.
Messages are likely to be the objects of primary scrutiny when message recipients are
involved with message content and when this content is relevant to them, at least in the
case of persuasive messages (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Many specific variables are associated with relevance and involvement, for example, decisions hinging on message content
or need to transmit the content to another person. It is worth noting that relevance and
involvement have not been manipulated in studies of speech evaluation; in fact, relevance
and involvement typically have been low, which has probably led evaluators to focus more
on speakers than on messages. It is also the case that specific roles will predispose persons
to focus on messages. To give a specialized example, film critics are required to analyze
films and to make global judgments. Noncritics, that is, naive viewers, commonly eschew
analysis of films but easily offer quick judgments: It was exciting or It didnt make
sense. The film-going experience requires message evaluation, although this evaluation
may be implicit and may remain unexpressed. Particular occasions will also precipitate
message evaluation. An interesting case in point is President William Jefferson Clintons
speech to the nation about a sexual relationship, which was delivered at the time of this
writing (August 17, 1998). Many nonspecialists offered opinions about his message, its
content, and its presentation: It wasnt (was) satisfying, It was too short, It was too
general, It had a blurred focus, and so on. On this occasion, there was a great deal of
interest in what the speaker would say; opinions about the speaker himself, his power
and his character, were already well formed. Finally, sometimes particular message features will cause message recipients to focus on messages, specifically, features that violate
expectations (M.Burgoon, 1990) or features that are marked, for example, a low-power
language style (Gibbons et al., 1991).
MORE GAPS BETWEEN THEORY AND
PRACTICE: CONCLUSION
So, message evaluation, that is, the process and structure of naive judgment, has been
seriously neglected, compared to speaker evaluation. Particular types of evaluations, for
example, coherence and informativeness judgments, barely have been investigated. The
interaction between message evaluations and message genres remains essentially unexplored: Particular dimensions of evaluation are likely to be especially, even uniquely,
relevant to specific genres or types of messages.
Apart from the issue of message judgment, it was mentioned at the beginning of this
essay that evaluations of all sorts are situated temporally and spatially, but this fact has
been largely ignored in speech evaluation research; the time and place of evaluation has
been imposed upon respondents for the purpose of coordinating an experiment. It would be
very useful at this point to discover where and when speech evaluation naturally occurs
outside of the laboratoryand to discover how different settings and temporal factors
affect evaluations of speakers and messages (cf. Duck, Rutt, Hurst, & Strejc, 1991). Additionally, as suggested earlier, evaluations have consequences for evaluators and persons
evaluated, but in the typical speech evaluation experiment, evaluations are made in a vacuum. Would respondents who evaluate a speaker as high in power, status, and competence

choose not to interact with her? Under what circumstances will respondents self-esteem
affect this interaction decision? How will speakers react if they are evaluated as high in
competence but low in attractiveness? How will they react if their messages are judged
to be informative but incoherent? Investigating temporal/spatial factors in speech evaluation, along with evaluative consequences for communicators and message recipients, could
extend the domain of speech evaluation research in important ways. And, almost certainly,
the speech evaluation research domain will be extended fruitfully by shifting attention to
the dimensions underlying message judgments, to the interactions between dimensions
and message genres, and to the many communication variables that systematically affect
dimension-relevant evaluations.
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Becker, S.L. (1962). The rating of speeches: Scale independence. Speech Monographs, 29, 3844.
Bradac, J.J. (1989). On coherence judgments and their multiple causes: A view from the messagevariable paradigm. In J.A. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 12 (pp. 130145). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Bradac, J.J. (1990). Language attitudes and impression formation. In H. Giles & W.P. Robinson
(Eds.), Handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 387412). Chichester, England:
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Bradac, J.J., Davies, R.A., & Courtright, J.A. (1977). The role of prior message context in judgments of high- and low-diversity messages. Language and Speech, 20, 295307.
Bradac, J.J., Hopper, R., & Wiemann, J.M. (1989). Message effects: Retrospect and prospect. In
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Bradac, J.J., & Mulac, A. (1984). A molecular view of powerful and powerless speech styles: Attributional consequences of specific language features and communicator intentions. Communication Monographs, 51, 307319.
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Burgoon, J.K., Kelley, D.L., Newton, D.A., & Keeley-Dyreson, M.P. (1989). The nature of arousal
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Dillard, J.P., Wilson, S.R., Tusing, K.J., & Kinney, T.A. (1997). Politeness judgments in personal
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Duck, S., Rutt, D.J., Hurst, M.H., & Strejc, H. (1991). Some evident truths about conversations
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Gibbons, P., Busch, J., & Bradac, J.J. (1991). Powerful versus powerless language: Consequences
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Giles, H., & Coupland, N. (1991). Language: Contexts and consequences. Buckingham, England:
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Giles, H., Fox, S., & Smith, E. (1993). Patronizing the elderly: Intergenerational evaluations.
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3
Designing Questions and Setting Agendas
in the News Interview
John Heritage
UCLA
In news interviews, unlike speeches, lectures or other forms of monologic communication, public figures overwhelmingly give information and express opinions in response to
journalists questions. The news content that results is thus a joint construction, whether
collaborative or conflictual, that emerges from the confluence of the questions journalists
choose to put and the responses that those questions engender.1
For this reason, questioning is central to the practice of news interviewing, and skill in
question design is at the heart of the interviewers (IRs) craft. The limits of questioning
play a significant part in defining the parameters of the permissible in mass media content,
and innovations in question design often embody efforts to redefine these parameters. In
designing questions, IRs ordinarily attempt to strike a balance between two competing
journalistic norms. On the one hand, IRs are expected to be impartial, objective, unbiased,
and disinterested in their questioning of public figures. They are expected to have respect
for the facts and the perspectives that interviewees (IEs) communicate, and to work to
bring these into the public domain. On the other hand, IRs also subscribe to a norm of
adversarialness. They should actively challenge their sources, rather than being simply
mouthpieces or ciphers for them. This second norm is one that pushes IRs not to let the
interview be a kind of platform or soapbox from which public figures can get away with
their own spin on events.
In part, the management of the tension between these two norms is handled by questioning itself. Questioning is conventionally understood as an action that does not take
up a substantive positioninvolving either agreement or disagreementvis-a-vis the IE.
For this reason, IRs work hard to package their actions as questions, and may invoke this
packaging to defeat IE claims that they are pursuing some kind of personal or institutional agenda. In the following case, for example, ABC journalist Sam Donaldson defends
himself against such a claim in just this way
(1) [U.S. ABC This Week: October 1989: Barman]
1
IR:
->
Isnt it a fact, Mr. Darman, that the taxpayers

will
pay more in interest than if they just paid it out
of general revenues?
IE:
No, not necessarily. Thats a technical

argument
Schudson (1994) gives a nuanced account of the emergence of the news interview as a medium of
journalistic practice, Clayman and Heritage (2002a) describe its development in British and American broadcasting.
Designing questions and setting agendas 45

5
IR:
->
Its not a-- may I, sir? Its not a technical
->
argument. Isnt it a fact?
IE:
No, its definitely not a fact. Because first of
all, twenty billion of the fifty billion is being
handled in just the way you wantthrough
10
treasury financing. The remaining
11
IR:
->
Im just asking you a question. Im not expressing
12
->
my personal views.
13
IE:
I understand.
This example is from an interview about alternative ways of financing losses from collapsed savings and loans companies, and the IERichard Darmanis a treasury official
in the Bush administration. Faced with insistent questioning from Donaldson (Lines 13,
56), he responds that twenty billion of the fifty billion is being handled in just the way
you wantthrough treasury financing. (Lines 810), thus implying that Donaldson is
advocating a specific policy preference. It is just this departure from journalistic norms
that Donaldson is quick to rebut at Lines 1112 with Im just asking you a question. Im
not expressing my personal views. Darman responds with an acceptance of this account
(Line 13).
As this example illustrates, questioning is a vehicle by which broadcast journalists can
sustain a neutralistic stance vis a vis interviewees, and defend themselves against charges
that they have overstepped their role as elicitors of information Clayman, 1988; Heritage
& Greatbatch, 1991).2
However, as the term neutralistic suggests, news interview questioning is not, and cannot be, strictly neutral. Because questions unavoidably encode attitudes and points of view
(Harris, 1986), IRs must still design their questions to strike a balance between the journalistic norms of impartiality and adversarialness. The particular balance that is achieved
between these two norms can be a distinctive, and even defining, characteristic of particular interviewing styles. In turn, distinctive styles of question design are an important element of the public personae of IRs ranging from Walter Cronkite to Ted Koppel to Larry
King in the United States, or Sir Robin Day to Jeremy Paxman to Jimmy Young in Britain.
The significance of question design as a signature feature extends from IRs as individuals to the news programs of which they are a part (e.g., PBSs Newshour vs. ABCs
Nightline), and ultimately to whole periods that are characterized by what may be termed
dominant styles of interviewing. This chapter discusses question design in the news interview, and addresses some of the resources through which IRs manage the balance between
impartiality and adversarialness in this context.
The term neutralistic is used in parallel with Robinson and Sheehans (1983:34) distinction
between objective and objectivistic news reporting. In their usage, objectivistic describes a
manner or style of reporting, while the term objective is treated in the conventional sense of a
judgement about balance, truthfulness and the absence of bias in the news.
2

A HISTORICAL CASE
Consider the following 1951 interview of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who has
called a general election and just returned to London to begin his election -campaign. The
interview is conducted at the London rail station where Mr. Attlee has just arrived. The
following transcript represents the complete interview:
(2) [UK BBC Interview with Clement Attlee (British Prime Minister 19451951)]
1
IR:
Good mor:ning Mister A:ttlee,=We hope (.)
youve
2
had a good journey,

3
(0.2)
4
IE:
Ye::s excellent, h
5
(0.2)
6
IR:
Can you:- (.) now youre ba:ck hhh having cut
7
short your: lecture tour::. (.) tell us [something

8
IE:
[Mm.
9
of how you- (0.2) vie::w the election prospects?

10
(0.2)
11
IE:
Oh we shall go in tgive them a good fi:ght,
(0.2)
12
very good, (0.4) very good cha:nce of >winning, =We

13
shall go in confidently,=We always do,<

14
(0.7)
15
IR:
U:::h And- (.) on wha:t will Labour take its
sta:nd.
16
(0.4)
17
IR:
We:ll that we shll be announcing shortly.
18
(0.2)
19
IR:
What are your immediate pla:ns: Mister
Attlee[:.
20
IE:
[My
21
immediate plans are <tgo do:wn> to a committee

22
tdeci:de on just that thing, .hhh (.) >soons I

23
can get away from here.<

24
(0.2)
25
IE:
hheh .hh
26
IR:
Uhm, hh (.) Anything else you would> ca:re
tsa::y
27
about (.) th coming election.

28
(.)

29
30
31
IE:
IR:
No:,
(0.6)
Uhm, (0.4) Uhm, ((end of interview segment))
The IRs questioning in this interview has a number of noticeable features:

First, his questions are all very open. Questions like Can youtell us something of
how you view the election prospects (Lines 69) and On what will Labour take its
stand (Line 15) permit the IE enormous latitude in developing responses.
Second, the questions are not the prefaced, multi-sentence questions that are common
today, where prefatory statements are used to establish context and background for
what follows. Rather Attlee is presented with simple inquiries that treat the immediate context of the interviewthe impending electionas the only thing necessary to
understand the questions that follow.
Third, the IR does not materially shift topic. The context of the interview is the Prime
Ministers arrival in London to strategize for national elections, and the IR does not
diverge from that. There are no shifts to discuss Britains relations with foreign powers, or disagreements within the Labour Party. The IRs questions remain tied to the
immediate context of the interviewthe election and Mr. Attlees view of it.
Fourth, even though Attlee gives noncommittal, if not downright evasive, replies to his
questions, the IR makes no attempt to pursue more specific responses. Rather he simply accepts the response that he is given and moves on.
Fifth, the design of the questions is fundamentally deferential to the power and status
of the Prime Minister. This is expressed through conventional indirectness (Brown
& Levinson, 1987; Clayman & Heritage, 2002b). Questions like Can youtell
us something of how you view the election prospects (Lines 69) and Anything
else you would care to say about the coming election (Lines 2627) evidently treat
Attlees responses as optional rather than obligatory. They indicate that Attlee will not
be pressed by this IR if he does not care to respond.
Finally, the deferential style embodied in the IRs questions is reciprocated in Attlees
brusquely, noncommittal responses. Attlee is not merely unafraid to decline the questions, he clearly feels under no obligation to respond to them. Indeed, he is quite happy
to imply (at Lines 2223) that the interview itself is preventing him from getting on
with more important election matters. No modern politician entering an election campaign today would dream of addressing an IR (or the voting public) in this way.3
Interviews like this one are a valuable historical benchmark. They tell us about the
extent to which present day broadcast interviews differ from those of the past. And they
are evidence of quite different relationships between broadcasters and politicians than exist
today. The modern political interview differs from this one in every major respect. This
chapter examines some of the ways in which IEs struggle with IRs over the terrain that is
Attlee could afford to adopt this stance because the audience for this broadcast was miniscule: less
than one per cent of the British public had access to a television set in 1951.

constructed through news interview questioning. We begin with an exploration of some of
the basic features and objectives of question design in the news interview.
ANALYZING QUESTION DESIGN: SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
News interview questions are often very subtle and complex constructions. They express
particular aspects of the public roles of IR and IE, and they can index elements of the
personal identities of both (Roth, 1998a). They can be primarily geared to the concerns
and preoccupations of either the questioner, the answerer, or the overhearing audience
members, or all three of these to varying degrees. They can embody complex grammatical
and rhetorical constructions to engage in the widest range of tasks designed to support or
undermine the positions of public figures on issues of the moment. It is obvious, therefore,
that they can be examined from many different angles.
We can begin by observing that, at the minimum, IRs questions have the following features: First, they establish particular agendas for IE responses. Second, they tend
to embody presuppositions and/or assert propositions about various aspects of the IEs
actions, interests, opinions, and the social and political context of these. Third, they often
incorporate preferences, that is, they are designed so as to invite or favor one type of
answer over another. Similarly, IEs can formulate their responses in ways that accept or
resist (or reject altogether) any or all of these. Thus IEs responses engage (or decline to
engage) the agenda set by IRs questions, confirm (or disconfirm) its presuppositions, and
align (or disalign) with its preferences. These possibilities are displayed in Table 1:
Table 1: Dimensions of Questioning and Answering
IR Questions:
IE Responses:
Set Agendas:
(i) Topical agendas
(ii) Action agendas
Embody presuppositions
Incorporate preferences
Engage/Decline to engage:
(i) Topical agendas
(ii) Action agendas
Confirm/Disconfirm presuppositions
Align/Disalign with preferences
These three dimensions are fundamental and inexorably relevant characteristics of question design and production.4 Because it is not possible to avoid them, IRs questions can
only select between different possibilities for agenda setting, presuppositional content, and
preference design. These selections are crucial for the work that questions do, the nature of
the interview that is built through them, and the IR and news show identity that is sustained
by these means.
See Boyd and Heritage (in press) for a parallel discussion of these issues in relation to questioning
in medical interviews.

SIMPLE AND PREFACED QUESTION DESIGNS
These three dimensions of question design are made more complex in prefaced questions.
These are questions that are preceded by one or more statements (Clayman, 1988; Heritage
& Greatbatch, 1991; Heritage & Roth, 1995). These prefaces were quite absent in Example
2, but they are very much a part of the modern news interview. Their manifest function is
often to contextualize and provide relevance for the questions that follow, sometimes for
the IE and often for the news audience. Example 3 is a clear case of this:
(3) [U.S. ABC Nightline: 22nd July 1985: South Africa]
1 IR:
P-> .hh Two- two members of your organization
(.)
2
Supposedly arrested today:

3
Q-> dyou feel in some danger when you go back
Here the prefatory statement (Lines 12) establishes a context that gives meaning and
point to the subsequent question, which otherwise might seem to come out of the blue, and
indeed be incomprehensible for many members of the news audience.
A prime difference between simple and prefaced questions concerns the degree to which
they embody initiative in establishing a context for the question to follow (Clayman &
Heritage, 2002b). Most simple questions draw on resources from the prior answer to provide for their relevance and intelligibility. The following is a case in point. Here a British
Labour politician with overall responsibility for his partys defense policy explains why he
walked out of the defense debate at his partys annual convention. In his first turn, he says
that he was angry because the person chairing the debate did not call him to speak and
allow him to reply to attacks on him. The IR then asks him whether the chairs action was
intentional (Line 8):
(4) [UK BBC TV: Nationwide: 30 September 1981: Labour Party Conference]
1
IE:
Well I walked out because I was ang:ry at not being
2
called by the chairman after two personal attacks

3
.hhh had been launched on me from the rostrum.=I

4
dont complain about those attacks. .hhh But I

5
think that any fair chairman would have given me an

6
opportunity of replying to them.

7
(0.4)
8
IR: -> Was it intentional not to call you?
9
IE:
.hhh Well i- (.) I dont think it was mali::gn,=but
10
It was intentional in the sense that he he referred

11
at the e:nd to the fact that I had put in a note

12
asking to be calle:d. .hh and couldnt be called.=

13
=So it obviously was intentional.=It wasnt .hh an

14
o:versight on his part.
This simple follow up question raises something that is implicit in the IEs previous answer,
especially the IEs reference to what a fair chairman would have done (Lines 56), and

it is explicit in introducing the issue of the chairs intentions as a relevant matter to be
addressed by the IE in his next turn at talk. It does not require prefatory remarks because
it transparently draws on, and projects an extension to, the IEs immediately previous talk.
The IE responds by devoting his next turn to asserting the intentional nature of the chairs
action, beginning with a pre-emptive denial that its intent was malign.
However, journalists may often find themselves in circumstances where a simple
follow-up question that explores some dimension of a prior answer is quite undesirable.
Under these circumstances, prefaces are an essential resource for resetting the context for
the question to come. In the following case, for example, a journalist uses a prefaced question design to put a topical issue raised by the IE (about blacks against blacks violence in
South Africa) on hold. This needs prefatory statements:
(5) [U.S. ABC Nightline: 22 July 1985: South Africa]
.hhhh The: urgent an pressing: need hh the: ()
1
IE:
tch .hhh uh immediate one: is to stop
2
violence. () violence perpetrated by blacks upon

3
blacks. () This is what we have to end (.) to get

4
to: uh situation .hhh where we can start ()

5
talking. Where we can start n uh peaceful man6
ner
() to haff (.) political dialogue.

7
tch .hhh Arright lemme get tuh that blacks against
8
IR: 1->
blacks question in uh minute but first lemme ask
9
1->
you it seems to me nobody dispu:tes .hhh thet
10
2->
thuh
power in south africa (0.2) is with thuh white
11
2->
12
2->
goverment. .hh An it seems to me that within thuh
rule of law: that could be do:ne.
13
2->
Why duh laws haftuh be suspended in order to
14
stop
15
thuh violence.
.hhhh Uhm (.) seems to me: uh- eh and always
16
IE:
has
been: a balance between freedom () an disor17
der.
18
19
[35 lines of talk omitted]

20
=Arright lemme talk about this question then fer a

21
IR: 3->
22
3->
moment of violence (.) of blacks against blacks.(.)
We live here in thuh United States......
23
In addition to using prefatory statements (1->) to place the IEs immediately preceding
statements on hold, the IR deploys additional statements (2->) to set up a question about
the necessity of suspending the rule of law in South Africa, and then further statements
(3->) to return to the blacks against blacks issue raised earlier by the IE.
Journalists may also use prefatory statements, not merely to give background for a
question (as in Example 3), but to provide a motivational context for the IEs answer. In
the following case, discussed in Roth (1998a), dealing with proposals to arm the British

police, the personal experience of the IEa policeman who was shot by a criminal while
unarmedis invoked to convey to the audience that the question has a special relevance
for him.
(6) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 21 Oct 1993]
1 IR: You as I say have been shot yourself in
thuh
2
in thuh line of duty, ahm Lets just look at
thuh
3
question of arming thuh police first of all.
4
Is it your view that the police should now be
5
armed?
6 IE:
.hhh But definitely. .hhh Ahm we w- (.) have
no
7 rights as a society to expect young men to enter
8 situations....
Here the question preface provides that the IEs experience of being shot is the presumptive
foundation of his perspective in answering it, and may privilege that experience as having
a special weight and significance for the audiences understanding and evaluation of his
response to the question.
In sum, prefaced question give IRs room to maneuver. Whereas simple questions leave
the IEs last response as the context for the next question, prefaced questions allow IRs to
escape from this constraint and construct a context of their own choosing for the question
they are about to put into play. The shift toward the use of complex question designs has
been relatively marked in both the United States and the United Kingdom from the 1950s
to the present, and it embodies a real growth in the scope, power, and autonomy of IR
questioning. Additionally, as we see later, the manifest function of prefaced questions
providing context for the subsequent question to the news audienceprovides justification
and cover for very much more hostile and aggressive questioning strategies than were
dreamed of in the early days of news interviewing.
DIMENSIONS OF QUESTIONING
Questions Set Agendas
The claim that IR questions set agendas for IEs involves three features of their design that
constrain IEs.
First, questions set agendas by identifying a specific topical domain as the appropriate or relevant domain of response. As a classical form of adjacency pair, they achieve
this by making non-responses (e.g., silence) or failures to address the questions topical agenda noticeable and accountable (Schegloff, 1972). Under such circumstances,
the questioner has the right to repeat the question or to solicit an answer in other ways
(Heritage, 1984:24551). Moreover, failure to respond appropriately attracts special inferences: in particular, that the answerer is being evasive, or has something to hide. This latter
sanction is particularly important when there may be millions of people watching on TV.

These constraints are quite compelling for IEs. Silence hi the face of news interview questioning is incredibly rare! When asked a question, IEs always try to respond in some way,
and most often attempt to look as if they are answering the question (Clayman, 1993,
2001).
Notwithstanding the fact that the term topic is loose and difficult to define (Jefferson,
1984; Sacks, 19641972/1992),5 it is plain that IEs are oriented to the fact that there are
real boundaries to the topical agendas set by questions. In Example 7, a British Labour
politician is asked about the significance of a right-wing leadership success for the future of
his party. He begins by responding to the question as put, and then adds a comment (Lines
1418) about the future actions of the losing left-wing politician.
(7) [UK BBC TV: Panorama: 28 January 1981]
1
IR:
Roy Hattersley .hhh is it right to interpret this
2
as a move back .hh to the right. =This er victory

by
3
such a narrow marg[in of Denis Healey.]

4
IE:
[.h h h h N o] I dont
5
believe it i:s. in some ways I wish I could say

6
that, .hhhh But I dont believe it i:s. I believe

7
its a mo:ve back .hhh to the broad based

8
tolerant representative Labour Part(h)y, .hhh the

9
Labour Party in which Neil Kinnock and I: who

10
disagree on a number of policy issue:s .hh can

11
argue about them .hh without accusing each other

of
12
treachery:, .hhh without suggesting that one or

13
the other of us is playing into the Tories ha:nds.

14
->
.hhh And let me say something about the next year
15
because that was your original question. .hhh I

16
think Tony Benn would be personally extremely

17
foo:lish to sta:nd for the deputy leadership

18
again?
The IE explicitly marks his additional comment as distinct and as departure from the questions agenda, and he goes out of his way to justify this departure by reference to an earlier
question asked by the IR (cf. Clayman, 2001). Here, the IE is clearly oriented to the topical
domain set by the IRs question.
Second, questions not only identify the topical domain to be dealt with in a response,
they also identify actions that the IE should perform in relation to the topical domain. In
Example 8 for instance, British Prime Minister Edward Heath is asked by David Frost
if he likes his main political rival of this period, Harold Wilson. Twice in this sequence,
Heath responds by addressing the topic of the questionWilsonbut he does not respond
in terms of the action agenda that the question called fora yes/no response on whether
See in particular Sacks lectures of March 9, 1967, and April 17, 1968. See also Spring 1970,
Lecture 5; Winter 1971, February 19, and Spring 1971, April 9.

he likes Wilson (cf. Raymond 2000). Instead he avoids the issue by talking in terms
of dealing with him and, more evasively still, working with other people who are in
politics:
(8) [UK BBC TV Omnibus: Frost-Heath Interview]
1
IR: Do you quite li:ke him?
2
(.)
3
IE: .hhh .h .h We: ll I th- I thi.nk in politics you see:
i- its not a ques:tion of going about (.) li:king
4
people or not, hh Its a question of dealing with

5
people, h .h a:n::d u::h (.) Ive always been

able to deal perfectly well with Mister
7
Wilson,=as
indeed: uh- he has with me,
8
(0.4)
10
IR: <But do you like> him?
11
(.)
12
IE: .hhhh Well agai:n its not a question of uh (.)
li:kes or disli:kes. I::ts a question of wor:king
13
together:: with other people who are in politics,

14
15
(0.6)
16
IR: But do ylike him.
17
(0.4)
18
IE: .hhh (.) Thatll have to remain tbe see:n wont
it.
Heaths avoidance of the questions action agenda licenses Frost to renew it, and he does so
in a most pointed way at Line 10, and again at Line 16. Frosts <But do you like> him?
establishes a contrast (with the but) between Heaths response and what he wants to
know, and the repetition of his original question sets aside that response and clearly indicates (both to Heath and, more important, to the television audience) that Heaths response
was inadequate, and that he has avoided the question.
Third, the agenda-setting function of questions involves decisions about how narrowly
or broadly defined the IEs response should be. In Example 8, the agenda was set pretty
narrowly by means of a yes/no question that made Heath accountable to respond in these
terms (Raymond, 2000). Yes/no questions are recurrent sites of conflict between IRs and
IEs, as in Example 9, in which a Serbian commander who is suspected of war crimes in the
Bosnian conflict is pressed about whether he will deal with United Nations personnel who
are responsible for investigating war crimes:
(9) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 11/02/93(IR Jeremy Paxman; IE Dragoslav Bokan)]
1
IR:
Mister Bokan, are you prepared to make yourself
available to U N investigators?
2
(.)
4
DB:
.hhhh Ah: first of all: I: just want to say that
5
its you know, very strange you know, to hear all

those accuses.=And ah: .hhh ah: its v(h)ery
6
7
8
strange to be in thuh (passive) role:: o:f

hearing, an:d ah .hh ah not to have an opportunity

9
10
11
12
13
14
15
IR:
DB:
->
->
->
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
IR:
DB:
IR:
DB:
->
->
->
you know to:: say anything: uh .hhh ah about

yourself or: you know your: ah go:als. In war. .hh
An:d [ah:
[Im not interested in your goals Mister Bokan.=
=Thuh question wars: are you prepared to make
yourself avai:lable to U N investigators.
.hhh You know uh- you know: the answer, you
know:
uh maybe better than ah m:yself. .hhh Because: o::f
>you know from the beginning of war,< .hhh I: have
just uh one goal an:d thats tdefend you know my
people: from thuh (lynch.)=
=Is that a yes or a n:o?
(0.5)
Uh: Is it a cour:t. (.) Or: a: interview.
So- you are: prepared to make yourself available
to U N investigators or no[:t.
[Of Course.
Here, the IE repeatedly avoids the question (Lines 411, 1519, 22). As the IRs series of
pursuits (arrowed) illustrates, the significance of yes/no and alternative questions is not that
IEs are necessarily forced to say yes or no right away. Rather it is that these questions
lay down a marker, making a yes/no response accountably avoided if it is not forthcoming. This in turn establishes the IRs right to renew the question,6 and IRs can and do avail
themselves of this right (Clayman, 1993). In a notable case, the interviewer in Example
9, Jeremy Paxman, asked a question 14 times of a British cabinet minister on network
televison!7 Thus IEs know that visible evasions license an IR to press them subsequently to
answer yes or no, and that this pressure may be heard as reasonable by the TV audience if
they seemed evasive in the first place. This kind of IR pressure may be heard as particularly
relevant and appropriate when there is the suspicion of wrongdoing, and/or where there is
an issue about the public accountability of the IEs actions.
In contrast, wh- questionsespecially what, why and how questionscan set the
parameters of response more broadly.8 For instance, Example 10 sets up a very open range
of responses from General John Vessey about his trip to Hanoi to negotiate over|information
about U.S. MIAs from the Vietnam War.
6
In this particular instance, the IR further narrowed the agenda of the question at Lines 2021 by
renewing his question as an explicitly disjunctive yes/no question. In this way,, he sharpened the
degree of constraint on the IE, and further underscored the IEs previous evasiveness as requiring
this narrowing.
7
This interview took place on May 13, 1997. Paxman subsequently won an award from the British
Academy of Film and Television Arts for the interview.
8
Not all wh- questions are equally open. In general, what, why, and how questions can enable more
exposition than who, when, and where questions, and are, in this sense at least, more open.

(10) [US PBS: Newshour: 10/23/92]
1 IR:
.hhh With us no:w for a newsmaker interview: is
thuh
2
delegation chairman former chairman of the joint
3
chiefs of sta:ff retired army general John Vessey.
4
5
6
IE:
IR: ->
7
8
->
IE:
9
10
11
12
13
General, welcome.
Thank you.
.hhhh Sir h:ow would you descri:be thuh significance
of this: (.) agreement.
.hhhhh Thuh Vietnamese:: uh: (0.2) foreign minister
and thuh Vietnamese prime minister (0.3) described
it to me: .hhh as a turning point.(0.3) i:n (0.4)
reh-resol:ving thuh fates of our missing. (0.5)
And I think thats what it is. It- .hh in thuh las:t
uh fi:ve years::
Here, the agenda for General Vesseys response is very under-specified. Almost any ontopic response would have likely counted as a valid and appropriate answer to the question.
In general, yes/no questions are potentially more constraining to an IE, whereas wh- questions can normally be successfully answered in a wider range of ways and using a wider
range of resources.
Tightening Question Agendas: Using Prefaces
As we have already suggested, the manifest function of question prefaces normally involves
giving background information to the audience, or managing topic shifts of various kinds.
However, question prefaces can also be used to make the agenda of a question more complex, constraining, or problematic. In the following case, a British conservative politician,
Michael Heseltine, is asked about his views on closer ties with Europe, an issue that had
become a source of conflict within his party:
(11) [UK BBC TV: Newsnight: 1989]
1 IR: .hh What Missus Thatcher has been saying: is
that
2
there is a danger (.) .h of a socialist superstate
3
being imposed (0.5) from Brussels (0.2) and
what
4
Mister Heath and others are saying is (0.2) that
5
is (.) is an illusory fear.=
6
=Where do you: line up on that is:sue.
7 IE: Well: (eh) technically, becaus:e (.) eh these
8
decisions are y:et to be ta:ken, it can go either
9
wa:y, (continues)

Here, Heseltine is not simply asked about his opinion on the creation of a socialist superstate. Instead, by means of the question preface, the audience is instructed about the existence of two conflicting positions on this issue that are held by two of the most senior
members of the Conservative party. Within this framework, the question was made more
pointed and newsworthy by its invitation to Heseltine to say where he lines up in that
conflict. Here the question preface describes the parameters of the dispute and its primary
movers, making the nature of his political dilemma very clear to a viewing audience that
may have known little about the then-emerging disputes within the Conservative party on
this issue.
Prefatory statements may also be used to tighten the agenda being set for an IE by
blocking certain types of answer. The following segment comes from an interview with
Margaret Thatcheralso on closer ties with Europe:
(12) [UK BBC TV: Newsnight: 1989]
1 IR: Now turning to the exchange rate mechanism
you:
2
have consistently said or the government has
said
3
.hh that you will joi:n when the ti:me is right
4
but people are saying: .hh that that means never.
5
Could you defi:ne the ki:nd of conditions when
6
you think we would go in.
7 IE: Uh no I would not say it means never. For the
8
policy...
The IRs question (Lines 56) is aimed at pinning down Thatcher to a specification of circumstances in which she would agree to join the exchange rate mechanism. He establishes
the agenda for this question with a preface that contrasts vaguely worded statements by
Thatcher concerning entry when the time is right with an interpretation of that statement, attributed to unidentified people (Clayman 1992), as never (Lines 14). The
preface provides a platform from which the question itself can be launched, while blocking
a response that, like the quoted when the time is right, would be vague and anodyne.
Still more complex is the following question preface to Senate majority leader, Robert
Dole. Here three main prefatory statements, all attributed to Dole, are used to set problems
for Doles stated objectives as a budget cutter:
(13) [U.S. NBC Meet the Press: 8 Dec 1985]
1 IR:
You cant have it both ways either.=>On thi.s
2
program< you have said that you dont think, .hhh
3
that youll eliminate thirty to fifty programs,
4
[an] Senator Packwood says you have to,=
5 IE:
[( )]
6 IR:
=.hh Number two you say you hope you will not
have
7
uh tax increase, [.hhhh And] number
8 IE:
[But I do.]

9
10
11
12
13
IR:
():
IE:
=and number three you say you h:ope you can have
a:l[m o s t] three percent on: .hhh on: on defe:nse,
[( )]
.hh And yet you hafta cut fifty billion next year.
Now which othose threes gunna give Senator,
In this case, the interviewer uses a series of prefatory statements to create a complex
dilemma for Dole. The statements describe three aspects of Doles positionhis admitted
inability to eliminate programs (Lines 24/6), his desire to avoid a tax increase (Lines 67),
and his hope to increase the defense budget (Lines 910). All three are incompatible with
Doles objective of cutting $50 billion from the federal budget. These three statements are
prepared for with a fourth at Line 1 (You cant have it both ways either.) that, among
other things, projects (to Dole and the news audience) that the subsequent statements will
identify contradictions that are troublesome to his position. At the end of this lengthy preface, Dole is invited to back down from one of his stated objectives (Line 12). This kind of
agenda could not be constructed without the prefatory materials.
Questions Embody Presuppositions
In addition to setting agendas, questions often assert propositions and they embody presuppositions with varying degrees of explicitness. This is so for both simple and prefaced
questions.
Most prefaced questions incorporate explicit contextualizing propositions. Once the
prefatory proposition is in place, the subsequent question can build from it and can embody
additional embedded presuppositions (Harris, 1986). Both of these features can be clearly
seen in the next case, which concerns an election in progress in which Labour politician
Tony Benn was ultimately the loser. Here the prefatory statement guardedly asserts (with
the evidential verb seems, Chafe, 1986) two propositions: the likely result of the election is
(a) close, and (b) against Tony Benn.
(14) [UK BBC TV: DLP: Hanna-Lansman]
1. IR: The result seems t be very close but (.) on
th
2
whorle it (0.2) doesnt look very good for::
(.)
3
Tony Benn.
4
Who do you bla:me for this?
The IE, Jon Lansman, was a supporter of Tony Benns. Thus the perjorative term blame here
also indexes his affiliation with Benn as the losing party in the election. As a matter of historical
record, the question likely invites the IE to name Neil Kinnock, at that time a left-inclined Labour
party figure whose vote againt Benn (together with those of a few supporters) may have tipped the
balance. After these events, Kinnock rapidly moved to the center of the Labour Party, later becoming its leader.

The subsequent question Who do you bla:me for this? builds from this platform to project blame and its allocation as the primary agenda for the IEs response. Quite clearly,
it embodies the presupposition that a nameable set of persons can be held responsible for
the impending election defeat, and that these persons can and should be relevantly blamed
by the IE for this.9
Presuppositions vary in the extent to which they are embedded within a question. To
assess the degree of this embeddedness, we can consider whether the respondent can
address a questions presuppositions, while still responding to its agenda. In Example 14,
the respondent could have directly answered the question by responding that no one was
to blame. In this way, he would have responded to the questions overt agenda, while also
denying its basic presupposition. Thus the presupposition that persons are responsible and
blameable for Benns defeat is relatively close to the surface of the questions design.
This contrasts with other more embedded cases in which, if respondents wish to contest
a questions presuppositions, they must depart from directly answering the question
as put.
In Example 15, for instance, this more embedded form of presupposition is present.
This interview took place during a period in which health care reform was on the U.S. congressional legislative agenda. Here an advertising professional who ran a TV advertising
campaign against the Clinton proposals is questioned about the timing of her campaign.
Embedded in the question shown is the presupposition that this campaign has been initiated
early relative to the timing of the legislative program for health care reform:
(15) [US PBS Newshour 21 October 1993; Health Care: the IR, addressed by name at Line 6, is
Margaret Warner]
1 IR: =Mizz Jenckes, let me start with you. Ah: y:ouve
2
started all (of) this I think, thuh health industry
3
association.>Health insurance association, .hhh
4
Why:: so early in this debate when theres not gonna
5
be:: a vote on it ih- fr maybe a year?
6 IE: Margaret (.) health care reform is well under way
In this case, the presupposition is buried a little deeper than in Example 14: The IE begins
her response with an initial move to deny the questions presupposition that the campaign
was started early. Subsequently, she develops this response into an answer that more
explicitly justifies the timing of the campaign (data not shown).
A similar form of embedding is found in the following two casesalso involving
wh- questions:
(16) [US ABC Nightline: 15th October 1992 (concerning Bushs attacks on Clintons
character during the 1992 U.S. election campaign)]
1 IR:
But, Mister Cicconi, >what do you what dyou make
2
of thuh fa::ct that (.) the audience, thuh voters,
3
dont seem to like that?
4 IE:
.hhh Well I- ih: I didnt get that from the
5
audience at all, Chris. I thought- I thought thuh
6
point that thuh president ma::de about .hhh who can
7
you trust in a crisis, who.

(17) [US PBS Newshour: 21 October 1993] (Simplified)]
1
IR:
(Let me- Let me (just) ask Mandy Grunwald one other
2
question.=How do you explain: that (.) public

3
support for thuh Presidents plan has dropped off

4
rather sharply since he announced it a month ago?=

5
IE:
=We havent seen those sharp drops, at all. In
6
fact wev[e seen

7
IR:
[So your internal p[oiling doesnt
8
IE:
[Our- our internal
9
polling has seen sustain:ed ah: support for thuh

10
plan,
In each case, a presupposition embedded in the questions design and treated as given
information is contested by the IE who, as a result, did not so much answer the question as respond to it. In Example 17, it is noticeable that the IR pursues the discrepancy
between her assumed information and that of the IE by asking about the IEs alternative
source of information (internal polling).
Deeply embedded presuppositions can be put to damaging effect in what have been
usefully termed quandary questions (Nevin, 1994). These are questions of the when did
you stop beating your wife variety in which highly hostile presuppositions are so deeply
embedded in the questions design, that any response that directly answers the question
will also confirm the questions presupposition(s)with damaging consequences for the
IE. Wh- questions are generally the most favorable environment for deeply embedded
quandary type presuppositions. The following is a case in point:
(18) [UK BBC Radio: World at One: 13 March 1979]
1
IR:
.hhh er Whats the difference between your marxism
2
And Mister McGarheys communism.

3
IE:
er The difference is that its the press that
4
constantly call me a ma:rxist when I do not, (.)

5
and never have (.) er er given that description of

6
myself
Any response by the IE, left-wing miners leader Arthur Scargill, that addresses the difference between his views and those of McGahey would confirm the embedded presupposition of the question that he is a marxist. Here, although Scargill starts his response within
the frame of the question (The difference is), he subsequently moves to undercut that
presupposition. However he can do so only by failing to respond to the question as put.
Yes/no or polar alternative questions, although they offer specific propositions for direct
response, still normally contain embedded presuppositions. For instance, Example 19 presupposes that Clintons character is problematicsomething that the IE, Clinton supporter
James Carville, explicitly contests in his response:

(19) [US ABC Nightline: 15 October 1992) ((On the 1992 U.S. Presidential campaign)]
1 IR: ->
=.hhh Mister Carville: should Governor Clintons
2
->
character now be off: limits somehow?
3 IE:
Well I dont know anything about his character
4
being off limits thuh man has magnificent

5
character...
And in the following case, the two alternatives (arrowed a and b) that are presented for
the IE to endorse are presented as exhaustive of his motives, and presuppose that there can
be no others. The question concerns Texacos agreement to settle out of court on charges
that the company systematically discriminated against its African-American employees.
(20) [US NBC Nightly News: 11/15/96:1]
1
IR:
.h Mister Bijur whats pro:- what prompted this
2
settlement? .hh
3
a-> Thuh fact that you concluded your company was

4
a-> in fact discrimina: ting

5
b-> or thuh prospects of: (.) more economic losses.

6
IE:
To:m it was that we wanted to be f:air: to
7
ah all of the employees involved, were a:

8
wonderful: gr:oup of people and family in this

9
company, en we wanta be equitable with everybody.
Here, as Roth (1998b) has noted, the or construction presupposes the correctness of one or
other of the candidate answers, simply leaving it the IE to confirm whichever explanation
is appropriate. This is something that the IE, a Texaco corporate executive, understandably
resists. It is notable in this example that the IE begins his response at Line 6 by addressing
the IR by name (To:m), summoning him into recipiency (cf. Schegloff 1968). By this
means, he projects that his subsequent action will be a volunteered first action, reducing its status as a second action that should properly fall within the terms of the prior
question (see also Example 15).10
In sum, all news interview questions embody presuppositions of some kind. For the
most part, these presuppositions are clearly shared between IR and IE and, quite commonly,
they have been established in earlier interview talk. Because of this, the presuppositional
basis of many IR questions can easily be overlooked and taken for granted. The nature of
IR presuppositions becomes most visible when, as in most of the previous cases, they are
rejected by IEs. In these incidentsand especially in quandary questionsthe difficulty
or hostility of the questions presuppositional content emerges quite clearly.11
The hostility embodied in IR questioning can be further shaped by aspects of question
design that favor one type of response over another, and it is this aspect of question design
to which we now turn.
See Clayman (1998) for a general account of the use of address terms in news interviews and
Heritage (2002) for other practices for reducing the responsiveness of second-position actions.
10

Questions Prefer Particular Responses
Though many news interview questions are not designed to favor particular answers, some
evidently are. This is important because the more strongly the IR designs a question to favor
one response over another, the more nearly their neurralistic posture may be compromised.
A number of practices of question designlargely associated with yes/no questionscan
achieve this outcome. What these practices have in common is some procedure for designing questions so as to inviteor, in conversation analytic terms, prefer (Heritage 1988;
Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1973/1987; Schegloff, 1988)particular responses. This practice treats alternative IE responses as nonequivalent, and establishes a higher threshold of
accountability if the IE chooses to respond with the dispreferred option. When preference
organization is mobilized against the likely position of IEs, the latter may find themselves
responding in a more defensive or self-justifying way than might otherwise be the case.
Questions can be shaped to prefer particular responses through the design of the question
itself, or through prefatory statements, or by a combination of the two.
Conveying preferences through the design of interrogates. Various aspects of questions
can be designed to favor or facilitate particular IE responses. Some of these involve features of interrogative syntax itself. Although it might be thought that interrogatives are
safe and neutral because they do not express positions, this not always the case. For
example, questions that are framed using negative interrogative syntaxsuch as Wont
you, Isnt this, and so onare routinely treated as embodying very strong preferences
about answers. Indeed IEs recurrently respond to such questions as opinion statements to
be agreed or disagreed with (Heritage, in press). The following is a case in point. Here the
IE is the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa:
(21) [US PBS Newshour: 22 July 1985]
1
IR: -> But .isnt this (.) d- declaration of thuh state of
2
emergency:: (.) an admission: that the eh=South

3
African goverments policies have not worked,

an
4
in fact that the um- United States (0.2)

5
6
7
IE:
8
9
administrations policy of constructive engagement

(.) has not worked.
-> I do not agree with you .hhhh that the approach
we
have taken (.) toward South Africa is- a- is an
incorrect approach...
The IRs negative formulation Isnt this... is clearly treate d by the IE as asserting an
opinion when he replies I do not agree with you... This is the only type of interrogative
to which IEs recurrently respond in this way.
11
See also Maynard (1985) for a discussion of how presuppositions become progressively disembedded in argument sequences involving children.

Given that negative interrogatives are often understood as opinion statements, a return
to our first example suggests an interesting kind of disingenuousness on Sam Donaldsons
part:
(1) [US ABC This Week: October 1989: Barman]
1 IR: -> Isnt it a fact, Mr. Darman, that the taxpayers will
2
pay more in interest than if they just paid it out

3
of general revenues?
4 IE:
No, not necessarily. Thats a technical argument
5 IR -> Its not a-- may I, sir? Its not a technical
6
-> argument. Isnt it a fact?
7 IE:
No, its definitely not a fact. Because first of
8
all, twenty billion of the fifty billion is being

9
handled in just the way you want--through treasury

10
financing. The remaining

11 IR: -> Im just asking you a question. Im not expressing
12
-> my personal views.
13 IE:
I understand.
Here, it can be noticed that not only is Donaldons first question a negative interrogative
of the type that is frequently treated as an opinion statement, but also that at Lines 56,
Donaldson directly disagrees with the IE (with Its not a technical argument.), and then
effectively reasserts that opinion a second time with a renewal of his earlier negatively formulated question. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the IE treats him as
having taken a position on the issue (Lines 710). And it is this that makes Donaldsons
subsequent defense (that he was just asking you a question) distinctly disingenuous!
Other aspects of interrogative syntax can also be designed to prefer particular responses.
Straightforward cases involve the [statement]+[tag] question design. The statement
describes a state of affairs and the tag invites agreement or disagreement with the statement. The use of this format is designed to promote the IEs agreement with the statement,
thus agreement with the statement is preferred. Example 22 exhibits this construction:
(22) [UK BBC Radio: World at One: 13 March 1979]
1 IR:
=Do you ascri:be to Marxist economic philosophy.=
2 IE:
=I would say that there: er: the: (.) philosphy of
Marx as far as the economics of Britain is
4
5
6
7
8
->
IR:
IE:
concerned is one with which I find sympathy.=and

would support it.=Yes.
(.)
Well that makes you a Marxist doe[snt it.]
[Not nece]ssarily
Example 23 similarly illustrates the device in reverse form:

(23) [UK BBC Radio: Today: 1993]
1
2
IR:
3
4
5
6
7
8
IE:
->
Now theres talk that thuh cabinet will announce

some sort of am:nesty for people whove committed
crimes: ah racially motivated crimes presumably.
.hh Uhm under thuh ah over thuh last few years.
That wouldnt be acceptable to thuh A.N.C. would
it?
.hhh Question of amnestys a very difficult
situation.
Here, agreement with the statement prior to the tag is still facilitated but, because the initial
statement is negatively formulated, an agreeing No answer is preferred.
Other aspects of question design can also embody preferences of this kind. For example
negative polarity items (Horn 1989) such as any embody a preference for a No answer,
as the following case in which the journalist relays other peoples descriptions of prison
camps in Bosnia to the IE, a representative of the International Society for Human Rights
(ISHR), and then asks Do you believe theres any justification for that at all?
(24) [UK BBC Radio Today: Bosnia Camps]
1 IR:
.hhh People have u::sed thuh phrase concentration
2
camps: and thuh Bosnians themselves have used

that
3
phrase.
4
-> Do you believe theres any justification for that
5
at all?
Here, the final question-formatted segment of the IRs turn incorporates the negative polarity terms any justification and at all. This question, asked early in the Bosnia conflict and
before Serbian war crimes had been confirmed and publicized, and directed to a representative of an organization noted for its caution and probity in making partisan accusations,12 is
cautiously designed for a negative answer.
Finally, incorporation of terms like seriously or really can also embody preferences
for particular answers. When they are used, as they normally are, in questions that prefer
responses that contrast with IEs known positions, they strongly challenge them to defend
those positions. For example, in the following case, Ross Perot is interviewed about his
candidacy in the 1992 U.S. Presidential election, and his position on the growing U.S.
federal budget deficit. Earlier in the interview he had justified his candidacy as a means of
getting the main political parties to take the deficit seriously.
(25) [US PBS Newshour: 18 September 1992]
1
IR:
Alright n-, lets talk about some of the things

you

2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
RP:
RP:
IR:
RP:
IR:
RP:
IR:
RP:
IR:
->
15
16
17
RP:
->
->
18
19
20
propose. R: raising the tax on gasoline ten cents

a
yea:r for the next five y[ears fifty cents.
[Yes
Yes.
A::h a gallon after five y [ears.
[A:fter five years.
Eh: taxing all but fifteen percent of the social
security benefits of recipients that e:arn over
twenty five thousand dollars a year.
Exactly.=
=Now youre endorsing that.
Yes.
Do you (.) s:eriously believe that President
Bush,
or Bill Clinton again is going to endorse either
[one of those.
[(I thought) they feel the American people
dont
have the stomach for fair (0.2) shared (.)
sacrifice. (1.2) The facts are the American
people
do=Thats the point were trying to make.
Here, after listing two potentially unpopular tax measures, the incorporation of the word
seriously into the IRs question is designed for a no answerand is thus hostile to Perots
political position. If he is to be consistent with his earlier stated position, his answer to this
question must be yes, it must be accounted for, and he must do so in competition with the
skepticism that the interviewers question conveys.
Designing Preference Through Question Prefaces. In addition to the interrogative component of question design, question prefaces can also be built to prefer particular responses.
One straightforward method of doing so is to invoke others who take a particular
view of the issue (Clayman, 1992). In Example 26, for instance, the IE (who works for a
human rights organization) is asked whether he would describe prison camps in Bosnia as
concentration camps.
(26) [UK BBC Radio: Today: Bosnia Camps]
1
IR: -> .hhh People have u::sed thuh phrase concentration
2
-> camps: and thuh Bosnians themselves have

used that
3
-> phrase. Do you believe theres any justification

Earlier in the interview, the IR and IE collaborated extensively in establishing that the organization that the IE represents is at independent and impartial in the way it deals with human rights
issues.
12

4
5
6
7
IE:
->
8
9
10
for that at all?

.hh I think in thuh case of some of thuh larger
camps there are, thats certainly accurate .hh ah
if you count .h torture and execution as hallmarks
.h of concentration camps .h then thuh reports
weve received ah would seem to suggest that
is an
accurate description for some of them.
This is obviously a delicate question for a human rights worker to answer. As noted previously, in an earlier part of the interview, the IE had been at pains to stress the apolitical
and nonpartisan nature of his organization. The design of the IRs question reflects an
orientation to this issue. He introduces the question by referring to anonymous people
who have used the term concentration camps, and then augments this with the assertion
that the Bosnians themselves have used the same term, thus favoring a yes answer.
The final question asks if there is any justification for the use of this term. Although the
question itself, as we have seen, is designed for a negative answer, the referencing of others who would answer affirmatively establishes a favorable environment for an affirmative
answer. Overall then, whichever way the IE responds, he will be seen to have responded to
a carefully and judiciously formulated question, and can match it with an equally judicious
answer. It is just such a response that the question receives (Lines 510).
A rather more overt mobilization of preference is exhibited in Example 27. Here the
interview concerns pending legislation to reduce the time limit for legal abortions. The IE,
British Conservative MP Jill Knight, is in favor of the proposed legislation.
(27) [UK ATV: Afternoon Plus 1979 Abortion]
1 IR:
Can we now take up then the main issues of
2
that bill which r- (.) remain substantially the

3
same. (.) and indeed (0.2) have caused great deal

4
of concern. (0.4) But first youll note .hhh

5
is the clause about (.) time limits h in which h

6
abortions can be .h legally=

7 IE:
=(Yes)=
8 IR:
=ha:d. And the time limit h (.) according to the
9
bill has now dropped .h from twenty eight weeks

.h
10
(.) to twenty wee[ks.

11 IE:
[Yes.=
12 IR: ->
=Now<a lot of people are very concerned about
this.
13
->
[.hh How concerned are you.
14 IE:
[Yeh
15 IE:
.hhh uh: (.) I think this is right. I think that
16
urn: .hh again ones had a lot of e:uh conflicting

17
18
19
20
evidence on this but .hh what has come ou::t h an

I think that .h the public have been concerned
about this, .hhh is that there have been thmost
distressing cases
The IRs lengthy question preface (Lines 110) shifts topic (Lines 14) and describes
the proposed reduction of the legal abortion period (from 28 weeks to 20 weeks). It culminates in the observation that a lot of people are very concerned about this (Line 12).
The final interrogative component of the IRs turn invites, or challenges, the IE to address
that concern. Here the IE is invited to address the concern of people about the reduction
in the time limit for abortions, when this is something that she herself favors. The compelling power of this hostile question preface is shown by the IEs rather convoluted effort
to harness the term concern to issues on heranti-abortionside of the argument. The
distressing cases she goes on to describe involve the destruction of wellformed fetuses.
In this way, the IE establishes a superficial lexical connection between her comments and
the agenda set by the IRs question, and thus manages to twist the terms of the question in
a fashion that is more helpful to her position.13
In these cases, preference is established by a statement prior to the IRs question. A
similar effect can be achieved by a statement positioned after the question as in Example
28, where a member of the governing Conservative Party is questioned about the upshot of
his disagreements with the Thatcher administration:
(28) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 14 October 1981]
1
IR:
But wont you have to consider threatening to vote
2
against the government, =

3
IR: ->
=Thats surely what (.) what all the critics now
4
->
have to face.
5
IR:
We::ll I dont know, no I- I think the: the were
6
still at the (.) stage of the intellectual argument

7
which I think .hh were winning,=because what

theyve
8
put forward is just the same old stuff. =Which nobody

9
believes and it hasnt worked.
Here the initial question component of the IRs turn, a negative interrogative that is itself
strongly weighted to expect an affirmative answer (see the earlier discussion of Example
21), is further supported by the flat assertion that all the (internal) government critics now
have to consider threatening to vote against the government.
The practice of prefacing questions with statements that are designed to favor particular
responses response can be developed to the point that IRs present positions as effectively
incontrovertible, and then invite IEs to deny them. This practice is common in cases where
IEs are engaged in defensive stonewalling. The following is a case in point. Here, the
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary is interviewed about the Gulf War Syndrome and its
13
See Clayman (2001) for further examples of this process.

possible origin in seron gas used during the conflict. The syndrome is now the focus for
claims for compensation by war veterans:
(29) [US CBS 60 Minutes: Gulf War Syndrome]
1 IR: Secretary Deutch you say there is no evidence.
2
.hh Youve got ca:ses where: khh then- Czechs:
say:
3
that they foun:d seron.
4
You say they didnt, th:ey say: (.) that they did.
5
.hh You have soldiers say:ing: that they experienced
6
burning sensations after explosions in the air. That
7
they became nauseous, that they got .hh headaches.
8
.hh You have two hundred fifty gallons of chemical
9
agents that were found in:si:de Kuwait.
10
.hh You had scuds that had seron in the warheads.
11
(1.0)
12 IR: If thats not evidence what is in.
Deutchs defense is, of course, oriented to the federal governments vulnerability to medical and other damages claims, which could be very extensive. The IR contrasts Deutchs
position with the statements of Czechs, the reported symptoms of soldiers, and other observations that are presented as fact. The final interrogative simply challenges the IE to deny
the evidential status of these various reported statements and assertions. In the way that this
evidence is compiled, the IR manages to exert very strong pressure on the IEs position.
Hostile Questioning: Splits, Forks, and Contrasts
Perhaps the most hostile questioning that IRs can engage in involves constructing IEs as
some form of disagreement or self-contradiction. This can take two main forms: IEs can be
presented (a) as in disagreement with their political allies, or (b) as in a situation of inconsistency or self-contradiction in their own positions.
We have already seen the first of these maneuvers in several earlier examples (e.g., 11
and 28). It is very common in Britain where the parliamentary process places a premium
on party loyalty, and consistency in voting with the party leadership. It is less common in
the United States where congressional voting is less constrained by party loyalties. British
journalists sometimes refer to this style of questioning as split hunting. A very overt case
is the following. The context of this interview is a developing disagreement within the Conservative Party over Britains relations with the European Union. The Conservative right,
led by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was hostile to closer relations. Her position
was opposed by ex-Prime Minister Edward Heath, who led a faction favoring closer ties to
Europe. The conflict seemed likely to impact the political succession to Thatcherif the
left prevailed, the IE in the following example, Michael Heseltine, would have been the
likely next leader of the party. In this case, the IR attempts to induce Heseltine to take up a
public position that is opposed to Thatchers (and aligned to Heaths) on three successive
occasions and, in the subsequent parts of the interview, the same topic is pursued in more

subtle ways. In fact, the entire 7minute interview is devoted to split hunting. We begin at
the beginning of the interview, where the IRs first question refers to a filmed report that
had just been shown:
(30) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 1989]
1 IR:
Well Michael Heseltine lets begin: with

one of the
2
comments towards the end of Margaret

Gilmores
3
report.
4
->
Was Philip Stevens of the Financial
Ti:mes right
5
->
(.) to place you: (.) in this argument
closer to
6
->
Mister Heath (.) than to Missus
Thatcher.=
7 IE:
=.hhh Well you know one of the reasons

that I:
8
wanted to (.) come on you:r pro:gra:m

.hh is
9
precisely to refu:se to invo:lve the personalities:

10
in this issue. I think Mister Heath has

done his
11
own cause a disservice .hh in: EU: the

way in which
12
he has spoken. This is not a matter of

13
personalities and the conservative party

is not
14
going to have th- the sort of row that the

media
15
will enjoy:. .Hhh but it is impo:rtant .h

that (.)
16
the conservative party and the country (.)

discuss
17
the ideas. And I wholly reject the analysis that

18
this will do us harm in the po:lls. I

believe
19
itll do us good (.) because we shall be

telling
20
the British people what the options are,

(.) what
21
the alternatives are, (.) and there will be

no
22
doubt in my mi:nd they will want conservatives to

23
24 IR:
->
25
26 IE:
->
27 IR:
28 IE:
29
30
31 IR:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38 IR:
->
39
->
40
->
41
->
42
->
43
->
44
45 IE:
->
46
pursue: whichever one we select.

But on: the substance of the ar:gument
are you
closer to: to Mister Heath=
=No youre [back on the [sa:me
si[tuation and what
[b- [No [Im ah
youre gonna try and do and youre not
gonna
succeed if we sit here all night, you are
not going
to get me into a personality [divisive
process. .hh
[hm
I will ta:lk about the ideas of Europe.
My:- my- I
cannot overstress(f) to you (.) the European issue
is going to dominate the next deca:de,
and if we
try to conduct it on a sort of personality
divisive
basis .h we will divert the industrialn
commercial
companies away from the real challenges
they face.
Well often uh (.) politics reach: the public uh (.)
through personality, .hh what Missus
Thatcher has
been saying: is that there is a danger (.)
.h of a
socialist superstate being imposed (0.5)
from
Brussels (0.2) and what Mister Heath
and others are
saying is (0.2) that is (.) is an illusory
fear.=
=Where do you: line up on that is:sue.
Well: (eh) technically, becaus:e (.) eh
these
decisions are ye: t to be ta:ken,..
In the first yes/no question (Lines 46), the IR constructs an agenda for Heseltines response
that presupposes the conflict between Thatcher and Heath as its primary reference point,
and is designed for a Yes response. When Heseltine attempts to reformulate the issue in
terms of discussing the ideas and options (Lines 1617, 1821), the IRs subsequent

question (Lines 245) pursues the original question of Heseltines alignment. He does so,
with the but preface, and the virtual repeat of the terms of his earlier question at Line 4, in
such a way as to formulate Heseltines previous response as an evasion (see the earlier discussion of Example 8). This question is also designed for a yes. Finally, after Heseltine
again declines to respond in terms of personalities (Line 36), the IR reinstates the issue
for a third time in terms of a substantive disagreement between Heath and Thatcher (Lines
3844), albeit with a question that is neutral in preference terms. Although this case is
quite egregious, it embodies characteristic features of British political interviewing that are
applied to senior figures in all three political parties.
A close relative of split-hunting questions are those that place the IE in a dilemma
or fork. Most commonly, these are shaped as disjunctive questions. For instance, in
Example 31, a British Labour politician is discussing his partys defense policy: Across a
number of earlier turns, the IR has been pressing his respondent on the issue that the party
would like to be rid of nuclear weapons:
(31) (UK: BBC TV Newsnight: 1989)
1
IR:
So what will you be pushing for tomorrow, what

is
2
your: bottom line as you said earlier?

3
IE:
Well I think therell be a number of (0.2) proposals

4
put by different colleagues, but the bottom line

has
5
to be that if things go well and talks procee:d w

6
uh, as we would want them to, over the first two

or
7
three years, both on strategic arm:s, and on the

8
question of a nuclear free Europethen, of,

9
course wed have achieved our objective slightly

10
more slowly than we used to deba:te, but (.) as

11
part of a: an international change, which would

12
be welcome and would contribute to the safety

of the
13
world. .hh if we dont get that, then I think some

of
14
us have to sa:y in- in all credibility .hh that we

15
would want Britain to be able to remove those

weapons
16
.hhh independently, unilateral[ly if tha[ts the

way=
[In uh- [In uh

17 IR:
18 IE:
=youd like to put it.=

19 IR:
=In other words, I dont understand the logic of

20
this:, uh Mr. Blunkett,

21
a-> if things are going well, and the, the atmosphere

22
23
24
25
a->
a->
b->
b->
26
27
28
29
IE:
b->
b->
of international detente continues (.) youre quite

happy to negotiate the weapons away,
but if things (.) go badly, and I assume by that
you mean some kind of return, to some kind of
cold
war atmosphere, then youll (.) give them away
[anyway.
[Well I: I Im not talking about giving anything
away,
Here the IEs lengthy statement about his partys nuclear weapons policy (Lines 316)
straddles policy conflicts within his party between those who wish to remove nuclear weapons as part of a negotiation, and those who would prefer to remove them unilaterally. The
IRs summary formulation (Heritage, 1985) simply sharpens this into an explicit contradiction, suggesting that the party will remove nuclear weapons under any conditions. This
implies either that the party has no coherent negotiating position or, worse, that it remains
committed to the politically unpopular policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
A rather different kind of fork is manifested in Example 32. Here the IEthen-Senate
leader Robert Doleis invited to explain the fact the President Reagans political programs are in trouble. In the question preface, the IR offers two anonymous and thirdparty-attributed formulations of the situation. The first is that Reagans programs, though
not the President himself, are in trouble. The second offers an explanation for that trouble
in terms of ineffective legislative leadership. The latter explanation, which engenders a
little laugh from Dole, is explicitly offered as implicating Dole himself.
(32) [US NBC Meet the Press: December 1985]
1
IR:
Senator (0.5) uh President Reagans elected

2
thirteen months ago: an enormous landslide.

3
(0.8)
4
IR:
a->
It is s::aid that his programs are in trouble,
5
a->
though he seems to be terribly popular with the
6
a->
American people.
7
(0.6)
8
IR:
b->
It is said by some people at thuh White House
we
9
b->
could get those programs through:: if only we
ha:d
10
b->
perhaps more: .hh uhffective leadership up on
thuh
11
b->
hill an I [suppose] indirecly that might ( )
12 IE:
[hhhheh]
13 IR:
b->
relate tyou as well:.
14
(0.2)
15 IR:
Uh whaddyou thi.nk thuh problem is rilly. Is it

16
17
(0.2) thuh leadership as it might be claimed up

on
thuh hill, er is it thuh programs themselves.
In the final formulation of the question, the IR draws on this extensive question preface
and explicitly invites Dole to identify the problem in terms of either the (de-)merits of
the programs, or ineffective legislative leadership. These were presented as exhausting the
possible explanations for Reagans legislative difficulties. As in Example 20, neither option
can possibly commend itself to a Republican Senate leader, and Doles response avoids
these options in favor of a response that cites the weakness of his majority in the Senate
(data not shown).
Finally, in a convergence of the split and the fork formats, IRs may contrast the
conduct of the IE with the conduct of another individual who is allied to the IE. In these
kinds of contrasts, the conduct of the second individual is normally used as a kind of
moral template for appropriate conduct (Smith, 1978). A notable use of this kind of
question occurred when then Vice-President (and presidential candidate) George Bush was
interviewed by Dan Rather live on CBSs Evening News.14 The film report preceding
the interview focused heavily on the Iran-Contra scandal, and ended with a description
of contacts between Bushs long-serving national security aide Donald Gregg and Contra
middleman Felix Rodriguez. Rathers opening question took up this topic.
(33) [CBS Evening News: 1/25/88 Bush-Rather]
1 IR: Mister Vice President, thank you for being with us
2
tonigh:t, .hh Donald Gregg still swerves as your
3
trusted advisor, He was deeply involved in running
4
arms to the contras, n e didnt inform you.
5
.hhh Now when President Reagans (0.3) trusted
6
advisor: Admiral Poindexter: (0.5) failed to inform
7
him::, (0.7) thuh President (0.4) fired im.
8
(0.5)
9
Why is Mister Gregg still:: (0.2) inside thuh White
10
House n still a trusted advisor.
11 IE: Because I have confidence in him, .hh n because
this
12
matter Dan:, as you well know:,
Here the IR, building from the film report, begins by asserting that Gregg still serves
Bush as a trusted advisor. He continues by depicting Greggs conduct as untrustworthy:
running arms to the Contras without informing Bush. This state of affairs is then contrasted
with the morally appropriate action that President Reagan took when his trusted advisor
Admiral Poindexter engaged in actions that breached that trust (Lines 57). The contrast
between Reagans and Bushs conduct is clearly drawn. The similarities between the advisors are established point for point, and Bushs conduct is presented as clearly differing
See Clayman and Whalen (1988/1989), Schegloff (1988/1989) and Pomerantz (1988/1989) for
other treatments of this interview.
14

from Reagans. This contrast is particularly pointed. Not only is Reagan Bushs political
ally and superior, he is also President of the United States, and a role model for the position
that Bush is currently campaigning for. Bush can thus be directly asked to explain the contrast between his conduct and that of his superiorthe occupant of the supreme position to
which he aspires. This is, of course, what the IRs question (Lines 910) proceeds to do.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has argued that, although questioning may generally be understood as a
neutralistic activity in the news interview context, neutralism is not to be confused with
neutrality. News interview questioning is very far from being a neutral activity. As we
have seen, the IR holds the initiative when it comes to the topics that the IE will be questioned on. There can be no neutrality in the selection of these topics and contexts: rather
the selection will be more or less favorable (or, which is not necessarily the same, more or
less desirable) from the IEs point of view. Further, the IR can manage questioning so that
particular presuppositions are incorporated in the design of questions and at varying levels of embeddedness. These presuppositions may be more or less problematic for an IEs
position, and their degree of embeddedness may create greater or lesser difficulties for the
IE in formulating a response. Finally, the IR can manage questions so that particular audience expectations for the IEs response are mobilised: expectations that the IE may need to
resist, and where such resistance may incur an additional burden of explanation than might
otherwise be the case.
News interview questioning, then, cannot be neutral but only neutralistic. It can be
more or less pointed, more or less fair, more or less balanced in its approach to its subject
matter. Much of the evaluationby the IE and, especially, by the news audienceof these
characteristics of IR questioning is likely to be shaped by perceptions of the relevance of
particular questions. For both the IE and the news audience, the prevailing consideration in
relation to each question is why that now (Sacks, 1992). The conclusions that are drawn
by the IEs (and, just as important, the news audience) about the why that now issue will
shape how the questioners purpose is understood and, relatedly, whether a question is
judged to be appropriate or fair.15
This chapter has aimed at laying out some basic features of question design in the news
interview context, and to describe their deployment in a range of instances. Underlying
some of these observations is the suggestion that innovation in question design can be
an important element of social change in the news interview context, and broadcast journalism more generally. In particular the emergence and growth of the prefaced question
design, while initially developed and used to inform the news audience about important
contextual details, represents a formidable extension of the interviewers initiative and
power. Many of the more hostile questions discussed in this chapter simply could not be
launched in any other way.
For example, Dan Rathers questioning of George Bush was widely judged to be inappropriate
and had substantial negative consequences for Rather and, indirectly, for CBS news (Clayman and
Heritage, 2002a).
15

In a nonrandom, but wide-ranging, sample of 639 questions from British and American interview data, Heritage and Roth (1995) found that nearly half of the total questions
asked were prefaced questions. In a recent study of presidential press conferences Clayman and Heritage (2002b) also found that simple questions fell from 44% of the total
during Eisenhowers first term to 21% during Reagans first term. During the same period
hostile question prefaces multiplied by a factor of 450%. Although the relative absence
of follow-up opportunities may encourage journalists to produce more complex questions
in the press conference context, these figures are nonetheless striking, and may index a parallel underlying growth in the deployment of prefaced questions in the U.S. news interview
context as well. If this is so, it is clear that journalistic initiative has expanded considerably
during the past 40 years and, in all probability, that this is directly associated with a growth
in adversarialness, which, by common consent, has also grown significantly during this
period.
The growth of prefaced questioning may, however, have different institutional histories
in Britain and America. In Britain, legislative regulation and oversight of broadcast journalism has historically been more intense than in the United States. Moreover, until 1958
when the BBCs monopoly position in broadcasting was replaced by a duopoly, there were
no competitive pressures that might fuel a reduction in deference and a rise in adversarialness. In the United States, by contrast, FCC oversight and regulation of news program
content has been minimal, and competitive pressures have impacted broadcast journalism from the outset. It may be conjectured then that in Britain there was a more dramatic
growth in prefaced questions, beginning in the 1960s, whereas in the United States growth
was more steady and gradual and began from a higher baseline. This in turn suggests that
news interview questioning may never have been as deferential in the United States as it
was in Britain during the 1950s. Thus the Attlee example (2) with which this discussion
began may truly represent one of the more extreme cases of deferential interviewing that
one could find in the anglophone broadcasting context.
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4
Taken-for-Granteds in (an) Intercultural
Communication
Kristine L.Fitch
University of Iowa
In a pair of articles (Hopper, 1981a, 1981b) synthesizing theory and research from diverse
areas of social science and philosophy, Robert Hopper formulated the nature and functions of taken-for-granteds (TFGs), unspoken yet ordinarily understood between-the-lines
aspects of talk. Emphasizing that TFGs were not to be equated with nonverbal messages,
Hopper noted the essentially incomplete and often telegraphic nature of much face-toface interaction. He pointed out similarities between missing premises in enthymemes,
pragmatic implications of utterances inferred from felicity conditions and conversational
maxims, and other well-studied categories of unspoken messages as the parts that when
presumed to form coherent patterns, constitute communicative frames (Bateson, 1972;
Goffman, 1974). The concept of TFGs put forth in those articles has proved a powerful
analytic tool in communication studies and related disciplines, and was recently the theme
of a Northwest Communication Association convention.
This essay illustrates one kind of TFGs in everyday talk: cultural premises, that is,
unspoken assumptions drawn from a specific communal system of symbolic resources.
This analysis draws upon a tradition within the ethnography of speaking that begins from
an assumption that peoples ways of speaking are structured by cultural codes (Philipsen,
1992) that are in turn assumed to vary across cultures. This assumption is not contradictory to the emphasis on structure and organization of talk typical of conversation analysis
(CA). It is worth noting, however, that ethnographies of speaking generally proceed under
the assumption that speakers draw upon cultural codes of meaning that are constructed
across time in order to communicate in a given conversational moment. Unlike CA, then,
there is an expectation in ethnographies of speaking that such codes will most often be
invoked implicitly, rather than being referred to explicitly, in most instances of everyday
conversation. I focus this discussion of TFGs around a conversation in which distinctive
cultural codes form the bases for contrasting proposals for action, despite speakers agreement about the objective these proposals are meant to accomplish. Although elucidating
TFGs can illuminate identification and understanding of culture in talk, which provides the
analytic vigor of the concept, I argue that making them explicit through metacommunication during interaction can be problematic. That said, the power of the TFG construct lies
in revealing the ambiguity and enigma inherent in talk, and the possibilities such incompleteness leaves open for multiple, often productive, alternative framings of interpersonal
events.

AN INTERCULTURAL DINNER TABLE CONVERSATION
Family dinner table conversation has been recognized for some time as a particularly rich
setting for talk that is more obviously culturally situated than in some other settings and
activities (see, e.g., Blum-Kulka, 1997; Ochs, Smith, & Taylor, 1989). Talk within families
is a primary vehicle for socialization of children into a speech community. That talk may
be implicitly instructive, as parents model desired ways of speaking and correct childrens
deviations from them (Erica, Gabe is talking, you need to wait your turn). It may also
be quite direct, as parents give voice to cultural norms for behavior and, at times, to the
understandings that underlie those norms (Its rude to talk when someone else is talking,
it seems like what theyre saying isnt important enough for you to listen to.)
A third way in which cultural norms and premises (described by Philipsen, 1997, as
cultural codes) are discernible in dinner table talk is through examination of such talk for
TFGs that are relevant to the matter at hand in some culturally situated way. What counts
as a culturally specific or relevant TFG is discussed in more detail later. For now, I propose
that a case can be made that a particular instance of talk is consistent with, and counts as an
enactment of, a cultural system of belief. Making such a case, however persuasively, does
not constitute ruling out other explanations, particularly if it is made on the basis of a single
fragment rather than a collection of similar instances. It does, however, provide a starting
place for pursuing cultural codes through their subtle appearances in everyday talk.
The transcript that follows is the first few minutes of a family dinner table conversation
that lasted approximately 15 minutes in total. Just before the recorder was turned on, the
son asked for an increase in his allowance. The participants are the mother (M), the father
(F), the 9-year-old son (S) and the 7year-old daughter (D). Some side sequences have been
edited out for length.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
S.
M.
M.
S.
but uh REASonable (.) mount (.) that Im gonna spend

(1.5)
What I? think is you need (.) two: (.5) containers
fer mo?ney (.) one tht you kin draw on tspend fr
things like bake sales an one that you dont touch
(.5) .hh one that you just (.) keep building up until
you have enough to go to the bank.
(2.5)
(4 lines deleted)
but (.) the WAY YOU have yer ((cup clinks)) finances
situated right now (.) Y YMIGHT PUT YER WHOLE
ALLOWANCE IN THERE BUT THEN THE NEXT DAY YOU GO AND
GET ALL OF IT ?OUT
(1.0)
yeah but one thing<< (.5) If I did tha: t
((swallows)) I dont (.) I make LES:SSh: than (.)
ten dollarsh (.) a month (2.5) (with thllwance Im
getting) (.) right now
Taken-for-granteds 79
19
20
21
22
M.
23
S.
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
M.
?.
S.
D.
M.
S.
F.
38
39
S.
40
D.
41
S.
42
43
44
45
46
S.
F.
47
48
49
50
S.
51
F.
52
53
54
55
F.
S.
56
(2.0)
THREE DOLLARS A WEEK? WELL TWO DOLLARS A WEEK, WHAT
YOURE GETTING NOW, YOURE RIGHT, THATS less than
ten dollars
(1.5)
If you gotta raise tthree dollars youd be making
twelve dollars a month
hhm
sou::nds good
(2.5)
Wo?::hh
(.5)
Well? outta that twelve dol?lars I wancha tbe saving
(1.0) EIGHT of it
(.5)
M::?kay
(5.0)
y ocho
Between six? and eight
He (.) them he could have
to spend
(1.5)
(right) (.5) soun?ds good
(3.5)
(1 line deleted)1
dan los (ahorros) a
y yo los
Give me the (savings) and Ill take
guardo (.5) Los ahorros gue van a ir para el banco=
care of them(.5)the savings that will go to the bank=
=okay (.5)
THATS? WHAT=
yo los man
Ill keep them
=y nadie puede tocarmelos=
=and no one can touch them=
=THATS WHAT
(1 line deleted)
I TRI: (.5)
The side sequence that begins here and ends at Line 59 involves D stating her intention to go to
her room to change the page on her calendar. M vetoes the idea, asking D to finish her dinner first.

57
S.
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
S.
M.
F.
S?
F.
M.
S.
M.
M.
=I said (.) will you?

(2 lines deleted)
Thats what I tried (1.0) thats what I asked you to
do once and then (.) Will you keep my allowance? for
a coupla weeksh?
Youre right? And I was not willing to (be uh)
Pero es que yo lo nico que voy a guardar es lo que
But the only thing Im gonna take care of is that
st guardao guardado (.) Lo que va a ir para el
which is saved saved (.) that which is going to the
banco (.) Lo o?tro no
bank (.) The re?st no
(1.5)
hm hm hm
Porque tienen que aprender a manejarlo
because they have to learn to manage it
Well? Im (.) I think if somebodys hangin onto it
for im hes not? learning ta
(.5)
hm hm hm
(1.5)
((softly, through food)) manage it
(2.5)
but if it would help? im out (.5) IF IT WOULD HELP
YOU OUT TO LEARN TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY FOR Papa to
82
83
hang onto it then (.5) whom I? tstand in the way a

progess.
Immediately obvious from this transcript is that S does not get a straight answer to his
request. In fact, when the topic shifts at the end of segment presented here, there has been
no clear indication of whether or not he will get the desired increase in his allowance.
Rather than a yes or no answer, M responds to his request with a proposal for how S should
manage his money more generally. In some contexts, between some participants, the relevance of this response could be questioned. M does not specify how the proposal is connected to the request; perhaps the increase will be contingent on S agreeing to adhere to it.
She does go on to make more explicit the basis for the proposal, noting a problem with Ss
current money management practices:
10
11
12
M.
13
but (.) the WAY YOU have yer ((cup clinks)) finances
situated right now (.) Y YMIGHT PUT YER WHOLE
ALLOWANCE IN THERE BUT THEN THE NEXT DAY YOU GO
AND
GET ALL OF IT ?OUT
Comparing the present state of affairsthe next day you go and get all of it outwith
the preferred alternative you just keep building up until you have enough to go to the
bank (Lines 67)suggests that the habit M wishes to correct is S spending all of his
money, rather than saving some of it. Certainly this is a common theme of parental instruction to children. Of note here is Ms emphasis on the actions and choices of the child himself, signaled by her repeated use of the pronoun you: You need two containers, one that you
can draw on, one that you dont touch, one that you build up until you have enough to go
to the bank. Assuming that goodies bought at a bake sale have more allure for a 9-year-old
than a container of money waiting to be taken to the bank, adhering to this proposal will
also require (and may be intended to instill) significant self-restraint.
Perhaps calculating the degree of self-restraint that he will be expected to exercise,
S notes that if he follows Ms proposal he ends up with less actual cash in hand than he
currently has (getting $2 a week and essentially being free to spend all of it, as opposed
to getting $3 a week and having to put $2 of it into the banks container). In Line 26 M
emphasizes the vast amount of money he would be receiving, twelve dollars a month, to
counter this objection.
Although the children initially agree to their mothers stated expectation, after a lengthy
pause the father moderates itbetween six? and eight. His mitigated proposal comes in
Spanish, at the same moment that the son seems to reconsider his agreement to saving all
$8. D quickly figures what spending money would be left under this plan, whether as an
endorsement or as a demonstration of her mental math skills. Neither child misses a beat
in these responses; whatever else may be said about the fathers use of Spanish (a matter
that is explored more fully later), language choice itself does not draw a reaction of any
kind. It seems to be unmarked, typical behavior for talk at this dinner table to go on in two
languages simultaneously.
In Lines 4654, F offers a counterproposal to solve the problem of S spending all of his
money. There is a clear stylistic contrast between Ms proposal and Fs:
46
F.
M.
Me dan los (ahorros) a mi y yo los guardo

Give me the (savings) and Ill take care of
them
What I? think is you need (.) two: (.5) containers
fer mo?ney
M seems to have offered a suggestion that may be taken merely as an opinion: What I?
think you need Whereas Fs utterance sounds like a command: Give me Translation
is tricky here, however, and the ambiguity is not one that can be resolved from hearing the
tape. In Spanish, pronouns are often optional, particularly at the beginning of a sentence. F
may be offering a suggestion as well, with the initial pronoun/verb left implicit, as in:
F.
(Pueden) darme los ahorros

(They can) give me the savings

Whatever the illocutionary force of the utterance, the substance of the proposal also contrasts with the one offered earlier by M. Rather than assigning a container the job of holding onto the savings until enough money has accumulated to go to the bank, F suggests
(or declares) that he will take on that role. Ss reaction is immediate enthusiasm: This is
exactly what he wanted all along, what he tried to get M to do for him once. There is a note
of accusation in the dramatic replaying of his appeal:
58 S.
thats what I asked you to do once and then (.) Will

you
keep my allowance? (.) for a coupla weeksh?
When M confirms that she has previously rejected the plan F is supporting, F interjects
with clarification of his role. He will not be in charge of ALL of the childs money, only
that which is going to the bank. Although M has not voiced a reason for her refusal to
cooperate with Ss earlier attempt to instantiate this system, F anticipates that it is a parents
involvement with the childs money that was the basis for her objection. In Line 71, he
suggests a point of agreement between him and M, a commonality despite their contrasting
proposals:
F.
M.
Porque tienen que aprender a manejarlo

because they have to learn to manage it
Well? Im (.) I think if somebodys hangin onto it for im
hes not? learning tamanage it
Ms immediate response is to disagree, not that they (both children, perhaps all children)
need to learn to manage money, but that if somebodycertainly F, since he has just
offered to do sohangs onto (part of) the money, S is not learning to manage it. In her
view, the plan F has proposed does not count as teaching S, or perhaps any child, to manage money. Her discontent with the role he has offered to play is mitigated by applying her
objection to somebodynot to him specifically, which would create an accusatory tone.
When this disagreement is met with silence (Line 79), M closes the topic with what sounds
on one level like an immediate reversal of field:
79
80
81
M.
82
83
(2.5)
but if it would help? im out (.5) IF IT WOULD HELP
YOU OUT TO LEARN TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY FOR Papa
to
hang onto it then (.5) whom I? tstand in the way a
progess.
It is precisely this quick juxtaposition of the stated view that if somebodys hangin onto it
for him hes not learning to manage it with the (louder) opposite IF IT WOULD HELP
YOU OUT that marks the latter as sarcasm. The parting shot is an idioma prepackaged, and thus hard to object to, formulaic construction. Drew and Holt (1988) noted
that idioms frequently occur at the end of complaint sequences, serving as a figurative
summing-up of a grievance that brings the matter to a close. Although their exploration
of idioms shows a number of cases in which the function of the utterance is to bring the
speaker and recipient into some kind of alignment, M is clearly not expecting to elicit
agreement with her point of view. In speaking sarcastically, she is in fact complaining that
her proposal has not been supported by F or gotten uptake from the children. Assuming she
has not really changed her mind from one phrase to the next, she is conceding defeat (at
least in this conversational moment), but not without first commenting on the irrationality
of the proposal that has been greeted with more enthusiasm than her own.
CONTRASTING CODES: CULTURALLY SITUATED TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS
In what sense, and to what extent, is this conversation among family members intercultural communication? What conversational features mark this (or any conversation) as an
instance of contact between members of different speech communities? The most obvious
answer seems, accurately, too easy: There are two languages used, Spanish by one of the
participants and English by the other three. Although language differences may be readily
observable boundaries between speech communities, Hymes (1972) noted that members
of a single speech community may well share two languages. The three English speakers
in this conversation plainly have no trouble understanding what is said in Spanish, so these
four could be part of a bilingual speech community in which mixing languages is in itself
unmarked behavior.
There is a noticeable disagreement in this exchange, however, in which contrasting
proposals are put forth. An attempt to state common ground that might align the two plans
is rejected. This disagreement, I suggest, reveals the existence of different assumptions
about personhood and relationships as enacted in money management practices. Those
TFG assumptions, left unstated as is most often the case, can be shown to be part of distinctive cultural codes. It is the contact between those codes that makes this intercultural
communication.
There are two questions at hand: What are the TFGs behind the distinct proposals, and
what is there to suggest that those TFGs are cultural premises? As noted earlier, Ms proposal emphasizes the childs actions and his (autonomous) responsibility for them. Dividing the allowance and keeping one part of it out of the spending loop is to be a matter
between S and two containers, physical objects that cannot praise him for compliance,
reproach him for lapses, or remind him of his promise (and thus reinforce it) at moments
of temptation. By contrast, Fs proposal that he, a human being endowed in a 9-year-olds
mind with both power and wisdom, take charge of the money allows S to draw upon the
strength of another person when his own willpower flags. Ms references in Lines 1013
suggest that S has unhappy experience with just such lapses. The remedy she suggests,
perhaps with a view toward underscoring the importance of willpower generally, relies on
increasing Ss ability to control and restrain his impulses. Fs remedy allows him to rely on
another person for help.
Left unsaid in this particular conversation are ideals of reliance on oneself as an individual versus reliance on other people, premises that are readily recognizable as a common

contrast between cultural systems. The fact that this contrast suggests that M comes from
an individualist culture and F comes from a collectivist one (Triandis 1988; Triandis et al.
1988) does not, however, illuminate very much that is specific to either culture. In what
sense, then, is this observation any more helpful than the obvious and unremarkable one
that these people are speaking different languages?
A problem with durable dichotomies like individualism/collectivism is that, although
resonant and often useful, they are too broadly conceived to be more than blunt instruments. They hack out the most obvious differences between cultures without giving clues
about how, when, and how often such dimensions of belief actually shape peoples talk and
other actions. Based on one conversation with one family, this contrast cannot be a welldeveloped account of specific cultural themes that distinguish Ms cultural background
(U.S. middle class) from Fs (Colombian middle class). Nonetheless, this contrast is a
readily hearable TFG in this exchange. Its presence suggests that with a collection of talk,
a catalogue of specific instances that draws upon similar as well as discordant notes to
establish cultural patterns (When does the father urge self-reliance? When does the mother
offer participation as assistance? To what extent are the varied instances part of a system,
and how may that system be described?) could be the basis for a more nuanced picture of
contrasting cultural premises.
The theoretical contribution of the TFG concept is to suggest that such description would
necessarily be grounded in examination of implicit messages. The theoretical contribution
of cultural explanations such as this one is to suggest that there is a system of meaning
there to be discovered: Although implicit and subtle, cultural premises can be discerned in
everyday talk, and often become most visible when they come in contact with a different
system of premisesas is by definition the case in intercultural communication. Interlocutors, even when they are well aware that they are interacting with someone whose cultural
premises are different from their own, are highly unlikely to make those premises explicit.
I want you to use two containers so youll become an autonomous individual, which in
my cultural belief system is the only kind of self that counts as a whole and healthy one
would have been an awkward thing for M to say in this (or any) conversation, as would I
want you to depend on me so youll learn that you are incomplete on your own, that you
need other peoples help to do anything in the world, which in my cultural belief system
is the only, and so on. The reasons why this is so, in intercultural communication as in
other kinds, are a useful point with which to conclude.
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS IN CULTURAL CODES AND INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
It is well known, or at least widely suspected, that dissimilar TFGs are at the heart of many
misunderstandings and disagreements between members of different speech communities.
Speakers leave those elements of talk unsaid that they presume to be shared knowledge.
When they come from different systems of belief, there are quite understandably different approaches to communicative goals, divergent interpretations of action, and other
serious muddles related to language use and meaning. If the problem were not in these
implicit, between-the-lines aspects of talk, the only distinctive feature of intercultural communication would be language differences, relatively solvable (if hardly simple) through
fluency and attention to strict accuracy of expression. The notion of TFGs emphasizes how
much of culture, and how many difficulties in intercultural communication, come down
to ideologies subtly hidden (because they are never given voice to) in and around spoken
language.
A common route to discovering such cultural differences, and working through areas
of misunderstanding, includes prescriptions to discuss TFGs in order to make explicit that
which is unsaid. The conversation examined here, and Hoppers observation in the TFG
articles that interpretation may be forever enigmatic and incomplete to some degree, make
it clear that there is a definite limit to which explication of that kind is practical in everyday talk. Alignment mechanisms are available, ranging from those that are so indirect that
they go unnoticed by participants, to those that are quite direct, clarifying TFGs by way of
making them explicit.
It seems very likely, however, that some premises are too delicate to put into words.
They must remain unspoken for a variety of reasons. One of those is the potential face
threat involved: To make explicit something that a competent hearer could be assumed to
know calls into question how competent this particular hearer actually is. Another reason
has to do with the nature of cultural premises. Making explicit a cultural premise can paradoxically call it into question. Part of the enormous weight of cultural codes to shape action
and interpretation comes from their pervasive unspokenness. Members of a speech community hear talk in well-worn grooves of inference. When human agency (for example) is
spoken of in ways that emphasize autonomy and individual selfhood (youyouyou
you) it becomes difficult to imagine other ways the (social) world could be arranged.
Besides increasing the difficulty of articulating them (a significant factor in itself), this
customary implicitness of cultural premises increases the risks involved in holding them
up to conversational daylight. For M to insist explicitly that children must develop individual self-restraint would be to open a slot for resistance, contradiction, a counterproposal
that interdependence among intimates was a more legitimate principle to instill, and other
forms of disagreement. It is far safer to argue over procedures for reaching a particular
goal, especially when the goal itself is not questioned, than it is to debate the fundamental,
sacred symbols underlying social life more generally.
A final reason TFGs must ordinarily be left implicit has to do with a further paradox, this
one related to Grices maxims (Grice, 1975). Given speakers abilities to search indirect
utterances for meaning by inference on the basis of quantity, quality, relevance, and truth,
it is not surprising that direct utterances would be subjected to a similar kind of scanning.
Suppose that M, aware after many years of conversation with F that included discovery of
cultural patterning in the disagreements between them, had explored his proposal for the
cultural premises underlying it. Is this how Colombians teach children to manage their
money? she might have inquired. However benigneven generousthe intention behind
the question, the contrast with her own position raises a face threat similar to the competence challenge just mentioned. Regardless of the phrasing, a metacomment that attributes
the meaning of an utterance to membership in a category to which the hearer belongs and
the speaker does not carries a strong suggestion that the comparison is critical or sarcastic,
dismissive of the hearers faculties to reason as an individual, along the lines of Isnt that
just like a wo/man?

The interpretation of competing codes I have offered here rests on cultural differences.
There are certainly other readings of this conversation that might be offered. Among those,
a gender difference perspective, in which Fs more forceful proposal supersedes Ms,
undercutting the legitimacy of her position and drawing the childrens support away from
her, is undeniably plausible. There is even room to argue that the difference of opinion
here, and the ways in which participants express their competing views, is idiosyncratic.
Sorting through these possibilities, each of which entails TFGs based in distinctive kinds
of shared knowledge, would require a great deal more examination of other conversations
between this couple and in other families, perhaps with similar configurations of cultural
background. The careful excavation of everyday talk that would entail is, appropriately
enough, Robert Hoppers signature contribution to the field.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to the members of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group in the Department of
Social Sciences at Loughborough University for their very useful discussion of the|transcript
presented in this chapter.
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Philipsen, G. (1992). Speaking culturally. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Philipsen, G. (1997). A theory of speech codes. In G. Philipsen & T. Albrecht (Eds.), Developing
Theories in Communication (pp. 119156). Albany: State University of New York Press:.
Triandis, H., Bontempo, R., Villareal, J., Asai, M., & Lucca, N. (1988). Individualism and collectivism: Cross-cultural perspectives on selfingroup relationships. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 54, 323338.
Triandis, H.C. (1988). Collectivism vs. individualism: A reconceptualization of a basic concept in
cross-cultural psychology. In G.Verma & C.Bagley (Eds.) Cross-cultural studies of personality.
London: Macmillan.
5
So, What Do You Guys Think?: Think Talk and
Process in Student-Led Classroom Discussion
Robert T.Craig
University of Colorado at Boulder
Alena L.Sanusi
University of Colorado at Boulder
This study examines certain uses of think talk (expressions such as I think and What do
you think?) in student-led classroom discussions on controversial issues. Data are drawn
from recorded discussions in several undergraduate critical thinking classes at a large,
western-U.S., public university, 19961998.
Students in this course were instructed in critical thinking techniques and participated
in practical exercises, one of which involved working in a small group to prepare and lead
a full-class discussion of a current, controversial issue such as capital punishment, sex
education, or media ethics. The official purpose of the discussion was to facilitate critical thinking on the issue, not necessarily to reach consensus. 1825 students, including
the group of 46 leaders, usually participated. A graded assignment for the leaders, the
discussions were observed and recorded by the instructor, who otherwise did not officially
participate. The leaders selected and researched an issue and conducted a 40-minute class
discussion. Background readings were sometimes assigned by the leaders in advance of
the discussion.
The discussions followed variations of a standard format. The leaders usually sat
together at the front of the classroom with other participants either facing them or completing a large circle. Usually, the leaders would open with a formal presentation, based
on their research, introducing the issue and providing background information. Often they
would then break the class into small groups assigned to discuss briefly particular questions, aspects, or points of view on the issue. General discussion, sometimes structured
around reports by small groups, sometimes structured by a series of questions posed by
leaders to the class as a whole, sometimes more free-flowing or managed by the leaders in
apparently ad hoc ways, would follow the opening presentation and/or small- group discussions. When time was up, the leaders would end the discussion, sometimes abruptly, more
often with some attempt to summarize and conclude.
Previous studies of these discussions have examined the use of critical thinking terminology to mitigate the interpersonal implications of disagreement and criticism (Craig,
1997), co-construction of the issue as a metadiscursive object and its use in presenting
standpoints and managing the discussion (Craig, 1999a, 1999b), the use of animated mock
figures in the construction of arguments (Muller, 1999a, 1999b), and a problematic transition from an opening presentation to subsequent class discussion (Sanusi, 1999). Craig and
Sanusi (2000) showed how Im just saying and related discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1980,
1987) are used by participants to constitute contributions to the discussion as expressions
of continuing, consistent standpoints on the issue.

The present study in a sense complements Craig and Sanusis (2000) analysis of continuity markers. If participants in group discussion routinely use tokens such as Im just
saying to display their contributions as expressions of unchanging viewpoints, how do
they also display the relevance of their contributions to the ongoing process of discussion?
Group discussion involves online talktalk that responds to the current state of the
discussion and occasions further such responses by others, thus moving the process along.
How is this accomplished?
Our analysis focuses on the use of I think and related expressions as markers of online
process. I think, especially in the opening stretch of a turn at talk, can be used to indicate a
particular kind of relevance to ongoing talk that characterizes the process of group discussion. In such cases, it marks the turn in progress as a presentation of the speakers response
to the currently relevant group topic, but not necessarily as a response to anything said
about the topic by other speakers. In our data, the relevant group topic is usually the discussion issue or some more immediate question or statement presented by a discussion leader.
Discussion leaders often invite these reactions by the use of expressions such as What do
you guys think? in presenting a topic to the group. I think marks the current turn as one in a
possible series of different individual reactions to the topic. As such, the current turn may
not be relevant at all to the immediately preceding turn, except by virtue of being the next
in a series of expressions of opinion by different members of the discussion group.
The following sections present data illustrating how think talk is used by discussion
participants to index their own statements of opinion as expressions of online thinking situated in the ongoing discussion, to mark transitions between canned and online discussion
and invite expressions of online thinking from other participants, and finally, to maintain a
sense of process when process seems threatened by a lack of potential for controversy on
the topic. In a concluding section, we reflect on the implications of this analysis for understanding the semantics and pragmatics of I think, and for further studies of interaction in
classroom discussions and related institutional settings.
I THINK AS A MARKER OF PROCESS
Example 1, an excerpt condensed from a transcript of a discussion of sex education, exemplifies the density of I thinks that can occur in such discourse.
(1) (Condensed)
1
M:
2
Jack:
3
4
5
6
7
8
Jack?
I think that (.) um: (.) well two things. One I
dont
think we can rely on family structure, our family
structure, (I think) in the United States is (.)
really screwed up. ((about 13 lines deleted))
Now
if youre ge- an I dont think that- that way
youre not attacking (.) religious or moral values
but (.) well. I- I guess in a way but at least
So, What Do You Guys Think? 89

9
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45
regardless of whether or not you believe in it

you
still have ta (.) accept that its out there. (And
you dont like it.)

Shelley: I think just even more so going on with that I
think that (.) um people are so opposed to things
like homosexuality is because- (.) I mean- like
like out theyre just ignorant about it I mean they
think that (.) you know its all abour:t (.) just
sex or whatever an- (.) yknow but its more than
that. Its about like relationships and things like
that an- you know like every other heterosexual
relationship and I think that (.) things like that
to be taught are important for people are (.) you
know, a-homosexual but theyre too afraid to

come
out and this will give them (.) like a way ta- to
have better self-esteem about themselves and

feel
better about themselves.
(.)
F?:
So (.) ()
Jennifer I was gonna say I think its of importance that
they define things like abortion and homosexuality
because we probably all knew somebody in high
school whos just totally naive: (.) about
everything. You know, and, whether we were

those
people or (.) we- were friends with those people
there are people in (.) high school that are
totally nave, to what those things even mean.
Really. You know, and I think its really important
that not necessarily they push one side or the
other. But that they really define them so students
know. What (.) it means? (.) What it is.

F?:
( ?)
Brooke: Na- I was just wanted to say that to say that uh-I
agree with that I think that like- things like um:
(.) maybe:: if- if someon- if you have to write a
paper or like (to have) a presentation like this.
Stuff like that in high school I think is really

46
47
48
49
50
51
important but you cant really just teach you

know,
you can define but- (.) w-where would you even
begin to teach about (.) abortion when theres so
many different sides? But I think it is important
to do stuff like (.) you know have an opportunity
like this ((turn continues))
In this stretch of discussion, I think is used to mark each turn as one in a series of expressions of opinion on the topic of sex education. Prior to this segment, a discussion leader
(Tad) posed the question (Wul/But) do you guys think like (.) heated topics like homosexuality:, and abortion:, should be something that (.) the government should be able to::
(.) talk about? After some elaboration by Tad (seven lines) and some brief transitional
business, Jack is called on by a leader (Line 1) and takes the floor (Line 2). Initiating his
turn with I think, Jack argues, in what can be heard as an implicit response to Tads question, that sex education in public schools is necessary because I dont think we can rely on
family structure, and that topics like homosexuality should be included because whether
or not you believe in it you have to accept that its out there.
Also (like Jack) opening with I think (Line 12), Shelley begins speaking and positions her turn as the next in a sequence by contrasting it with the preceding (I think just
even more so going on with that I think).1 Even more so going on with that indicates
broad agreement with the preceding turn and that the following remarks will extend the
preceding topic in some unspecified way. The following I think, however, shifts the
topical focus from Jacks view back to Shelleys. Her subsequent contribution, although
it continues Jacks just preceding topic of homosexuality, does not respond to his specific
points. Rather, in arguing that teaching about homosexuality is needed because the reasons
for opposing it are based on ignorance and it will help homosexual students to feel better
about themselves, Shelley can be heard as presenting another view in response to the question earlier posed by a discussion leader (Tad).
Two following speakers in succession, Jennifer and Brooke, present further views on
the topic of teaching about homosexuality in schools. Each opens her turn by marking a
temporal disjuncture (I was gonna say [Line 28]; Na-I was just wanted to say [Line
41]) between the sequential position of her turn and the unspecified recent moment in the
discussion that immediately occasioned what she is about to say. Each speaker prefaces
her contribution with I think. Each continues topical threads of previous turns (a prosex education stance, societal ignorance of homosexuality, the value of specific learning
experiences) while not responding to specific points made by previous speakers.
The transcript, based on an audio recording, omits nonverbal behaviors that were available to the
participants. It is quite possible that Shelley did not self-select as next speaker but was nonverbally
selected by Jack or a discussion leader in response to her nonverbal bid for the floor (such as a
raised hand). The omission of possibly relevant nonverbal details, especially in turn transitions,
should be kept in mind when reading these transcripts.

In the linguistic literature, I think appears most regularly in discussions of modality
and hedging (e.g., Coates, 1987; Galasinski, 1996; Turnbull & Saxton, 1997). In Example
1, however the phrase does not appear to be used primarily as a hedging or downtoning
device. Note the appearance of the word important/ce in the propositions with parenthetical I think in the following excerpts:
I think that (.) things like that to be taught are important for people are (.) you know,
a-homosexual (Lines 2022).
I was gonna say I think its of importance that they define things like abortion and
homosexuality (Lines 2931).
I think its really important that not necessarily they push one side or the other.
But that they really define them so students know. What (.) it means? (.) What it is.
(Lines 3639) .
Stuff like that in high school I think is really important but you cant really just
teach you know, you can define but- (.) w-where (Lines 4547).
But I think it is important to do stuff like (Lines 4950).
It would seem unlikely that a speaker would be downtoning a proposition for which she
is claiming importance. In these cases, the I think might be understood as contributing
modality, that is, a sense of speaker commitment, in a fairly literal way, as a lexical verb.
More noticeable to us, however, is the flowing quality of the talk and how I think is used
to mark each in a series of expressions of opinion. The opinions presented in Example 1 are
all generally favorable to sex education but are otherwise diverse. Each turn links sequentially and topically to prior turns but does not primarily build on or respond to previous
speakers opinions. Each advances the discussion primarily by contributing the speakers
own view on the current topic.
Notably, there is little to suggest that speakers in this free-flowing segment of discussion are expected to build tightly on one anothers comments any more than they actually
do. Their expressions of opinion are not markedly hesitant, apologetic, or qualified; they
generally display the features of preferred rather than dispreferred turn shapes (Pomerantz, 1984). In short, there is no evidence that participants in this stretch of discussion,
in expressing whatever opinions on the topic happen to occur to them in the moment, are
doing anything other than what they apparently ought to be doing in the situation.
I think seems to function in such routine, unproblematic stretches of talk neither especially to modify illocutionary force (either to boost or downtone), nor to express politeness
or deference, but rather primarily to mark contributions as expressions of online thinking
within the discussion process. I think indicates a relevant response to the current discussion
topic but also licenses a certain topical disjunctive as the discussion jumps from one individual point of view to another. I think marks an expression of opinion on a shared topic but
from an individual point of view, distinct from succeeding and following points of view,
occasioned by the current state of the discussion. It marks process.

TRANSITIONS BETWEEN CANNED AND SPONTANEOUS TALK
In Example 2, students deal with the problem of speaking on behalf of a group rather
than on ones own behalf. Talk produced while a student is speaking as a spokesperson
is noticeable for its very lack of I thinks. The only I think in Sallys (the spokespersons)
talk is the initial I think, whose syntactic parallelism with Jacks question marks her talk as
designed as a response to his question and what follows as her sense of the discussion that
had occurred in the group in which she was participating.
(2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
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19
20
21
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23
24
25
26
Jack:
I hope weve kinda outlined each one of these

(.) conclusions an hh reasoning why I asked
yguys
what yguys think (.) whether you guys are on

the
opposite sides or (.) bring up points and also y
know- y go specifically into the (.) examples the
Ramsey case or (.) any uh these, hhh what do you
guys think like the Globe pictures that were

published, (.) pt what do you guys think of that.
(2.4)
Sally: I think right now I mean theres like a little
bit of miscommunication cause our group (.)

primarily
dealt with (.) with issues [that were:-] that

were=
M:
[((cough))
Sally: =false or exaggerated or you know like whats
been
taken out of context and those
things like I would say you know (.) sure I- Id
like to know about things going on in the press

as
long as theyre true n that (.) n- n yes I agree
the public has the right to know I agree with

a lot
of those things as far as the First Amendment is
concerned .hhh but we were more focussing

o::n
werent we?
M1:
Mm hm.=
M2:
=((murmurs [of agreement))]
Sally: [focusing on that?] w(h)e(h)e
we(h)e(e)re focusing on, .hhh like taking things

27
28
29
out of context an- an- (.) I mean- making up

stories or yknow or compensating for a lack of
facts (then,)(.) but
In Example 2, Jack asks other participants what they think as a way of transitioning from
the presentation of canned (prepared) material to open discussion. Similar uses of What do
you think? or What do you guys think? occur quite frequently in our data (also see Example
5, later). Such expressions invite reports of online thinking in reaction to some stimulus.
In this case, Jack is speaking as one of a group of students who have been assigned to lead
a discussion of media ethics. The group has just finished presenting a series of reasons for
and against increasing restrictions on the press. The presentation has been prepared by the
group members as a summary of breakout small-group discussions that they led, in order
to serve as a stimulus for a discussion that is now to occur among the entire class. Think
is used by Jack to mark this transition from canned to spontaneous discussion by inviting expressions of opinion, and then by Sally, marking her turn as a response to Jacks
invitation.
Sally goes on, however, to explain that she is unable to make an acceptably relevant
response. Her small group, she says, didnt focus on the kinds of examples Jack just
referred to, so she has no thoughts to express on those issues. Sallys extended turn at talk,
including a short stretch of side talk with members of her group, is interesting in a number
of ways. Our main interest at this point in the analysis is what her response suggests about
the interactional properties of What do you think?
What do you think? invites expressions of opinion in reaction to something presented or
indicated by the speaker. It projects nothing about the contents of the reactions except that
they will be reactions to that something and that they will be reactions, that is, expressions
of online thinking from presumably differing individual points of view. Sallys account in
Example 2 displays not only her online reaction but also her awareness that the thoughts
invited by Jack are expected to be reactions specifically to the kinds of examples he has
presented.
Sallys talk in Lines 1029 also provides evidence that What do you think? invites
online rather than canned expressions of opinion. Sally indicates in a variety of ways that
she is responding to Jack not just as an individual but on behalf of her small group, but this
spokesperson role becomes rather problematic for her. If think is about in-process reactions
rather than canned presentations, then reporting on behalf of a group becomes a potential
trouble point, because the groups thoughts are either previously agreed upon (canned) or
have to be negotiated on the spot, which would require a frame shift or time out from
discussion in the larger group. Sallys orientation to this problem is reflected in her tense
shifts, her use of I think to mark her immediate thoughts and her nonuse of it in other contexts, her explicit checking with the group that she is representing their views accurately
(Lines 2122), and her laughed speech in Lines 2526.
Example 3 is a similar exchange from a discussion on health insurance reform, in which
M initially tries to speak on behalf of us guys (implying canned talk, i.e., the presentation of a view already discussed within the group) but quickly resorts to I think, marking
his talk as spontaneous.

(3)
1
2
3
F:
M:
4
5
7
8
9
How do you guys feel about that.

um how do we feel about that ((several people
laughing softly)) (.) oh we we think its a
moral
responsibility and stuff but I think that seeing
from other countries trying to do this and seeing
how it has it hasnt had any positive effects
and p
then () bring it back to our our current plan I
think that ah its just it will be more abused
than it will be used ((turn continues))
M responds to Fs question, directed to his small group, as to how they feel about the
moral responsibility to provide health care to people in need, with talk laden with signs of
trouble including false starts, hesitation, and side interaction (including soft laughter) with
members of his group. His response is first marked by we feel (arguably displaying himself
as cooperative in that he takes up Fs focus on how you guys feel; Galasinski, 1996), then
shifts (still uneasily, with a false start) to the less evaluative we think and then to I think.
In all of this, M displays the awkwardness of expressing an online group reaction as he
retreats to (and proceeds with) expressions of his own individual online reaction.
MAINTAINING CONTROVERSY
Examples 13 have illustrated some ways in which think talk is used in contexts where
the processual aspect of discussion is threatened or needs to be emphasized, including:
sequences of diverse, loosely related opinions, transitions from canned talk to open discussion, and shifts from speaking on behalf of a group to speaking as an individual. We now
turn to evidence for yet another threat to process in the context of a class discussion: lack
of controversy.
(4)
1
2
3
4
Emily:
5
6
Do you guys?- Wul it seems- wul it seems to me

tha:t like most of us agree: an- you know we all
kind of we agree that (.) people need to be aware,
and- and its gonna happen anyway whatever, (.)
Why
do you guys think that its such: (.) like a
controversial thing among parents. I mean
Example 4, from the same sex education discussion as Example 1, illustrates another environment that can constitute a threat to the discussion process, namely agreement. Agreement among all participants in a discussion can threaten the continuation of the discussion
process, because once the group has reached a point of agreement, unless the group is
following a prepared agenda, there may be nothing immediately at hand to discuss. As we

can see in Example 4, a discussion leader may invite further discussion by marking points
of agreement, presenting a new question or item of information, and inviting reactions with
some variation of What do you think?
When a topic for discussion threatens to be uncontroversial, leaders may do considerable work to mark it as open to various opinions and therefore potentially controversial
when inviting opinions, as in Example 5.
(5) Condensed
1 Emily: So. But. Urn. I guess wed like to know, what you
2
guys think about, whether [or not sex
3 Tad:
[Before- be- before we
4
wanta know what you guys think
5 ?:
mm hh-huh-huh
6 Tad:
I just wanted to make sure that- Imean wer- wer
7
were presenting ourselves (.) in sort of a biased
8
standpoint because we did the whole condom exercise
9
and we passed out condoms an (.) we talked about
10
how condoms should be distributed in school, so,
we
11
may: be: showing you guy:s that that were for: sex
12
e:d, which we are, (.) but (.) sex ed in schools is
13
a different thing, bcause, I think
14
((turn continues, 30 lines deleted))
15
(.) but this kind of gives like a: just a gradual
16
leap into the actual talking about sex and uh what
17
goes on in (childrens lives)?
18
(.)
19 Emily: (Well?) So! What dya guys think.
2 0 Tad:
We were going to break you guys into groups but
(.)
21
we figured that thats been overworked a lot in
22
this class? so we figured we have a kinda
23
jus-=
24 Emily: =( )=
25 Tad:
=have a open? (.) discussion? (.) and maybe just
26
(.) what you guys feel? because I mean my- my
27
views: (.)
28 F?:
I know:
29
(.)
30 Tad:
have changed a little bit, as far as (.) sex
31
education should be taught in schools because I
32
dont think it is up to the government to (be

33
34
35
36
Emily:
Tad:
forcing) something like this, (.) I think its

more parents and more religion, (.) then) (.)
Alright![ ]So whataya guys think!
[(uh)]
Example 5 occurs at the end of a long introductory segment in which Emily, Tad, and
other members of the group assigned to lead this class discussion on sex education have
presented a large amount of canned information about the topic. Emily at Line 1 initiates a
transition from canned presentation to open discussion with a markedly hedged expression
of interest in what you guys think. Tad interrupts and proceeds to talk at some length,
emphasizing that, even though the leaders are presenting ourselves in a sort of biased
standpoint in favor of sex education, the topic really is controversial. (Thirty lines have
been deleted from Tads long turn.) At Line 19 Emily recycles the question, more confidently than before, but Tad again interrupts to report that the leaders have decided against
using an overworked approach, that open discussion is wanted, and, again, that the topic
really does warrant discussion as evidenced by the fact that Tads own views have changed
a little bit (Line 30). What is interesting about Tads I think and I dont think is less his
attitude as speaker toward his own propositions, but the way he puts forward those markers
of thought-in-process in the service of presenting something to be reacted to in a situation
that threatens an end to the talk. Emily then repeats her question a second time, still more
emphatically than before, after which open discussion begins (finally!). In this segment,
Tad displays great concern to repair a condition that may render Emilys invitation to open
discussion unsuccessful, the condition being that the topic is uncontroversial. Think talk
again is occasioned by agreement as a threat to the discussion process.
DISCUSSION
In summary, we have described several ways in which think talk is used to index online
thinking and expressions of opinion in the discussion process. I think can be a token that
a speaker uses to bypass conditional relevance of her contribution to the immediately preceding talk in favor of the contributions relevance as one of a series of individual reactions
to a leaders question. Think talk also can be used to mark transitions between canned and
open discussion, and to maintain a sense of process when the potential for further discussion on the topic seems threatened. We conclude with a brief discussion of some possible
implications in regard to the semantics and pragmatics of I think, and further research on
classroom discussion and related forms of institutional discourse.
I Think, Modality and Politeness
Our analysis finds that think may function as meta-talk (Schiffrin, 1980) in that it focuses
attention on the status of the talk. However, it does so in ways that have little to do with
the semantics of the verb think and more to do with a need to display what kind of talk
it should be taken to be. It is only by freeing ourselves from the expectation that words
contribute semantically rather than pragmatically that we can see the way these phrases, in

the examples we have presented, have been put to a metadiscursive task that is not clearly
predictable from the semantics of the words.
In the linguistic literature, as we noted earlier, I think most often appears in discussions of modality and hedging (e.g., Coates, 1987; Galasinski, 1996) or of modality as it
functions to do facework (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Turnbull & Saxton, 1997). As
Holmes (1984) pointed out, these represent the two primary reasons why a speaker would
want to modify the illocutionary force of a speech act: to convey modal meaning or the
speakers attitude to the content of the proposition, and to express affective meaning or the
speakers attitude to the addressee in the context of the utterance (p. 348). In these functions, I think seems to draw on the implications (e.g., rationality, intentionality, and their
social implications) of the semantic content of the lexical verb think, so that a speaker using
I think would be referring to and characterizing a consciously held opinion or intent.
Curiously, I think resists categorization as either a downtoner or a booster (Holmes,
1984) of speaker commitment because, like I believe, depending on its intonation pattern,
it may either hedge or intensify/highlight the speakers commitment to her utterance. Perhaps this ambiguity accounts for why I think is absent from Schiffrins (1987) discourse
marker model of discourse, although semantically, as a lexical verb, it would seem to have
a place with such discourse markers as you know and I mean, whose verbs appear to refer
to a particular way of holding a kind of cognitive entity.2
However, Schiffrin (1990) noted that although modality, or speaker commitment to a
proposition, may be marked in a variety of (perhaps redundant) ways both linguistically
and metalinguistically, there may in fact be no such marking at all. This of course raises the
question of whether the overt marking of modality through I think might have some other
discursive or communicative functions. Given that it can usually be taken that what one
says is what one thinks (as can perhaps be inferred by the fact that what is usually explicitly marked is deviation from that expectation), why bother to explicitly metalinguistically
mark the expected?
We recognize that I think no doubt often participates in meaning making through the
semantic contribution of the verb think (as Schiffrin, 1987, in fact argued to be the case for
you know and I mean), but we would like to suggest that I think may also be used in a way
that is quite independent of the semantic content of the verb. We suggest that there is evidence in our data that I think may be doing interactional work much in the fashion of tokens
like oh (Heritage, 1984, 1998) and okay (Beach, 1995), which do important interactional
work despite their scant semantic content. If we can see I think as a relatively semantically
empty token that might be doing some work besides referring to and characterizing mental
states, the question arises what that work might be. It appears to us that I think, particularly
in its (sequentially more or less distant) relationship to a discussion leaders question posed
roughly in the form, What do you guys think?, points to the speakers making this contribution as a second pair-part made relevant by that question. As such, I think also serves to
Interestingly, though, Schiffrins structuralist approach to discovering the meanings of you know
and I mean through examining their complementary functions roughly parallels our own approach:
whereas Schiffrin (1987) found that you know and I mean work to shift orientation between speaker
and hearer, we argue that Im (just) saying and I think can serve complementary functions of maintaining personal standpoint continuity and keeping the discussion going.
2

disconnect the current contribution from any interpretation in terms of the immediately
preceding turn. In doing so, I think seems to be a participants resource for the performance
of discussion, where crafting ones contribution in terms of the content and form of the
previous utterance is less useful than crafting ones contribution (via I think) as just one
more answermy answerto a leaders topic-based question.
In claiming that I think is a participants resource for doing this kind of interactional
work, we are not claiming that this is the only function that I think prefacing can perform,
nor are we claiming that no other mechanisms exist for accomplishing this same interactional task. Our claim is the limited one, that this is one interactional function that I think
appears to be performing in the data we have examined.
Implications for Further Research
This research should be extended to examine the functions of other markers of process and
continuity in the conduct of classroom discussions. We wonder, for example, what might
be the distinction, if any, between I feel and I think, which alternate in interesting ways in
our data (see Example 3; Example 5, Lines 2635).
The significance of preliminary observation is that it opens up the possibility of research
that focuses on communicative problems in particular settings. In these student-led classroom discussions, one salient problem is to maintain the flow of talk as required both to
fill time and to cover ground for purposes of evaluation by the teacher. Rather different
problems may be expected to be more salient in group discussions oriented to arriving
efficiently at a consensus or decision for purposes of action. It would be interesting to see
whether I think is often used in school board meetings or jury deliberations, for example,
in ways we have noted in these classroom discussions. In these other settings, no less than
in classroom discussions, discussion process as well as continuity of standpoints in the
expression of opinions is surely important, but the process demands of the other settings
are probably quite different.
Within the classroom setting itself, the interactional problems of teacher-led discussions undoubtedly differ from those apparent in our student-led discussions. Whereas participants in our discussions are of essentially equal status, even though some perform a
differentiated role of discussion facilitator, teacher-led discussions involve a more marked
differentiation of power and authority. Huspeks (1989) study of the differential use of I
think and you know in working-class speech suggests one interesting point of comparison.
The preponderance of I think and the relative scarcity of you know markers in our data
contrasts with the overwhelming preponderance of you know sequences in the speech of
Huspeks working-class respondents. The pattern of our data is consistent with the predominantly middle-class status of our students. It may also reflect the lack of salient power differences in these student-led discussions along with the situational demand for participants
to assert their individual opinions (indexed by I think), whereas in other circumstances they
might do more to highlight common ground (indexed by you know). These possibilities can
be explored empirically in studies of different groups and settings, including teacher-led
classroom discussions.
So, what do you guys think?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual convention of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA, May 29, 1999.
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Argument in a time of change: Definitions, frameworks, and critiques (Proceedings of the Tenth
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Craig, R.T. (1999a). Metadiscourse, theory, and practice. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 2129
Craig, R.T. (1999b, July 30). The issue as a metadiscursive device in some student-led classroom
discussions. Paper presented at the Eleventh AFA/NCA Summer Conference on Argumentation,
Alta, UT.
Craig, R.T., & Sanusi, A.L. (2000). Im just saying: Discourse markers of standpoint continuity.
Argumentation, 19, 425495.
Galasinksi, D. (1996). Pretending to cooperate: How speakers hide evasive actions. Argumentation,
10, 375388.
Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In
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Heritage, J. (1998). Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society, 27, 291334.
Holmes, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8, 345365.
Huspek, M. (1989). Linguistic variability and power: An analysis of YOU KNOW/I THINK variation in working-class speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 13, 661683.
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Chicago.
Muller, H.L. (1999b, July 30). Hypothetical examples in student arguments: Animating mock and
cited figures. Paper presented at the Eleventh AFA/NCA Summer Conference on Argumentation,
Alta, UT.
Pomerantz, A.M. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/
dispreferred turn shapes. In J.M.Atkinson & J.C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action:
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Press.
Sanusi, A.L. (1999). Maintaining formation: An instance of frame transition. Paper presented at the
November 2000 annual convention of the National Communication Association, Seattle, WA.
Schiffrin, D. (1980). Meta-talk: Organizational and evaluative brackets in discourse. Sociological
Inquiry, 50(34), 199236.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Schiffrin, D. (1990). The management of a co-operative self during argument: The role of opinions
and stories. In A.D.Grimshaw (Ed.), Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in
conversations (pp. 241259). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Turnbull, W., & Saxton, K.L. (1996). Modal expressions as facework in refusals to comply with
requests: I think I should say no right now. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 145181.
6
Gesture and the Transparency of
Understanding
Curtis D.LeBaron
Timothy Koschmann
Southern Illinois University
Most research on language and social interaction (LSI) has been decidedly action focused,
more concerned with what people do (i.e., vocal and visible behaviors) and how they do it
(e.g., through mutual orientation and coordination), less concerned with subjects possible
cognitive states (e.g., intentions, motivations, and understandings). Conversation analysis
(CA) especially has been touted as an empirically rigorous alternative to mentalistic perspectives that regard language as a way to study underlying psychological states, structures,
and competencies. Robert Hopper (1997), for example, described himself as a cognitive
agnostic. Though not denying the existence and potential importance of cognition, he
insisted that researchers should distinguish between calculated speech and most social
interactiondistinguish what actors do from what theorists may infer (p. 6). Hoppers
agnostic stance was consistent with CA as it has generally been described and applied. Heritage (1990/1991) observed that conversation analysts have sought, wherever possible, to
avoid a terminology of social action that invokes mentalistic predicates and thereby anthropomorphizes processes that may be less anthropomorphic than we conventionally believe
(pp. 328329). (See also Heritage, 1984; Hopper, 1989, 1990, 1992; Hopper, Koch, &
Mandelbaum, 1986; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Jacobs, 1988; Levinson, 1983; Pomerantz,
1990; Psathas, 1995.)
We agree with and indeed celebrate the efforts of Hopper, Heritage, and others to place
CA work on a rigorous foundation, one that does not allow ungrounded speculation with
respect to interactants hypothesized states of mind. In our own studies of classroom interaction (cf, Koschmann, Glenn, & Conlee, 2000; LeBaron, 1998; LeBaron & Koschmann,
1999; LeBaron & Streeck, 2000), however, we have been brought to examine how participants avow and ascribe mentalistic predicates to themselves and to others in the course of
their joint and ongoing learning activities. A question for us, therefore, has been how can
we as analysts document the practical methods by which these activities are accomplished
without abandoning the standards of warrantability set forth by the founders of our field?
Such questions and issues have already been raised by other researchers, who have
proposed discursive or praxiological approaches to the study of psychological matters.
Social psychologists with an interest in discourse and conversation analysis (e.g., Edwards,
1997; Edwards & Potter, 1992), for example, have considered cognitive phenomena
through detailed study of talk-in-interaction. Rather than treating cognition as prior to,
and separable from, interaction, it is treated as something that is managed in, constituted in,
and constructed in interaction (Potter, 1998, p. 35). Some conversation analysts working
Gesture and the transparency of understanding103

within the ethnomethodological tradition (e.g., Coulter, 1990; Lynch & Bogen, 1996) have
regarded cognition as largely public and observable rather than purely private and mental.
Coulter (1979) observed that members of a culture mundanely traffic in cognitive categories and predicatesand have practical ways of making subjectivity-determinations
(p. 51). He was early to propose a program of research to determine howon the basis
of what culturally available reasonings and presuppositionsdo members actually avow
and ascribe mental predicates to one another? (p. 37). An example of one such mental
predicate is the verb to understand. Following the work of ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949), Coulter observed that understand is not a process-verb like play,
but rather a terminusverb like win. An avowal that one understands, therefore, does not
describe a temporally-extended course of action (p. 37), but instead serves to mark out a
success-claim (p. 37). Coulter noted that Wittgenstein joined Ryle in treating understanding as other than a private, mental experience. Wittgenstein (1953/1968) wrote with regard
to an individuals claim to understanding, One might rather call it a signal; and we can
judge whether [the claim] was rightly employed by what he goes on to do (para. 180).
Coulter concluded, The criteria for understanding, for having understanding, cannot be
private, inner mental or experiential states or processes, but must be scenic (p. 39).
We use the phrase transparency of understanding to suggest that participants understandings within classrooms (and we think other settings) may be publicly performed,
sequentially organized, made available for others (and analysts) inspection, altogether
accountable1 . The scenic features whereby understandings are enacted are not restricted
to the linguistic, but include the mediation of artifacts, situated practices of inscription,
and various embodied forms of communication. Communicating bodies arguably have
primacy over talkbodies of understanding may occupy and move within social space,
appearing first and lingering long after a conversation has died. In the data presented here,
a transparency of understanding is interactively achieved through recurring hand gestures
that are coordinated with talk and other body movements in understandable or recognizable (Sacks, 1965/1992, p. 226) ways. Our approach to studying gesture and human
understanding should not be confused with earlier work of a psycholinguistic bent (e.g.,
Goldin-Meadows, Alibali, & Church, 1993; McNeill, 1985, 1992) that treated gesture as
a window into cognitive processes. Instead, we have adopted a microethnographic perspective that draws upon the traditions of CA and context analysis (cf. Kendon, 1990)
to explore how gesture contributes to shared forms of understanding as an interactional,
rather than cognitive, achievement.
CAN YOU DEFINE THRILLS?
Our videotaped record shows eight people involved in a problem-based learning (PEL)
exercise (Koschmann, Kelson, Feltovich, & Barrows, 1996) associated with a medical
school in the midwestern United States. The participants were divided into two groups
that communicated via a video-conferencing system. Although physically separated by
We use the term in the sense suggested by Garfinkel (1967), that is, Any setting organizes its
activities to make its properties as an organized environment of practical activities detectable,
countable, recordable, reportable, tell-a-story-aboutable, analyzablein short, accountable
(p. 33).

approximately 100 miles, the two groups were virtually brought together as one televised
image that all participants could see and hear (see Fig. 6.1).
A faculty coach and three medical students were seen in the picture-in-picture (PIP)
window on the lower right of the screen. The four students shown in the full screen were
enrolled in a nursing program. At both locations, participants sat in a semi-circle around a
large table so that they could easily orient toward each other, toward a common workbook
(i.e., their medical case study), and toward the video-conferencing equipment (camera and
monitor) that enabled communication with the other group.
Fig. 6.1: Four nursing students, three medical students, and one faculty coach participate in a problem-based learning exercise, via a videoconferencing system.
Within this educational setting, participants were routinely called upon to display their
medical knowledge. One task facing the students was to interpret what their workbook
said. The medical students, who had not yet had any clinical experience, looked to the
nursing students to explain various clinical terms and concepts found in the workbook.
Typically, a medical student asked a question and one or more nursing students provided
an impromptu answer. Such knowledge displays2 were usually marked by hesitations,
restarts, silences, colloquial speech, self-repair, and other features typical of explainingin-themoment (Crowder, 1996). Moreover, knowledge displays were often interactive
accomplishments. That is, respondents often failed to complete their answers alone and
instead paused, shifted gaze, changed body orientation, or gestured toward another person,
2
Koschmann, et al. (2000) observed a recurrent structure within PBL exercises that they termed a
knowledge display segment (KDS), defined as a topic-delimited segment of instructional discourse in which participants raise a topic for discussion and one or more members elect to display
their understanding of that topic (p. 55).

and thereby invited (or at least created opportunity spaces for) others to collaborate in the
knowledge display.
For instance, at one point during their discussion, the students came across the term
thrills and one of the medical students (Jack) asked a question that some of the nursing
students (e.g., Bill) elected to answer. The moment has been transcribed as follows (a
complete transcript appears at the end of this chapter):
(1)
1 Jack:
2
3 Bill:
4
5 Susan:
6
7
8 Bill:
Can you defi:ne thrills

(1.0)
Thrirll is what you fee:l (.) like is: (.)
ya could- (0.4)
If- if you happened to have uh huge murmur
(0.4) you could put your hand on (your)
chest
and
it
the upbeat
Although Jacks utterance was ostensibly a closed question (which could have been
answered with yes or no), Bill treated it as a prompt to display his knowledge by
providing a definition of thrill. As Bill began speaking (Line 3), he also raised his left
hand and began gesturing (see Fig. 6.2). With his hand elevated and hence made available
for others view, he repeatedly wiggled the fingers of his left hand. By coordinating this
gesture with the lexical affiliate feel (Line 3) Bills gesture was recognizable as a tactile
representationthat is, his moving fingers were performing the behavior or experience of
feeling with the hand.
Fig. 6.2: Bill attempted to define the word thrill

However, Bill failed to complete a coherent response alone. He did not produce an utterance that was hearably complete. As the transcription (Line 3) shows, he repeatedly paused
during his turn at talk, and he restarted his utterance to change the trajectory of his explanation. His first restart was marked by the words like is(Line 3); a second restart occurred
with the words ya could (Line 4). Moreover, each of these restarts was coordinated with
a shift in the shape of his gesturing hand. When Bill said, like is, his fingers stopped wiggling and came together in a rounded shape. When he said, you could, Bill moved his
left hand down and scratched the side of his neck, and his eye gaze simultaneously shifted
away from the monitor and down to the workbook, withdrawing from the interaction (see
Fig. 6.3). Thus, Bills knowledge display came up short: His hand gesture dissolved into a
neck scratch at the same time that his talk was suspended and his eyes dropped.
Figure 6.3: Susan performs a heart murmur gesture.

Susan (on Bills right) picked up where Bill left off. By repeating the word feel (Line 7),
Susan made her talk recognizable as a continuation of the knowledge display Bill initiatedthat is, he also used the word feel (Line 3). However, Susans utterance was more
hearably complete. The syntactic and prosodic structure of her talk indicated a transition
relevance place (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974) after the words feel it (Line
7). Moreover, her utterance was coordinated with a recognizably coherent gesture. At the
beginning of her utterance (with the words if- if), she lifted her right hand to her chest,
locating it where a heartbeat might be felt. .With the words you could (Line 6) she lifted
her flattened hand a few inches from her chest (see Fig. 6.3) and then returned her hand to
her chest. Altogether, Susan performed a hand-felt heartbeat (albeit exaggerated). Notice
Bills alignment with Susans behavior. Bill collaboratively completed Susans utterance
with his words feel the upbeat (Line 8). His collaborative completion evidenced that he
heard and understood her description sufficient to complete it in overlap with her. Moreover, Bills own hand movements changed to correspond with the gesture that Susan now

performed. After scratching his neck, Bill looked toward the monitor where Susans hand
was visibly flattened against her chest, at which point Bill lowered his hand toward his own
chest and spread his fingers in flattened form (see Fig. 6.4).
Fig. 6.4: Bill flattens his hand after looking toward Susans.
Bill performed a gestural shape in conjunction with Susans production. Through such
vocal and visible displays of alignment, Bill showed that Susans performance was an
appropriate continuation of the knowledge display that he had initiated.
Continuing their response to Jacks question about the term thrills, the nursing students
further coordinated their vocal and visible behaviors. After collaboratively completing
(Line 8) Susans description, Bill elected to continue:
(2)
10
11
12
13
Bill:
(1.1)
Its like (.) flui:d thats getting caught on
somethin and its (.) twisting arou:nd the
vessel or
or whatever
14 Jean:
15 Bill:
Its tur bulence yeah
After a brief silence (Line 10), Bill added to the talk about the term thrill (Lines 11 through
13), but again failed to produce a coherent explanation that was hearably complete. Notice
the form and content of his talk: An utterance-initial hedge (its like), followed by hesitations (pauses) and nondescript words (somethin and whatever), came together in a
rather odd narrative about blood within the heart getting caught and twisting around
action words not usually associated with fluids. Nevertheless, Bills vocal behaviors were
coordinated with a hand gesture that was evidently consequential. With his index finger

extended, he rotated his left hand in the air to iconically represent the movement of fluid
within a chamber (see Fig. 6.5).
Figure 6.5: Bill performs a turbulence gesture.

Jean (on Bills left) watched his gesture (see Fig. 6.5) before speaking the word turbulence
(Line 14). By speaking in overlap, Jean participated in Bills knowledge display. By speaking only after Bills gestural performance but before the end of his utterance, Jean showed
recognition of Bills embodied actions. Whether or not Bill was searching for the word
turbulence, Jean provided it (Line 14) and Bill then repeated it (Line 15)literally incorporating it into his description of thrills. Through repetition of Jeans word, Bill treated
Jeans interjection as collaborative.
The groups understanding of the term thrills was not a private achievement, nor was it
a hidden psychological condition inaccessible to analysts. Rather, a transparency of understanding was publicly and interactively achieved among the nursing students, through
visible and audible behaviors carefully orchestrated. Through coordination of their talk,
embodied actions, especially recognizable hand gestures, and ongoing use of material
objects and mediating tools within an organized space, the nursing students interactively
performed an understanding of the term thrills that the medical students silently observed
and thereby corroborated. The participants collaboratively completed each others utterances, repeated terms of each others talk, reproduced each others hand gestures, and in
other ways cooperated in a collective display of understanding. Eventually, the nursing students stopped talking and oriented away from the television monitors and back toward their
workbook (or toward each other, whispering quietly), thereby showing themselves to be
satisfied that an understanding of thrills had been adequately provided or accomplished.
Moments later, one of the medical students elected to speak, transcribed as follows:

(3)
23 Marie: Thrill is just the: (.) youre feeling the
24
murmur (.) you can feel it with your
ha:nd
Maries description or definition of thrills came off as relatively succinct, hearably complete, perhaps polishedat least compared to Bills earlier attempts to define the term,
which involved hesitations, restarts, and eventually Susan and Jean as overlapping collaborators. Nevertheless, Maries ostensibly individual display of understanding must rightly
be regarded as a group achievement as her performance represented a composite of the
nursing students immediately prior vocal and visible behaviors. Marie used words that
had already been spoken: feel (Lines 3, 7, 8, and 17), murmur (Lines 5, 19, 21), and hand
(Line 6). Moreover, her utterance was coordinated with a gestural sequence that unmistakably resembled Susans (and Bills) prior performance: With the word thrill (Line 23),
Marie placed her flattened hand onto her chest; with the word feeling she lifted her hand
a few inches from her chest before returning it. Thus, her ostensibly individual display
of understanding was an embodied formulation (Heritage & Watson, 1979) of sorts
that summarized or performed the gist of prior interactionboth talk and gestureand
thereby displayed a certain understanding of that prior interaction, altogether advancing the
transparency of understanding within the group. Maries participation served to bridge the
telecommunications divide of the groups videoconferencing sessionthat is, she helped
to constitute the eight participants as being of one mind by registering within the PIP
window a sequence of behaviors with a recognizable pedigree of social interaction from
the larger frame.
CONCLUSION
Through microethnographic study of classroom activity, such as briefly represented here,
we have documented various forms of communication, including gesture, whereby a transparency of understanding may be interactively accomplished. Gestures may literally take
shape as new understandings publicly emerge and evolve within a group. Gestures may
be observably sharedeven repeatedly performedby those who move jointly toward a
transparency of understanding.
Among the several studies of gesture conducted within the field of LSI in recent decades
(e.g., Bavelas, 1994; C.Goodwin, 1986; C.Goodwin & M.H. Goodwin, 1986; Kendon,
1972, 1980, 1987; LeBaron & Streek, 2000; Streeck, 1993, 1994), our study seems to compare and contrast most interestingly with one: Schegloffs (1984) examination of gesture
and projection. Using conversation analytic methods to explicate empirical (transcribed)
details of talk, Schegloff found that gestures almost always occur within the same turn as
their lexical affiliates, but also tend to precede their lexical affiliates, thereby constituting a projection spacethat is, a processing period between the earliest indication of a
communicative behavior and its eventual delivery. Through study of iconic gestures, he
sought an independent estimate of the possible size of the projection space (p. 288),
which might shed light on other sorts of phenomena such as projection and conversational repair. Although Schegloff flirted with issues of cognitive processes as he focused on

singular utterances of individual speakers3, he carefully wrote with the voice of a cognitive
agnostic: Words such as intention were displaced by terms like projection; words such as
recognized were recast as displayed recognition of; if the term preference was used, it was
redefined as a structural rather than a psychological condition; when words such as think
appeared, they were corralled by quotation marks; and so forth.
Our study of gesture involves some notable (and we think complementary) differences.
By focusing on strips of social interaction (i.e., knowledge display segments) rather than
individual utterances or even utterance pairs, we see how the life span and the meaning
of a gesture may extend across multiple turns at talk among multiple participants. We
find gestures to be strongly affiliatednot only with specific lexical itemsbut with parts
and wholes of utterances, other participants utterances, other gestures, other participants
gestures, participants embodied use of space, and so forth. Viewed from such a perspective, the ways in which gestures are employed in interaction are highly relevant to the task
of explicating how participants routinely make their understandings visible to themselves
and others. It is in this sense that we speak of the transparency of understanding, not as a
private mental event, but as an embodied, public, and, hence, analyzable achievement.
APPENDIX
1
2
3
4
5
Jack:
Bill:
Susan:
Can you defirne thrills

(1.0)
Thrirll is what you fee:l (.) like is: (.)
ya could- (0.4)
If- if you happened to have uh huge murmer
(0.4) you could put your hand on (your)
chest
and
Bill:
9
10
11
12
13
(?) :
Bill:
the upbeat
Right
(1.1)
Its like (.) fluird thats getting caught on
somethin and its (.) twisting arou:nd the
14
Jean:
15
Bill:
16
Jean:
vessel or
Its tur
it
or whatever
yeah
See Moerman (1990), which criticized Schegloffs (1984) study because it was interested in
mental, not social mattersin cognitive processing and forms of thought rather than interactive
processes (p. 8); because it related movements to words and ideas [and did not] describe those gestures in their social context (p. 19); because it focused upon isolated or single utterances treated
more as sentences composed by individuals than as the products of interaction (p. 20); and
because it based the meaning of a gesture on its correspondance with its affiliated word (p. 40).

17
18
Bill:
You can feel a thri:ll or you (0.2) auscultate
19
Susan:
20
21
Bill:
a murmur
(0.2)
22
23
24
Marie:
a bruit which
hea:r
Or a murmur
(0.8)
Thrill is just the: (.) youre feeling the
murmur (.) you can feel it with your ha:nd
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II
Talk in Everyday Life
It is perhaps not incidental that people have not devoted their lives to studying sentences like I had a good breakfast this morning or How are you?. There are
more or less defensible reasons for not studying such sentences. Not studying such
sentences, however, may have real consequences. The question of what language can
do, what people can do with language, what the results of an analysis of I had a good
breakfast this morning would involve, what kind of program it poses for a fieldall
these things remain absolutely open.
Sacks, 1984, p. 24
One of the hallmarks of language and social interaction research is keen interest in ordinary, commonplace interpersonal communication. Sacks, the founder of conversation
analysis (CA), observed that the mundane, trivial talk people do in living their everyday
lives risks being slighted by social scientists more concerned with finding prima facie
important topics for study. Countering this trend, LSI research has shown convincingly
that routine interaction serves as a locus for instantiations and negotiations of identity,
relationships, social structure, and culture. The LSI interest in the everyday reflects not
only a theoretical assumption about its importance but also an ideological commitment to
appreciating and even celebrating routine human communication. Robert Hopper actively
sought to open communication scholars eyes to the everyday, resisting a too narrow
concern with what he termed the great words of great people.
The articles in this section present empirical studies of casual interaction. They primarily reflect conversation analytic methods. As others (Psathas, 1995; ten Have, 1999) have
noted, the name conversation analysis proves unduly restrictive, for the methods have
proven useful to approach a variety of types of interactions beyond conversation. Nevertheless, most of the discourse examined in these articles occurred in casual (non-institutional)
situations: among acquaintances, friends, and family members.
Charlotte Jones (chap. 7) examines restarts in conversation, where a speaker begins
an utterance, abandons it, then begins again. She extends prior work by Goodwin (1980)
and Schegloff (1987), who showed how restarts can work to attract the attention or gaze
of an interlocutor. Jones finds that some restarts may direct the interlocutors attention to a
particular activity, specifically beginning a new topic, or presenting a sensitive or delicate
matter.
Charles Goodwin (chap. 8) examines how a speaker may drop the name of an assessable object in such a way that a hearer can recognize the assessable character or special
status of the referenced item. He shows how speakers produce some assessables in such a
way as to project for the recipient how they should be assessed, whereas the production of
others can constitute an assessment test for the recipient. Goodwin draws on and extends
previous CA research on assessments (e.g., Pomerantz, 1984).

Susan Corbin (chap. 9) argues that questions containing the wording did you may
present particular interactional problems, in that the wording can indicate that the asker
expects that something should have been done. Therefore, such questions may carry an
accusatory sense that makes relevant subsequent talk that addresses the accusation. Data
for the study come from both recorded conversations and field notes. She analyzes both
logical and pragmatic presuppositions inherent in these questions, noting that the majority
of did you questions do not receive only a yes or no but an elaborated answer, often
with accounts.
The tenth chapter examines conversations about illness outside of the doctors office.
The vast majority of social scientific research on medical interaction has focused on professionals communicating and working with patients. By contrast, Wayne Beach legitimizes
the role of laypersons in issues of health and healing. He studies telephone conversations
between family members of cancer patients, who update, assimilate, and commiserate about
the diagnosis and treatment of their loved one. Whatever news or instructions patients may
receive from an expert at a medical facility, the information is necessarily understood and
given shape through the everyday relations of people communicating at home. Through
his analysis, Beach ties abstract notions such as stages of grieving and having hope
to specific social actions identifiable within transcribed data. His study of everyday talk
about cancer bears kinship with his (1996) research on bulimia, which was based on a naturally occurring conversation between a bulimic young woman and her grandmother, who
recognized and dealt with the granddaughters eating disorder.
Samuel Lawrence (chap. 11) takes up the issue of how interactants deal with unwanted
understandings. He provides a case study of one participants rejection of anothers understanding. In effect he examines an instance in which what Drew (1987) called a po-faced
receipt of a tease may have implications for the relationship between interactants. He
contrasts this with practices of third-position repair.
In chapter 12, Jenny Mandelbaum investigates ways that people accomplish interpersonal relationships through their interactions. She presents detailed analysis of two cases
to show methods through which people foreground relationship while continuing talk and
related activities. Tit for tat and conversational repair allow participants to focus attention on some prior bit of talk produced by another speaker. Relational communication is
always implicitly present; this analysis locates moments in which it becomes explicit and
thus more directly available to analysis than in the flow of relationally unmarked discourse.
It offers a bridge from LSI to relational communication research interests.
Gail Jefferson (chap. 13) describes how interactants may clarify a possible ambiguity
without explicitly doing so. On occasion when an alternative possible hearing could be
available in the talk of a speaker, that speaker continues talk in such a way as to clarify
which of the alternative hearings is meant. In that this is done without explicit self-correction (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977), it poses an analytical puzzle. Conversation
analysts typically rely upon interactants displayed orientations to the ongoing activities
in talk. This chapter illustrates how a researcher may deal with a phenomenon for which
these resources are elusive, raising issues about the process of analysis and offering some
suggestive findings.
Also addressing a methodological conundrum, in chapter 14 Emanuel Schegloff raises
the issue of how analysts might trace the suppression of an item and its apparent later
Part II: Talk in everyday lift 115

surfacing. The instances involve a speaker beginning a turn constructional unit in which
a next word, relatively clearly projectible, is not produced at that moment. However, the
possible word in question appears in that persons talk shortly thereafter, but used in a different sense. This analysis goes beyond prior conversation analytic work that has addressed
the issue of noticeable or bearable absences of actions (e.g., second pair parts following
first parts of adjacency pairs). Here, Schegloff accounts for the absence, and subsequent
reappearance, of particular words.
Conversation analysts have argued that in order to invoke some feature of context to
account for details of interaction, the researcher must demonstrate its relevance for participants (Schegloff, 1987). Through analysis of a single instance, in Chapter 15 Phillip Glenn
provides evidence that laughter, by features of its production and placement, may reveal
participant orientation to gender. Thus laughter, like other micro features of interaction,
shapes and renews context (Heritage, 1984, p. 242)in this case, a gendered context.
How people orient to and constitute gender in talk is one example of the larger issue of
connections between discourse and context, which continues to play a central role in much
LSI research.
Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra (chap. 16) uses conversation analytic methods for gathering and transcribing recordings of naturalistic interactions. She builds upon and extends
previous research by Schegloff, Hopper, herself, and others, concerning patterns of identification and recognition in telephone interaction openings. Beginning with data to support an argument for systematic differences between Dutch and American calls, she then
explores possible explanations. She develops an intriguing claim about historic change in
the ways Dutch tend to self-identify in phone openings. Further elaborating the analysis,
she then reports research suggesting that there are sex differences within the Dutch data.
Thus, her chapter suggests that variations in how people answer the phone and accomplish
identification may reflect culture, sex, and changes through time.
REFERENCES
Beach, W. (1996). Conversational about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Drew, P. (1987). Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics, 25, 219253.
Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New
York: Academic Press.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation analysis methods: The study of talk in interaction. Thousand
Oaks: Sage
Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on Methodology. In J.M.Atkinson & J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social
action: Studies of conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Between macro and micro: Contexts and other connections. In J.Alexander,
B. Giesen, R.Munch, & N.Smelser (Eds.), The macro-micro link (pp. 207234). Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair for conversation. Language, 53, 361382.
ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage
7
Utterance Restarts in Telephone Conversation:
Marking Topic Initiation and Reluctance
Charlotte M.Jones
Carroll College
Restarting an utterance is a common practice in natural, everyday conversation (Schegloff,
1987). Restarts (or recyclings) regularly occur at turn beginnings and serve a variety of
functions, including attention-seeking (Goodwin, 1980; Heath, 1984; Schegloff, 1987).
Schegloff (1987) argued that recycled turn beginnings function to repair the possible
impairment of overlapped talk. That is, identical repeats of turn beginningsoccur regularly when there has been an overlap of the turn beginning with the prior turn (p. 7). He
provided an example from a face-to-face encounter:
R:
Well the uhm in fact they must have grown a culture, you know, they mustve- I mean how
long- hes been in the hospital for a few days, right? Takes a bout a week to grow a culture
K:
I don think they grow a I don think they grow a culture to do a biopsy.
Schegloff observed that Ks recycle begins exactly at the point where her talk is no longer
being overlapped or emerges in the clear. Thus, her recycled turn beginning orients to the
end of the overlap and the coming of the listeners attention.
Goodwin (1980) discovered that certain restarts seek recipient gaze as a sign of attention. He noted that speakers have the task of constructing turns for hearers. That is, a
speaker must have a hearers attention and participation. Collaborative efforts by speaker
and hearer are fundamental. Goodwin demonstrated this idea with face-to-face data illustrating speakers use of restarts and pauses to request and gain hearers gaze before continuing their turns. Goodwin illustrated:
Tommy: You agree wi d- You agree wicher
aunt
Pump
X
kin:
In this instance, Pumpkin, the hearer, is not gazing at the speaker, Tommy. After the restart,
Pumpkin directs her gaze (shown by______) to Tommy. At this point, with the hearers
gaze and attention, the speaker continues his turn. In short, restarts and pauses can function
as attention-getting devices in face-to-face encounters.
But, do restarts serve different functions in a limited communicative channel such as
the telephone? Restarts in such circumstances may function differently than Goodwin and
Schegloff implicate. Do such restarts function to solicit a listeners attention? Hence, this
Utterance restarts in telephone conversation 117

project investigates restarts in telephone conversations (see Hopper, 1992), a medium in
which participants cannot rely on attracting recipient gaze.
Several points should be considered. First, as recipient gaze is not possible over the telephone, how does an interactant know that she or he has secured a listeners attention over
the telephone? Second, a number of recycled turn beginnings with overlaps were found in
a large corpus of telephone interactions. However, putting these aside, another group without overlaps still remained. Do restarts in telephone discourse serve any other functions
besides repairing overlap or seeking gaze?
This chapter attempts to answer this question by examining restarts at turn beginnings in
telephone conversations. Turn beginnings have been found to have particular implications
(Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1987). Schegloff argued that turns project,
from their beginnings, aspects of their planned shape and type (p. 2). Concerning shape
projection, he stated, for instance, that a turn that begins with If may project a contingency clause of a particular length and a similarly sized consequence clause. Question
projection (e.g., wh- word turn beginning), quotation projection (e.g., He says turn
beginning), and disagreement projection (I dont think turn beginning) are all examples
of turn type projections. Thus, turn beginnings are important to turn-projection (p. 2).
Recycled turn beginnings or restarts, then, may mark or signal to the listener that there
is something in particular about to happen in the speakers remaining utterance. It is argued
in this study that certain telephone restarts can function to project a marked topic or issue
as viewed and exhibited by a speaker. Two cases of markedness identified thus far include
restarts of utterances that (a) initiate new topics and (b) indicate a reluctance to ask or
respond to particular issues (i.e., sensitive or delicate). That is, telephone utterance restarts
can serve to summon the listeners attention to a particular part of the conversationa new
topic, or a request or response concerning a perceived sensitive or delicate issue.
RESTARTS AS INDICATORS OF TOPIC INITIATION
Speakers, then, can signal at the beginning of their turns what it is that they are interested
in doing. For example, a speaker may explicitly announce an abrupt topic shift by starting
a turn with, Not to change the subject, but. Similarly, a speaker may use a list-initiating
marker to project-as-upcoming a multi-unit turn (Schegloff, 1981). That is, beginning a
turn with, for instance, First of all, thereby projects that after the turn-unit in which the
first is done, more will follow (p. 75).
Speakers may also use less explicit methods of signaling to listeners their intent, for
instance, the intent to change the topic. During an attempt to change a topic is clearly one
point where a speaker would want a hearers attention. In fact, Schegloff (1979) argued
that if a topic-initial sentence by a speaker is not marked in some way for the listener, then
in the majority of cases the listener will initiate a repair in the next turn. He provided an
example:
B:
B:
A:
hhh A:n:d uh, (0.5) Me:h,

(0.2)
Oh Sibbies sistuh hadda ba: by bo: way.
Who?

In this instance, B initiates a new topic, Sibbies sister, without including any type of repair
device within the turn such as a descriptor or modifier to key the listener. Without such
identifying information, A didnt follow the new line of talk and hence, exhibited a repair.
To successfully initiate a new topic without explicitly marking it as such, a speaker must
somehow signal to the listener this intent. Schegloff uncovered one method, topic-initial
turns that contain a self-initiated repair with a descriptor or modifier, but there may be others. Thus, in instances where a restarting telephone speaker is introducing a new topic, the
restart may function to secure the listeners attention. In the following segments, one can
observe utterance restarts being produced as speakers rather suddenly change topics. The
restarts occur precisely at the points when speakers initiate topic changes.
(1)
UTCL A10.14
JES:
see some people
(1.1)
RIC:
Really
JES:
Yeah
(0.9)
he took off and said he was goin to
RIC:
Hm: : : :
JES:
So- I dont know wher:e he is or what

hes
doing
10
(1.0)
=>
11
RIC:
So wha a- what are you doing tonight
12
(0.4)
13
JES:
Nothin
In Instance 1, Rick and Jessie are talking about a friends whereabouts. In Line 11, Rick
restarts what are as he mentions Jessies plans for the evening in the form of a topic
initial elicitor (Button & Casey, 1984). Button and Casey noted that topic initial elicitors
regularly take the form of inquiries into what is new and In so doing, they provide for
new topicalizable material as dislocated from prior topical talk (p. 174). Even though
its new topically, Jessie understands his question and follows his lead as evidenced by her
answer of Nothin.
We can similarly observe a restart marking a topic change in Instance 2:
(2) UTCL A10.15
RIC:
Lotta gigglin hh hhh

hhh
[]
BIL:
Yeah?
RIC:
Hes gettin in that

Christmas spirit hh
BIL:
o:h shit
RIC:
pt hh hh
=>
BIL:
.hh When u: :h
RIC:
hh uh huh=
=>
BIL:
=When a you- when

are you goin home
(0.9)
10
RIC: U: : : :h the t
11
(beep)
In this segment of conversation, Rick and Billy are discussing the behavior of a friend,
which they assess using a potentially topically terminal assessment (O:h shit) and laughter in Lines 4 and 5. At Line 6, Billy initiates the topic of going home. However, Rick
continues to laugh at Line 7, overlapping Billys turn, which he then abandons. At Line 8,
he restarts when are you twice. It appears that Ricks laughter leads to Billys first restart.
That is, his talk is now in the clear. Considering that the second restart isnt serving this
overlap function, it instead seems to be related to attention-seeking for the new topic.

And in Instance 3:
(3)
UTCL D8.12
PAM:
I havent talked to my mother in a
lo::ng ti::me. (0.4) >(Tex 0 U weekend

<
(0.7)
RIC:
phhuh
PAM:
I talked to my da:d.
(1.8)
RIC:
hu:h
PAM:
hu h
=>
RIC:
Do you hav- do you have any other blo
10
brothers or sisters
11
PAM:
I have a sister.
In Instance 3, Rick and Pam are discussing Pams parents potential reactions to a letter
she had written them. At Line 9, Rick brings up the topic of possible siblings of Pams. He
does this while restarting his utterance beginning do you have. Pams response, I have a
sister, shows that she understands his question and follows his lead topically.

In all of the preceeding instances, restarts occur as a speaker initiates a topic change.
Schegloff (1979) noted that when topic-initial utterances display no hitches, repair initiations are common in the next turn. In these restart cases, the hearer is able to follow the proposed topic and continue it; no repairs occur. A restart by the speaker ensures the hearers
attention at a turning point in the conversation. Thus, I posit that the restarts are functioning
successfully to alert the listener to a new topic.
In addition to marking topic initiation, utterance restarts can function to project speaker
reluctance.
RESTARTS AS INDICTATORS OF RELUCTANCE
Participants in everyday conversations routinely make and respond to requests. However,
at times, speakers may exhibit in some fashion a reluctance to inquire about or reply to
certain issues. For instance, some people may understandably be hesitant to discuss topics such as sexual activity or personal finances, considering them to be of a sensitive or
delicate nature. Schegloff (1980) identified one way in which participants show an orientation to talk as sensitive or delicatethey first exhibit a pre-delicate. That is, a question
projection is followed by a question that is marked in some fashion as a delicate one. For
example, before asking a question that might be considered sensitive for some reason, a
participant might first say Can I ask you a question? or more explicitly, I want to ask
you a question that may seem a bit indelicate, but I have to know. Restarts may provide
speakers with another, perhaps less explicit or less marked, way to display forthcoming talk
as sensitive or delicate.
One group of telephone utterance restarts in this study involves both requests and
responses to requests. Restarts can be seen as functioning to signal or mark some type
of talk as being reluctantly produced. In the following first set of instances, the speaker
exhibits a restart as she or he is responding to a previous speakers utterance and is revealing information that she or he may consider potentially damaging, risky, or embarrassing
in this particular circumstance (e.g., personal finances, setting conditions on a friends
request). That is, speakers restarts show a reluctance to grant or respond to a certain type
of requests (i.e., delicate or sensitive).
(4)
=>
UTCL F1.1
1
MOM:
2
3
DAU:
4
5
MOM:
DAU:
-And he has a ra:nch for us to look art so

were gonna go just look at it just
[]
How mu :ch
(0.4)
-hhhh We:ll I- I dont know I don know
h- (.)
dont wanta dis- discuss it on the
telepho:ne=
=O:h.

In this segment, a mother and daughter are discussing the mothers possible purchase of
a ranch. The daughter inquires about the price of the ranch in Line 3. The mother displays a reluctance to reply. After a pause, a delay (i.e., an inbreath), and an appositional
(i.e., We:ll), the mother restarts I- and also repeats I don know. Additionally, she
restarts the word discuss as she metacommunicatively expresses that she doesnt want
to discuss the matter while on the telephone. Thus, the mother exhibits an utterance restart
(as well as other delay devices) at the point where a potentially delicate issuepersonal
financesarises.
=>
(5)UTCL A10.5
1
RIC:
Is there any way I can borrow somebodys
moped
2
(16 lines omitted)

3
RIC:
.hhhhhhhhhhh Itll probly take me twenty minutes
4
FLA:
When he gets- when he gets back from the bank
5
you can u- you can borr it

6
RIC:
Who
7
(0.2)
8
FLA:
Nat an
9
(0.4)
10 RIC:
Whens he leaving
11
(0.4)
12 FLA:
Oh hell proly back in like fifteen minutes and
13
itll proly take him fifteen twenty minutes
14
hell hell probly be done forty minutes and
15
then you use it
In Instance 5, Rick has asked to borrow Flaretys moped, which is currently being loaned
to someone else. In Line 4, Flarety agrees to let him borrow it, but exhibits the relatively
short restart when he gets while doing so. With this and his later comments, he seems to
be setting conditions for or potentially refusing the borrowing by Rick. One could argue
that potentially refusing or setting conditions on a friends request could be considered
socially risky and potentially damaging to the friendship. That is, Flarety may be reluctant
to offend his friend.
As mentioned earlier, not only can speakers reveal a reluctance to respond to particular requests, but they can also show a reluctance to make such requests. In the following segment, we can observe an utterance restart produced as the speaker asks the
recipient to reveal information about herself that is potentially damaging, socially risky, or
embarrassing (e.g., sexual activity). That is, the speakers restart shows a reluctance to ask
a certain type of question:
(6)
UTCL A10.14:4
1
JES: -hhhhh Uh we had it like at eight thirty
=>
2
3
RIG:
(0.5)
Ye- did j- wu- did you spend the night
there
last night
In this segment, Rick and Jessie are discussing their workout times interwoven with Jessies anger at her dating partner (i.e., also Ricks friend). At Line 3, Rick asks Jessie if she
spent the night at her dating partners place of residence. He restarts wu- did you as well
as pausing before the utterance. Asking people to reveal where they spend their nights
(especially specifying a dating partner) is a personal and private matter. Thus, it can be
argued that Rick is showing reluctance to inquire about this delicate matter.
We have examined several instances of requesting and of responding to requests that
involve restarts. They all appear to show a reluctance or hesitancy to inquire or respond to
issues that can be considered of a sensitive or delicate nature. That is, speakers and listeners display an orientation to the talk as potentially problematic. Sometimes these displays
cluster together. In the following instances, we can observe both participants displaying
reluctance when talking about a particular issue:
(7)
=>
=>
UTCL A10.14:6
1
JES:
I told him I didnt want him to swim: Rick
2
Was that mean

3
(0.6)
4
RIC:
Whasat?
5
JES:
I told him that I didnt want him to swim
6
(1.1)
7
RIC:
Well what do ya- what do you mean
8
(0.7)
9
JES:
I tol- I jus- (0.4) you know: I just go::
10
(0.2) we were talkin about it or something
11
and I just go:: I dont want you to swim
hhhhh
In Instance 7, Jessie and Rick are discussing a prior conversation between her and the
man shes dating, Billy, about his swimming for the collegiate team. He is also a good
friend and swimming teammate of Ricks. At Line 7, Rick exhibits a short restart, what
do you, in his metacommunicative response to Jessies prior announcement or disclosure
(including the possibility of having hurt her dating partner). In addition to proffering a
query about a sensitive topic, Rick does the delicate work of not snowing alignment with
a conversational partner by displaying agreement or an agreeing assessment with Jessies
announcement. Ricks restart, then, may be serving a dual purpose, displaying a dispreferred turn shape as well as reluctance to discuss the topic.
After a short pause, Jessie then exhibits a restart involving another short pause and you
know: before the actual restart of I just. Her utterance can be seen as socially risky in
that she is revealing a serious request she made of her intimate partner, to not participate
on the university swim team. Asking a college athlete to quit his or her sport would seem

to be a significant request. Jessie notes her orientation to her request as delicate in Line 2
when she asks Rick if he thought it was a mean thing to say. As mentioned previously,
revealing this information to a friend and teammate of Billys seems chancy in that Rick
may get upset with her for possibly hurting his friend and the team. Jessies restart may also
be displaying a sensitivity to the lack of alignment in Line 7 from her hearer. Thus, both
participants show a mutual orientation to this topic as delicate and sensitive.
An additional interesting feature about this instance is the use of ya know and a pause
before the beginning of the restart. Pomerantz (1984) found that dispreferred seconds (e.g.,
disagreements when agreements are preferred) typically include delay devices such as
pauses and tokens (e.g., uh, well). She noted that these delay devices display reluctancy or discomfort (p. 72). Thus, the delay devices evident in this segment (as well as in
Instance 4) seem to function as part of the delicate and tentative nature of the talk.
And in Instance 8:
(8) CIS 271.1

1 CAL: Okay- -hh this would be an AIDS patient
h
2 IS:
Okary
=> 3 CAL: I- this there any type
]

[
= 4 IS:
-hhh Is i- is- are
>
5
are you cailling for this patien:t um: =
6 CAL: =Yes uh huh=
In this segment, the caller to a Cancer Information Service has requested to talk with someone about nursing home placement for an AIDS patient. At Line 3, the caller restarts is
there, the beginning of a question. However, she stops and relinquishes her turn to the
Information Specialist.
In Lines 4 and 5, the Information Specialist attempts to find out if the caller is the patient
or if she is representing the patient. She displays a delay (i.e., an inbreath) and recycles
her turn beginning twice in pairs (i.e., Is i- and are- are). One might hypothesize that
she is starting to say Is it you? and then changes it as the former might be considered too
direct. Even in this semimedical situation, asking someone to reveal whether she or he has
a terminal illness such as AIDS is potentially a socially risky question. This is especially so
considering the current stigma associated with AIDS (Sontag, 1989).
This segment is interesting in that both participants restarts could be orienting to the
sensitive nature of that talk, but considering the overlap, they also could be trying to get
the floor. That is, the restarts may also be serving an attention-seeking function here. Both
participants utterances arent changing the topic (as in our first group of restarts), but are
showing orientation to different aspects of the topic. Thus, it is possible that telephone
utterance restarts may serve dual purposes simultaneously.

CONCLUSIONS
This chapter describes various functions of restarts at utterance beginnings in telephone
conversations. Particular recycled turn beginnings were found to serve two attention-seeking functions. That is, a speaker initiating a new topic or showing reluctance when making
or responding to a request may signal to the other that something is up by using a restart.
These restarts occurred precisely at places where speakers were introducing new topics
or were displaying reluctance to discuss particular issues (e.g., sexual activity, personal
finances, potential refusal to lend items, dating issues, illness disclosure).
These findings expand our previous knowledge of the functions of recycled turn beginnings as attention-seeking devices. Schegloff (1987) claimed that they serve an overlap-repair function, whereas Goodwin (1980) argued for a gaze-requesting function. Considering
the absence of recipient gaze in telephone conversations, this chapter argues that restarts
may also serve different forms of attention-seeking functionsto indicate or mark the
initiation of a new topic or a reluctance to make or respond to delicate requests.
Thus, a restart may best be considered as a multifunctional conversational feature, capable of varying sequential work. Employing Mandelbaums (1990) distinction, restartsas
an interactional feature of the practices of conversationserve to accomplish multiple
practices in conversation such as gaining attention, getting the floor, shifting topics, and
marking delicacy. However, there are other conversational features of the practices of
conversation that interactants may employ to accomplish these same social or pragmatic
practices in conversation. These features may include more, or less, explicit or marked
ways of solving interactional problems and can be viewed on a continuum.
At one end of the continuum, interactants may choose fairly implicit, less marked means
to achieve a conversational action with little disturbance to the expression of an utterance
or to the conversations surface (Jefferson, 1996). For instance, a speaker may choose to
gradually change a conversational topic over the course of several turns via a stepwise
transition (Jefferson, 1984; Sacks, 1992).
At the other end of the continuum, interactants may choose fairly explicit, more marked
ways to accomplish actions such as gaining attention, shifting topics, or displaying delicacy. For example, the young woman in the following face-to-face segment employs a
rather direct way to summon her listeners attention:
UTVL
Moonlight Pizza
MOU:
She was sitting right here like this YA::LL look at

me:.
Rather than displaying a restart to attract gaze and attention (Goodwin, 1980), MOUSE
commands her listeners with the explicit YA::LL look at me:., using added stress, sound
stretches, and increased volume to further emphasize her demand. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, a speaker may start a turn with, Not to change the subject, but as a way
to announce an abrupt topic shift, or first query a conversational partner, Can I ask you a
question? to explicitly mark a subsequent sensitive or delicate question or request.

However, there are potential dangers in employing such marked features. First, in some
cases, a speaker may be perceived as abrupt, demanding, or socially inept. Second, opportunities for the conversation to get momentarily or completely sidetracked or for a bid to
change the tone or mood of the conversational moment are made available. For instance,
in response to a serious Can I ask you a question?, wisecracks such as You already did
or What, another one? (Schegloff, 1980) may sidetrack and disturb the serious tone a
speaker is attempting to set. It may then take several subsequent turns to reestablish the
direction or to get out of the side sequence, so one might argue that more marked actions
are potentially less conversationally economical. Third, an interactant may be flatly refused
before the other even hears the question or request, No, I dont answer personal questions
or No, you may not, perhaps especially when in an argumentative encounter.
In comparison, restarts may pose less conversational danger than more marked actions.
First, being less explicit, restarts may be less likely to be perceived as abrupt or demanding.
Second, considering sequential implicativeness (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), it would be
much more difficult for wisecracks or refusals to emerge with the use of restarts alone.
Regarding the marking of delicate, sensitive matters or topic shifts on the telephone,
restarts seem to be in the middle of the continuum when it comes to such activities as refusing a request, asking a personal question, or initiating a new direction in the conversation.
Thus, telephone restarts express middleground options by speakers. They illustrate how
we as interactants can produce an action to fit the specific needs of the moment-by-moment unfolding of an encounter. Moreover, restarts show us that one form can have many
functions.
Future research in the area might uncover yet other practices in conversation that
restarts serve in addition to gaining attention, getting the floor, shifting topics, and marking delicacy. Furthermore, although instances in the present study included both casual,
everyday and institutional telephone talk, a more focused study of different types of institutional interaction could reveal differences regarding the use of restarts. For example,
the use of explicit, marked forms of actions or more implicit, less marked forms may vary
in, for example, medical or therapeutic interviews versus corporate business interactions.
It would also be interesting to discover if restarts serve any of the aforementioned functions in face-to-face encounters. Moreover, investigating the occurrence or lack thereof of
restarts in particularly sensitive environments such as arguments may prove worthwhile.
For instance, might the absence of restarts display a specific stance in an argument, such as
certainty or hostility to the other?
REFERENCES
Button, G., & Casey, N. (1984). Generating topic: The use of topic initial elicitors. In J.H. Atkinson
& J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 167190).
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C. (1980). Restarts, pauses, and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn-beginning. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 272302.
Heath, C. (1984). Talk and recipiency: Sequential organization in speech and body movement. In
J.M.Atkinson & J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis
(pp. 247266). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Jefferson, G. (1984). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately nextpositioned matters. In J.M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in
Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 161.
Mandelbaum, J. (1990). Communication phenomena as solutions to interactional problems. In J.
Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 13 (pp. 216244). Beverly, CA: Sage.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J.H. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies
in conversation analysis (pp. 57101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vol. II) (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of
Schegloff, E.A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T.Givon (Ed.), Syntax
and semantics, Vol. 12: Discourse and syntax (pp. 261288). New York: Academic Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1980). Preliminaries to preliminaries: Can I ask you a question? Sociological
Inquiry, 50, 104152.
Schegloff, E.A. (1981). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of uh huh and
other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Analyzing discourse: Text and
talk (pp. 7193). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversations
turn-taking organization. In G.Button & J.R.E.Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization
(pp. 7085). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Schegloff, E.A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. In R.Turner (Ed.), Ethnomethodology
(pp. 233264). Baltimore: Penguin.
Sontag, S. (1989). Aids and its metaphors. New York: Doubleday.
8
Recognizing Assessable Names
Charles Goodwin
UCLA
Robert Hoppers work has been centrally concerned with the question of how human beings
produce action in concert with each other by deploying the resources and practices used
to organize talk-in-interaction (e.g., Hopper, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1999; Hopper & Chen,
1996; Hopper & Glenn, 1994; Hopper & LeBaron, 1998). The present chapter explores
one facet of this process, focusing on the way in which culturally relevant understanding
of the names used to identify valued objects is made visible through specific interactive
procedures.
What is investigated here is the ability of a hearer to spontaneously, on his own,
recognize the assessable character of an object being named (a Cord, a particular type of
car built before World War II). The name is dropped in a deadpan fashion, without alerting the hearer to its assessable status, and thus poses a recognition test for the hearer.1 Is
he a competent member of the domain of discourse indexed by the name, such that he can
recognize on his own the special status of the item that speaker has just named? Indeed, in
the data examined herein, there are two hearers, only one of whom passes this test.
SIGNPOSTED ASSESSMENTS
This practice of producing assessable names as recognition tests must, however, be seen as
part of a larger family of practices that also includes alternative procedures used by speakers to explicitly signal their hearers that an assessable is about to be produced. As a point of
departure for the phenomenon explored in this chapter, some of these are briefly described.
In earlier work, Marjorie Goodwin and I (C.Goodwin & M.H.Goodwin, 1987) investigated
how turns at talk containing assessments can be organized as a multiparty interactive activity. Thus in the following, as the speaker pronounces an assessment adjective good, the
entity being assessedasparagus pieis formulated as a highly valued object through a
range of both talk and embodied displays by both speaker and hearer:
(1)
Nancy:
Tasha:
Jeff made en asparagus

pie.
It was s::so [: goo:d.
[I Love it.
Here, the hearer simultaneously produces a positive evaluation at the very moment that the
assessment adjective is spoken. She doesnt wait until after speaker has said good, but
in that talk about cars in this fashion is explicitly marked by the participants themselves as a distinctively gendered, male practice, I use the male pronoun to talk about an addressee of this talk.
1
Recognizing assessable names 129

instead starts to evaluate it before the speaker has even stated her own evaluation. What
interactive practices make such concurrent assessment possible? Before producing the talk
that constitutes the peak of the assessment, the speaker signposts its upcoming arrival
with an intonationally enhanced intensifier s::so_i. The hearer can use this prepositioned
evaluative frame to project what is about to happen, and indeed she does so by starting her
own assessment at the very end of the intensifier.
In Example 1, the projective signpost took the form of an intensifier (s::so:) and the
assessment peak occurred at the place where the speaker produced an assessment adjective. These slots can, however, be filled with other types of units. For example, one very
common type of assessment is formatted as a noun phrase within which an assessment
adjective, such as beautiful precedes a description of the object being assessed.
(2)
Paul:
Tell Debbie about the dog on the golf course

tday.
((intervening talk omitted))
Noun Phrase
Eileen: An this beautiful, (.) [Irish Setter
I[rish Setter ((rev erently))

(3) Curt: This guy had, a beautiful, thirty two Olds
The assessment adjective tells the recipient that the object about to be described is being
assessed in a particular way. Moreover, though the entity being assessed may indeed be
relevant to a larger sequence of activity, such signposting is a local operation. Example 2
occurred in the midst of a story. Paul and Eileen had played golf together, and Paul asked
Eileen to tell the others present how a dog stole the speakers golf ball. Eileens pronunciation of Irish Setter, just after the assessment adjective beautiful, is overlapped by an
intonationally enhanced, appreciative version of the same name by Paul. Note how Pauls
treatment of the Irish Setter as an assessable differs markedly from the way in which he
formulates this same dog within the frame of the report being made by the larger story,
that is, as a protagonist in a laughable event (see C.Goodwin & M.H.Goodwin, 1987, for
more detailed analysis). By placing signposts before the peak of the assessment the speaker
informs the recipient of what is about to happen, with the effect that when this talk is
actually spoken, the recipient is already in a position to treat it as an assessment.
Signposting is, however, but one of many ways in which assessments can be organized
as an interactive activity. One of these alternatives is examined next. Instead of announcing
to the recipient that what is about to be said should be assessed in a particular way, speaker
produces the assessable out of the blue. In that the talk containing the assessable has not
been categorized as such (e.g., with an anticipatory signpost), the recipient is faced with the
task of discovering that an assessable has been produced on his or her own. The following
provides an example. In these data, the participants are car buffs. Curt is trying to restore a
Model T and asks Mike where he can get a rear spring for the car:

(4)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Mike:
Mike:
Mike:
Mike
Curt:
Mike:
Curt:
Mike:
Curt:
Mike:
Lemme ask a guy at work.

Hes gotta bunch a old clunkers.
(0.2)
Well I cant say that theyre ol: clunkers=
eez gotta Co:rd?
(0.1)
Two Co:rds,
(1.0)
[And
[Not original,
(0.7)
Oh yes. Very original,
Oh:: reall[y?
[Yah. Ve(h) ry origi(h)nal.
Awhh are you shit tin m [e?
[No Im not.
In Lines 57 Mike describes a particular type of car, a Cord, without explicitly assessing it.
However his recipient, Curt, treats such a car as a very highly valued object with a series of
elaborate displays in Lines 10, 13, and 15, for example, asking Mike are you shittin me.
Once Curt uncovers the assessable character of the car, Mike joins him in displaying appreciation of it. Thus Curt initially treats what Mike said as so remarkable that it can hardly
be believed by saying not original, a proposal that if true would diminish the assessable
status of the cars being evaluated. This question provides an opportunity for Mike in Line
12 to emphasize that they are indeed original, and in so doing to display his own appreciation of the cars. Note the placement of the word Very before origi(h)nal, the enhanced
intonation with which both of these words are spoken, and the emphasis provided by placing Oh before yes at the beginning of the turn. The process of assessing the cars thus
becomes a mutual, collaborative activity.
The assessment-relevant nonvocal behavior that occurs in this sequence merits special
comment. While saying Oh yes in Line 12, Mike shakes his head from side to side.
Rather than contradicting the yes in his talk, this head shake simultaneously displays
that he is disagreeing with the assessmentdiminishing proposal just made by Curt (that the
Cords were not original) and constitutes a form of assessment activity in its own right,
an oh wow headshake. Because these phenomena have already been described in detail
elsewhere (M.H.Goodwin, 1980; Schegloff, 1987) they are not discussed further here.
In these data, Curt is able to recognize the exalted status of a Cord without being explicitly told that it is an assessable by Mike. This suggests that speakers have available to them
at least two alternatives for introducing an assessable into talk:
1. Announce to recipient that what is about to be said is an assessable. For example put
an assessment adjective like beautiful before it.
2. Produce an object without marking it as an assessable and thus place recipients in a
position where they must recognize its assessable status on their own.

RECIPIENT RECOGNITION AS AN INTERACTIVE PROCESS
For clarity, recognition of an unmarked assessable has so far been treated as something
done entirely by the recipient working alone. I now want to explore the possibility that the
process through which the recipient recognizes even an unmarked assessable can itself be
organized as an interactive activity.
Seeding the Ground for an Assessable
In Example 4, despite the speakers deadpan production and lack of explicit assessment
terms, there are in fact some features of the talk that might guide the recipient to see what
is about to be said as an assessable. Mike first describes the cars of his friend as old
clunkers, but then says that they are not old clunkers:
(4)
1
2
3
4
Mike:
Mike :
5
6

(0.2)
Well I cant say that they re ol: clunkers=
eez gotta Co:rd?
(0.1)
The recipient is thus instructed to hear what is about to be described as something that
stands in marked contrast to old clunkers. Through the operation of such contrast organization, the assessable name in Line 5 emerges within an environment that has already been
subtly shaped by its presence; the shadow of its properties become visible before the object
itself. Though not explicitly marking the name being produced as an assessable, Mike has
nonetheless seeded the ground for its recognition.
Holding the Name Available
Despite the way in which its status has been foreshadowed, when the word Co:rd? is
actually spoken it is not treated as an assessable. Mike ends his pronunciation of the word
with a rising contour (indicated in the transcript by a question mark), an act that frequently
functions as a solicit for a response from the recipient, and leaves a space after producing
the word for the recipient to respond. However, the recipient does nothing and in Line 6 a
gap ensues.
Mike thus produces a response-relevant object that does not receive an appropriate response. He now employs a standard procedure available to speakers for pursuing a
response: rather than moving his talk forward into new material, he redisplays this object
for his recipient (Line 7):
(4)
Mike :
Well I cant say that they re ol: clunkers=

eez gotta Co:rd?
6
7
Mike:
(0.1)
Two Co:rds,
Indeed, in the present case Mike upgrades the assessable from a Cord in Line 5 to Two
Cords in Line 7. Continuing to hold the assessable available in this fashion both extends
the time available to recipient for producing a response2 and also subtly signals (e.g.,
through the reiteration of the assessable and its upgrade) that further response is relevant.
Mike also performs a nonvocal gesture that helps to solicit a response. To look at how
this gesture operates it is helpful to consider the actions of the third party present during
this exchange, Gary. Recall that the sequence began with Curt asking for help in finding a
high arch spring for his Model T. Right after Mike mentions his friend with the old clunkers, Gary offers the name of someone else (it is later revealed that this person builds street
roadsters and is thus a possible source for the spring):
(4)
1
2
3
4
Mike:
Gary:
Mike :
5
6
7
8
9
10
Mike:
Mike
Curt:

Yknow Marlon Liddle?
(0.2)
Well I cant say that theyre ol: clunkers=
eez gotta Co:rd?
(0.1)
Two Co:rds,
(1.0)
[And
[Not original,
Just as Mike reveals that the cars are not old clunkers, Curt orients to the fact that Gary has
just said something by shifting his gaze noticeably away from Mike and toward Gary. He
continues to gaze away from Mike until after Line 7. Thus throughout the time that Mike
is announcing the presence of the Cords, Curt is looking away from him. As Mike says
Two Cords in Line 7, he moves his hand forward with two fingers extended in a V (i.e.,
a hand gesture for the number two) toward Curt and then back to his own face. This very
noticeable gesture occurs right at the point where Mike is upgrading his assessment and
appears to act as an additional solicit to Curt (for more detailed analysis of how gestures
can be used to attract the gaze of nongazing recipients, see C. Goodwin, 1986b). Very
shortly after this happens, Curt brings his gaze back to Mike with a movement that also
shows heightened attentiveness to what has just been said (e.g., while moving, Curt raises
his head). When this movement is completed, he begins his vocal response to the assessable in Line 10, intercepting Mikes appending And. Note that Curts head movement
See C.Goodwin (1981, chapter 3) for other analysis of how speakers add new segments to their
talk in order to coordinate the unit production of that talk with relevant actions of their recipients.

occupies the silence in Line 8 with the beginning of his response. Thus, unlike the much
shorter silence in Line 6, it is not a gap, but instead becomes a space filled with assessment
relevant activity.3
In brief, here Curt, unlike Gary, is able to display his ability to independently recognize
the exalted status of a Cord. However that independent display has in fact been made
possible through a subtle interactive process of prompting from Mike, who has worked
hard to hold the assessable name available until Curt can see its import and react appropriately to it.
More generally, here we find an instance of what seems a more general strategy of
downplaying something before its emergence, and then dropping it as a bomb, so that its
unique assessable character is highlighted by its sudden emergence within a relevant but
unlikely environment. Indeed, one can speculate that the ideal way this sequence would
have run off would have been for Curt to have asked what kind of old clunkers the guy
had, and then received a Cord in response. Note that unlike the congruent assessments
in Example 1, where both participants were enthusiastically evaluating the assessable, the
current strategy is characterized by asymmetry in participation, with each party displaying
markedly different affect. The party dropping the bomb, here Mike, talks with deadpan,
cool nonchalance. By way of contrast the recipient of the bomb displays shocked, elaborated amazement.
CONCLUSION: ASSESSMENTS AND THE INTERACTIVE ORGANIZATION OF
CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
Recognition of assessable names, and the tasks it sets its recipients, sheds interesting light
on the organization of cultural knowledge as an interactive phenomenon. One of the central themes that has motivated research in cultural anthropology from Malinowski through
contemporary studies of cognition, is the question of how members of a society recognize
and properly interpret in a culturally meaningful way events in their phenomenal world.
Building a response to an unmarked assessable is relevant to this process in a number of
different ways.
First, in order to deal with the assessable properly recipient must recognize the object
that speaker is talking about. This is by no means a trivial matter. For example, one person
viewing these data heard the car that Mike was talking about as a (Honda) Accord, something that led her to become quite puzzled about Curts reaction to it. Being able to properly
identify items such as this is one of the things that establishes within the talk of the moment
a participants competence, and indeed membership (or non-membership) in a specific
culture. In the present data, the cultural world at issue is that of car buffs, but equivalent
recognition tests can be posed in almost any domain of discourse, for example, science,
politics, farming, sports, and so on. Frequently names are used to describe assessable
objects in talk, and a very interesting literature on the interactive organization of reference and name recognition now exists (c.f. Clark, 1996; Clark & Schaefer 1986; Clark &
Wilkes-Gibbes, 1986; Isaacs & Clark 1987; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Schegloff, 1972).
For other analysis of how nonvocal assessment activity can occupy silences, see M.H.Goodwin
(1980).
3

Second, in order to find the assessable status of what is being talked about, the recipient
must know how to rank and evaluate the object once it has been identified. A response to
an assessable can contain an alignment display of some type (e.g., Curts treatment of the
Cords as highly valued objects). Therefore, mere recognition of the name and the entity it
refers to is not sufficient to build an appropriate response to an assessable. In addition, the
recipient must be able to evaluate the recognized object and properly place it within the
larger cultural domain that it inhabits.
Third, the results of these operations can be publicly scrutinized by other participants.
The recipient is performing the tasks of recognition and evaluation in order to build an
appropriate response to the unmarked assessable. That response will display to others
whether he or she did or did not recognize the assessable and how he or she evaluated it.
Others can and do choose to disagree with a speakers assessment of a particular entity.
For example, shortly after the sequence being examined here, Curt proposed that a thirtytwo Olds should be treated as an exalted, highly valued object in much the way that the
Cord here is, but Mike refused to go along with this proposal (for detailed analysis of these
data, see C.Goodwin & M.H.Goodwin, 1987). Recognition and evaluation of a referent
are frequently conceptualized as purely internal, psychological processes. Here, however,
it becomes possible to analyze how performing these actions can be subjected to public
scrutiny, confirmation, and challenge within systematic processes of interaction.
The public, interactive practices through which a name is both recognized and evaluated are quite relevant to central issues posed in the analysis of culture. For example, they
permit empirical investigation of the process through which members of a society come to
share a culture in the sense that separate individuals form judgements about the events
they encounter that are congruent with those of their co-participants, but differ radically
from the interpretations of these same phenomena made by members of another group. By
viewing processes of categorization and evaluation within an interactive matrix, it becomes
possible to shift analysis from specific cultural categories, that is, a list of fixed, stable
entities argued to constitute the culture of the group, to the underlying social processes
through which such categories are formed, tested, used, and changed as constitutive features of the activities the participants are engaged in.
Fourth, insofar as the identifications and judgments one makes can be scrutinized by
others, and used to assess ones competence and membership in a particular culture, these
processes provide a built-in motivation for members of a group to learn the background
information, ways of speaking, and so on, necessary for appropriate participation in a specific domain of discourse. Talking about cars for these speakers is very serious business,
and indeed one of the ways in which they negotiate and establish their competence and
standing vis--vis each other. The same is true for many other domains of discourse. These
interactive processes thus provide structures for both testing and motivating acquisition of
particular bodies of knowledge.
Fifth, such considerations raise the question of how participants learn relevant information about a domain of discourse in the first place. Clearly a multiplicity of acquisition
processes are involved.4 The present data shed light on how assessments might be relevant
to such issues. Someone listening to this talk who had never heard of a Cord before could
find from the way in which it is treated by Curt and Mike (a) that a Cord is a type of car,
(b) that it is a very highly valued object in this culture, and (c) something about the criteria

used to evaluate such phenomena in this particular domain of discourse, for example, that
the status of a car as original is a most relevant attribute for judging it (i.e., this is the first
question Curt raises about the Cord in Line 10). The sequence thus provides information
about both the status of particular objects in this culture and ways of invoking these objects
and their relevant attributes within talk. Such phenomena provide a practical resource for
parties involved in the interaction. Indeed one of the men participating in this interaction,
Gary, is not able to display the competence about the world of cars that Mike and Curt
exhibit, and one can in fact see him trying to learn how to talk about them appropriately as
the conversation unfolds (see Goodwin, 1986a).
The self-explicating resources provided by assessments are available not only to participants but also to ethnographers and analysts. Such structures provide a way of getting
information about the content of a culture without querying participants. Use of methods
such as this seems especially important because membership in a culture involves not
merely recognition of content items, but also particular ways of talking about these items,
appropriate alignment displays to them, and so on.
The phenomena investigated here provide one demonstration of how fine-grained cultural knowledge is built, organized, and deployed through precise use of the practices used
to build action within talk-in-interaction.
REFERENCES
Clark, H.H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, H.H., & Schaefer, E.F. (1986). Collaborating on contributions to conversations. Language
and Cognitive Processes 2(1), 1941.
Clark, H.H., & Wilkes-Gibbes, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition, 22,
139.
Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New
Goodwin, C. (1986a). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text, 6(3), 283316.
Goodwin, C. (1986b). Gesture as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation. Semiotica,
62(1/2), 2949.
Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M.H. (1987). Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the interactive
organization of assessments. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics, (1) 152.
Goodwin, M.H. (1980). Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description
sequences. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 303317.
Hopper, R. (1988). Speech, for instance: The exemplar in studies of conversation. Language and
Social Psychology, 7(1), 4763.
Hopper, R. (1989). Sequential ambiguity in telephone openingsWhat are you doin. Communication Monographs, 56(3), 240252.
Hopper, R. (1999). Going public about social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(12), 7784.
Hopper, R., & Chen, H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan.
Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29(4), 291313.
For a very subtle example of learning within the midst of conversation, see Jefferson (1987).

Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Repetition in discourse: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Vol. 2, pp. 2940). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Interaction, 31(1), 5974.
Isaacs, E.A., & Clark, H.H. (1987). References in conversation between experts and novices. Journal of Experimental Psychology; General, 116(1), 2637.
Jefferson, G. (1987). Exposed and embedded corrections. In G. Button & J.R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk
and social organisation (pp. 86100). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E.A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons
and their interaction. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology
(pp. 1521). New York: Irvington.
Schegloff, E.A. (1972). Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D. Sudnow (Ed.),
Studies in social interaction (pp. 75119). New York: The Free Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50 (2), 101114.
9
Interactional Problems With Did You Questions
and Responses
Susan D.Corbin
University of Texas at Austin
Did you questions are ubiquitous in everyday talk. The examples used in this project are
taken from recordings of actual conversations or from overheard conversations noted by
the author. A collection of did you questions and observations of their use and characteristics was made from which the examples in this chapter were drawn. In this collection,
it was noted that did you questions are used in many ways. For example, did you
questions can be used to begin a conversation upon first meeting a known other:
(1) [Corbin, FN] (Student to student)
S:
Hi Kim, did you get that tape from the Speech
Lab?
K:
Yes, thank you so much for doing that
to continue a conversation when a previous topic has been talked out:

(2)
[UTCL A35d.l5] (Wife to husband)

HNK: pt .hhhh Did get the deal sold though
KRS : Great.=
HNK: = So (0.4)
KRS: Did you get your account straightened out
to introduce a previously unmentioned mentionable:

(3) [UTCL A35a.l2] (Daughter to mother)
KRS: .hhh Okay well you have a good day, did you have
a
good time over at Joyces last night?
to remind someone of an intended action:

(4)
[Corbin, FN] (Mother to teenage daughter)

Mom: Did you bring in the trash can?
D:
Yes, I did.
Occasionally, the recipient of a did you question shows that the question is problematic:
Interactional problems With did you questions and responses 139

(5)
(6)
[Corbin, FN] (Co-workers)

Pizza worker 1:
Did you grate this cheese?
Pizza worker 2:
Whats wrong with it?
Pizza worker 1:
Well, you were supposed to put
Saran Wrap on it.

[DP 4]
C:
Did you go in this morning?
(2.0)
E:
U:h no, my back was hurtin too much
Recipient response indicates how she or he has taken the question. In example 5, an
exchange between two people working in a pizza palor, the asker does not use any vocal
intonation that might cause the question to sound as if he is accusing the recipient of
anything. However, the recipients response indicates he appears to have heard an accusation (Whats wrong with it?). In Example 6, the response shows a problem by the
dispreferred-shaped response (Pomerantz, 1984).
The next two examples show that another researcher has noticed that both hearers and
askers of did you questions may find them problematic (Tracy & Naughton, 1994). In
example 7, in an interaction between faculty and graduate students at a graduate seminar,
Beth displays that she has problems with Sams did you question:
(7) [Tracy & Naughton, 1994, pg 294, excerpt 12]
SAM:
Did you, have any dilemmas of choice in terms of
experimentation here? Did you, did you sacrifice

uh
uh external validity for control at any point?
BEH:
Uh yeah the, well I, our readings, I mean when

they,
when they read the conversations or read the
scenarios
Tracy and Naughton characterized Berns disfluent answer as showing that Beth
recognize[s] a difficulty (p. 295) with the question.
Tracy and Naughton (1994) also showed an example demonstrating that askers may
indicate that they recognize the problematic nature of did you questions. They noted
that to ask a did you question of someone is to indicate that the action questioned is
something that could be expected to have been done:

(8)
[Tracy & Naughton, 1994, p. 287, Excerpt 1]

ROY:
... Did you, are you aware, I would assume that, that studies looking at self attributions and other attributions of competence generally show a pretty high correlation?
SUE:
hmm mm
ROY:
That, that is generally true? That, that persons own self rating of competence
correlates pretty highly with ratings of those surrounding?
Roys question concerns Sues research presentation. He starts his question as a did you
question, which inquires about the recipients actions. If one continues along his did you
line of questioning and combines it with the end of his question, one arrives at the conclusion that Roy was going to ask whether or not Sue had found other studies reporting
that self-attributions and other attributions of competence show a correlation. Tracy and
Naughton (1994) argued that to ask if they did something suggests it is an activity that
could be expected (p. 287). That is, it would be expected for Sue to find research reporting
the high correlation and perhaps untoward if she had not found this research.
However, Roy changes his did you to are you aware, which asks about the recipients state of knowledge at the time of the question. Before completing his question, he
amends his statement to I would assume that, which refocuses the knowing about the
attribution studies from the student to himself. Tracy and Naughton (1994) argued that
Roys reformulation of his did you question from did you to are you aware and
finally to I would assume that suggests he does not want to imply that she (the student)
should know what he is asking (p. 287). That is, the successive amendments move the
asker away from the did you format and softens the potential offence (or face threat) in
the question.
These four examples show that both speakers and hearers demonstrate in talk that they
recognize the problematic nature of did you questions. However, note that there is only
a potential for did you questions to be problematic. Of course, not every did you question is going to be a problem for every recipient, as seen in Examples 1 through 3. Certainly
vocal intonation and sequential location have a lot to do with the problematic potential of a
did you question. As each example is discussed, these features are noted.
This chapter discusses three characteristics of did you questions, any one of which
might induce a problematic response to a did you question. They are:
1. The use of did you at the beginning of the question indicates it is about a recipients
past action (or possible past action) and may be heard by the recipient to have problematic
linguistic logical presuppositions.
2. A did you question can be highly indexical; that is, the referent of the question is
underspecified yet the questions structure shows that the speaker believes that the recipient will understand the sense of the question. This high indexicality may lead to a recipients hearing a problematic linguistic pragmatic presupposition.
3. The did you question is grammatically packaged to elicit a yes/no response, but
usually receives an elaboration as well as the yes/no. A lack of expansion may lead to
an askers pursuit of an expansion, which can cause interactional problems. In the present
collection, no one problematic did you question contains all three of these aspects. The

following sections include discussions of these problematic aspects of did you questions
in more depth with examples from actual conversations.
PRESUPPOSITIONS
The notion of presuppositions in language has been discussed by linguists since the 1950s.
Levinson (1983) noted that there is more literature on presupposition than almost any
other topic in pragmatics (p. 167). He also observed that there is an ordinary notion of
presupposition that describes any background assumption against which an action, theory,
expression or utterance makes sense or is rational (p. 168). Contrasted with the ordinary
notion of presupposition is the linguistic notion that is restricted to certain pragmatic
inferences or assumptions that seem at least to be built into linguistic expressions and
which can be isolated using certain linguistic tests (p. 168). The most common linguistic
test for logical presuppositions is the constancy under negation test, which states that the
presuppositions of a statement remain true whether the statement is true or false. Keenan
(1971) proposes that there is also a pragmatic presupposition which is that there is a clear
relation between the statement and its context. If a statements context is not clear to a
recipient, she or he may conclude that the speaker is being ironic, silly, or stupid. Examples and discussion of problematic did you questions involving logical and pragmatic
presuppositions follow.
Logical Presupposition
According to Levinson (1983), questions will generally assume the presuppositions of
their assertive counterparts (p. 184). Consider the did you question from Example 6.
(6)
[DP 4]
E:
=>
E:
C:
E:
Actually (0.2) I think he will, theres- (0.5) because Shawn (0.7) has been he
did the same thing, walked in, he said that was a- ((noise)) they didnt say anything to im.
(0.8)
When he went in this morning
Did you go in this morning?
(2.0)
U:h no, my back was hurtin too much
Cathy asks if Evan went in to work that morning. Her vocal emphasis indicated by a raised
tone on the word you indicates a shift of emphasis from Shawns going to work to Evans
going to work. Es answer to her question in the disperferred turn shape of a long pause and
the filler Uh indicates he has a problem with the question (Pomerantz, 1984). The assertive counterpart of Cs did you question is Evan did/did not go in to work this morning.
Cs did you question generates at least one possibly problematic presupposition: Evan
had work to go to this morning. According to the linguistic test, this statement remains
true whether or not he actually did go to work. If a recipient hears the presupposition in the
did you question as problematic, the recipients answer will probably reflect this, as in

example 6, by giving a justifying reason for not going to work that morning. The assumptions that people make about others actions may be seen in the logical presuppositions of
their did you questions. If the recipient hears the presupposition as problematic, she or
he may answer the question in a manner indicating a problem.
Pragmatic Presupposition
The knowledge that people in relationships share is an integral part of understanding
problems with the indexical aspect of the did you question. Pragmatic presuppositions,
according to Keenan (1971), require that the question be uttered in an understandable context. For recipients to understand a did you questions pragmatic presupposition, the
recipient must understand and recall the shared knowledge of the questions topic. If the
recipient does not recall the questions indexed shared knowledge, the recipients answer
may indicate problems.
Context may be clear in at least two ways and can be shown in these examples of nonproblematic did you questions. One, as seen in example 9, is that the did you question
refers to the current topic:
(9)
[DP 4]
C: Yeah but theyre so [(tacky)
E: [Did you tell them to take
their (0.8) sandwich and sh- stick it

C: No because I had a (0.8) I had two cards (0.4)
right?
C has no trouble understanding the context of the did you question because it does not
change the topic of conversation. She complains that the counter people at the sandwich
shop were unpleasant to her (theyre so (tacky)). Es did you question asks if she
decided to purchase a sandwich despite the unpleasantness (Did you tell them to take their
(0.8) sandwich and sh- stick it). C shows that she has no problem understanding the context of the did you question in her immediate answer and the continuation of her story.
A second way context is clear in did you question asking is by the separation of the
did you question from the previous topic with some kind of conversational boundary.
Example 3 shows a did you question during a preclosing in a mother-daughter telephone
call:
(3)
=>
[UTCL A35a.12]
KRS:
you just pick up (.) dad and Timmy n from work and come over.
MAB:
Oka:y.
KRS:
.hhh Okay well you have a good day, did you have a good time over at Joyces
last [night?
MAB:
[Yeah, we did, it
was real ni:ce?
(0.4)
KRS:
Well thats good to hear.

Before KRS asks her mother the did you question, she and MAB have begun to close
the telephone call:
MAB: Oka:y.
= KRS: .hhh Okay well you have a good
>
day,
Schegloff and Sacks (1984) described the closing of a telephone call as working in a
step wise fashion to allow the introduction of unmentioned mentionables (p. 80). With
the exchange of okays, KRS and MAB have aligned contributions toward closing the
encounter. A preclosing moves the partners to closing unless one of them thinks of something else to mention. In this instance, the preclosing separates the new topic introduced by
the did you question from the previous topic. The preclosing helps make it clear to the
recipient that the did you question is a new topic.
Pragmatic presupposition problems can occur in conversations when recipients do not
understand the reference of the did you question. Example 10 shows problems with the
pragmatic presupposition of a did you question. Two female friends are at the beginning
of a telephone call negotiating a first topic:
(10)
=>
[UTCL A24.5]
CAR:
My roommate is such a bitch
BET:
Why
CAR:
huh c(h)ause .hhh whatBET:
serious?=
CAR:
=No .hh- (0.3) whaa you doin
(0.4)
BET:
Nothin
CAR:
Oh. Did you find it
BET:
()
(0.4)
BET:
(Oh) did I find what
(0.5)
CAR:
The shorts
BET:
Huh?
CAR:
The shorts
(0.4)
BET :
. hhhh O: h no: .
CARs did you question (Did you find it) is problematic on two counts. First, it is an
abrupt change of topic. She does not indicate to her interlocutor in any way that she is
changing topics from what are you doing to finding it. CAR appears to be trying to find
any topic for them to talk about other than that her roommate is a bitch. When what are
you doing does not produce a topic, she shifts immediately to did you find it:
CAR:
=>
BET:
CAR:
=No .hh- (0.3) whaa you

doin
(0.4)
Nothin
Oh. did you find it
The second problematic aspect of CARs did you question is the unclearly indexed it
in the question. BET indicates this is her problem in the way she asks for clarification (did
I find what) (see Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). BET uses the word what to indicate
that it is where she is having problems understanding CARs did you question. Example 10 shows that did you questions can be problematic if the pragmatic presupposition
of context through topic shift and pronoun reference is not clear to the recipient.
ANSWERS TO DID YOU QUESTIONS
As mentioned in the introduction, did you questions are grammatically packaged to
elicit a yes or no answer. Yet, in a collection of did you questions, the majority are
answered with more than just yes or no. Some did you questions are answered with
expansions of the yes/no answer, whereas others are answered with accounts, that is,
reasons for having done or not having done the action the question concerns. Expansions
often look like the answer MAB gave KRS in Example 3:
KRS:
MAB:
did you have a good time over at Joyces last

night?
Yeah, we did, it was real ni:ce?
MAB answer with a Yeah and expands the answer with it was real ni:ce. Accounts
often look like the answer that E gave C in Example 6:
C: Did You go in this morning?
(2.0)
E: U:h no, my back was hurtin too much
E answers with no and an account, my back was hurtin too much. Very often, this
expansion or account addresses a problematic logical presupposition of the question, such
as the presupposition that Evan had work to go to that morning.
Not only can the did you question itself be problematic for interactants due to presuppositions, but also the pursuit of an expansion or account to the answer of a did you
question can be problematic for a recipient.
Pursuit of Expansion
In the next example, from a videotape of a couples dinnertime conversation, Tom asks
Abbie a did you question that she answers with a simple no. Tom asks for an expansion
of the no answer and is successful in getting an expansion. However, he also receives a
very marked response:

(11)
=>
=>
[DP2]
T:
A
T:
T
T:
A:
Have y- did ya do anything today fo:r (a) (0.6) finance class

(1.0)
For what?
For finance class did you get anything done
No
(0.3)
Nothing at all
(0.6)
Nada. (0.5) I havent done anything Ive been gone, since ten oclock this morning
Toms first did you question (first arrow) concerns whether Abbie has prepared anything for the finance quiz they plan to study for later in the evening (Have y-did ya do
anything today fo:r (a) (0.6) finance class). His interutterance 0.6-second pause and
very quiet utterance finish may be what leads Abbie to ask for clarification of his question
(For what?). He starts his repeat question (second arrow) with the non-understood section of his question (For finance class did you get anything done). There is no particular
intonation in this question to indicate that he was accusing her or doing more than asking
for information. Abbie shows none of the problematic features seen in other did you
question answers, such as a hesitation or uh filler. However, she answers without an
expansion (No). Tom asks for more than her negative answer by with his next comment
(Nothing at all). The raised inflection of the word all may indicate surprise that she has
not done anything. Although Abbie does not appear to find the original did you question
problematic, she does appear to have problems with the pursuit of an expansion of her
no answer. She pauses 0.6 seconds before she answers and then reinforces her negative
answer with two more negatives (Nada and I havent done anything) before she offers
an account for not having done anything (Ive been gone, since ten oclock this morning). Her emphasis on gone shows that it has been impossible for her to do anything for
finance today. This example demonstrates that if interactional problems do not occur with
the asking of the question itself, problems may occur if the asker pursues more than the
yes/no answer offered.
In the next example, the recipient of the did you question also answers the question
of her actions without an explanation of those actions. Grammatically, she has answered
the question. However, pragmatically, her recipient appears to expect more than her no
answer:
(12)
=>
[UTCL D9:3]
GOR: Did you: give Suzy the advice I suggested?
(1.2)
DEN: No
GOR: Are you going to?
(0.2)
DEN: No
GOR:
DEN:
(0.5)
I dont believe you
(6.0)
Youre irritable
Unlike Abbies response in the previous example, Denise appears to find the did you
question problematic as seen by her 1.2-second post-question pause (see Pomerantz, 1984).
When she does answer, she gives the least amount of information that answers the question
(No). The did you question asker can choose at this point to go on to something else, to
as Garfinkel (1967) noted let it pass, or to pursue an expansion to the did you question.
Gordon chooses to pursue more (Are you going to?), perhaps in search of an explanation to the logical presupposition that he believes Denise had an opportunity to pass on his
advice to Suzy. Denise pauses very slightly and tells him No again with no expansion. At
this point, Gordon expresses disbelief:
GOR:
I dont believe you

(6.0)
DEN:
Youre irritable
Denises utterance concerning Gordons irritability shifts the conversations topic from
Denises past actions to Gordons present actions and the explanation of her no answer
to the did you question is dropped. These examples show that a did you question can
be problematic for interactants when an asker wants an expansion or an account that is not
forthcoming. The pursuit of an expansion can be as problematic as the did you question
itself.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has shown that did you question can be problematic for interactants. Not all
did you questions are problematic, but enough are that they are recognized as being problematic by recipients and speakers (Tracy & Naughton, 1994). This chapter also shows that
there are three aspects of a did you question that can foster problems for recipients. The
first is that did you questions are rich in logical presuppositions and pragmatic presuppositions. A specific did you question may not be problematic, whereas the truth of the
underlying logical presupposition may be a problem. Given the presupposition richness,
did you question may not suffice to indicate understandable context, a violation of pragmatic presuppositions. The final problematic aspect of did you questions is the pursuit of
an expansion to the did you question and the problems this may cause the recipient.
Questioning the expected past actions of another would not, on the surface, appear to
be the source of a problematic interaction. However, closer inspection of actual did you
questions reveals aspects with problematic potential.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to extend a special thanks to Robert Hopper for reading innumerable
drafts of this chapter as both a second-year doctoral project and a comprehensive exam
question.
REFERENCES
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodolgy. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Keenan, E.L. (1971). Two kinds of presuppositions in natural language. In C. J.Fillmore and
D.T.Langendoen (Eds.), Studies in linguistic semantics (p. 4452). New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston.
Levinson, S.B. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J.M.Atkinson, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies
in conversation analysis (p. 57101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 50, 696735.
Schegloff, E.A., & Sacks, H. (1984). Opening up closings. In J.Baugh & J. Sherzer (Eds.), Language in use (p. 6999). New York: PrenticeHall.
Tracy, K., & Naughton, J. (1994). The identity work of questioning in intellectual discussion. Communication Monographs, 61, 281302.
10
Managing Optimism
Wayne A.Beach
San Diego State University
Examining how family members talk through a loved ones cancer on the telephone reveals,
as a central concern, the interactional construction of hopeful and optimistic responses
to uncertain and potentially despairing cancer circumstances. I refer to such recurring
moments as managing optimism1 in talk about cancer. This chapter focuses on an initial
collection of seven excerpts wherein optimism emerges as a resource for family members
as they update, assimilate, and commiserate about cancer diagnosis and treatment. These
materials are drawn from a set of 54 recorded and transcribed phone calls comprising the
first natural history of a family talking through cancer, from Moms initial diagnosis until
her death, some 13 months later.2 Only phone calls #1 (involving Dad and Son) and #2
(Dad, Son, and Mom) of the corpus are examined, interactions drawn from a collection of
more than 100 instances where speakers engage in optimistic collaborations.
1
It was Robert Hopper who coined the phrase managing optimism to depict a wide range of
moments for dealing with bad and uncertain news by remaining hopeful about his health condition. This description first emerged within weeks following a diagnosis of colon cancer, during one
of a series of phone calls with me wherein his illness trajectory routinely (though not exclusively)
became an explicit topic for discussion. Following his summary of what doctors had told him about
ongoing test results, attention was given to the inherent (and often frustrating) uncertainties of
medical knowledge, including doctors being unwilling and apparently unable to lay out, in specific
terms, just what his prognosis for overcoming cancers debilitating effects might be. In the face
of more basic yet unanswered questionsHow long do I have to live? What probability for healing exists? What impacts will further treatments have?our talking about cancer diagnoses and
impacts routinely shifted to being optimistic, reassuring, at times even upbeat about the ambiguities such bad news entails. And it was in response to our being hopeful together that Robert stated
something like Managing optimism. Thats what Im calling what were doing, as a practical
achievement.
2
Family members include the Son, Father, Mother, Daughter, Aunt, and Grandmother. The corpus
also includes an assortment of other conversations between the Son and his ex-wife, the ex-wifes
brother, representatives from various airlines (when seeking flight information and reservations), an
academic counseling office receptionist, a receptionist at an animal boarding kennel (when making
and canceling reservations for his dog during his travel), a woman the Son had begun dating, an old
friend from St. Louis, a graduate student who covered the Sons classes during travel, and a variety
of other calls involving routine daily occurrences (e.g., the payment of bills, leaving messages on
phone answering machines).
Managing optimism 149

Unique opportunities are provided when health-related family conversations are closely
inspected over an extended period of time.3 As Kubler-Ross (1969) observed years ago in
reference to different stages that people go through when they are faced with tragic news
defense mechanisms in psychiatric terms, coping mechanisms to deal with extremely difficult situations The one thing that usually persists through all these stages is hope (p.
138). In the data that follows, preliminary insights into such phenomena such as defense/
coping mechanisms and stages can be tied to specific social actions. More recently, in
his ethnographic study focusing on the social meanings of death in three hospital wards
dealing with seriously ill patients, Perkyl (1991) referred to hope work as a predominant set of practices whereby patients are getting and feeling better (curative and palliative care) or past recovery (where hope per se is dismantled). In contrast, focus here rests
not with medical staff working with their patients in institutional settings, nor attempts to
legitimate medicine by professionals, but with laypersons speaking together on the telephone within their home environments (though, as in call #2, Mom is in the hospital when
Son phones from his home).
As with Perkyl, (1991) findings, it is not necessary for hope to be explicitly named.
At times hope is invoked in situated and thus revealing ways in the data examined herein.
And though not a single instance of the word optimism has yet been identified, speakers actions are shown to display a sense of expectancy, even assurance, about a hopeful
future.
As a preview of more complete data to follow, consider the following seven excerpts:
1.
SDCL: MALIGNANCY #1:67

Dad: So .hhh n:o:: I would hope by Monday or Tu:esday
2.
3.

Dad:
.hhh But (0.2) she did have two nice things ha:ppen today.
Mom:
No theres nothin to say. >You just-< .hh Ill- Ill wait to talk to Dr.
Leedon today.=Hes the cancer man, and =
Mom:
My only hope- I mean- (.) my only choice.
Son:
Well wheres our magic wand Mom.
Mom:
.hh Is find a reason to keep fighting and (.) to keep being hopeful.
Son:
See, [there] theres a small battle=
4.
5.
6.
7.
Only alluded to in this chapter, research focusing on longstanding concerns with social aspects of
death and dying (e.g., see Sudnow, 1967; Kubler-Ross, 1969, 1974; Perkyl, 1991, 1993, 1995;
Holt, 1993), troubles-telling sequences (e.g., see Jefferson, 1980, 1984a,b, 1988, and chapter 13 in
this volume; see also Sacks, 1992), and interrelationships between the delivery and receipt of good
and bad news (e.g., see Maynard, 1996, 1997, in press) are more fully addressed in related and
ongoing papers (e.g., see Beach, in press b; Beach, 2000 a,b).
Mom:
Son:
[( )]
=That weve won.=
Only Excerpts 1, 4, and 6 reveal hope/hopeful as being invoked, and then in similar yet
contrasting ways: in Dads reference to medical procedures (1), a personal reflection on
Moms ill-fated circumstance (4), and her display of perseverance and tenacity (6). Yet the
other instances are also somehow related to hopeful and optimistic orientations: As Dad
lightens prior and serious discussion (2), Mom waits and relies on news from the cancer
doctor (3), Son invokes and Mom responds seriously to magic, and Sons later attempts
to edify and simply cheer Mom up (7) in response to a story she initiates.
As a whole these moments reveal managing optimism to be a practical matter for
family members, talk that is shown to be designed in alternative (at times even humorous) ways while working through troubling illness circumstances. Analysis proceeds by
giving attention to the interactionally achieved and contingent features of each successive
moment, in its natural and emergent order, to discover what might be learned about how
speakers manage various optimistic concerns.4
INTERACTIONAL FEATURES OF MANAGING OPTIMISM
Hope and Uncertainty Regarding Medical Diagnosis and Procedures
We begin with the initial instance, where hope is explicitly mentioned in the midst of
talking through a family members cancer. In Excerpt 8 as follows, Dad continues by
reporting to Son a doctors description of procedures for treating Moms cancer. In Line
3, these procedures include contacting a cancer specialist and conducting this bo:ne scan
thing tomorrow.:
8)
1
2
3
4
5
6

Dad:
.hhh He said he would have somebody else look in on
her:.=He also co:ntacted this cancer specialist so
he will be in Monday. (.) .hhh And they will do this
borne scan thing tomorrow. So .hhh n:o: : I would

hope
by Monday or Tu:esday (0.7) pt they have <pin:ned

do::wn>(0.7) the particulars of what theyre after.
This analytic exercise is part of a more encompassing project, designed to capture not just patterns
of interactional conduct co-enacted by family members facing cancer but also three interrelated
sets of activities: a time-line sense of chronology for family members undergoing cancers development; a grounded understanding of how conversations get progressively constructed from prior
interactions, as resources forming the basis for organizing here-and-now problems and their solutions (see Beach, in press b); and (as noted) an extension and elaboration of the observed tendency
for good topics to arise out of otherwise bad and troubling matters (see, e.g., Jefferson, 1984a,
Perkyl, 1991, Sacks, 1992, Maynard, 1997).

7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Son:
Dad:
>Now they may not have< the course of action all

figured out, but [ .hhhh]
[Umhm] =
= Theyll at least kno:w. (.) .hh And maybe this
is just simplistically in my mind >but theyll
know< .hhh what ki:nd? theyre dealing with.
That way they should know .hhh how quickly does
it spread (.) what is- (0.7) what can be done to:
to stop it >you know< .hh radiation [or chemotherapy
or
Following I would hope in Line 4, Dad makes reference to two basic features of cancer
treatment: when something might be known and what theyre after. Immediately next,
however, he disclaims by stating >Now they may not have< the course of action all figured out, which is quietly and briefly acknowledged by Son. Dad then proceeds by elaborating his lay understandings of what he was hopeful about, namely, bottom-line concerns
with identifying the cancer and attempting to stop it with radiation or chemotherapy.
Several features of Excerpt 8 are interesting but not unusual throughout the Malignancy phone calls. First, this excerpt represents the initial display of hopeful conduct-ininteraction. These actions follow Dads initial and extended delivery, and Sons receipt and
assimilation, of bad news regarding Moms cancer (see Beach, in press; 2000c; Maynard,
1996; 1997; in press). Second, a delicate and countervailing balance exists between hope
and uncertainty. Notice again that Dads expression of hope (Line 4) is mitigated with a
next-positioned caveat: a course of action (Line 7) replete with incomplete knowledge.
Third, Dad must inevitably rely on, and report about, what doctors have told him about their
specialized knowledge. It is clear that Dads source of hope is anchored in the involvement
of assumedly competent medical providers, professionals who are expected to do everything possible while devising a plan for halting the insidious progress of Moms cancer.
However, his attempts to describe doctors suggested treatment options to Son (e.g., this
bo:ne scan thing in Line 4, and later to simplistically in my mind in Line 11), reveal
Dads lay attempts to understand complex medical procedures and the technical expertise
comprising bone scan procedures. Qualified and simplified moments such as these, involving lay constructions of medical knowledge and procedures, are given considerable attention by family members throughout the course of Moms cancer. Inevitably, each identified
moment reveals some problems in offering medical descriptions, but also optimism about
ongoing treatment and diagnosis.
Shifting from Bad to Good News
For approximately 1 minute following Excerpt 8, Dad continues by describing to Son how
Moms original neck problem, some 35 years ago at 25 years of age, was a slow growing
lymphatic cancer. He then raises the possibility that Moms current cancer may also be
slow growing, which bone scan results will aid in determining. In Excerpt 9 which follows,
Dad summarizes what is essentially a bad news description of how Mom was doing. His

portrayal escalates in its telling, from Moms co:nf irmation and resignation I just
hurt too b:ad to be anything else something drastic.:
9)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

Dad:
A:: yeah .hhh (.) But she seemed to be doing (.) >as I
said< pt .hh at this point it was mostly (0.5)
co:nfirmation and resignation.

Son:
[Mmhmm: .]
Dad:
[Cause she] said, .hhh I just hurt too b:ad to be
anything else (0.2) >ya know.< It ha: :d to be
som- (0.7) something drastic.

Son:
Mmhm.
Dad:
And she was really having some problems with pa:in
today. She had .hh one and a half (0.2) >percodans<
in her and it wasnt hardly slowin it down.
Son:Mmm wow.
Dad:.hhh But (0.2) she did have two nice things

ha:ppen
today. She was on her way do:wn and .hhh and was
kinda, depressed or concer:ned I guess with having
>to go down< for these needle biopsies and Will?
showed up.
In Line 12, following Dads progressively distressing update, Sons Mmm wow. displays a shift from acknowledging Dads description-in-progress (i.e., with Mmhmmm:
and Mmhm) to quietly assessing it as troubling news. This response is treated by Dad
as Sons unwillingness to comment further, and not inviting Dads further elucidation of
Moms painful condition. Immediately following Sons Mmm wow., Dad initiates
transition to a new but related topic with his pre-announcement But (0.2) she did have
two nice things ha: ppen today. As an upshot of Sons closure implicative action, this
conversation restart (see Jefferson, 1984b, p. 193; see also Jefferson, 1996; Sacks, 1992)
reveals how Dads insertion of good news is on-topic, yet designed by him to ease the
burden of previously articulated grievous circumstances about which enough had been said
(at least for now).
Notice also that Dads kinda, depressed or concer:ned (Line 15) was inserted following his pre-announcement, yet before announcing the good news that Will? showed up.
Here, as with how Dad and Son collaborate on reporting bad news as a prelude to announcing good news, the close proximity of Moms reported mood, immediately prior to an old
friend showing up for a visit, reveal how everyday life is comprised of tightly interwoven
relationships among bad and good circumstances. It also illustrates how the valence of
social occasions are subject to change and alteration, literally on the cusp of interactional
time (see Maynard, 1997; in press).
The shift from bad to good news evident in Excerpt 9 is also similar to Holts (1993)
findings involving death announcements by tellers, particularly to recipients not especially
close to the deceased. In each of the 10 instances she examined, the tendency to treat the

death of an intimate or acquaintance as bad news nevertheless eventuated in movement to
a bright side sequence revealing some positive stance toward the news (e.g., deceased
persons: worked until the time of death, died peacefully and in so doing solved problems
associated with prolonged illnesses and caregiving tasks, or had the opportunity to say
goodbye to people providing for a funeral that is less dismal). Holt observed that there
seems to be a strong link between bright side sequences and topic termination (p. 208),
not uncommonly termination of a phone call. In Excerpt 9, two exceptions can be noted.
First, Dad transitions not just to a closely related topic, but to a decidedly positive orientation to updating news. His actions reveal how the shift from bad to good news is as an
apparent resource for facilitating closure to a discussion that Son initially, and next Dad,
treated as a delicate matter. Second, in Excerpt 9 not only is good news about friends
unexpected visits elaborated, but the phone call continues for more than 15 minutes. This is
not surprising, however, because this is the first phone call between Dad and Son regarding
Moms malignant diagnosis. Perhaps even more important, however, is that a loved ones
cancer is consequential for family members. Recipients not close to the deceased neednt
be directly concerned about primary family troubles (Beach, in press). Family members
routinely (often closely) monitor the course and progression of a loved ones illness, experience anxiety regarding the future, and grieve together for the possible or probable loss of
a family member with whom extensive history is shared.
DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN HOPE AND CHOICE
In two contrasting yet related interactional environments, Dad and Son have been shown
to collaborate in managing optimism regarding Moms cancer: In Excerpt 8, hope was
explicitly named and commented on by Dad; in Excerpt 9, talk about good news emerged
out of prior bad news descriptions. In both instances, Dad was reporting on prior incidents
involving medical staff and procedures, the latter focusing on how Mom was doing including problems with pain medication. These two instances were drawn from the first phone
call.
A more extended instance appears in the following Excerpt, but in this case during the
second phone call, the very next day, between Son and Mom. A revealing glimpse of Moms
construction of her own cancer dilemma is evident in three ways: as she relies on medical
procedures and providers as sources of information and thus attributed (but not named)
hope, as hope gets mentioned but quickly corrected by her in favor of choice regarding
radiation and chemotherapy, and as keep fighting gives rise to being hopeful:
10)
((Mom has just informed Son that her cancer has been diagnosed as a very fast growing adenoma type-an update from call #1, where Dad was not aware of the general cancer classification, nor whether Moms cancer was slow or fast growing. Mom has just reported that since
very few people respond well to treatment, and those who do live five years or less, Its real
bad.))
1
Mom:
And uh: >I dont know what else to tell you.<
2
(1.0)

3
Mom:
((coughs))
Son:
.hh hhh Yeah. (0.2) um- ((coughs)). Yeah, I
dont know what to say either.
Mom:
No theres nothin to say. >You just-< .hh Ill
Ill wait to talk to Dr. Leedon today.= Hes the
cancer man, and =
Son:
= Um hmm.
10 Mom:
See what he has to say, and (0.4) just keep goin
11
forward. I mean I might be real lucky in five
12
years. It might just be six months.
13
(0.4)
14 Son:
Yeah.
15 Mom:
Who knows.
16 Son:
Phew: : .
17 Mom:
Yeah.
18 Son:
.hh hhh (0.4) Whadda you do: with this kind of
19
thing. I mean- (.)
20 Mom:
>Radiation chemotherapy.<
21
(1.2)
22 Son:
Oh bo:y.
23 Mom:
Yeah.
24
(0.5)
25 Mom:
My only hope- I mean- (.) my only choice.
26 Son:
Yeah.
27 Mom:
Its either that or just lay here and itll kill me.
28
(1.0)
29 Mom:
And thats not the human condition.
30 Son:
No. (1.0) I guess [not.]
31 Mom:
[No.] (.) So thats all I can
32
tell you.
It appears, at least initially, that Mom and Son collaborate in exiting from the topic of cancer. Both speakers utter I don t know (see Beach & Metzger, 1997), first in Line 1 as
Mom claims she has nothing further to tell, and next in Lines 4 and 5 as Son affirms that, as
recipient, he does not know what to say. In this sense there is indeed nowhere else to go
(Jefferson, 1984b, p. 191), and Lines 15 bring closure to further talk about the seriousness
of Moms prognosis.
Yet Lines 15 also demonstrate a transition to talking with her cancer doctor,
which Mom initiates in Line 6. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that the

insufficient knowledge they claim, and display an inability and/or unwillingness to talk further about, is tied only to Moms prior diagnosis (most notably the anguish Moms immediately prior news makes available) and not her ongoing treatment. Three features of particular
relevance to managing optimism emerge in Lines 632.
First, Moms No theres nothin to say. is one form of an extreme case formulation
(see Pomerantz, 1986), employed here to emphasize her position and to terminate her diagnostic update for Sons hearing. Next, notice that Moms I 11- Ill wait to talk to Dr.
Leedon today. = He s the cancer man, (Lines 78) implicates her having cancer without explicitly stating it. This is but one instance representing a larger collection where the
word cancer is noticeably absent and, at times, apparently and actively avoided. In this
moment, where Mom clearly has been diagnosed with cancer but fails to directly state it,
she is nevertheless left with the task of formulating herself as a sick person. One practice
for doing so, which Mom employs here, is to make reference to a provider-patient relationship in which she is involved. Thus, the professional expertise of cancer man, provides
one solution to directly stating I have cancer. And by stating See what he has to say,
(Line 10), Mom situates herself as recipient for obtaining any new information the doctor
might impart. Only the doctor has the expertise to announce any new, potentially good,
and more or less definitive news regarding her acute medical condition. A central feature
of just keep goin forward. (Lines 1011), therefore, involves waiting for the doctor and
whatever news he might disclose. As updates about Moms terminal illness evolve, this is
but one instance of how faith in your doctor is grounded in moments where waiting is
explicitly stated, whereas the possibility of hopeful news is only implied.
Of course, there is no guarantee that any update of her condition will amount to whatever good news might imply. This is revealed straightforwardly through Moms selfrepaired I mean I might be real lucky in five years. It might just be six months. (Lines
910). When 5 years is considered fortuitous, just what might constitute good news is an
altogether relative notion here. (As noted previously, Moms death occurred 13 months
following diagnosis.) Clearly, in Lines 1417, uncertainties surrounding such an illness
trajectory make it problematic for Son and Mom to do more than assimilate the quandary
they are caught up within.5
Second, in response to Sons query in Lines 1819, whadda you do: with this kind of
thing. I mean-, Mom immediately and quickly replies >Radiation chemotherapy. <. By
forwarding medical procedures as forms of treatment regimen, Mom also avoids addressing what Son may very well have been pursuing: more personal issues involving her coping (e.g., fears, anxieties, anger) with what appears to be a terminal diagnosis. Whether
Son was in fact soliciting and thus inviting Mom to talk further about her feelings remains
unclear. What is apparent is that by responding in this manner, Mom is managing optimism through steadfast reliance on medical protocol that, for now, is put forth as critical
to j ust keep goin forward. (Lines 1011).
Third, it is her resoluteness that Sons delayed and assimilating Oh bo:y. response
seems to address (Lines 21 & 22), which Mom next affirms en route to an explicit yet
Work in progress (Beach 2000) is focusing on a collection of similar moments where few words
are enough in the course of assimilating bad news (e.g., Jesus, Oh boy, Oh wow, Phew, Yuck).

fleeing reference to hope: My only hope-I mean(.) my only choice. This is a curious self-repair, where hope and choice are at once treated by Mom as interwoven
yet distinct, an explanation for which might be gleaned from prior discussion: In light of
her 5-year prognosis as a best case scenario for life expectancy, any hope emerging from
radiation and chemotherapy is restrictive; such treatment options offer little certitude nor
assurance of healing her cancer. Thus, in this utterance, hope and the optimism it may
engender appears to give way to my only choice., which is itself clearly restrictive and
further legitimizes her decision making (see Pomerantz, 1986). It is not really a preference
but an ill-fated necessity that Mom is orienting to. Addressed in no uncertain terms in Lines
25 and 27, Mom displays an essential unwillingness to be passive while allowing the cancer to kill me., which Son aligns with here (Line 26) and following Moms elaborated
And thats not the human condition. (Lines 29 & 30). Further, it is by reference to basic
human instincts for survival that Mom expresses her willingness to be treated through
radiation and chemotherapy.
In the final utterance of Excerpt 10, Moms So thats all I can tell you. (Lines 3132)
repeats tell you from Line 1, where Mom stated >I dont know what else to tell you
.<. By so doing she exhibits her departure from this portion of an extended storytelling,
which her cancer experiences entitle her to reveal (see Sacks 1984, 1992).6 One consequence is that, through word repeat, her story ending is punctuated in a manner not providing further access to Son who, as story recipient, does not further pursue what his Whadda
you do: with this kind of thing. I mean-, (Lines 1819) may have been designed to address
(e.g., Moms personal feelings). Nor can he address the scenic particulars constructed in
Excerpt 10 by himself, as it is clearly Moms story to tell.
Invoking and Responding to Magic
What Son does do, however, is proceed with his own story, informing Mom that he is
aware of how the medication she is on can make her depressed. Mom then informs him that
her diagnosis is very serious because the cancer has metastasized. (These data are not
included here; 31 Lines were deleted between Excerpts 10 and 11, which follows). Next,
Son takes the initiative to shift orientation to cancer problems by invoking magic:
11)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Son: Well wheres our magic wand mom.
Mom: $It- he$ (.) Beats the hell out of me.
(1.2)
Mom: I guess the o:nly thing: (.) I: can do: is (.)
after Im done ree:ling from this.

Son:
Mmhm.
Mom: .hh Is find a reason to keep fighting and (.) to keep being
Schegloff s (1999) analysis of word repeats at turn endings reveal a similar resource: Tellers display their entitlement to initiate closure to stories only they are capable of narrating.

8
10
11
12
13
14
15
Son:
Mom:
Son:
Mom:
Son:
hopeful. (0.5) You know that- thats about all you 9

can do. >Thats all a person can do.<
How can you do: that. (0.2) Thats [gotta]=
[We::ll]
=be tough. >I mean-< I dont mean to sa:y that
sounding like a
Here comes your Papa: : .
A:hhh.
In Line 1 Son achieves two key actions. First, through our he assumes ownership of
Moms illness predicament by making them out to be problems that can be faced together
(see Beach, 1996). This is but one relational and commiserative display of being with
(see Beach, in press-b; Goffman, 1963, 1971; Mandelbaum, 1987) that was obvious yet
implicit in prior discussion. Next, magic wand offers more than wishful thinking. It also
injects a sense of humor and brightness into a serious health scenario, one that is literally
no laughing matter, and (based on prior actions) apparently a set of dire circumstances
preventing Mom from being capable of uplifting herself.
In responding with $it- he$ (.) Beats the hell out of me. (Line 2), Mom in turn
accomplishes two key actions. First, her initial attempt at laughter ($), though quickly
aborted, nevertheless treats Son as having made an effort to invite such laughter through
his magical refraining of such critical topics. Curiously and next, however, Mom acts as
recipient of her own telling situation by producing a despairing and recognizably serious response (Jefferson, 1984a, p. 346). By so doing Mom again appears unable and/or
unwilling to take the trouble lightly and thus act in a troubles-resistant fashion (Jefferson,
1984b, 1988). Rather, and understandably so, she is totally engrossed in (and ensnared by)
her diagnostic dilemma.
But there is more here, a poetic and delicate preoccupation evident in her unwitting
and quietly tailored Beats the hell out of me. (see Beach, 1993, 1996; Hopper, 1992;
Jefferson, 1996; Sacks, 1992; see also chap. 13, this volume).7 Beginning with how the
word Beats adds valence and thus pragmatic force to Moms description, it stands in
marked contrast to how magic wands are typically employed (i.e., through a simple waving, which is sufficient to achieve magical consequences). And in unison with Beats
as a lexical choice reflecting the kind of force required to drive cancer out of her body,
so does her extended utterance precisely characterize an unintentional sensitivity to the
very troubles at hand: If a magic wand could heal an illness approaching hopelessness,
it would literally exorcise a dark and foreboding force from hell that stifles rather than
improves living.
The phrase Beats the hell out of me. may be added to the collection of idiomatic expressions as Drew & Holt (1988, 1998) have analyzed them (e.g., its gone tuh pot, down the
tubes), in that it is an utterance occurring in a sequential environment clearly involving complainable matters (i.e., a serious cancer diagnosis). However, this interactional moment is unique in
this sense: While Drew & Holt (1988) have shown that such complainable matters are routinely
directed to others treatments of them, here Moms utterance is not treating her Son as the source of
the trouble but the illness she is enduring and its varied consequences.

Following his humorous attempt to uplift Moms condition, Son next withholds further commentary to her tepid response (Line 3). But the despair evident in her reply is
only momentary (see also discussion of Excerpt 12 in the next section). As revealed in
Moms next I guess the o:nly thing: (.) I: can do: is (Line 4), she continues by specifying that there are uncertain and limited options for coping with cancer. This utterance is
consequential in three key ways.
First, it prefaces her insertion after I m done ree:ling from this., a bewildering formulation referencing her here-and-now reaction to a malignant diagnosis (what Dad had
earlier and apparently portrayed as co:nf irmation and resignation. in Excerpt, Line 3).
Second, it also sets up Moms .hh Is find a reason to keep fighting and (.) to keep being
hopeful. (Lines 78). Framed as an ongoing and practical matter, Mom sketches out a
procedure for living with and through her cancer that exemplifies basic survival instincts
underlying the human condition (see Excerpt 10, Line 29, earlier). As she constructs it,
remaining hopeful requires motivated fighting, two interwoven yet distinct actions that
facilitate the search for reasons to live.
Third, it is interesting that a key portion of Moms I guess the o: nly thing: (.) I: can do:
is (Line 4) is repeated two more times in Lines 89: You know that- thats about all you
can do. >Thats all a person can do.<. Notice that whereas can do gets repeated, Moms
attempt to inform her Son evidences a movement from I you person. In unison
with her use of meIIm in Lines 25, Moms description becomes progressively
less my-world centered as she endeavors to manage optimism in the face of bad diagnostic
news. This stepwise shift, beginning with a revelation of her experiences yet ending with a
generic person, accomplishes three critical and interrelated actions:
1. While falling short of magic, Mom reveals herself as doing all she can within her
unique circumstances. She first discloses then normalizes her lived reality as an ordinary
feature of illness management, an orientation common for others dealing with cancer predicaments (with whom she is now indirectly yet directly associated) as well.
2. By invoking third-person characterizations, Mom distances herself by utilizing you
and person as devices for coping with the apparent inevitability of death. Through thirdperson references, her illness problems become less intimate and thus more easily managed
at a time when, clearly, coming to grips with dying is inherently problematic.
3. Mom is also designing her talk in consideration of Sons hearing, and even protection,
from having to directly confront a hopeless terminal illness. She is not disattending his
prior and attempted uplifting of the dire situation, but (as best as possible) being responsive
to it. Though her current disposition can be explained as reeling, it is only temporary:
Her confusion will give way to a more determined and hopeful condition, a fighting
perseverance that Son can himself be hopeful about.
Excerpt 11 draws to a close as Son continues by further pursuing just how Mom can
remain hopeful (Lines 10 & 12), a solicitation that is preempted with Moms announcement that Papa has just entered the room.

A Story and its Consequences: Fighting the Battle Together
As Mom exits from talking (not shown in Excerpt 11), Papa and Son continue talking for
nearly 5 minutes about fixing cars together8 and an upcoming chili dinner Son has prepared
for when Mom returns home from the hospital. Son then requests to speak with Mom once
again and announces his dinner plans to her. It is at this juncture that Mom initiates the
following story about a sign the Son had placed in her hospital room:
12)
1
2
3

M:
>By the way< your sign Do not take me really worked.
S:
$Did it?$
M:
Totally confu:sed one girl. She looked, and she looked,
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20.
21
22
23
24
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
M:
S:
and she looked. Now this is a little oriental gal. =

= Mm hm.
(0.4)
<And ah> (1.0) [she went out]
[Do not] ah (.) take oh ( .) me
(.) [ha]
[She] went out and she brought in >ya
know< those things have liners?
Mmm hm.
She brought a li:ner of like a- of clear water in to
set it there.
Mm hm mm hm [hm]
[She] didnt- she couldnt quite figure
that whoile thing out. >But she wasnt gonna touch it. <
Mmm. (.) Good.
So that was kinda funny.
See, [there] theres a small battle=
[()]
=That weve won. =
$Right, [right,] right$
[$hhh.$]
While it may appear that fixing cars together is of little relevance to understanding the interactional management of cancer predicaments, quite the contrary is the case. It is revealing to examine
just what everyday topics find their way into the midst of cancer topics, how and when they
appear and are terminated, that are seemingly not about cancer per se. For example, in this instance
of fixing cars together, is it coincidental that Dad and Son move together to talk about 1) something they are both knowledgeable about, that 2) they can thus (with some confidence) diagnose
togetherin stark contrast to technical matters of cancer diagnosis and treatment? Analysis of a
larger collection of of topic organization suggests otherwise.

25
26
27
28
29
M:
S:
An(d) thats all ya can do is jus- just

[rack up the] sma:ll battles.
[Rirght ri:ght uh mm]
Well .hhh Well okay. Im gonna let you go:.
O[kay.]
((Mom & Son move to phone closing.))
That Mom even initiated such a humorous story displays her attempt to lighten what had
become, prior to Son and Dads conversation, a very serious discussion of both her diagnostic condition and orientation to coping. Further, she also acknowledges Sons thoughtful effort to meet her needs, by his placement of a Do not take me sign, which stands
in contrast to her prior tepid and momentarily despairing response to his well where s our
magic wand mom. (Excerpt 11, Lines 12).
Taken together, the actions built into this shift in topic mark a contrast in Moms
demeanor: They are remedial in just the ways Moms initiation of this particular story
appears designed to invigorate her earlier and displayed unwillingness and/or inability to
take her troubles lightly, and to display appreciation for Sons ongoing concerns with her
illness predicament.
This marked shift in Moms disposition does not go unnoticed by Son. In response to
her reference to little oriental gal. (Line 4), Son collaborates by personifying the girls
scenic reaction with a stereotypic [Do not] ah (.) take oh (.) me (.) [ha] , a voiced switch
in identity (see Beach, 2000a) he treats as humorous with his final [ha]. Next, it is of particular interest that when Mom brings the story to a close (Line 19), Son relies on Moms
initiated story to revisit yet extend their earlier discussion (Excerpt 11): He retopicalizes
and reframes Moms immediately delivered story (i.e., fighting battle, our magic wand
weve won). In these ways, Son shows sensitivity to Moms keep fighting and (.) to
keep being hopeful., while simultaneously treating this as a moment for reemphasizing
that they are indeed facing the problems together.
Following Moms aligned recognition and their shared laughter (Lines 2324), Sons
An (d) thats all ya can do is jus- just [rack up the] sma:ll battles. (Lines 2526) offers
a prototypical summary that reinvokes all ya can do. Apparently, this utterance overextends an otherwise well-taken point, however, as Mom interjectively moves to close down
Sons contribution (Line 27) and end the phone conversation together (Lines 2829).
CONCLUSION
Faced with a serious and uncertain cancer diagnosis, and thus in the very midst of emergent
troubles and possible despair, family members rely on hope and optimism as resources for
dealing with and attempting to ease burdens arising from the often harsh and restrictive
impositions of such illness circumstances. Just as it has been observed that research on
the connections between hope and social psychological functioning is minimal in cancer
research, and that maintaining] a sense of control is an essential determinant of how
cancer patients cope with their illness hopefully (Bunston, Mings, Mackie, & Jones, 1995,
p. 79), so can it be noted that perhaps even less is known about what comprises hope and
control as interactionally organized moments of practical action.

Although only calls #1 and #2 of the larger corpus were examined, managing optimism was nevertheless evident across an assortment of social actions:
Acknowledging the importance of medical personnel by steadfastly relying on medical
protocol and treatment procedures.
Lightening the discussion by shifting from bad to good topics.
Revealing how personal coping with cancer involves an inseparable relationship
between hope and restricted choices.
Offering collaboration in facing Moms illness together.
Humorously going even beyond hope by invoking magic when Mom understandably
displays an inability and deep preoccupation with not taking her troubles lightly.
Proposing fighting and being hopeful as basic survival instincts even when resistance to troubles is diminishing.
Doing all you can do to remain capable of hoping that healing might occur.
Clearly, then, such delicate instances are comprised of fine-grained subtleties through
which the process of managing optimism is being achieved. Ongoing analysis of the
larger collection of such moments (calls #3#54) will provide a useful and longitudinal
perspective for framing how the interactional activities examined herein are themselves
tied to, in fact constitutive of, key moments as Moms cancer progressed and was treated
until her death. Though yet further and critical implications require discussion, only four
can be briefly articulated here.
First, working to be hopeful together can also produce its own interactional dilemmas
in the midst of talking about other dreaded issues Perkyl, 1995). Further investigation
is needed into how the management of family relationships is itself an ongoing and often
problematic achievement, particularly when: a) doing the work of moving out of troubling
topics (e.g., Dads shift to good from bad news precipitated by Sons display that enough
had been said); b) moving talk forward even though family members express that they
do not know what to say (e.g., Mom and Son rely on few words when assimilating the
news together); c) initiating, pursuing, and responding to intimate and personal topics
(e.g., Son twice querying Mom about how she copes with her condition); d) uplifting and
compensating for responses to such edification efforts (e.g., Sons invoking magic and
Moms delayed telling of a funny story to counter her prior tepid response to his displayed
concerns); and e) in responding to Moms story Son further attempts to make the point that
small battles can be won together, which Mom interjectively initiates closure on by moving
to end the call.
Second, even a cursory inspection of these materials reveals that the query What makes
a family, a family? (e.g., see Gubrium & Holstein, 1990) is deserving of substantive,
interactionally grounded answers. Such matters as how supporting and commiserating get
interactionally managed, for example, are available to the extent they are anchored in family members practices for working as a team: when taking turns at being hopeful, injecting
humorous concerns into troubling circumstances, and working to protect one another from
fears and anxieties so often associated with death and dying. In these ways, useful contrasts might also be made with interactions among acquaintances. This chapter has shown
that bright side sequences are only one type of response available for family members

dealing with cancer (see Holt, 1993), that the proximity and interwoven nature of good and
bad news is omnipresent, and that family members may display doing being a family by
making anothers problems their own in and through the ways they assimilate the news and
grieve together (see Beach, 1996, in press).
Third, regarding talk about troubles (see Jefferson 1980, 1984a, 1984b, 1988; see chap.
13, this volume), these family members appear remarkably sensitive to limitations on
serious topics, yet at times proceed to enact topic shifts without necessarily terminating
talking about cancer per se. How this ongoing work gets done also merits ongoing examination. Similarly, environments need to be more fully inspected when, following moments
where Moms ability to resist troubles essentially fails, she nevertheless rebounds, that
is, attempts to muster the energy required to rally her appreciation for Sons concerns and
to remain hopeful and optimistic. Further, if and when such issues as coping or defense
mechanisms are to be understood as interactionally generated and managed, as well as
stages of grieving (i.e., denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance; Kubler-Ross,
1969, 1974), they must be shown to be more than psychological states wherein individuals
experiences are ultimately the units of analysis. By inspecting how family members mutually coordinate their orientations to illness predicaments and various health concerns over
time, it may become possible to describe and substantiate temporal shifts interactionally,
that is, by elucidating the social actions comprising developmental aspects of coming to
grips not just with death and dying but, even more broadly, all aspects of illness progression. A key feature of these discoveries will likely involve understanding how prior discussions, such as what the doctors told them, are employed to constantly shape and update
understandings about Moms condition (see Beach, 2001, in press). Little has been said in
this chapter about such carry over recurrences, even though the data make available such
possibilities for analysis, albeit in limited fashion (e.g., as with Dad and Moms references
to medical staff).
Finally, as described earlier (see Footnote 1), I did not invent managing optimism
as a technical term for labeling social actions of the kind examined here. But it seems an
apt description. Having been diagnosed with cancer, and just beginning to realize social
aspects of talking with others about his diagnosis and treatment, it was Robert Hopper who
observed the tendency to remain hopeful as uncertain and even bad news emerged. Given
marked contrasts between self-reporting about versus enacting social actions collaboratively in real time, it is interesting (yet perhaps not surprising) to note that the kinds of
interactional contingencies examined in this chapter extend considerably beyond those he
identified in more general terms. Similarly, the experiences and interactional involvements
of a cancer patient (with medical staff, family members, friends, and colleagues alike) are
much broader than what any single phone corpus might capture. And so it should also not
be unexpected that Robert cited other kinds of encounters central to managing optimism,
only three of which I mention here, activities involving both those undergoing cancer and
others talking with them about it: a) acting as though everything is all right when it
obviously is not, b) literally calibrating and coordinating just what and how something
might be said, if anything, yet without appearing morbid about the illness, and c) when
talk about the same cancer arises, but within different relationships comprised of varying
degrees of background and intimacy, what problems (if any) emerge as attempts to discuss

and describe the illness and its prognosis are modified (e.g., when disclosure is solicited
and/or voluntary, withheld and/or pursued)?
Living with and through cancer, and an array of other chronic and lifethreatening illness
(e.g., see Packo, 1991), occasions diverse circumstances where managing optimism is
interactionally achieved. Only selected and comparably few instances have been introduced in this chapter. It is obvious and compelling, however, that the full social milieu of
cancer quandaries, involving what communicators do, not what scholars have validated
(Hopper 1981, p. 209), remain largely unearthed and thus taken-for-granted.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was made possible through funding provided by the American Cancer
Society (Grant #ROG-9817201).
REFERENCES
Beach, W.A. (1993). The delicacy of preoccupation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 299312.
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Asociates.
Beach, W.A. (2000a). Inviting collaborations in stories about a woman. Language in Society, 29,
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Beach, W.A. (2000c). When few words are enough: Assimilating bad news about cancer. Unpublished manuscript.
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11
Rejecting Illegitimate Understandings
Samuel G.Lawrence
University of Central Florida
Conversation analytic studies have demonstrated decisively that an architecture of intersubjectivity (Heritage, 1984) provides for the recurrence and stability of understandings
in talk-in-interaction. These studies describe interactants methods for accomplishing the
routine and tacit tasks of displaying, ratifying, and updating intersubjective understandings (Heritage, 1984; Sacks, 1992a, 1992b; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). This
architecture of intersubjectivity is a systematic by-product of turn organization:
[I]t obliges its participants to display to each other, in a turns talk, their understanding of other turns talk. More generally, a turns talk will be heard as directed to a
prior turns talk, unless special techniques are used to locate some other talk to which
it is directed. (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 728)
The outcomes of interpretive operations, performed upon the prior turn in the first position,
are publicly displayed in the next turn position. The selection of some next action (e.g.,
an answer), for example, exhibits its speakers understanding that the prior turn was a corresponding first action (e.g., question). The prior speaker, in turn, inspects the adequacy
of those displayed understandings and exhibits their (inadequacy in the third turn position. The products of these inspections may contribute to or briefly impede the continued
sequential development and directionality of the talk.
According to Heritage (1984), the third position slot may be used for implementing
actions that tacitly ratify understanding displays in next turn position. Alternatively, the
speaker of the talk in the first position, upon finding evidence of misunderstanding in the
next turn position, may initiate third-position repair (Schegloff, 1987b, 1991, 1992). For
example, D understands Ms deployment of Jeff as referring to her husband who is also
named Jeff. The displayed product of this understanding is the collective pro-term we.
This pro-term refers to the speaker and her husband.
(1)
1
2
3
4
UTCL: Mother-Daughter.2.192202
M: =How are things goin with her- uh her and Jeff?
D: Fine
(0.4)
D: Just fine, we havent seen much of h
M:
D:
mean your Jeff, I mean Jeff Over

very good ((continues))

M re-performs the operations that D had performed on Ms turn in Line 1 and displays their
products, your Jeff, in the rejection component of the third-position repair (Lines 56).
Ms actions of re-performing these operations and displaying their products treat Ds misunderstanding as the product of a methodical and legitimately alternative, though incorrect,
analysis of Jeff (Line 1). In this regard, Schegloff (1992) observed:
It is striking that misunderstandings are both orderly and accessible to the speaker of
what has been misunderstood, who might well be thought to be so committed to the
design and so-called intent of the earlier turn as to be disabled from appreciating that
(or how) it could be otherwise understood, (p. 1307)
The orderliness and accessibility of misunderstandings to speakers of talk in the first position, however, are not givens because they may misunderstand the understanding display in
the next turn position (Schegloff, 1992). Additionally, speakers may reject an understanding display as an unwarranted or illegitimate analysis of the talk in the first position. In
these cases, the understanding display may be treated as intelligible on its own; however,
the speaker of the first-positioned talk may deny the reproducibility of that understanding as the product of some methodical analysis of the prior turn. Such understandings are
rejected not as misunderstanding but as misconstruing the prior turn.
The present essay is a single case analysis (Schegloff, 1987a) of an understanding
display that is rejected as misconstruing the prior turn. Analytical resources from turn,
sequence, and topical organization are utilized to explicate: (a) how the talk in first position
is occasioned, (b) how the next speaker analyzes the prior turn, (c) how the speaker of the
first-positioned talk rejects the reproducibility of that analysis, and (d) how the speaker of
the understanding display counters the rejection and provides for the methodicity of that
display.
The data are taken from a telephone conversation between two college students. Dee
Ann had called to check whether Skeet was willing to lend his ticket to her. After indicating
that he needed the ticket and producing a topicbounding turn, Dee Ann used a topic initial
elicitor (Button & Casey, 1984) in Line 1 to create a slot in which Skeet may formulate
newly topicalizable materials, based on his current activity. After the repair sequence in
Lines 23, he reports his current activity as, Goin ta bed.
(2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
:
UTCL:
Dee
Ann:
Skeet :
Dee
Ann:
Skeet :
Dee
Ann:
Skeet :
ROMSa.1.1
What Doin=h
Wha Im doin?
Uh huh
Coin ta bed
(0.2)
Are you really?
Yep
Rejecting illegitimate understandings 167

8
16
17
Dee
Ann:
Skeet :
Dee
Ann:
Skeet :
Skeet :
Dee
Ann:
18
Skeet :
19
Dee
Ann:
Skeet:
Dee
Ann:
Skeet :
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
20
21
22
23
24
25
Dee
Ann:
26
Skeet:
27
Dee
Ann:
Dee
Ann:
28
29
30
rya si.ck?
(0.2)
No Im jus tired.=
=Tired
Yeah.
(0.4)
Went to bed too late las night.=
=(Yep) I donno why:
(.)
huh huh
my fault. ((spoken in an exaggerated
regional dialect))
(0.3)
I- (.) didnt siay that
Okay
eKh
((laughs/coughs))
You th(h) ought it awful l(h)oud(h)
thou (h) gh huh
huh .h=
=No.
(0.3)
Jis okay wull- (0.2) anyway (.) thought Id
check
Because Skeets activity report had been solicited rather than volunteered, it exhibits downgraded newsworthiness (Button & Casey, 1984). Dee Anns topicalizing response Are you
really? upgrades the newsworthiness of that report and makes Skeets current activity
available for further topical talk. This topicalizer selects Skeet as the next speaker, but does
not specifically request an elaboration of his report although an occasion for elaboration is
provided; thus, Skeet is positioned to volunteer an elaboration. His minimal affirmation in
Line 7, however, momentarily curtails topic development, but Dee Ann pursues elaboration in Line 8 through an itemized news inquiry (Why? rya sick?). This inquiry utilizes
a correction invitation format (Sacks, 1992a) that selects a candidate account from a class
of accounts (glossed as debilitating personal states) and invites confirmation or a correction that selects an alternative account from the same class. Skeet in Line 10 opts for the

latter by rejecting Dee Anns candidate account and attributing his early preparation for
sleep to fatigue. Skeet uses the minimizer jus to formulate his fatigue as having minimal
seriousness.
After the hearing check and its confirmation (Lines 1112), Dee Ann had an opportunity to self-select and pursue further topical development (Line 13); however, she did not.
Instead Skeet elected to continue speaking and volunteered an unsolicited account for his
fatigue: Went to bed too late las night (Line 14). He attributes his fatigue to his own
prior failure to get to bed on time. Important to note, the topical focus of Skeets current
unhappy state is linked up with incipient topical possibilities, namely actions and events,
within the temporal frame of las night, that preceded and possibly contributed to his
failure.
Dee Anns understandings of Skeets account are progressively displayed in two successive turn units. The initial turn unit (Yep) I donno why: (Line 15) may be viewed
as a teasing action. Evidence for this analysis may be found in its composition and sequential placement. First, Dee Ann professes ignorance of the reasons for Skeets tardiness
in getting to bed. Since Dee Ann and Skeet may share access to actions and events that
preceded and possibly contributed to his lateness in getting to bed, disavowing that shared
knowledge is in direct contrast to something they both know (Drew, 1987, p. 232). This
contrast, coupled with the stress on and the stretching of why:, contribute to the recognizability of the units ironic import. Second, Drew (1987) reports that teases occur in the
next turn position and treat prior turns as overdone in some fashion. In view of their possibly shared knowledge, Dee Anns irony may treat Skeets account in Line 14 as stating
the obvious rather than as news. Third, teases attribute deviant actions and/or categories
based on some minimally required identity (Drew, 1987). That is, Dee Anns use of why:
exploits Skeets failure to get to bed (minimally required identity) by alluding to (deviant)
actions that suggest a lack of personal discipline. In contrast, professing ignorance of these
actions may be a way for Dee Ann to take up a playful stance of innocence.
Following a beat of silence in Line 16, Dee Ann produced two bursts of laughter. In the
environment of Dee Anns ironic laugh source, the subsequent laughter proffers a laugh
invitation (Jefferson, 1979). Skeet has an opportunity to exhibit appreciation of Dee Anns
tease and playful stance of innocence by laughing together with her, thus co-implicating
himself with that stance (Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff, 1987). Skeet does not take up
the invitation to laugh. Instead, he displays recognition of the tease (without ratifying its
humor) through his own faint and world-weary profession of ignorance in Line 18.
In Line 17, Dee Ann does not pursue laughter. Instead, following her terminal inbreath,
Dee Ann explicitly denies culpability in regard to Skeets lateness in getting to bed. In
contrast to her prior teasing action, this denial proposes a serious version of las nights
events. Her denial is done in a kind of exaggerated countrified, regional dialect (possibly central Texas) that is compatible with her posture of innocence. Combined with her
pre-speech laughter, Dee Ann uses this speech register to distance herself form the delicate
action of treating Skeets account in Line 14 as shifting blame to her.
How does Dee Ann come to deny responsibility for Skeets failure to get to bed on
time? First, she does not solicit the account in Line 14. Instead, Skeet volunteers it. Button and Casey (1985) observed how tellers refrain from volunteering delicate tellings and
wait for recipients to solicit them. Because Skeet had volunteered the account, Dee Ann

may have understood him as making a special point of reminding her of an incident with
now unhappy consequences for him (Pomerantz, 1978). Second, Dee Ann may have
understood Skeets account as part of an unfinished telling, with more details to come. The
unsolicited production of this account (Line 14), coupled with its scanty details, may have
contributed to that understanding. If Dee Ann had participated in activities with Skeet that
preceded his failure to get to bed on time, then her disavowal of blame in Line 17 may have
anticipated and preempted forthcoming reminders of her participation that shift at least
some of the responsibility for his failure to her. Dee Ann may have anticipated descriptions
from Skeet that would have turned his failure into a consequence of her antecedent actions
(Pomerantz, 1978).1
In the third turn position (Line 21), Skeet deploys I- (.) didnt say that to reject Dee
Anns denial of culpability. The delayed onset of this rejection, coupled with the glottal cut-off of I- and the beat of silence prior to didnt, display what, for Skeet, is the
strongly unexpected character of Dee Anns denial.2 Features of Skeets rejection exhibit its
placement in the third sequential position in relation to his account (Went to bed too late
las night) in the first position and Dee Anns analysis of it (Not my fault) in the next
turn position. The pro-terms I- and say topicalize his authorship of the account, and
that ties back to, without formulating, Dee Anns denial and its concomitant attribution
of blame shifting. Like third-position repairs, this rejection treats the relationship between
the contributions in the first and next turn positions as problematic. However, the negation
of say denies that Dee Anns finding of blame shifting could have been produced from
any legitimate analysis of Went to bed too late las night. Skeet rejects her analysis, not
as misunderstanding the account, but as misconstruing it.
This method of rejecting understanding displays in the next turn position differs from
comparable practices of third-position repair. The latter treat misunderstanding displays
as viable, albeit incorrect, alternative understandings of talk in the first position. In this
instance, I- (.) didnt say that rejects Dee Anns denial of culpability as the product of an
illegitimate analysis of the account in Line 14. Additionally, third-position repairs provide
speakers of understanding displays with the resources to redo their understanding of the
first-positioned talk.3 Rather than providing these resources for Dee Ann, Skeet stands by
the import of his account as an innocuous and self-evident description of his agency in failing to get to bed on time. Skeets rejection accomplishes this action by reporting a negative
event; that is, he denies having authored talk that could be construed as shifting responsibility to Dee Ann. This negative formulation makes an implicit contrast with what he did
This line of analysis depends on the assumption that Dee Ann had been a party to the previous
nights events. Though no independent evidence is available, it is difficult to surmise otherwise how
she could have come to see herself as a candidate for blame allocation, without imputing some type
of exotic motivation to her denial of culpability.
2
Notice that Skeets rejection is done in reference to his talk in Line 14; the rejection does not
propose a version of the previous nights events that would treat Dee Ann as an outsider to those
events. That is, if Dee Ann could not be viewed as a party to those events, Skeet would be expected
to deliver a very different sort of rejection (e.g., Huh? You werent even there).
3
Referring back to example 1, after M had specified how Jeff in Line 1 was properly understood
(Line 6), D used her revised understanding of Ms question to redo her answer (Lines 78) in a
direction quite different from Lines 2 and 4.
1

say. Skeet imputes a benign and self-evident intelligibility to that talk; furthermore, the
account is treated as a completed telling, as opposed to an unfinished one. Skeet invokes an
entitlement to having the account treated as having the plainfully intelligible character that
he attributes to it (Garfinkel, 1967), and thus Dee Anns misconstrual of that talk is treated
as something of a breach of that entitlement.
In line 22, Dee Ann acknowledges Skeets authorial authority over his talk. This asymmetry does not mean, however, that she is without resources to counter his rejection
(cf. Drew, 1991).
21
22
Skeet:
Dee
Ann:
I- (.) didnt say that

Okay
23
Skeet:
eKh
24
25
Dee
Ann:
26
Skeet:
27
Dee
Ann:
Dee
Ann:
28
29
((laughs/coughs))
You th(h) ought it awful l(h)oud(h)
thou(h)gh huh
huh .h=
=No.
(0.3)
Jis okay wull- (0.2) anyway (.) thought Id check
In Line 23, Skeet produces a burst of laughter (also bearable as a cough upon its occurrence) that Dee Ann joins with a pair of laughs. Out of this environment, she retrieves
the laugh source (Line 21) from which the counter You th(h)ought it awful l(h)oud(h)
thou(h)gh is produced. The pro-term it preserves the referent of that (Line 21), and
the counter half jokingly concedes that Skeets account could not have been understood as
saying she was to blame; this concession is delivered in a qualified fashion (note the use
of though in the tag position). Nonetheless Dee Anns counter preserves her finding of
blame shifting by imputing it as a thought to Skeet.
The action of attributing thoughts to an interlocutor speaks to Sacks (1992a) remarks
concerning the observability of thoughts:
And this phenomenon of seeing other peoples thoughts is really an important thing.
Exactly how its properly posed is quite tricky. First of all, its of course nonsense to
say that thoughts are things that cant be seen, unless you want to take some notion
of thoughts that Members do not employ, since they certainly do take it that one
can see what anybody is thinking. Not in every case, certainly, but you can see what
people are thinking, and there are ways of doing it. And you must learn to do it.
(p. 364)
In this particular case, Skeet has rejected Dee Anns denial of culpability and its analysis
of the account in Line 14; he denies the very possibility of construing his talk as shifting

blame to her. Dee Ann faces the problem of providing for the methodicity of her denial and
its display of understanding in Line 17. Having just conceded to Skeets authorial authority,
she is effectively prevented from using the composition of Skeets description of his own
agency as a resource in solving this problem. Furthermore, certain methodical features of
her understanding, the unsolicited production of Skeets telling and its possibly unfinished
character, may be potentially troublesome to formulate explicitly. Dee Ann provides for
the methodicity of her rejected understanding by glossing Skeets observable activity as
a thought and formulating that activity gloss as the source of her action/understanding
display. Such a practice does not involve mind reading in the sense of claiming access to
the private recesses of anothers mind. The description awful l(h)oud(h) characterizes
that thought as having a publicly conspicuous character.
The delicate nature of Dee Anns counter lies not so much in the attribution of thoughts
to Skeet but in the reattribution of the action of blaming to him. Skeets rejection is treated
as a laugh source that Dee Ann retrieves to produce a continuation of joking activity as she
distances herself from the accusatory import of her counter (Line 24). This laughter was
initiated in Line 23 by Skeet, but was sustained primarily by Dee Ann during its course
with minimal participation from Skeet (Line 26). The laughter combined with the joke-toserious No (Schegloff, 1996) in Line 27 to frame the interaction that ensued from Skeets
rejection in Line 21 as half kidding/serious. Dee Ann exits from this topical sequence
(Line 29) by returning to the previous topic and official reason for the call.
To summarize: This essay reports on a practice of rejecting illegitimate understanding
displays. Utterances such as I didnt say that refer to those displays (through the proterm that) but reject the reproducibility of such displays from a methodical analysis of
the talk in the first position. This practice may be regarded as a cousin of third-position
repair. Though both action types treat the relationship between the talk in the first position
and its display of understanding in the next turn position as problematic, the former does
not formulate a repair or solution to the problem of understanding. In the present data,
the speaker of I didnt say that reports a negative event that contrasts implicitly with
what had been said in the first position. This speaker stands by the first-positioned talk as
exhibiting a self-subsistent intelligibility. Consequently the recipient of I didnt say that
faced the problem of providing for the methodicity of her action/display of understanding
in the next turn position. The observed solution in these data involved the speaker of the
understanding display acknowledging her interlocutors authorial authority then imputing
her understanding to a thought of the interlocutor. This formulation served to gloss the
publicly noticeable activity of the interlocutor as the source of her understanding.
These data serve to suggest some possible limits to speakers tolerance for alternative
understandings of their talk. As Schegloff (1992) pointed out, speakers readily recognize
that and how their talk may be understood in ways divergent from its designed import.
However, when their talk is treated as portending some interpersonally problematic action
(such as blaming), subsequent understanding displays may be rejected as exceeding that
tolerance. One way to reject the legitimacy of an understanding display is to deny the
usability of the talk in the first position as the source of an analysis that would produce that
understanding. This finding provides a naturally occurring complement to one of Garfinkels (1967) breaching demonstrations. Next speakers were instructed to withhold displays
of understanding of the prior speakers commonplace remarks (e.g., I had a flat tire) and

to raise problems of understanding by initiating repair (e.g., What do you mean, you had
a flat tire?) in the absence of recognizable understanding problems. The prior speakers
subsequent outrage was clearly more moral than technical. He concluded that speakers
do not merely expect to be understood but insist on an entitlement to the manifestly intelligible character of their talk. In the present data, a next speaker commits to a display of
understanding, but the prior speaker uses the third sequential position to reject the prior
action/understanding display as transgressing the self-evident intelligibility of the talk in
the first position. Unlike the explosive outrage of Garfinkels victims, the parties to the
present data drew upon the organization of laughter and used special speech registers as
ways of framing delicate actions as half joking/serious. Overall, these findings contribute
to our understanding of connections between the interactional architecture of intersubjectivity and the moral order.
Rejecting the methodicity and legitimacy of an understanding display poses certain
interactional aftershocks in which the parties orient to a possible impropriety embodied
in imputing the action of blaming to a prior speaker whose talk is excluded as a possible
source of such an understanding. So how does the speaker of the rejected understanding
display manage to re-legitimate that display? One way is to formulate conduct, other than
the talk in the first position, that would serve as an alternative source of the speakers
methodically produced understanding. Here that speaker preserves her understanding as
the product of a gloss of her interlocutors publicly conspicuous activity: You th(h)ought
it awful l(h)oud(h) thou(h)gh. The interactional uses of these glossing practices provide
both a parallel and challenge to communication models that impute messages to the private
encoding of speakers thoughts and meanings. Whereas these models treat thoughts
as residing in the private, unobservable mental storehouse of speakers, such notions of
radical subjectivity are not in use among the parties to this interaction. These observations
add credence to Sacks (1992a) remarks concerning the public observability of thoughts
and underscore the dangers of premature theorizing that glosses rather than explicates the
details of interactional practices.4
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Robert Hopper was my dissertation adviser at the University of Texas in the late 1980s.
I and many others, in large measure, trace the beginnings of our intellectual commitment
to the close examination of talk to his graduate seminars in conversation analysis. Over
the years, he has continued to embody what it means to be a colleague by appreciating
our strengths and challenging us to improve our craft. He has unselfishly given of himself
during the best and worst of times. It is a distinct honor to contribute to this esteemed
collection.
4
Rejecting theoretical notions of radical subjectivity does not deny that people, at times, do act as
practical Solipsists. The key is finding data in which the parties to an interaction orient to such
practices instead of insisting upon their omnirelevance as many communication models do.

REFERENCES
Button, G., & Casey, N. (1984). Generating topic: The use of topic initial elicitors. In J.M.Atkinson
& J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 167190).
Button, G., & Casey, N. (1985). Topic nomination and topic pursuit. Human Studies, 8, 355.
Drew, P. (1991). Asymmetries of knowledge in conversational interactions. In I.Markova &
K.Foppa (Eds.), Asymmetries in dialogue (pp. 2148). Hertfordshire, England: Harvester
Wheatsheaf.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In
G.Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (7996). New York: Irvington.
Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In
G. Button & J.R.E.Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 152205). Clevedon, England:
Pomerantz, A. (1978). Attributions of responsibility: Blamings. Sociology, 12, 115121.
Sacks, H. (1992a). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1, G.Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Basil
Blackwell.
Sacks, H. (1992b). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 2, G.Jefferson, Ed). Oxford, England: Basil
Blackwell.
turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50, 696735.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987a). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation
analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 101114.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987b). Some sources of misunderstanding in talk-ininteraction. Linguistics, 25,
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Schegloff, E.A. (1991). Conversation analysis and socially shared cognition. In L.Resnick,
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12
Interactive Methods for Constructing Relationships
Jenny Mandelbaum
Rutgers University
Increasingly in the communication field, scholars are coming to recognize that the character of a relationship is built moment by moment, by interactants, in and through interaction
(Goldsmith & Baxter, 1996). Though compelling, this claim has proven difficult to document. Just how is the relationship between interlocutors constructed, and thus available,
from the particular ways in which talk is produced?
In this chapter I describe two methods whereby the interactional construction of relationships can be documented. First, in a kind of conversational tit-for-tat, one interlocutor produces a turn that could be heard to have problematic, or disconnecting
implications for the relationship. In the next turn, the other produces a similar turn that has
the result of shifting the disconnecting implications to connecting ones. In the second
method, conversational repair targets a turn that has possible problematic implications for
the relationship. The speaker of the repairables method for repairing the problem does not
take up the relationship implications, though. These two methods for taking up turns with
possible problematic implications for the relationship display the interactive process of
relationship construction.
APPROACHES TO RELATIONSHIPS
In the vernacular, and often in scholarly work also, we take relationships to be things that
we have. That is, in the way that we talk about them, relationships are often reified, static
entities. Relationship states are often treated as independent variables, with discursive
consequences (Hopper & Chen, 1996, p. 310). This approach to relationships treats them
as social structural entities that exist outside of discourse, taking spouse or supervisor, for instance, to be social categories, from which ways of talking follow. From this
perspective, which dominates much research in communication, ways of talking could
provide an index for intimacy, and ways of talking that are characteristic of marriage,
for instance, could be discerned. In practice, an approach that sees relationships as existing external to discourse presents problems, because even within relationships that have
objective, social categorical definitions, relational states shift. Even those who might
describe themselves, and be described by others, as happily married have arguments or
difficult interactions and problematic moments.
In contrast to this view, social constructionists and others make a strong case for seeing relationships as constructed in and through interaction. Goldsmith and Baxter (1996)
emphasized the importance of this constitutive view of communication in relationships.
They drew on subjects diaries and recollections to identify a set of 29 speech events, which
they then divided into six groups that constitute everyday relationships. They pointed out
that it might prove difficult to observe all the joint enactments of talk through which an

individuals relationships are constructed (p. 90). Therefore, they used diary studies so
that individuals could report on the events in which they engage in various relationships
(p. 90.). Conversation analysts have shown that detailed analysis of tape-recorded naturally
occurring conversations provides a method for describing particular ways interacts may
do relationships (e.g., Goodwin, 1990; Heritage & Sefi, 1992; Mandelbaum, 1987, 1989;
Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997).
Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967) proposed that all messages have both content and relationship levels. All talk then may be taken to contain proposals regarding
the relationship between interactants. For the most part, though, these relational proposals
do not become the main business of talk, and may not be taken up at all in any discernible
or overt way. Their study often is speculative, because claims about the relational activities
that interactants may be undertaking can be hard to demonstrate.
Goffman (1971) suggested that interaction contains numerous signs whereby interactants make available to one another the current character of the relationship (p. 184).
He called these tie-signs evidence about relationships, that is, about ties between persons, whether involving objects, acts, expressions, and only excluding the literal aspects
of explicit documentary statements (p. 184.). Tie-signs may include holding hands, locking arms, using the same bottle of suntan lotion when coming to the side of the pool, and
so on. For the most part, the production and noticing of these tie-signs are not focused
involvements (Goffman, 1963) for interactants. That is, they are generally incidental to
other ongoing activities. Goffman wrote of them as a sort of social obligation, a performance that we owe others who are in the co-presence of a related couple (a pair in a
relationship). Through the performance of tie-signs, both relational partners and others are
provided with evidence of the character of a relationship being enacted.
Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) recommended as a final step in analysis that the researcher
examine the identity and relational implications of the way a particular action is packaged.
For conversation analysts, it is critical that relationship be procedurally relevant to participants (Schegloff, 1987). Like identity, although theorized to be omnirelevant, it can be
hard to document the relevance of relationship to the way talk is done. For this reason, conversation analysts often have been reluctant to address issues of relationship, using instead
such terms as alignment, and affiliation. Despite this constraint, conversation analytic
findings reveal important features of how talk may propose and/or construct relationships.
For instance, Heritage and Sefi (1992) showed how health visitors methods for questioning new mothers can propose particular alignments between participants. Goodwin
(1990) showed how the way that a directive is offered proposes a version of the relationship
between the interactants. That is, when you ask someone to do something, it formulates
who they are with respect to yousomeone over whom you can assume unquestionable control, for instance. When I say to someone Come here right now, I propose a
relationship between us in which I have some legitimate jurisdiction over that persons
actions. Some actions, then, lend themselves to fairly easy interpretation with respect to
the relationship they propose between interlocutors. The firmness of this phenomenon
is perhaps indicated by the fact that using a polite format to ask someone with whom we
have a close relationship to do something for us may be a way of a proposing (current)
distance between us. Some ways of talking to or acting with regard to others, then, have
somewhat stable relational interpretations. With respect to how we ask someone else to do
Interactive methods for constructing relationships 177

something, the extent to which we provide them with choice, or self determination over
their own actions, is a fairly tangible index of how we see ourselves relative to them. It
may indicate the kind of interpersonal power we take ourselves to be able to enact with
respect to them.
Some conversation analytic work has looked at inexplicit relational proposals that can
sometimes be disentangled in such features of conversation. For instance, the use of reporting to do such actions as blaming (Pomerantz, 1978), and inviting (Drew, 1984); the placement and nature of recipient turns in storytellings (Mandelbaum, 1989), and complaints
(Mandelbaum, 1991/1992) may enable participants to blame, invite, or complain in a collaborative rather than a unilateral fashion. However, conversation analytic work for the
most part has not turned its attention to how relationships are constructed, specifically
because this is frequently difficult to identify as the work interactants are actively undertaking. Two exceptions are the work of Jefferson, Sacks, and Schegloff (1987), and Morrison
(1997).
Jefferson et al. (1987) showed that the use and uptake of obscenity may provide a way
for interactants to collaborate on constructing intimacy, and in this way make sub rosa
proposals of intimacy. Morrison (1997) demonstrated how interlocutors may use tracking
questions and answers to these questions to enact involvement. She showed how by asking a question that in effect seeks an update, relationship members talk in such a way as
to display their involvement in the life of the other.
Studying relationships involves numerous complexities for the researcher. Among them
are issues of unpredictability, privacy, and access. Scholars interested in how relationships develop note that transitions in the character of a relationship may occur at critical
moments (e.g., Baxter & Bullis, 1986). It is hard to know when critical moments of relationships will take place, and harder to have a tape recorder or video recorder present at
those critical moments in ways that will not change the character of the occurrence. Yet if
we look at interaction closely, we see that, in line with the proposals of social constructionists, relationships are constructed and negotiated moment by moment in a delicate to and
fro, some of which can be documented through close attention to the details of talk.
Both Gofftnans tie-signs and Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jacksons relationship level
of conversation may be present throughout conversation, but may not constitute a focused
activity for interactants. In this chapter, I examine places where the often overlooked relational implications of talk are taken up in some way. I discuss two methods for doing this,
tit-for-tat and repair, and contrast the apparent relational consequences of each. In both
cases, I show how both ends of the relationship (Goffman, 1971, p. 188) work together
to position themselves vis a vis one another.
TIT-FOR-TAT
During the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, while she was uttering
her vows, Princess Diana produced Prince Charles name (Charles Philip Arthur George)
incorrectly, confusing the order of the names.1 The significance of this repairable could be
interpreted in many different ways. As a unilateral, presumably unintentional action, it has
1
I am grateful to Paul Drew for bringing this example to my attention.

many possible (possibly negative) implications, both regarding Princess Dianas identity
(the kind of person that she is), and regarding their relationship. It could be taken to have
implications regarding her competence or her state of mind, for instance. Psychologists
might take it to have symbolic significance regarding her feelings for Prince Charles, or
about the wedding. In his vows, though, Prince Charles produced Dianas name in a similarly incorrect way. Until Princess Dianas death it was said that this was the last nice thing
he did for her. His tit-for-tat here made available the implication, getting names wrong
during a wedding is something anyone could do. A reciprocal action of the same kind
appears to be one way to take up a problematic activity. By doing the same thing (mixing
up names, in this case), it targets the activity to which it is reciprocal. It may show that the
initial action was noticeable. Interestingly, though, by doing the same action, a possibly
problematic or disjoining action on its own is rendered benign or conjoining, because
the implications that anyone could do it or it can happen to me become available. It
becomes a common occurrence, instead of a gaping breach of etiquette, for instance.
In the following segment, a telephone conversation is begun with an apparently playful
exchange of name-calling. This tit-for-tat seems to work in a similar way to the previous
instance. Though it is clearly not its official business, the first name-calling could be
heard to set the couple apart. That is, although in the context the hearing is unlikely, it could
be heard in this way. In response, the reciprocal name-calling proposes a kind of relatedness between the callers, undoing the possible disjuncture. Kip and Cara have been put on
the phone by their roommates, who were talking together until Caras roommate reported
to Kips that Cara wanted to talk to Kip. On the tape, we hear Cara waiting for Kip. His
êe^YEE::ÊS?hh huh hih heh starts their conversation.
(1)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Romance 8
Kip:
êe^Y [EE::Ê]S?hh huh hih heh=
():
[()]
Cara:
=Ki^:p?
Kip:
ehh. heeYe (h) e (h) es?
Cara:
hh Yih que:er w(h)at[re ya doin.]
Kip:
[ehhhhhhhhhh]hh.
(0.6)
Kip:
uh Î dunno whatre you doin you queer bait.
Cara:
Kip:
Cara:
eh h[eh heh heh

[Nothing?h
eh hh[h eh
t(s) gon on.
After initial apparent difficulty recognizing one another (perhaps due to Kips overdone
Yes in Line 1), in Line 5 Cara calls Kip a name, Yih que:er, which could be heard as a
teasing response to his redoing, in Line 4, of his over-exaggerated Yes at the beginning
of their interaction. Though in its vernacular sense of homosexual queer has no apparent fit with Kips behavior, it could be heard as a playful version of silly or oddan
original meaning of the term queer. This is immediately followed by an inquiry regarding

what he is doing, presumably currently or immediately before he took the phone call. This
can be heard as a conventional beginning to their conversation. His response is postponed
by a post laugh inbreath. In Line 8, he gives a minimal answer to the question regarding
what he is doing, I dunno. He then asks the reciprocal question, whatre you doin, and
produces a reciprocal name-calling, you queer bait. This name-calling is reciprocal in a
special way. She has called him a queer that, if it were to be taken seriously or literally
in the current vernacular, would make her not of interest to him. Queer bait in response
to queer could be heard to be formulating her as bait for the queerthat is, bait for
Kip. It thus proposes a possible relationship between them in which she is specifically
attractive to him.
Thus a formulation of him (you queer) that taken literally (in the sense in which it is
presumably not intended) makes her of no interest to him, is recast in retrospect as making her specifically of interest to him. This is done playfully, but nonetheless might raise
a glimmer of the possibility that there could be a relationship between them that involves
a connection constituted by appropriate fit and special interest. In its aftermath, nothing is
overtly made of the reciprocal name-calling and the possible connectedness it implies. As
Kip laughs, Cara answers the inquiry that preceded the name-calling. As Kips laughter
continues, Cara makes a reciprocal busyness inquiry: (s) gon on. and talk proceeds.
In this instance, through a kind of conversational tit-for-tat interactants make available a connection between them. Immediately after talk that could be heard to indicate a
reciprocated disjunctive between them (the difficulty recognizing one another), an action
by one partner that could be heard to have possible implications for their relationship, but
could equally, and more plausibly, be heard to be directly related to prior talk (Kips playfully overdone greeting) is responded to in such a way as to constitute a reciprocation by
the other. The reciprocation takes up possible relationship implications in the first speakers
turn and provides for a proposal of connectedness between them where her turn could have
been heard to position them as disconnected. Talk simply moves on, and nothing is made of
it overtly. Like Princess Dianas flub, Caras name-calling makes available certain implications regarding participants relative positioning although these relative implications are
clearly not official business at all. In both cases, their relational partners next turn has
a similar format, yet counteracts those implications in an off-the-record fashion that
nonetheless makes the relational implications of the first turn apparent. Here then we see
a sort of advance on the tie-sign. An action that could be heard as a tie-sign with possible
disaligning relational implications, but that could also simply be ignored, is targeted, made
visible, and redressed simultaneously by a response-in-kind. Nonetheless, like Goffrnans
tie-signs, this remains an embedded action.
REPAIR
In the following fragment, the embedded relational implications of a turn are taken up
in a more overt way, using repair. Nonetheless, the first speakers response to repair initiation downplays the relational implications. This demonstrates interactants alertness to
problematic relational implications, and indicates the collaborative character of positioning
activities in conversation.

Two couples, Vicki and Shawn, and Nina and Matthew, are eating dinner together. This
segment occurs after about 14 minutes of recorded conversation. Vicki reports an activity
she plans to undertake (Lines 24, 26, and 28). Shawn initiates repair in a somewhat overdone, teasing way (Lines 33, 35, and 37). Vicki completes the repair in an underdone
way (Lines 3940). The underdone character of Vickis repair is noticeable in contrast to
the overblown character of Shawns repair initiation.
(2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
12a
13
14
CDII:3940
Shawn:
Nina:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Shawn:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Vicki:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Nina:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Matthew:
Vickie:
Matthew:
Vicki:
28
29
Nina:
Vicki:
30
31
32
Nina:
Shawn:
[Cars ih stra:nded bout thirdy sumpn

peoplev die:d,
(0.7)
Wo:w.
(0.4)
Becuz a that,
(0.3)
Ye:ah.=
=Css the weather,
Wir gunnuh call [up]
[Ts in]sa[: n e .]
[Wir gn]nuh
[call up sm frjiends] =
[(sp thA:: d).]
=hih.hh[Wz e_igh] d [y degrees here
the oth]uh] =
[en say] [eighty degrees]ihh]
=[day. ih hih] [he
=[hnhh heh-hu]h-h[uh
Oh they hate tih hear that.
I kno:w. En [then hang up] eh heh u
[Well this gu]y
=^Who[was \tha[t ()
[who- [
[mn nah ah [hah
[One guy thet I
[wannacaw:11=
[()
=he usually comes ôu: t. yihknow[so
you js=
[Mmhm,
=tellm its eighdy degree:s hill get
onna
$pla:n[e
[nhh[Yheh]=
[Woah]=

33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Vicki:
Nina:
Shawn:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Shawn:
41
42
43
44
45
Matthew:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Shawn:
46
46a
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
Nina:
Vicki:
Shawn:
Matthew:
Shawn:
=[n a h-ha-ha]
[heh heh heh]
=[w a i hey]woah w[oah
[ih hih heh he[h
[Wu waia
waia wu.
(0.4)
One: gu::y you usually ca(h)a(h)ll?
Wd[zs
[mm-hm
m-h [m
[No we [^c a\ : 1 1.]
[Wd is this] : : .
(0.5)
Oh:.Okay it wz: friend ami:net[oo.
Awright.
[Oh: Shames
friend, [yeah.
[Nyejah)
[Oh thats good (thet).
Thats my[friend.
[The guy (oo) comes outn treats
yuh?
(0.2)
Ye:h.
In Line 24, Vicki begins a report about an unnamed guy that she wants to call. In using a
nonrecognitional reference (one that indicates she does not expect that her recipients could
recognize the person to whom she is referring [Sacks & Schegloff, 1979] the implication
is available that she does not expect any of those present to be able to recognize to whom
it is that she is referring. In Line 27, she tells what the guy referred to in Line 24 usually
does. She then reports what you need to say to produce the result of this guy coming
outtell him about the warm weather. From this recipients can draw the implication that
if she does what at the beginning she states she wants to do (call him), the result will be
that the unnamed (and unknown-to-others-present) guy will come out. In previous turns, in
Lines 1016 Shawn and Vicki together enact what they are going to do (Were gonna call
up some friends)calling people to tell them that it is 80. They synchronously report
an action that they both claim and show themselves to be going to undertake together. In
formulating the person who wants to call as I, and in contrast with their joint enactment
of calling someone to tell them that it is 80, her report of something she wants to do (one
guy that I wanna cawrll, Lines 2425), and her reference to you js tell m (Line 27
and 29) could be heard to project an action she will do by herself. Given the way in which
she refers to the person she will call, and her formulation of herself as the sole caller, it is
potentially hearable that she wants to call someone unknown to members of the present
gathering.

Immediately upon the completion of Vickis report of her future plan, Shawn stops
conversation in a very elaborate and overdone way. His wai hey woah woah Wu waia
waia could be heard to indicate some kind of trouble, but it is not available from this turn
what the trouble could be. He then produces a turn as though it were a repeat of Vickis
turn: One: gu::y you usually ca(h)a(h)ll? (Line 40). He combines elements from the
beginning of her turn in Lines 2425 (one guy that I wanna caw:ll) and the second part
of it in Line 27 (he usually comes ôu:t) to produce a most incriminating version of
what she said: One guy you usually ca(h)a(h)ll? He slightly misrepeats her talk in such a
way as to make available as an understanding the strongest indication that there is a guy
in her life about whom he does not know, whom she calls habitually. His Wdzs (What
is this?) corroborates the impression that he is calling into question what is going on.
All of this is produced in a somewhat overdone, overblown fashion, which Drew (1987)
suggested may be characteristic of teases. It is possible to hear this turn as taking Vicki to
task in a teasing way for having produced the appearance that she is inviting out to see her
some guy that he does not know. In Goffmans terms, he displays himself to be hearing
her turn as offering a particular kind of tie-sign. Like the first turns in the tit-for-tat segments examined earlier, although it is clearly not its principal enterprise, Vickis turn could
be heard to be proposing that she has some involvement that suggests disassociation with
Shawn because of association with a guy that Shawn does not know.
In Line 42, Vicki offers a disagreement token, No, and then offers another version
of part of what he, through his reenactment, has claimed her to have said, we ca:ll can
be heard as a candidate replacement for you usually call. The repair operation involves
dropping the usually and replacing you with we. In this way, the problematic character of the activityhabitually calling an unknown guy without him knowingis removed,
because the calling is an activity that they do together.
What is anomalous about this repair is that she does not stress the repaired item. Normally in response to other-intiated repair, the item that performs the repair operation is
stressed, so as to be hearable as the repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 1977). She
stresses call, which does not appear to have been targeted as the repairable. At the same
time, it is clearly the word we that has replaced the I from her turn and the you
(meaning Vicki) from his turn. In stressing call, a word that has not been repaired, it is
as though she were indicating that the activity of calling were the repairable. In this way,
she literally de-emphasizes the word that caused the troublethe one that pointed to who
was doing the calling. It was her use of I that made available the appearance or possible
hearing that she might want to, or was engaging in, some activity independent of Shawn.
Stressing the nonrepaired part could be hearable as backgrounding or playing down
the relational implications of the repair. In this way, Vicki avoids overtly taking up the
relational proposal his repair tries to make.
Shawns repair appears to be done as a teasing display of concern, yet Vicki gives a pofaced response to the tease. She treats it as though it were serious (Drew, 1987). After what
appears to be a postoverlap resolution hitch, in Line 45 Shawns change of state token,
Oh (Heritage, 1984), shows that he now has a new understanding of what Vicki meant.
His okay shows that this shift makes what she had been proposing acceptable. He then
reports a characteristic of the call-recipient that he now understands: it wz: friend amine
too. In explicitly stating that this is what makes it okay, Shawn makes available that it was

indeed the problem posed for their relationship that constituted the problem his repair initiation addresses. In calling the groups attention to it by doing a very public repair, Shawn
calls this implication into question in an overdone, teasing fashion. In so doing, he shows
that the appearance that Vickis talk could be heard to present regarding their positioning
relative to one anotherthat there is a guy whom she will call, and who will then come
out (presumably to California)is what was problematic for him. Because it is a friend of
his also, he can now rehear this as unproblematic, and make that rehearing public.
In this way, Shawn makes a public display of having the right to call into question with
whom Vicki associates without his knowledge. In her producing her repair with the stress
that she does, Vicki emphasizes the activity of calling, and not the we on which the relational implications center. In this way, she seems to focus on issues of understanding, rather
than relational concerns. There is no playing along with the tease, display of shame or
embarrassment, of having been caught red-handed, and so on. Rather, the way in which
she offers the repair has more the air of annoyance.
Drew (1987) suggested that teases are often used to produce mild social sanctions, and
that po-faced responses provide a way for the teased party to set the record straight. Here
Shawns repair initiation seems to target the problematic tie-sign, the appearance of illicit
activity that Vickis turn makes. Though Vicki could play along with the tease, she sets
the record straight in a way that seems to dismiss the tease. In playing down the relational
implications, Vicki avoids officially entering into the positioning activity that Shawns
turn takes up. Rather, her talk does relationship work by not officially taking up the implications Shawns repair indicates. For in treating it as a matter of course that it is his friend,
and showing mild annoyance at Shawns action, she displays that the concern his repair
indicates is not an issue. Here then we see an instance where the possible relational implications of a turn are taken up and made available by one participant, whereas the other
participant downplays the relational implications. Though Shawns turn makes possible
overt uptake of relational matters, Vickis shows that they are not relevant here.
CONCLUSIONS
These episodes demonstrate that relational implications may be taken up when they contain
problematic proposals regarding the relative positioning of interactants. The management
of these proposals is a collaborative process. In both conversational tit-for-tats, and in the
repair episode, a second turn targets possible problematic relational implications in a prior
turn. Thus we see interactants on-sight alertness to the relationship level of a conversation, and to the tie-signs that talk may contain. However, talk in third position indicates that
even where relationship implications have been targeted by one speaker in the talk of the
other, the speaker whose talk contained those implications need not take them up further.
This account suggests the subtle yet collaborative manner in which relationships are
enacted in interaction. It seems that moments where there are mild problems for relationships (or the appearance of a relationship) can prove to be fruitful sites for documenting the
interactive work of relationship construction. In this way, we can begin to see relationships
as collections of communication practices, or things that we do through communication, in
contrast to thinking of them as social structural things that we have.

REFERENCES
Baxter, L., & Bullis, C. (1986). Turning points in developing romantic relationships. Human Communication Research 12, 469493.
Drew, P. (1984). Speakers reportings in invitation sequences. In J.M. Atkinson & J.C.Heritage
(Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 129151). Cambridge
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places. New York: The Free Press.
Goffrnan, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Harper & Row.
Goldsmith, D., & Baxter, L. (1996). Constituting relationships in talk: A taxonomy of speech events
in social and personal relationships. Human Communication Research, 23, 87115.
Goodwin, M. (1990). He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among Black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heritage, J. (1984). A change of state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J.M. Atkinson & J.C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis
Heritage, J., & Sefi, S. (1992). Dilemmas of advice: Aspects of the delivery and reception of advice
in interactions between health visitors and first-time mothers. In P.Drew, & J.Heritage, (Eds.)
Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 359417). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, R., & Chen, C.H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29, 291313.
Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Notes on laughter in pursuit of intimacy. In
G.Button & J.Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization, (pp. 152205). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Mandelbaum, J. (1989). Interpersonal activities in interactional storytelling. Western Journal of
Mandelbaum, J. (1991/1992). Conversational non-cooperation: An exploration of disattended complaints. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 97138.
Morrison, J. (1997). Enacting involvement: Some conversational practices for being in a relationship. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Temple University, Philadelphia.
Pomerantz, A., & Fehr, B.J. (1997). Conversation analysis: An approach to the study of social
action as sense making practices. In T.A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction: Discourse studies 2A multidisciplinary introduction (pp. 6491). London: Sage.
Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E.A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons
in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday langauge: Studies in ethnomethdology (pp. 1521). New York: Erlbaum.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987). From micro to macro: Contexts and other connections. In J.Alexander,
B.Giesen, R.Munch, N.Smelser (Eds.) The macromicro link (pp. 207234). Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361382.
Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J., & Jackson, D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication. New York:
Norton.
13
A Note on Resolving Ambiguity
Gail Jefferson
Rinsumageest
Just about twenty years ago, working on materials in which people talk about their troubles, I came across a possible phenomenon: Someone inadvertently produces an ambiguous utterance, then attempts to disambiguate it without speaking explicitly. Although it was
clear to me that something like that was going on, I found that I had no analytic resources
to develop a case for it. I gave a talk to some colleagues at the University of Manchester,
presenting the phenomenon as something intriguing but that my conversation analytic
resources gave me no handle on, and was told in no certain terms that my muchvaunted
conversation analytic methods had utterly failed to handle it. Theyre a lively bunch! Even
agreement turns into open warfare. At some point, someone suggested that we just go have
a drink. So ended my presentation.
Since that time Ive every now and then come across another candidate case (and
although the original instances occurred in the materials I happened to be investigating at
that time, the phenomenon is not exclusive to troubles-talk). Recently I took another shot
at itnot that I can handle the thing any better now than I could twenty years agobut just
trying to suggest that such a phenomenon might exist, and that this or that fragment of data
might comprise an instance of it.
Perhaps Robert Hoppers phrase roughing up the ground best describes what Im
up to.
Ill start out with a few fragments in which it seems to me that one participant has produced a characterizably problematic utterance, then resolves the problem, whereupon a
recipient produces an appropriate next utterance.
(1) [Goodwin:60:C:12]
( (Two women at a block party, chatting about college days and characters they have known.))
1
Lauren:
We had this one girl she wz from Flo:rida. Un
2
I swear tGo::d, she wannid tbe on the bes

3
dress list.
4
(0.4)
5
Lauren:
Ener parents apparently wereneven that
6
wealthy. En she wenoutn she bought tons of

7
clothes so she cd be on thbesdres-She even

8
came tcollege inna pegnoi:r se:t.

9
(0.2)
10 Lauren:
Yknow. u-mean who goes tih college inna with a=
11 Tanzi:
= [Who even o:wns] one.right?

12 Lauren:
[pegnoir set.]
A note on resolving ambiguity 187

Problematic here is that Lauren seems to be describing a young womans arrival on a
college campus wearing a negligee (in a pegnoir set, Lines 78). There may be good
grounds for Tanzi to figure that Lauren means to be saying something less drastic, that is,
that the young woman brought with her, among her tons of clothes, a pegnoir set. She
didnt arrive in one, but with one. The story structure itself may be angled toward the
less drastic alternative; a story about someone showing up on campus wearing a negligee
would probably look different from the start. On the other hand, funny things do happen at
college. So, Tanzi may be holding off taking a position.
We may be seeing Lauren discovering her error as she recycles the punchline with its
problematic in a and immediately thereafter produces the problem-resolving with a (I
mean who goes to college in a with a, Line 10).
Whereupon Tanzi produces a next utterance appropriate to the with a alternative,
addressing herself to the ostentation of having such a thing rather than, say, the brazenness
of wearing it. And this is whereupon in a strong sense. Not just somewhere afterwards,
but immediately upon the occurrence of the clarifying phrase.
Lauren:
Tanzi:
who goes tih college inna

witha
Who even o:wns one.
While the problem in the preceding fragment does have to do with alternatives, it doesnt
involve the sort of ambiguity Ill be focusing on, where a single item could mean one thing
or another.
The following two fragments do involve that sort of ambiguity. As in the preceding
fragment, immediately upon the occurrence of disambiguation, we get an appropriate next
utterance.1
The first of the two fragments comes out of a telephone conversation between two men
on duty at different locations during the 1964 Anchorage, Alaska, earthquake. They refer
to each other by their locations: City is the Anchorage fire department and Elmondorf
is an outlying army base. Theyve been connected by a short circuit in the telephone system, and have taken the opportunity for a chat. In this course of that chat, the following
occurs:
(2)
1
2
3
4
5
[FD: Finger:23]
Edorf:
Dyou know wt-wt kinda newsere broadcastin
downn thStates et (.) presnt?

City:
I: heard dfir:st
Squawk:
[xxxxxxx] rxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxrxx
xxx)
City:
[ (2.0) [The
These two fragments and my discussions of them are taken from Jefferson (1986).

6
8
Edorf:
9
10 Edorf:
11 City:
12 Squawk:
13 Edorf:
14
15 Edorf:
16
17 Edorf:
18
19 Edorf:
20 Ci[ty:
21
22
firsone thet dey uh, (0.7) broadcas w z sixty

tun thr
[
[Yer loudn clear Muldoon Tower,
(2.0)
Pardn?
I heard d [firsbroadcasStateside,]
[(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]x [xxxxx)
[Justa minnit.
(1.4)
Gohead.
(1.9)
Gohead.
(0.2)
Ci ty,
[Ye-u- ah heard dfirsbroadcasstate det deh
wz bout sixty tthree hunnerdea:d n (0.4) city
of Anchrage is on dih grou:n
Just as City starts to answer Elmondorf s question, a squawk box on the Elmondorf side
starts up with a report from Muldoon air field (Lines 14). And we can watch Citys
work by reference to the squawk box. He initially drops out (lines 34) and then, perhaps
because he gets no indication from his coparticipant that he should maintain his silence,
he may take it that someone else on duty is handling it, and he starts up again (Lines 36).
But it turns out that his coparticipant is handling the squawk box, and interrupts him to
respond to it (Lines 58). And City drops out, remaining silent until hes invited back by
Elmondorfs Pardon?, to which he responds immediately (Lines 811).
That City hears Elmondorf s Pardon? as directed to him and not to Muldoon Tower
may be, at least in part, because Pardon? is a conversational object, in strong contrast to the instrumental Youre loud and clear with which Elmondorf responded to the
squawk box.
But again, just as City gets going the squawk box starts up, and Elmondorf, again with
a conversational object, Just a minute, indicates that City should drop out and give the
squawk box priority (Lines 1014).
Now comes what Im proposing to be the ambiguity. In his next utterance, Elmondorf uses Go ahead, which is both conversational and instrumental. This may generate
a problem for City: which of them is being told to Go ahead, he or Muldoon tower?
And it appears that Elmondorf comes to see that there is a problem and what the problem
is. After two such invitations go unanswered, he shifts to a non ambiguous item, naming
his selected coparticipant: City. Whereupon City respondsand whereupon in a very
strong sense, that is, after the first syllable of the identificatory word:2
Jefferson, (1986), the whole point of the exercise was that one cannot be certain that City starts
to talk by reference to Ci and not by reference to the prior Go ahead, his response merely incidentally occurring at a recognition point for the identificatory word. The same reservation, on an
even finer scale, holds for Fragment 3.

1
2
3
4
5
6
Edorf:
Edqrf:
Edorf:
City:
Go head.
(1.9)
Go head,
(0.2)
Ci
Ye-u- ah
heard
In the following fragment, the whereupon feature may be really exquisite. And for this
fragment Im preserving the initial consonant and vowel of the actual names of two of the
participants, Jesse and Joan, in order to show just how delicate this business may be.
The fragment is taken from a group therapy session for teenagers. This particular session is being observed from a room behind a one-way mirror.
(3) [GTS: I:2:19: R:5]
( (Jesse is reporting a success with his parents; they have stopped interrogating him about his comings and goings.))
1
Jesse:
Nobddy sez inning yih jis keep whha:lkin.
2
hh yihknow
3
(0.2)
4
5
6
3
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Jesse:
Joan:
Jesse:
David:
Joan:
Jesse:
its bghuggin mhhe(h)now [ hm hm ]

[Donta] lk tih them
talk tu: S: : .
(1.3)
No. (.) th- (0.4) drapes er closed now I cn see
through that liddle crack et thwindow over there
(2.0)
Yer very consciousv thm being in the : re .
Je [sse.
[He keeps:: [talk [inthere.]
[ih [It doesn] rilly bother me,
This may be a very touchy moment. Joan having raised the issue of observers in the first
place, (Lines 56), it is possible that Davids remark (Line 11) is addressed to her. Indeed,
the appending of Jesses name by David may be directed to clearing such a possible ambiguity, similarly to Elmondorf s work in Fragment 2 with his shift from Go ahead, and
Laurens work in Fragment 1 with her shift from in a to with a.
(But whereas Laurens shift, involving as it does a mid utterance substitution, is clearly
a self-repair, Elmondorf s is less obviously a matter of repair, in that after a bit of silence
he produces a legitimate next component for a single utterance, that is, Go ahead (0.2)
City. And Davids shift is even less obviously a matter of repair, coming off as a through
produced sentenceutterance with the disambiguating name in tag position: Youre very
conscious of them being in there Jesse. Were left with some intonational details, the standard ending intonation of in the:re., which might lead us to wonder if the disambiguating
Jesse was not appended to a completed sentence-utterance specifically in order to resolve
a just discovered ambiguity.)

And, similarly to City in Fragment 2, Joan could be monitoring for which of the two
candidate addressees (in this case, which of the two who have shown themselves to be
conscious of them being in there) is being addressed.
But the recognition work in this case would have to be a bit finer than that proposed for
City in Fragment 2, because in this case the name of the other candidate addressee starts
with the same consonant as does Joans. Involved in this case, then, would be response
upon occurrence of the crucial differentiating vowel, at which point, and no sooner, selection is achieved. And it is at just that point that Joan launches a next utterance appropriate
to Jesses being the one addressed by David:
David:
Joan:
Yer very consciousv thm being in

the:re.
Je
He
And that is whereupon in a very fine sense.

In the following four fragments, the circumstances become murkier. In each of them it
seems to me that someone, having produced an ambiguous utterance, then tries to achieve
disambiguation without the sort of explicitness found in the prior materials. That failing,
in three of the four we do getperhaps specifically as a last resorta disambiguating
utterance.
In the first of the foura leisurely conversation between two neighbors, Reva and Jane,
in the laundry room of their apartment buildingthe talk has turned to an allergy that
Janes husband is suffering from. At some point thereafter, the following occurs:
(4)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
[Gold: MS:1617]
Reva:
En its annoying. cause you-jih-you-you

figure
you nevuh had it befaw n allv a sahdn yih
getting all dih [sy:mptom [s,

Jane:
[Mm:, [nYah I know.
(1.0)
Jane:
I think it has a lo:t tdo wih tha:t.
(1.2)
Jane:
En the fa:ct thet (.) they dont know what eez
allergic to yet.=
Reva:
=Ih makes (a),
(0.4)
Jane:
( )
(0.6)
Reva:
En my sistuh callme today she siz to me how
is
evrything out the:re how is it is evry thing
unduh control?
(0.4)

18
19
20
Reva:
Jane:
Ah sid I guess it is the planes ah le(h)nding I

say I donknoh:,
uh-huh eh-heh eh-heh.
Reva presents her sisters question as a multi component utterance, How is everything out
there, how is it, is everything under control? (Lines 1416). This may be a faithful rendering of her sisters words. It may also comprise serial attempts by Reva to disambiguate
what she has come to see as a possible reference to some sort of illness-related problem
topically coherent with the prior talk, when what she intends to be referring to is a dramatic
but short-lived strike by the citys air traffic control personnel. (In the first place, out
there may be fitted to a trouble of the area in general, in contrast to, e.g., with you. And
perhaps at the subsurface, poetics level, is everything under control came to be produced
via its resonance with air traffic control.)
In this case, activities that may be attendant to a problem and its solution are embedded
in bland colloquy; Reva quoting an exchange between her and her sister consisting of a
multicomponent question and a similarly constructed answer (Lines 1419), in which one
component of the answer, the planes are la(h)anding, happens to be an explicit reference
to the topic; Jane responding, not thereupon, but after a next component, I say I dont
kno:w (which, contributing nothing substantive may work as a recompleter), with a mild
laugh (Line 20) that, although it occurs at a distance from the disambiguating component
may yet be fitted to it, given the laugh particle in la(h)anding.
So although matters in Fragment 4 are worked out in a more dilatory fashion than in the
prior three fragments, there is still some evidence of a problem and its solutionfor both
speaker and recipient.
In contrast to the foregoing where, in the first three fragments we have the recipients
whereupon responses and in the fourth, a response that, although not immediately thereupon, may yet show its relationship to the solution-bearing component, in the remaining
three fragments we lose the recipient as a resource. As far as I can tell, their responses are
completely opaque for the problem-solution issue.
The following fragment and its consideration is taken from the work I did on troublestalk and is one of the cases in which I first noticed the possible phenomenon (Jefferson &
Lee, 1980).
The situation is this: The adolescent son of divorced parents has driven down from Palo
Alto where he lives with his father, to visit his mother in Los Angeles. At some point in the
visit, his car is vandalized. Hes left the car with his mother and is flying home unbeknown
to his father who is expecting his arrival by car and has phoned the mother to find out his
sons estimated time of arrival, only to be given the news.
(5)
1
2
3
4
5
[MDE: MTRAC:601:2:R:12]
Sheila:
Hello:?
Monty:
Hi: Sheila?
Sheila:
YA:H<
Monty:
How are you.
Sheila:
FI:NE

6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
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
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Sheila:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
(.)
Did JOEY GET HOME YET?
I wz wondering wene left.
(0.3)
.t.hh Uh(d) did OH: .h Yer nod in
on wut ha:penhhnt.
No(h)o [ (wut he-)
[Hes flying.
(0.2)
En Nadine [Joes girlfriend] is going to meet
im:.=Becuz the TOP wz ripped o:ffv iz
car which is tih say somebddy helped thmselfs.
Stolen.
(0.5)
Stolen.=Right outn frontv my house.
Oh fer c:rying out loud En eez not gnna- eez
not gnna bring it ba:ck?
h No so its parked in: thih gihrage cz it wz
so damn co: ld. <and ez a mattuh fac snowing
on the Ridge Route.
(0.4)
hhh So I took him to the airpor he couldnt
buy a ticket.
(0.7)
B- he cd only get on sta:nby.
(0.4)
Uh hu: [h,
[En I left him there et abayou:t noo:n.
(0.5)
Uh ha:h.
(0.5)
Ayund uh,h
(0.4)
Wuts e gundo go dow:n pick it up later? er
somethn like [ey- [Bt thats AW ] fl
[hh[His friend-]
Yeh [ his friend S t e e-
[ (Boy) that really makes] me ma:d,
(0.4)
hhh Oh its digusti [ng iz a matteraf] a:ct.
[P o o r J o e y.]
I- I:, I told my ki:ds- who do this: . down et
the Drug Coalition ah want th TO: P ba:ckhh.
(1.1)

50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Sheila:
Monty:
Sheila:
Monty:
SEND OUT THE WO:rd. hhhkhuhh

(0.3)
Yeah.
(0.3)
Bu:t (.) hhghuh: his frienSte:ve en Brian er
driving up.
(.)
right after: :< (0.3) school is out. En then hill
drive dow:n here with the:m.
Oh I see
So: in the long run hhh it (.) problys gnna
Save a liddle time n: energy.
Okay
As Sheila described what happened, Monty exhibits what seems to be more concern for the
car then concern for his son; for example, his response to Sheilas initial announcement,
Hes not going to bring it back? (Lines 2122), his non response to her report of icy cold
weather in which Joe would have to be driving in a car without its convertible top (Lines
2426), and his non and minimal responses to her report of Joes troubles at the airport
(Lines 2732).
Which is to say, Montys treatment of Sheilas report raises as a possible issue that the
boy has been irresponsible, simply abandoning a problem as adolescents are wont do do .
Focusing on the arrowed series of assessments, the initial one, But thats awful.
(Line 40), may be an attempt to repair what might look like a display of more interest in
the cars return than in the boys circumstances. It occurs immediately after a statement of
concern for the cars return, prior to completion of the utterance in which that statement
is packaged: Whats he going to do, go down and pick it up later? Or something like eyBut thats awful. (Lines 3940). In that rapid juxtaposition is an echo of Fragment 1 with
Laurens shift from in a to with a. And as Lauren may there be discovering her error,
Monty, hearing himself expressing concern for the car (for the second time, cf. And hes
not going to bring it back?, Lines 2122), may be discovering the infelicitous direction
of his concern, attempting to repair that with a self-interruptive display of concern for
the boy.
However, the assessment he uses is non selective; it could apply to either concern.
And following on the heels of an expression of concern for the car as it does, it might
conceivably be heard as assessing his sons abandonment of the vandalized car.
As it happens, Montys assessment occurs in overlap with something Sheila has started
to say (Lines 4142). She, having cut off her overlapped utterance, minimally acknowledges Montys talk with Yeh and starts again, now overlapped by his next assessment,
which starts up immediately after her Yeh (Lines 4243).
The Yeh is at best no help to Monty in deciding if his initial assessment has been heard
by reference to the vandalism or to his sons irresponsibility. At worst, it may be weighted
toward the latter, hearable as Sheila, in the interests of keeping the peace, acceptingif
most minimallyhis assessment of the boys (and her own) handling of the situation.

And conceivably it is in response to the non- or wrongly commital Yeh that Monty
makes a next attempt at disambiguation. But, as in Fragments 2 and 4, rather than producing something more selective of one or the other relevant alternatives than was his But
thats awful, he offers another item of the same sort,(Boy) that really makes me mad
(Line 43) cf. Elmondorf s repeated Go ahead and Revas added how is it, is everything under control? And it may be that the offering of a same or similar item can alert
a recipient to a problem in their response to the initial item while preserving non explicit
reference.
But in this case, whereas, for example, an expression of anger on his sons behalf such
as Boy I bet hes mad might not only have done such reoffering work but could have
fostered selection of the vandalism alternative, Montys expressing his own anger allows
for (and perhaps even promotes) selection of the irresponsible-kid alternative.
And given the persistent bivalence of the talk so far, Sheilas concurring Oh its disgusting (Line 45), which does not select for one or the other alternative but refers to whatever it is that Monty is referring to, could at least possibly be concurring with his prior
utterance as an assessment of the boys abandonment of the car and not the vandalism.
For Montys assessments and Sheilas concurrence to be unequivocally understood as
addressing the vandalism and not the boys behavior, we need to refer to and rely upon our
shared knowledge of the conventional proprietiesfor example, that a father cares more
about the welfare of his son then about a chunk of Detroit metaland assume that the
speaker and his recipient share those proper concerns.
It appears that in this case the father does not feel able to depend upon those conventional proprieties for deciding how is ex wife is hearing what hes saying, or for him to
decide what she is saying.
And what occurs next is an utterly explicit utterance that resolves any possible ambiguity, Poor Joey. (Line 46).
This utterance is positioned in just the way Pomerantz described for second assessments,
that is, with minimization of gap between its initiation and prior turns completion; in this
case, as in several of those she showed, occurring in slight overlap (Pomerantz, 1984):
Sheila:
Monty:
Oh its distgusti
ng
[
Poor Joey.
[
That is to say, as a sequential object Poor Joey comes off as an understanding/agreeing

response to Sheilas utterance, and not at all as some sort of repair.
Nevertheless I would argue that Poor Joey is indeed some sort of repair; this expression of pity, so unlike the sort of talk that Monty has been producing throughout the interaction, being enlisted specifically to resolve the as-yet-unresolved ambiguity.
In armchair-psychological terms, Poor Joey may have been generated out of the fact
that Monty does blame his son and is in fact angered by the boys just walking away from
the vandalized car, and thus can hear his own words and those of his recipient as at best not
clearly enough not blaming the boy. It may be that he has found himself forced to produce
something so drastically over solicitous to make himself heard through the crescendo of
blame that has only intensified with each next utterance.

The following fragment also involves the relational-pair categories parent-child, with
the attendant conventional proprieties. Again the disambiguation does not come off as a
solution or repair, and again the recipients responses are inscrutable.
Heres the situation. Christmas is approaching. Two young mothers, Ann and Linda,
are chatting on the telephone and talk has turned to presents for the kids. Ann has already
bought some for her own kids, and also some for Lindas kids. At one point shes remarked
that what Ive got for them theres no way youre going to be ableto get it in your car,
which sounds pretty impressive.
As the fragment begins, Linda is asking what Steven, one of Anns children, wants for
Christmas. To Anns I dont know she responds I dont know either (Lines 15); that
is, she speaks of herself as a candidate gift giver in search of the right gift (and perhaps
something pretty special) for her friends little boy.
(6)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Linda:
Ann:
Linda:
Ann:
Linda:
Ann:
Linda:
Ann:
Ann:
Linda:
Ann:
->
Linda:
Ann:
Linda:
Ann:
[TCI(b):16:2526]
So:: Whatd Stevn wa::nt.
(0.2)
hhhhhh Oh:::(m) tch I: dont kno [w, [
[tch I dont
know eether. [I
[(Bt) he keeps tell in yi.hknow
before he mentioned thet he said he wannid uh
( .) tch a tra::ctor.
Mmhm,
[
[hhhh En, I donknowf they have those liddle
To: nka things? bt hes go-ot two athese (.)
grader uh not graders bt tra:ctor things
out [here.
[Yea [:h? h?
[hhhh Anthats aonly thing yihknow
he kept telling s- u- Donna one day she went with
me tin the store en she stayed in th- car with
thkids en then I hh-hh did the sa:me fer he:r,
hhhh a:n uh:m sh- t she said thet s- Steven
said he wannid the tra:ctor.=
hhhhh(h)y(h)ihkno(h)w]
[
[M m : : : : .]
=hh Oh thats ni: ce hhuh heh heh heh h [uh- u]
[heh he] h=
=He aint gettn one, [heh] heh hhhh] hh=
[Ye: ah .]
=Bu:t. I dont know I rilly(d) (0.2) phhh Hes

28
29
30
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
Linda:
Ann:
Linda:
Ann:
Linda:
so ha:rd. tuh figure out (.) what tih git

im [this year]
[eYea:h.]
((ca 8 lines omitted, in the same vein))
I got im a lotta things tih jis:siddo:wn

en [:
[Ye:a:h.=
=pk en do things. I do: nt I donknow I really
dont wannim tuh hhave a lotta stuff ....
So : : (m) tlk hhh I dont know just (0.2) ga: :me
yihknow booksn:: stu [ff he cn] do stuff hh
[Mm::.] [Yeah.
Linda as candidate gift giver in search of a gift for Steven may be what sets up the ambiguity problem here. When Ann does mention something Steven really wants, a toy tractor
(Lines 1620), one question might be whether Linda is listening to the anecdote that that
information is embedded in as a story recipient or as an information seeker. And what may
be happening in Anns series of utterances following Steven said he wanted the tractor is
an attempt to convey to Linda that shes neither to run out and buy the kid a tractor nor to
feel accountable for not doing so, without saying so in so many words. (While Ann might
have avoided the whole problem by simply not mentioning the story of Stevens telling
their friend Donna that he wanted a tractor, she might forsee Donnas mentioning it to
Linda and be trying to head off whatever problems that might entail.)
Anns initial attempt to defuse Steven said he wanted the tractor, a dont take this
seriously marker, the laughing recompleter (h)y(h)ou kno(h)w is overlapped by Lindas
simultaneous appreciative Mm:::. To the mention of the tractor (Lines 2122). (That
the next place Linda produces that sort of utterance is at the fragments end, when Ann
summarizes the foregoing talk by mentioning some things that shed like Steven to have,
So, I dont know, just game you know, books and stuff (Lines 4345) suggests that its
initial occurrence might also be produced as a response to a gift suggestion made to her
by Ann.)
Anns next attempt, her ironic self-quoted response to the storied announcement that
Steven wants a tractor, Oh thats nice huh heh heh heh is received by Linda with a little
laugh (Lines 2324).
That is, Lindas responses give no indication that she sees herself off the hook when it
comes to the toy tractor.
Anns problem here may be the reverse of Montys in Fragment 5. That is, whereas
Monty may be not at all sure that the conventional proprieties are working for him so that
hell be understood to be more concerned for the boy than for the car, Ann may be discovering that the conventional proprieties are working too well, that shes not being heard as not
wanting her child to have the toy he so much wants for Christmas.
And it is, perhaps, therefore that we get the disambiguating He aint getting one, heh
heh (Line 25).

I have a feeling that this utterance is as uncharacteristically callous as Montys Poor
Joey in fragment 5 is uncharacteristically solicitous. But in this case the callousness may
specifically be produced to be taken lightly, not only with the appended laughter, but with
the aint. Shes to be heard as doing talking tough to get a point across. And a bit further
on, the possible callousness of He aint getting one is shown to have been a matter of
motherly concern; that instead of toys, shed prefer him to have game books; things that
promote activity (see Lines 4144).
A quick note about aint. Ive transcribed two phone calls between these two women;
this very long one (ca 45 minutes) and another, shorter one. This is the only occurrence of
aint. All other utterances that could be done with aint are done with standard syntax.3
Not long after Id put together an earlier draft of this exercise, I began watching coverage
of the O.J. Simpson trial. Several times I heard aint used in the way Ann uses it. And
in some instances, the aint was embedded in language a cut above the ordinary. For
example:
(6.a.)
[TV news, caught in passing]
((Cindy Adams, New York Post columnist))
Adams: If theres a better system anywhere I aint found it yet. But theres something
inherently wrong with whats happening in this case.
(6.b.)
[CNBC Special Report, 42495]
((Manny Medrano, commentator, asked about the feasibility of using professional jurors.))
Medrano:
That also (.) aint gonna happen fthe feeruh-r-f The reason thet it rilly flies in
the face of Constitutional protections,
And just recently, looking through some medical data collected in 1992,1 came across a
physician making similar use of aint.
(6.C.)
[HospSite: PIS:82792:2122]
((Senior attending physician Slater is commenting on intern Fitchs suggestion that a patient be
scheduled for a psych consult))
Slater:
It might be worth it causeit might be Yknow kind of [an unstable mo
ment where
[
Fitch:
[Mm [Mhm
Slater:
hhh just getting on a waiting listn having an: (0.7) hhh (.) something happen in a couple
months just (.) aint gonna do the jo: [b.

Fitch:
[Yeah.
Slater:
hhh Its not that shes got a crisis its just this is the m- the right ti:me
(.)
Fitch:
M [hm
Slater:
[period in which something ought to nappe [n.
Fitch:
[Mhm.
For example (and these are all by Ann): [TCI(b):16] p. 1. Im not gnna have it done., p. 15,
Im not worryin about it., p. 57, Its not rilly like a cowboy thing, p. 60, thats not yours,
p. 79, hes not doing that. [TCI(c):12] p. 5, Were not answering., p. 13, yer not talking tuh
somebddy:.

(Especially nice here is that having used aint gonna do the job to make his point, Dr.
Slater returns to the standard syntax of Its not that shes got a crisis )
These sorts of materials can lead us to see Anns He aint getting one, not as an
expression of callousness, but as an idiomatic resource shes put to work to make herself
utterly clear in an environment of persistent ambiguity. And in that regard, then, it may well
be that Montys strikingly solicitous Poor Joey is a similar sort of resource being put to
similar work in a similar environment.
The final case and its consideration, like Fragment 5, comes out of the early work on
troubles-talk (see Jefferson & Lee, 1980). As in the preceding three fragments, we get
a series of ambiguous utterances. Unlike the preceding three, this one has no explicit,
last-resort component. Thingsif they are adriftremain adrift.
In this section of the troubles-talk report, the point being made is that although troublestalk seems to have the potential for progressing as an orderly sequence, it appears to be
enormously susceptible to contamination by other types of activities. One such contaminant is the negotiating of a plan, in which one participants trouble is the others obstacle.
In the following fragment, someone has phoned with a project in mind (leaving her
little boy to be looked after for a while so that she can go shopping) and discovers that the
intended coparticipant in the project (the babysitter) has a trouble that may be consequential for that project (shes got the flu). And once again, the issue of proper parental concern
for a child seems to be involved.
(7)
[TCI(b):7:12]
( (Call opening unrecorded; Lily is the caller and is now identifying herself to Cora.))
1
Lily:
Jo:dys mothe:r?
2
(0.6)
3
Cora:
Oh ye [h ((very hoarse, here and throughout call))

4
Lily:
[Jo:dy Lih- tempi,

5
Cora:
Oh: yen,
6
(0.2)
7
Lily:
Are you si::ck,

8
Cora:
tch ah got the flu.

9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Lily:
Cora:
Cora:
Lily:
Cora:
Lily:
Cora:
Lily:
Lily:
Cora:
aOh::::.uh [hnh [hnh ha] ha-ha-ha

[h- [hhhhh] hh-hh-hk
(.)
hh
[Wul that ni:ps itnna bu:d, hh ah wz gonna ask
yuh if yih cd keep Jo:dy fer a c(h)ouple hours
but yih cant if yih got the flu::
tch Ah wouldnwanim arounme ho:n,t=
nNO::::,]
[
[hhhhhhh]hh Cause uh: ahv really ghhot it.
(.)
yo [u sure-]
[Ah-]

22
23
24
Cora:
Lily:
25
26
27
28
29
30
Cora:
Lily:
Cora:
31
32
33
Lily:
Cora:
Lily:
(.)
But ahd be glad=do it if I wasnt sihhck.
-yousure sound aw:ful ul. [(hoarse.)]
[ t Oh: :] my God
ah been hhh running thhighestempihtures you
ever sa:w.
Omy go:sh well let me hang upn letchu git back
tuh be:yudh=
=eh huh [uh uhh] h h
[So:rry]I disturbed you.]
=Hayih doin hhon=
=Oh jes fi:ne.
Across the fragment, the trouble is talked about by reference to its consequences for Lilys
project; that is, will the fact that Cora has the flu stand in the way of her minding Lilys
little boy. The presence of a symptom (hoarseness) and the announcement of the flu does
not in itself terminate the possibility that the project can be carried out. This is perhaps
because a feature of the term the flu is that it gets applied to almost anything and may here
be naming something quite mild, and a feature of hoarseness is that it can be residual and
not at all debilitating. So the sheer assertion Ive got the flu (Line 8) and the presence of
hoarseness are in a range of ways unreliable indices.
And it appears that although Lily announces absolute withdrawal of the project, Well
that nips it in the bud (Line 13), she is allowing for and perhaps specifically pursuing its
being carried out. For one, several alternative courses are available to her. She might at
this point introduce the Sorry I disturbed you, which eventually closes off discussion
of Coras flu (Line 31). Less drastically, she might now initiate the diagnostic inquiry that
occurs midway into the discussion, You sure sound awful (Line 24). Instead, having
announced abandonment of the project, she goes on to describe it: I was going to ask you
if you could keep Jody for a couple of hours and her grounds for abandoning it: but you
cant if youve got the flu (Lines 1315).
And in the description of the project is at least one detail that might tend to urge for its
being taken on by Cora; that is, there is mention of the briefness of the intended period
of babysitting (a couple of hours), where, that something will take but a little while is a
routine component of such negotiations.
Then there is the proposed reason for abandoning the project, but you cant if youve
got the flu. This utterance strikes me as a proposal offered for confirmation or disconfirmation, perhaps because stating it makes it sequentially relevant; a response to it is due.
Also, the proposed grounds for abandonment of the project are specifically disattentive
to what ought to be a crucial concern if the flu is being taken seriously; that is, it ought
not to be that this sick woman cant take on the job, but that if she is sick the child ought
not to be exposed to her.
So, in this utterance that announces itself as abandoning the project, there is a minimizing not only of the task (just a couple of hours) but of the obstacle (no concern about
contagion), and the babysitter has been put into a position of confirming or disconfirming
that she cant take on the job.

Now we come to the target series. In the utterance that confirms that the project ought to
be abandoned, it appears that Cora is addressing the seriousness of the flu by reference to
possible contagion with I wouldnt want him around me, hon (Line 16). She is in effect
hanging up a quarantine sign.
But the utterance is ambiguous. It is at least conceivable that what is being referred to
is the child as a nuisance to a sick person rather than (or as well as) the sick person as a
source of contagion for the child.
This is a very real issue, and it does show up in conversationbut interestingly, at least
in the cases Ive noticed, not as a person-to-person assertion, but as a third-party report.
So, for example, in the following fragment a woman is talking about her daughter Janets
very ill father-in-law.
(7.a)
Emma:
[NB:IV:13:R:56]
Janet sd he looked (.) awflly ba:d though bcourse Fre:d ditn say e
looked so ba:d but uh: (0.4) what kinyih do:, hes ho:me en yee ah mean they
cant have
the kids aroun distur:b Yihknow
And in the following fragment a woman is talking about her daughter-in-laws mum,
who has yet to see her newborn granddaughter.
(7.b)
Mattie:
Leslie:
Mattie:
Leslie:
[Holt:88U:2:4:3]
And uh (0.2) her mum rang me this morning n (0.3) they could get from Salsbry
just uh within a day but sh sez I cant go n see er Ive got bronchi:ti [s
[Oh dear what a sha:me.
Shsz I ca:nt go anywhe(h)re nea(h)r them an
she do(h)nt feel like it anyway you [know,

[nNo::.h
Fragment 7.b is especially instructive. We get both aspects specifically referred to, that is,
sick person as a source of contagion (again with the self-quarantining, stay away formulation: here, I cant go anywhere near them, in Fragment 7 I wouldnt want him around
me), and sick person as in any event unwilling.
Further, the covert character of the latter is interestingly invoked; that is, while Mattie
quotes her fellow new grandmother as saying I cant go and see her, Ive got bronchitis,
she does something else with the unwillingness aspect, not quoting but asserting and she
dont feel like it anyway. How ever she may have come to that conclusion (whether the
other woman actually said it, or some sort of common knowledge is being invoked; i.e., no
ill person would feel like it), Mattie is not ascribing those very words to her, but providing a sort of buffer by forming it up as a statement about her and not by her.
So, returning to Fragment 7, it appears that the understanding of Coras I wouldnt
want him around me, hon as an assertion of self-quarantine in the interests of protecting

Lilys little boy from contagion is based on a conventional public propriety. But there turns
out to be that covert aspect, that is, that behind the quarantine sign is one that reads do
not disturb.
Compounding that, is the local context, specifically, that Lily herself is exhibiting no
concern about quarantine.
Given these factors, Cora, having said I wouldnt want him around me, hon and receiving a drawn-out, sympathetic nNo::::, (Line 17), may have good grounds to suspect that
she is being heard to be invoking the do not disturb alternative.
A quick note about nNo::::,. Comparing British and American uses of No as a
response token (not an answer to a question), I found that whereas British speakers use
No for negatively framed priors, for example:
(7.c)
Kath:
Polly:
[Wheatley(1):16]
So ah dont kno::w, (.) yihknow when shes com[ing
[No::,
Americans deploy Uh huh, Yeah, and so on, not only for positive but for negative
priors, for example:
(7.d) [SBL:2:2:R:1]
Jean:
Allen doesnknow anything new out there eether.
Clara:
Uh huh,
(7.e)
[TCI(b):8:23] ((re: allergy medication))
R.J. :
En I donknow where she keeps that sorta stu:ff,
Dick:
Y:ah
reserving No for affiliation; for showing sympathy, solidarity, and so on, often where
values and morals are concerned, for example:
(7.f)
Maggie:
Dawn:
(7.g)
Nancy:
Emma:
[JG:II(a):3:2] ((Maggie blacked out at party))

she asked me if it wz becuz Id had too much t dri:nk en I sid no
becuz et the t] i: me
[
[N O : : ; : :.]
[NB:II:2:R:19] ((Nancy knows that Andr lied.))
becuz Andr never stayed home all day tih call anybuddy [Y, h
hhh] hh
In any event, the nNo::::, with which Lily receives Coras I wouldnt want him around
me, hon is not unequivocally selective of either alternative (quarantine or do not disturb and, as in similar circumstances in Fragments 4, 5, and 6, another non disambiguating
item is offered, Because Ive really got it (Line 18), Cora perhaps attempting to alert her
recipient to the existence of a problem while remaining non explicit.
But, in contrast to the prior fragments with their disambiguating third items, Cora
produces yet another non explicit utterance, But Id be glad to do it if I wasnt sick

(Line 23), and the ambiguity is left unresolved: Is she expressing concern for the child or
for herself?
It is certainly possible that she is using ambiguous talk to pursue attention to her troubles while not explicitly saying poor-me-and-the-devil-take-your-kid.
On the other hand, the ambiguity may be a by-product of an attempt to avoid being seen
as trying to instruct a mother on the proper grounds for abandoning the project; that is, that
its not that Cora cant baby-sit, but that the child should not be exposed to herand that
that ought to have been the mothers first concern.
In which case, across a series of attempts, this speaker might be characterized as invoking, while specifically declining to explicate, the proprieties in hopes that the recipient
will come to see that her prior talk exhibited a misalignment to those proprieties and now
produce talk that will exhibit correct alignment.
And whereas in each of the preceding fragments the problem can be ascribed to the one
who is producing the ambiguous talk, in Fragment 7 it may be that the trouble lies with the
recipient.
In which case, whereas in each of the preceding fragments the one who produces the
ambiguous talk solves the problem with a disambiguating utterance, in Fragment 7, as the
recipient appears to remain dense to the problem, the speaker may be deciding that tactful
ambiguity is preferable to possibly confrontational disambiguation.
A closing note. One thing we can notice is that whereas in Fragment 7 disambiguation
(possibly for good reason) did not occur, in the preceding materials we did see an eventual
move to explicitness.
One question that raises is, why do we not see an immediate move to something explicit?
Why, for example, in Fragment 2, do we get Go ahead again? Why, in Fragment 5, do
we get another indexicalized complaint (Thats awful followed by That really makes
me mad)?
This may have to do with a general feature of interaction, something that might be called
understanding assumed, which involves that the way in which were talking to each other
is in principle adequate for understanding. Where, then, on any given occasion, resolving
some particular problem by explicating, explaining, and so on, could constitute a rupture
of that in-principle condition of understanding each other.
In one of his lectures, Sacks talks of how monumental in its import it is that in their
interaction people suppose that what weve been talking about all along, you know in the
way I told it to you, and I suppose that in producing any next thing I say. He goes on to
offer a rhapsodic description of a possible consequence of that assumption; that without
thinking about it, the work I do is to find for any item you sayno matter how grossly it
misunderstands what I say, how well it understands what I say (Sacks, 1992, p. 184).
The materials Ive been exploring here may involve a rather more prosaic working out
of understanding assumed on particular occasions when that assumption falters. Specifically, when an initial non explicit reference seems to be getting into difficulty, its speaker
may attempt to alert its recipient to the problem while preserving the utterances original,
non explicit character, and thereby preserving the assumption of understandingit being
only when that attempt fails that the assumption is breached and explication is brought
to bear.

REFERENCES
Jefferson, G. (1986). Notes on latency in overlap onset. Human Studies, 9, 153183.
Jefferson, G. & Lee, J.R.E. (1980). On the sequential organization of troublestalk in ordinary conversation. (SSRC end-of-grant report).
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J.M.Atkinson & J. C.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 5964). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1992). [Lecture 2]. In G.Jefferson. (Ed), Lectures on conversation (Vol. 2, p. 184).
Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
14
The Surfacing of the Suppressed
Emanuel A.Schegloff
UCLA
I was first alerted to the phenomenon I sketch here by an incident in which I was a participant. The episode was not taped; I noticed the key occurrence when it happened in the
course of the interaction, a meeting (job interview would probably be the more accurate
term) with the Vice Chancellor of a small New England university in the early 1970s. After
the end of the interview, I wrote a note about what I had noticed onyou wont believe
thisthe back of an envelope.1 Heres the note:
Talking to Vice Chancellor; he tells about an administration report that slams some
departments and the trouble to be expected when the report becomes public. It is set
up for the shit will hit the fan, but he censors it. Still, its in his brain, as witnessed by: a few moments later, replying to a suggestion that it not be made public,
he says its already in the fan.
So there in a nutshell is a raw description of the phenomenon. If we ask what happens to the
talk that gets suppressed when an utterance gets aborted before being brought to completion, then we sometimes see the suppressed item pop up in the talk later. As I say, thats a
raw description. How can we refine it? And why, or how, is it of interest?
As an initial take, we might say it is of interest, first, because it is a recurrent occurrence
in conversation (if it turns out to be) and it is our job to describe such things. And, second,
because we may well find ourselves called upon to explore and register what has been
suppressed when talk is self-interrupted, and what prompts the suppression. If we have
grounds for looking to a particular place and knowing how to recognize what is to be found
in it, we may find evidence there to support a claim about what was suppressed. And often
enough what was suppressed is the best lead as to how come it was suppressed.
How can we refine the rough initial account? At the very least it would be nice to put
some constraints on the claim that something said later is the suppressed item, and some
constraints on later; surely it cannot be indefinitely later.
And surely we want to press such refinements not on anecdotes written on the backs
of envelopes, but on recorded data that can be inspected over and over again to give us
the best possible chance of detecting this phenomenon. And it needs detecting. As we see
herein, what happens to suppressed material often appears designed to escape noticefor
obvious reasons; if it was wanted to be kept out of the talk once, there may well be grounds
I am, it should go without saying, not recommending this way of working, especially for getting
started on a project, but one should not discard candidate phenomena only because they have come
to attention in this way.
The surfacing of the suppressed 205

for keeping it from figuring in the talk subsequently as well. In fact, I found my most recent
instance while preoccupied with some other topic, in data that I have been working on for
about 30 years, data that were in fact collected several years before my episode with the
Vice Chancellor. Thats a long time to escape detection! Here, I can examine only a few
exemplars, but I think we can at least sketch some of the key features of this phenomenon,
which I am calling the surfacing of the suppressed.2
A FIRST TAKE: INITIAL OBSERVATIONS AND RESOURCES
Let me begin with an exchange that presents (at Line 29) a very simple and accessible version of some of the central features of these occurrences. (The reader is urged to examine
the transcripts with some care and not read around them; notational conventions are
explained in Appendix A. Readers are invited to access the audio of this and virtually all
the data extracts in this article, in a format suitable for most platforms, on my home page,
which can be addressed at <http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/schegloff/>, with a link
to the present paper. Should this web page cease to be available, readers should contact me
directly or search the California Digital Library at <http://cdlib.org/>. The extract is from
a telephone call in the late 1960s between two young women who grew up in the same
neighborhood and attended the same college until Bee transferred to another school; here
Bee is asking about the school that she has left and that Ava still attends.)
(1) TG, 4:345:31 (simplified)
34
(0.4)
35 Bee:
Eh-yih have anybuddy: thet uh:? (1.2) I would
36
know from the English deparmint there?
37 Ava:
Mm-mh. Tch! I dont think so.
38 Bee:
Oh, =<Did they geh ridda Kuhleznik yet hhh
01 Ava:
No in fact I know somebuddy who ha:s huh [now.
02 Bee:
[Oh
03
my got hh[hhh
In Gail Jeffersons article On the Poetics of Ordinary Talk (1996), she employed the term suppression-release (at pp. 8, 18, 20 and 24) for a somewhat different, but not unrelated, phenomenon.
By that term she meant Youre being very careful not to say something, and you succeed in not
saying it, and it sneaks out in the next utterance (p. 8). However, in none of the instances that she
examined in this regard is there an overtly displayed suppression of the talk (e.g., by cutting off the
talk that would articulate the suppressed material), talk that subsequently is released. In three of
the four instances, Jefferson developed a cogent account of an ongoing suppression of some word
or theme that subsequently comes out in the talk, but that was not done as a suppressionwas not
done as a displayed suppression; in the first of the instances for which she introduced the term,
there is a displayed suppression, but it is applied prematurely, and the item hypothetically being
avoided (Blacks) is not the one subject to displayed suppression and does not in fact come out
subsequently. So although Jeffersons account of what she referred to by suppression-release is
tracking something that is thematically closely related to what I am examining here, the details of
the occurrences and their analysis are different.
2

04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
Ava:
Bee
Ava
Bee
Ava
Bee
Ava
Bee
Bee
Ava
Bee
Bee
Ava
Bee
Ava
Bee:->
Ava:
Bee:
Ava:
[Yeh en s he siz yihknow he remi:nds

me of d- hih-ih- tshe reminds me, hhh of you,
meaning me:.
(0.4)
Uh-ho thats [a- thats a s[wee:t co:mplimint]
[Kuhleznik.= [I said gee:, tha:n]ks
a lo:[t honeh,
[hhhhhhuh huh=
=.hh [Said] yih all gonna gitch mouth shuddup=
[hhhh!]
=fih you yih dont sto:p i [t.]
[M]mmyeh,
I think evrybuddys had her hm[hhh!
[Ohh,
[shes the biggest] pain in the a:ss.
[ -fih something,]
(0.3)
Yeh,
.T Shes teaching uh English Lit too, no more
composition,
Ohj: :, Shes moved up in the wor[ld]
[She] must know
somebuddy because all those other teachers they
got rid of.hhhh
(0.3)
Yeh I bet they got rid of all the one::Well one I
had, t! hhhh in the firs term there, fer the
firsterm of English, she die::d hhuh-uhh [hhh
[Oh:.
She died in the middle of the te:rm?mhhh! =
=Oh thats too ba:d hha ha!=
Note then that this extract begins with a topic-proffering sequence initiated by Bee to Ava,
a sequence whose second try (at Line 38) asks whether they (i.e., the authorities at the
college) got ridda Kuleznick yet, a teacher who is held in low regard by both Ava and
Bee. They work up the Kuhleznick case for a bit, and it turns out that she has not only
not been sacked, but is doing very wellteaching English Lit too, no more composition,
the import of which is registered by Bee (Line 24) as having moved up in the world, and
explained by Ava (Lines 2527) by reference to her knowing somebody because all those
other teachers they got rid of. Such a reuse of a word from a question (Line 38s Did they
get ridda Kuhleznick yet) deep into an extended answer sequence is a practice for marking
or claiming the end of the answering (Schegloff, 1998).
And here (at Line 29) it appears that Bee is aligning with this move to close the sequence
by agreeing with the claim with which Ava has proposed to end it with respect to the fate

of the faculty they knew in common, Yeh I bet they got rid of all the one::. Although this
is epistemically qualified to a supposition by the I bet, the turn-so-far still appears on the
way to alignment, projecting a continuation as got rid of all the one[s I had].3 But it is
aborted before getting there.
The turn is arrested in a relatively unusual waynot with a cut-off but with a sound
stretch (marked by the colons near the end of Line 29). It seems to convey, waitamminnit,
Im just thinking of something that makes what I was about to have said not quite right.
It exemplifies a suggestion made some years ago (Schegloff, 1979) that, whereas cut-offs
commonly initiate repair on the talk-already-produced, sound stretches ordinarily initiate
repair on talk as yet unsaid. And so Bee aborts the about-to-have-said-ness of it, and tells
what problematizes it: One of her former teachers could not have been gotten rid of by the
secular higher-ups (so to speak), because she died. And thereby what was on the way to
being an agreement with what Ava had said, and an alignment of their views and the closing of the sequence, is derailed. It is turned into an exception to what Ava had said, and
thereby at best a nonalignment, perhaps even a disagreement and challenge (a characterization resonant with the well that initiates the new departure, well being often deployed
as an opposition- or disagreement-marking token).
As it happens, this outcome characterizes virtually every sequence and topic in this
conversation. At one point, having secured from Ava an agreement that she is home (she
must be, because that is where Bee called her and she answered, and this is before callforwarding technology), Bee remarks in frustrated vindication (or vindicated frustration),
See? hI-Im doin somethin right tday finally, I finally said something right. (0.2) You are
home. Still, Ava finds a way to distance herself even from this inescapable truth: Yeh-1
believe so. Physically anyway. Bees backing away from the alignment we are examining,
concerning getting rid of teachers, is just one appearance of something deeper and more
pervasive going on in this interaction and in the relationship of which it is the most recent
(and possibly the last) episode.
But note how Bee starts this exception: Well one I had t! .hhhh in the firs term
there, and so forth. Note two things. First, what follows the suppression of the ending of
the turn unit that was aborted includes in its very beginning just the words that appear to
have been suppressedI had. Indeed, we almost reflexively use those words to either
reconstruct, or ground the reconstruction of, what that aborted ending was going to be.4
Second, note the break between one I had and its descriptor in the first term there. This
ends up being a single phrasal person referenceone I had in the first term there, but it
is fractured in the middle, both with the tongue click and with a substantial inbreath, an
The brackets enclose a plausibly projectable continuation of the talk that was not in fact articulated.
4
As we do with error correction; cf. Jefferson, 1974.
3

inbreath that displays the at least transient unit-in-itsown-right status of this chunk, and
the persistence of the boundary that was projected to occur after had.5
Here is another, quite similar, instance (at Lines 38 and 41). Mark has been visiting and
schmoozing with Sherrie, Karen, and Ruthie in their dormitory room in the mid-1970s, talk
mostly dominated by Marks recounting of his recent social life. Then:
(A)
SN-4, 12:1540.
15
Mark:
Yih know my stomach after every meal now feels
16
r:ea:lly weird n its been giving hh Mi:les got

17
Digel tablets? n stuff like tha:t?

18
(0.4)
19
[henh
20
Mark:
[A:nd uh: like-(-) ts r:ea:lly weird, ( too).
21
hh- I find one thing .dont eat their pineapples.

22
They make yer stomach imme:diately after dinner

23
really feel lousy.<t least m.i:ne.=

24
Sher
=Their pineapples ca:nned.
25
(1.5)
26
Mark
(I ont care,) its still terrible,
27
Sher
mmh
28
Mark
hhhh HUH-HUH hhhh hh they really- just turn my
29
stomach. Sumpm after dinner [(ih) (-)(s)] turning

30
in yer stomach .hh

31
(??)
[hhhh hh]
32
(0.5)
33
Mark
But U: m:
34
(12)
35
Kar:
Cest la vie, cest la vie,=
36
Mark
=eyeh
37
38
39
40
41
42
Mark: :-->
?Kar:
Mark: :-->
(1.2)
Thats about it hell I havent been doing anything
but- () s- (Well,) (0.2) going out [actu] ally.
[mmh]
(0.7)
I af tuh start studying no:w
Mark is apparently starting to complain that he has done nothing but s[tudy], which is (by the testimony of his own prior talk) the opposite of the case. When he comes to the payoff component
of this turn-constructional unit (at the start of line 39), he suppresses it, and confesses that he has
done nothing but good times. The correction from what hewas about to say to the truth is even
underscored by the actually which serves here (as it often does; Clift, 1999, 2001) as a correctionmarker. And then the suppressed studying surfaces in the turn to repentance which follows
(at line 42); one might almost hazard the conjecture that this further extension of his talk at this
juncture is designed to accommodate the surfacing of the suppressed element of the prior talk.

So the candidate finding I want to take away from this instance is that something that has
been suppressed in the course of producing talk in a turn may pop up in the same words in
the very next spate of talk. We add to and shape this observation as we examine additional
candidate exemplars, but, for now, we have this: what was suppressedthat is, the word
or words that were suppressed (if they appear to have been projected), may surface in the
immediately following talk. That gives us something to look for and a place to look for it,
and those two thingsposition and compositionare major parts of all sorts of practices
and phenomena in talk-in-interaction.
EXCURSUS: SUPPRESSION AND INSERTION
There are occurrences that look very much like suppressions, ones in which the suppressed item pops up in immediately following talk, which however are a quite different phenomenon. They are instances of same-turn repairs accomplishing the operation of
insertion. Thus for example:
(2)
01
02
03
04
05
Joyce and Stan, 4:0711

Stan: And fer the ha:t, Im lookin fer somethi:ng uh
a
-->
little different. Na- uh:f: not f:: exactly funky
but not (.) a r-regular typea hhh >well yihknow
I I< have that other hat I wear, yihknow?

Joyce: Yeah,
In this telephone conversation recorded in the mid-1970s, Stan is soliciting advice from
his sister Joyce about where to purchase a hat and a pair of sandals. At Line 02 he appears
to suppress somethingwhich begins with an fwhen he says about the hat that he is
looking to buy, not f::. And when a moment later the word funky comes out, it may
look like the surfacing of the suppressed. But Stan has in effect put the utterance-so-far
on hold in order to insert somethinghere, the word exactlybefore the word he was
in the process of saying, after which he returns to the saying of it; thus not f:: exactly
funky. Funky has not been suppressed, only to surface anyway; it has been held in
momentary abeyance to insert something before it. To be sure, this practice is as deserving
of careful analysis as suppression is (because it is as much an issue for recipient as suppression is): How shall we understand a speakers disruption of the production of the talk to
insert some elementthis element in particularat this juncture? What does its insertion
do to the upshot of the turn? To what possible understandings of the talk by recipient does
a speaker show orientation by inserting this element when it was not included in the previously articulated composition of the turn? Etc. But these questions are different than the
ones mobilized by suppression. Or consider the following extract from earlier in the same
conversation. Stan has asked his sister the outcome of a traffic ticket incident in which
she was involved and she has reported deciding to pay the ticket rather than contesting it.
Then:

(3)
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Joyce and Stan, 01:2030

Stan:
[I guess it would ye you figured out finally
found out itd be too much ha:ssle ta take care
of it.
Joyce:--> hh I figuired (0.4) in order: I would just haf
tig- make t.wo trips down there:,

Stan:
Yeah,
Joyce:--> Yihknow Id hafta go down there ta pay it.,
Stan:
Right,
Joyce:
Then make an appoi:ntment (.) ta come back
there
again,
Stan:
Yea[h,
Joyce:
[An they wouldnt give me a date, fer a month
an a half,
Stan:
Yeah,
Stan is offering a guess about why his sister Joyce has chosen to pay a parking/traffic ticket
rather than contesting it. Joyce appears to be suppressing something when she says (at
Lines 0405, in regularized orthography), I would just have to g-, with that something
surfacing at Line 07, Id hafta go down there ta pay it. But it is clear that here again an
insertion is being done. Joyce has temporarily put this utterance on hold while inserting
make two trips down there before the go:inserting, that is, the larger point of which
the selfinterrupted utterance is a first part.
Although this is not the place for a substantial comparative treatment of suppression
and insertion, at least this much can be said here. A speaker can show that insertion
is being done by having the previously abandoned and now repeated or returning element
be implicated in the same trajectory of utterance as was initially in progress, and this is
ordinarily implemented by employing the same grammatical form and lexiconby doing
resuming as part of the practice of doing inserting. In suppression, as we see later, the
suppressed elementwhen surfacedis often virtually unrecognizably different from
what was in progress or due next grammatically and semantically rather than resumptive
of it, and is implicated in a different trajectory of utterance.
One upshot of registering the practice of same turn insertion repair, and differentiating suppression from it, is this. It may be necessary to track the subsequent development
of the talk in order to determine exactly what practice the earlier abandonment of a
TCU-in-progress (TCU stands for turn-constructional unit) was the product ofnecessary
both for the co-participant and for the professional analyst. And, for the coparticipant,
once engaged with that subsequent talk, and with its potential sequential implicativeness for what should be said next in response, the possibility of returning to the point of
abandonmentthe point of suppressionand lingering on its import is attenuated.

SECOND TAKE: PAYOFFS: EMPLOYING THE OBSERVATIONS AND
RESOURCES
Returning now to suppression itself, let us see what the resources developed on the first
exemplar (before the excursus), and the search that they permit, yield on another specimen. In this telephone call between two college women in the mid-1970s, Hyla has called
her good friend Nancy ostensibly to talk about the arrangements for going to the theater
that evening, but a good deal of talk about other matters gets done as well. Quite early on
in the conversation there are opportunities for each to tell anything major that happened
during the day, and it is in such a telling by Nancy that the utterance we examine occurs
(at Line 24).
(4)
HG, 2:125
Hyla:
[Bu:t]
Nancy:
[My f]:face hurts,=
Hyla:
=Wt-
(.)
Hyla:
Oh whatde do tih you.
()
Nancy:
GODe dis () pracly killed my dumb fa:ce,=
Hyla:
=Why: Ho[-ow.]
Nancy:
[(With,)]
10
()
11
Nancy:
With this thing I donee I wzneven looking I
12
dont kno::w,
13
()
14
Nancy:
Bt e jis like orpened up,
15
(0.6)
16
Nancy:
a lo*:t* yknow(v)
17
(0.4)
18
Nancy:
the pimples I ha:ve= =
19
Hyla:
=Eoh::,
20
()
21
Nancy:
It (js) hurrt so bad Hyla I wz cry:::ing,=
22
Hyla:
=Yhher khhiddi[;ng.]
23
Nancy:
[nNo:]::He really hurt me he goes
24
Im sorry, hh wehh hh I khho th(h) at dznt make
25
i(h)t a (h) n (h) y better yihknow he wz jst (0.4)
26
so, e-he didnt mean to be but he wz really
27
hurting m[e.

Looking at Nancys turn at Lines 2327, we can note that here too an utterance is aborted,
its ending suppressed. Nancy has reported her exchange with the doctor after crying in
reaction to the pain: He apologizes (Lines 234), she reports herself to reject the apology
(Lines 245). Then (in standard orthography), He was just (0.4) so, e-he didnt mean to
be but he was really hurting me. He was just so what? In the aftermath of pain infliction
and an apology that is treated as rejectable? He was just sowhat?
I take it that this can be not only a question for us external analysts; it can be an issue
for the parties as well, the recipients of the talk. Recall that recipients parse a speakers talk
in real time, turn-so-far by turn-so-far, projecting where it is going, what it is coming to,
what it will take for it to be possibly complete. They are projecting all the time, and using
each next bit of the speakers actual talk to confirm or modify their projection of where the
talk is goingto re-project. So Hyla is not listening in a docile manner for each next bit
of Nancys turn to fall into her lap, so to speak. She is listening proactively, in the fashion
that (as we have seen from such work as that of Sacks [1992] and Lerner [1991, 1996] on
collaboratives or anticipatory completions) can often allow such a recipient in effect to say
the projected next part of the utterance for or with the current speaker. Indeed, in just such
a place as we have arrived at, one often enough finds the recipient chiming in at the point
of the hesitation and supplying the missing item (Lerner, 1991, 1996). There are grounds
then for taking the recipient to be oriented to the possible turn completion that is being suppressed and not delivered (just as recipients can be demonstrably oriented to it when suppression is not an issue). He was so There is a virtual tension built up by the recurrent
cycle of projection (by the recipient) and delivery by the speaker of a next bit of the turnso-far, a tension deprived of resolution by the suppression. We return to this theme later.6
How about mean? He was just so mean? Look then at the immediately following
talk after the suppression, and notice: He didnt mean to be but
Now this is clearly a different mean. What is suppressed in Nancys turn, if it was
mean, was a descriptor (an adjective)was the mean of nasty, cruel, and the
like. The mean of He didnt mean to be but is a verbthe mean of intend. Still,
it is a way in which the word or words that have been suppressed find a way out, so to
speak. Sometimes they are the same lexical items used in the same senseas in one I
had; sometimes they are the same lexical items used in an entirely different sense, as with
mean. And when they come out in such a radically different usage, they are very hard
to detect. In effect, they are a form of camouflage, allowing the suppressed talk to come
out, perhaps even at some level to ground the energy or tension set up by the unfulfilled
projection of the turn completion, without actually saying the suppressed thing. It (so to
speak) grounds the energy left unspent by the nonsaying of the projected, although still
not saying the suppressed, although using its word(s).7
One sort of evidence for this line is suggested by the suppressed elements reappearing in the
immediately following talk not of the suppressing speaker but of the recipient, whose close
attention to the turn-so-far, and orientation to its projected completion, are displayed by production
of the candidate suppressed element. For discussion of several exemplars of this, see Appendix B.
7
Consider the blizzard of tokens of the suppressed item in the following episode of mutual accommodation in arranging to take a meal together.
6

But what is so important about not saying the suppressed? In many such instances,
what is suppressed is suppressed because in some fashion it is problematic or delicate.
Such problematicalness or delicateness also commonly figures in a speakers providing an
opportunity for anticipatory or collaborative completion by the recipient (as in the work of
Sacks and Lerner cited earlier). Getting the recipient to say the delicate item allows them to
have said it together, collaboratively; it shows the recipient to also be capable of thinking
that thought and saying it.
So what is so delicate or problematic in the episode in Extract 4? Here is another piece
of the puzzle, another ingredient of the phenomenon being described here. We want to
show not only the suppression reappearing, and reappearing in the next spate of talk (composition and position); we would like to motivate or ground the suppression interactionally,
and where it is so grounded, come to terms with the camouflaged appearance that it sometimes takes. The phenomenon can still be there without heavy interactional motivation;
but then, perhaps, it is most centrally an artifact of the speech production machinery under
interactional control and shaping.8
(B)
MTRAC,
902,
Marcia:
Fiona:
Marcia:-->
side 1
Bu wai- dya wanna have lunch? r dinner. Witha Big Mac.
Which dya think is best fer you.
(1.0)
Well I dontuh::: (1.5) I- Im- Im adjustable. I think if I know now,
yknow I cn:uh:: (1.0) adjust my time accordingly,
I take Marcia to be saying Well I dontuh:::[know] with the know suppressed. But then note
the flurry starting with if I know now yknow, none of which is the know that she|suppressed
(which was the knowing of whatis best fer you).
There is a closely related phenomenon and practice that deserves brief mention and exemplification here, without full treatment. This involves a display of orientation to public cultural norms in
the very course of transgressing them; that is, even when they do not command full assent or conformity from the speaker her or himself. This can take the form of full or partial suppression. In the
former, the speaker omits articulation of the transgressing elements. Thus, in a storytelling episode
discussed in various papers (Goodwin, 1986, 1987; Schegloff, 1987, 1988, 1992), Mike is telling
about a fight at the race track the night before. Although he later shows himself willing to articulate
far more offensive language, he begins the storytelling itself this way:
(C)
23
24
Auto Discussion, 6:234

Mike:--> Evidently Keegan musta bumped im in
thee
(0.6)
And the silence at Line 24 is broken by the intervention of another party to the conversation. What
is missing here is quite clearly the word ass, which figures in similar contexts later in the story
and is articulated there. But here there is a sort of obeisance paid to the cultural impropriety of the

So what is the problem or delicate matter here? I offer this proposed analysis, or conjecture. Nancy is a young woman, in her late teens, in the transition between adolescence
and adulthood. Under the stress of the pain and the telling about it, it appears that she is
regressing a bit, reverting to a childs grasp of painit is inflicted by those who administer it because they are mean.
usage, and it is fully suppressed. In partial suppression, the improper talk is produced in lowered
voice, sotto voce, as what I am inclined to call quiet improprieties. For example, in the following phone call recorded in the mid-1960s, a woman of some years is telling her friend about a
holiday trip to Lake Tahoe in California, and the comparative virtues and drawbacks of the venue.
This includes what could be reckoned to be prejudiced comments about various so called minority
groups. Although she has little reason to believe she can be overheard, she nonetheless lowers her
voice to register an awareness of, and orientation to, the impropriety of what she is doing.
(D)
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18a
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SBL, T2: C4, 3:130 (simplified)

Bev:
So you go outta California into Nevahda. All of the
motels are in California, all the ga(h)mbling
places, and the big hotels, are in Nevada.

Ann:
Mm hm,
Bev:
And os its- it is. -hh
Ann:
Yeah,
Bev:
iinfinitely different. And I don know, Ann, but I
thinktheyre stealing a lotta Los Vegas.

Ann:
I wouldnt be surprized.
Bev:-->
The other thing that we noticed, ((very quiet)) You
know, we didnt see any Jews, you know in Las Vegas,
you [know how you see those greasy old women an=
Ann:
[Uh huh
Bev:
=[men, but at
Ann:
=[Uh huh,
Bev:-->
And very few Negroes, ((voice moves to low-normal))
But we saw lots of Orientals.

Ann
[Mm hm,
Bev
Ann:
Bev:-->
Ann:
Bev:
Ann:
Ann:
Bev:
Ann:
[You see, I think they come in from San Francisco.

Mm hm,
((voice returns to normal)) And the Orientals, you
know, are always very well dressed,
Mm hm,
And theyre tremendous gamblers.
Mm hm,
I think thats ()
So uhm uh:: they have a grand time at the crap
games.
Mm[hm,

There is evidence of such a stance elsewhere in this very conversation. Hyla, for example, a little later on, reacts to a mention of the Dear Abby advice column by launching
into a story: Oh:, she said something mea::n yesterday I didn like her, and as soon as
Nancy asks her to go on, she retracts the mean as a descriptor, Well ih wasnt mea:n bt
it wz really stupid. Mean here is a kind of generic negative. But here is another instance
of the usage of the term, this time from an adolescent boy, a hotrodder in 1960s Los
Angeles talking about the relationship between teenagers and the police, which embodies
just the usage I have suggested for Nancy.
(5)
1
2
3
4
5
GTS
Roger:
-->
Al:
When a cop sees a hopped up car, he doesnt care

if youre goin forty five you must be doin
somethin wrong, and if he wants to be mean, he
can bust you on a thousand things.
He doesnt have to have a reason
Here again the adult who does something painful to the kid does so because he is, or wants
to be, mean.
So here is Nancy poised on the very verge of a relapse into this childish way of seeing the world: She does not treat the doctor as hurting her incidentally, as part of doing
29
30
3.1
Bev:
Bev:
[They
They really at uh- its a something to see, and Im
glad I saw it, n I had a wonderful time doin it.
Formal notice is thus taken of the cultural norms applicable here, in the very course of showing a
lack of commitment to abide by them. Finally, there are gradations between full suppression and
reduced offensiveness, in which, for example, a speaker mouths the words or parts of them without actually voicing them, or begins that way and then gradually allows some voicing to set in, as
in the following characterization (by the same Mike cited earlier in this note) of the villain in the
story.
(E)
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Auto Discussion, 9:2327

Mike:-->
D[eWa:ld is a [big burly ( (silent))ba ( (vl)) sterd=
Curt:
[Jeezuz . [
Phyllis:
[hhhh hhehhhhhhehheh,
Mike:
= [jihknow,
Curt:
= [Mmhm,
Here, the first syllable of bastard is mouthed silently and its remainder is voiced very quietly
(V1 is an abbreviation for Very low). What we have in the various gradations of this practice,
then, appears to involve more than simple word production apparatus per se, and yet not some
thisinteraction-specific matter of delicateness, but one way in which culture in the anthropological sense, and an orientation to cultural prescriptions as privileged points of reference, appear in
talk-ininteraction.

something for her, and when he apologizes she rejects the apology as ineffective, and characterizes him asjust as she is about to say mean, she backs away. And note, what she
backs into is precisely the adult counterpart to the childish viewits not that he means to
be hurting her, but it hurts just the same. And in the very course of articulating this newer
adult part of her, she leaks outin camouflaged formthe bit of childishness she has
almost let escape.9
A rather more public problematicity and delicateness informs the next instance, taken
from an interview on National Public Radios news program Morning Edition. President
Clinton had nominated obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Henry Foster to be Surgeon General
of the United States, and the nomination had run into trouble in its pursuit of confirmation when Dr. Foster was reported to have performed a number of abortionsthese being
treated as immoral by one segment of the press, the Congress, and the public, and as a
medical decision by another segment. Journalist Joanne Silberner developed a story on
the attitude of obstetrician/gynecologists toward doing abortions, and one part of the story
reported on Dr. Elizabeth Garrow (Lines 14), and included her recorded response to an
inquiry during an interview (Lines 513).
(6)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
NPR, Morning Edition, 2/23/95

JS:
Elizabeth Garrow does one or two abortions a
week
as part of her practice in suburban Virginia. She
says its one of many services she offers her
patients.
EG:
Just as if a woman comes in an says, .hh Im
pregnant=I want ta have a baby, en I- try to give

her good prenatal ca:re, .hhh or .h I dont want to
be pregnant en I g:et her on the pi.:ll, f=sh=ss I
am pregnant en I dont want ta be:, .hh thats- (.)
-helping her take care of that is just another
aspect. (0.8) of- of my jo:b. I dont see it as any:
(0.2) more a less important. Its js- its a part
of it.
At Lines 1112, it seems apparent that Dr. Garrow is on the way toward summing up how
abortion presents itself to her in her practiceas just another aspect of my job (Lines
1011)by saying I dont see it as any [moral issue]. In the context of the public controversy that prompted the story and interview in the first place, this would, of course, have
been fuel on the fire. As she approaches the problematic element of her TCU, she slows
and pauses, and suppresses moral. But note how it creeps out nonetheless. In a striking
restructuring of her TCU, the any is converted into the start of the idiom any more or
9
Compare the relationship of this surfacing of a suppressed item with the earlier-discussed reappearance of an item held in abeyance to allow an insertion before it, as in Extracts (2) and (3) and
the discussion of them.

less [important]. But her articulation of this phrase, by reducing the or to a, incorporates the suppressed moral like this: any: (0.2) [more+a+1]+ess In the very swerving
to avoid the publicly problematic moral, it occupies the turn in camouflaged form and in
the very next bit of talk.
Let me end with the instance that had escaped me all these years, and that I finally saw
while examining something quite different. This comes from the conversation drawn on
for the first extract that we examineda telephone call between two young women in late
1960s New York. Ava is telling Bee about how she came to be so tired.
(7)
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TG, 02:1038
Ava:
Im so:: ti:yid.I js played ba:skeball
tday since the firs time since I wz a
freshmn in hi:ghsch[ool.]
Bee:
[Ba::] sk(h)et=
b(h)a(h)ll? (h) [ (Whe (h) re.)

Ava:
[Yeah fuh like an hour enna
ha:[If.]
Bee:
[hh] Where didju play ba:sk[etbaw.]
Ava:
[(The) gy]:m.
Bee:
In the gy:m? [ (hh)
Ava:
[Yea:h. Like grou(h)p therapy.
(.)
Ava:
Yuh know [half the grou]p thet we had la:s=
Bee:
[O h : : : .]hh
Ava:
=term wz there- <n we [jus playing arou:nd.
Bee:
[hh
Bee:
Uh-fo[oling around.
Ava:
[hhh
Ava:
Eh-yeah so, some a the guys who were bedder
yknow wen off by themselves so it wz two
girls against this one guy en hes
ta:ll.Yknow? [hh
Bee:
[Mm hm?
Ava:-->
En, I had- I wz- I couldnt stop laughin it
wz the funniest thing bt yknow you get all
sweaty upr en evrything we didn thing we
were gonna pla:y, hh en oh Im knocked out.

Bee:
Nhhkhhhh! hhhh
Ava:
Ripped about four nai:ls, n okhh!
Bee:-->
Fantastic.=
Ava: ->
=Bt it wz fun-You sound very far away
Here, it appears that the I had- at Line 33 suppresses I had [fun.] Note first that the
fun surfaces a bit later in the funniest thing (Line 34), where, however, the sense of

fun (as having a good time) is masked by the sense of funniest (as laughter prompting) given by its following couldnt stop laughing. Then note that, just before a final
quick exit line from this topic at Line 40, Ava says, But it was fun; this is the same fun
that was suppressed earlier (as compared to the funniest as the superlative of funny
that is not, quite), but she still manages to deflect it from herself to the situation as a whole:
It was fun, rather than I had fun. Note as well that the first thing to follow the initial
suppression at I had- (Line 33) was I wz- (itself cut-off in turn), and that wz returns
in the exiting line it wz fun (Line 40). Several ties connect this exit line with the earlier
site of the suppression, then. (Note by the way that Bees otherwise odd fantastic (Line
39)odd as a response to knocked out and ripped about four nailsmay invite understanding for its resonance of fantastic with fun.) So the features that have recurred in
other instances of suppression that we have examined appear to be present here as well.
But what is going on? I would like to end with an(other) illustration of an unexpected way
in which having a sense of such a phenomenon as suppression resurfacing as a real thing
can figure in our understanding of entirely different aspects of what is going on in some
episode of interaction.
The suppression and its reappearance (or the capacity of the reappearance to warrant
that there was a suppression and what it was) throws new light on something odd in the
opening of this conversation. In the opening, Bee says a curious thing after detecting in the
sound of Avas voice and in her apparent kidding around a note that properly warrants
notice by a recipient in an opening; she says, Why whatsa matter with y- ysound happy.
Now sounding happy would not ordinarily be characterized or made accountable as
something the matter with you The allusion here, I had always taken it, was to Ava being
a sad sack type, always complaining, never being content, so that the later ysound sorta
cheeerful that follows Avas denial of being happy would, even as a reduced descriptor,
be a noticeable. But this had been mere supposition; interpretation with little in the data to
support a stronger claim of analysis.
And herein the suppression we have been examiningwe see what may be such evidence: Ava cannot bring herself to say she had funI had funeven though everything
about the telling about playing basketball conveys that. This is not quite something that
motivates the suppression, but it grounds the claim of suppression in a larger canvass of the
speakers conduct, and grounds Bees treatment of Avas sounding happy as something
the matter with her in an actual display of happiness avoidance.
This is a long way from where we started (though subsequent developments can be
brought to bear on the episode with the Vice Chancellor, even if only conjecturally for lack
of a recording of the exchange). The moral of my story is this. Taking seriously, and pursuing, an observable for the purely technical object it can be, can make available a resource
whose bearing on the warrantable analysis of what is going on in interaction is by no means
purely technical in the pejorative sense ordinarily attached to that phrase.
Perhaps the larger moral is to remove the pejorative sense attached to terms such as
technical, merely technical, purely technical, and the like altogether. If something is
correct as an account of a possible event or practice or phenomenon in talk-in-interaction,
then pursuing it in its own terms promises to deliver an analytic resource whose scope of
relevance cannot be properly imagined in advance.

POSTSCRIPT
It will not be lost on readers that my title alludes to a phrase generally associated with
psychoanalytic theorizing, and with Freud in particular, the return of the repressed. Why,
then, have I danced around this memorable phrase, and settled for something that retains
both its semantic sense and its poetic alliteration, but not its literal identity? Suppression
and repression have, to my mind, slightly different connotations. Repression is deeper,
suppression shallower; repression long-lasting; suppression, at least potentially,
shorter term and transient (a government may suppress an uprising, but we do not speak
of it as suppressive; if this is a long-term, character-revealing tendency of a regime, we
speak of it as repressive); repression fundamental, suppression, at least potentially,
relatively superficial. Still, in both of them, grounds are found by actors for affirmatively
avoiding the externalization of something assertedly (by the analyst thereof) present in the
scene and informing the conduct of participants in the scenewhether these be thought
of as regimes and bodies politic, individuals and their psyches, or participants in episodes
of interaction. Here I have been dealing with suppression; to what degree the discussion
turns out to be relevant to repression-(whatever that term may be understood to denote,
given the methodological obstacles to rigorous and clear thinking in this domain) remains
to be determined.
Dealing with suppression (and repression as well, of course) involves us in nontrivial issues of interpretation and evidence, and this in two respects. First, it involves showing
what was not saidand this implicates a host of issues bound up with making negative
observations. Second, it can involve (and does in the present case) arguing that something
that was said not only was said, but is what was specifically not said earlier, and has thus
in effect escaped.
With respect to the first of these sets of issues, it may be worth reviewing in as compact
a form as possible the problem of negative observations. Strictly speaking, an indefinitely
extendable set of things was not said at any specified point in a conversation, yet only a
very limited part of that set can relevantly be noted to have been not saidby parties
to the conversation in the conversation or by external analysts about it. As noted early on
in the conversation analytic literature, one consequence of the sequencebuilding resource
dubbed the adjacency pair (two-turn sequences such as greeting-greeting, question-answer, request-grant/reject, etc.) is that when there is no response to the first part of such a
pair, one can not only generally say who was silent, even though no one has talked; one can
say what was not said/done. After a question, then, the silence is understood as a failure to
answer or a withholding of answering. Here, formulating what was not said takes the form
of a characterization of the activity or action that was not implemented, and that line of
analysis can be grounded in the relevance rules by which a first pair part constrains, shapes,
and casts an interpretive key over the moments directly following it.
The negative observation implicated in a claim of suppression, however, can be more
detailed and specific than this. In the episodes examined in this chapter, what is claimed
is that some word(s) or phrase(s) or topically specific fragment of talksome sayable in
particularhas been specifically withheld from articulation, has been suppressed. The
relevance rules that underlie such a claim therefore have to be more fine-grained than those
underlying characterizations of missing responses to first-pair parts.

With respect to the second set of issues, one feature of the type of understanding of
interaction (and social life more generally) sought by conversation analysis and kindred
pursuits in the social and human sciences is that analytic characterizations of actors conduct be grounded in, and warranted by, the participants own demonstrable orientations
to the setting, context, and import of what is going on. In this enterprise, one eschews
analytical claims warranted only by the theory one brings to the data, whatever the force
of the statistical or experimental or interpretive data marshaled on their behalf. Whatever
categories of action the analysts theory has generated, if we cannot show the participants
to be oriented to the conduct in its course by reference to such categories, to such an
understanding of the import of their actions, then that line of analysis is not tenable. But are
we then to argue about talk that has slipped outas is implied by the surfacing of the
suppressedthat this captures the orientation of the parties? The import of the conduct
for them? That is what is involved in arguing that something that was said not only was
said, but is what was specifically not said earlier, and has thus in effect escaped.
These are some of the more general issues mobilized by the empirical occurrences with
which this chapter engages. It would, of course, be presumptuous to claim that they have
been solved. But I hope to have indicated one way in which we can approach taking them
seriously and beginning to deal with them. Their relevance may extend past conversation
analytic work itself.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First, prepared for, and presented at, the annual meetings of the National Communication Association, Chicago, November 1997. Robert Hopper called to my attention possible
convergences with discussions in Jefferson 1996, a matter taken up in Footnote 2. The
present version of the chapter was prepared while I was the grateful beneficiary of a John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and a fellowship in Residence at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, under support provided to the
Center by The National Science Foundation through Grant SBR-9022192.
This article is co-published in German in Volume 1, No. 4 of the new journal Psychotherapie und Sozialwissenschaft. Readers coming to the article from a background
in psychiatry or psychoanalytically oriented psychology will find in the Postscript some
reflections on the relationship between the sort of conversation-analytic work presented
here and those traditions of inquiryas reflected in the title, and may wish to consult it
first, or in due course.
Appendix A
Suppressed Elements Surface in Recipients Utterance

This appendix presents brief accounts of two episodes in which suppressed elements reappear in the immediately following talk not of the suppressing speaker but of the recipient,
whose close attention to the turn-so-far, and orientation to its projected completion, are
displayed by production of the candidate suppressed element. Consider first the following
opening of a telephone conversation.

(8)
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
D&B, 1:117
Dina:
Hello?
Bernie: Hllo, Dina?
Dina:
hhhHI!
Bernie: Hi, howre you.
Dina:
I CAlledju las night.
Bernie: You di:d,
Dina:
yea:h.
Bernie: Wha ti.:me.
Dina:
Uh::: about seven uhclock, or was it e- tch! Oh
I- I dont remember b- but I calledju.

Bernie: Yeah.
Dina:
N- nobuddy was home.
Bernie: hhhh[hhhh
Dina:
[Gee I was just th- n- thats very funny.
-->
How are you.

Bernie: Okay.
Dina:
Thats good.
BerTch! hhhh I think I was home last night.
nie:-->
Almost certainly Dina was saying at Line 14, Gee I was just th[inking about you], something that is often accompanied by thats [very] fUnny (at the beginning of an unanticipated phone call). Here it is suppressed (perhaps because it is a further display on her part
of interest in him which may not be reciprocated or appropriate). Note then that it pops up
three turns later, in the recipients mouth (I think I was home last night.). Two observations may be made about this. First, regarding the non-immediacy of the position: This
is the first turn of Bernies following the suppression, which is not sequentially constrained
by Dinas prior turn. Second, hurdles are overcome for this utterance to be produced here.
A reciprocal howareyou question is in order, as Bernies first howaryou at Line 4 was
by-passed by reporting the effort to call him, and Dinas howaryou was marked by its
stress on the second syllable as a first inquiry of a reciprocal pair (Schegloff, 1986).
Where the reciprocal inquiry was due, Bernie does not do it. In its place he replies to the
Nobody was home of Line 12 with what is in effect a disagreement or rejection or correction, its contrariness marked by the epistemic downgrade of the I think, which was the
suppressed element of Dinas earlier turn.
The second exemplar occurs early in the conversation between Joyce and Stan examined earlier in the discussion of insertion (Extract 3), and indeed is the larger sequence
in which that insertion occurred.
(9)
01
02
03
Joyce and Stan, 01:0902:12

Stan:
hh First of all howd that thing turn out with
-->
the ticket. Dju: anything happen?
(0.4)

04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
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
Joyce:-->
Stan: -->
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce:
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce:
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce:
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan:
Joyce :
Stan: -->
Joyce :
Oh, I just decided ta pay it.

Decide (d) ta pay how much was it
Fifteen fifty.
Fifteen fifty?
Mm hm,
(0.2)
Bitch. Bitch.
I(h) kn(h)owh[h
[I guess it would ye you figured out
finally found out itd be too much ha:ssle ta
take care of it .
hh I figu:red (0.4) in order: I would just haf
tig- make two trips down there:,
Yeah,
Yihknow Id hafta go down there ta pay it,
Right,
Then make an appoi: ntment (.) ta come back there
acjain,
Yea[h,
[An they wouldnt give me a date, fer a month
an a half,
Yeah,
AnI figu:red (0.9) the case [just wu
[(Plus) ya gotta
yih gotta put down the money. ahead a time.
Yea:h,
Yeah,
Yeah t [hey give it back to you. l:ater.=
[ (Yeah the)
= [ (see an)
= [The way I beat mine it was a pa:rking ticket.
yihknow, so I was able ta go to ta night court .
(wu) then beat the ten dollar ticket.
Oh:,
hh Yihknow just the principle a thing that
bugged me.
Yea:h,=
=U: :m (1.4) tch! (.) So wudja do pay it through
the auto club
Yea:h,
(0.5)

On the theme that the suppressed item may show up in the immediately following talk of
recipient, note that Stan surely appears to suppress something at Line 02: Djuianything
happen? He is starting to ask an agentive question: Did you: [pay it] The sound stretch
on the you shows him thinking the better of it, and he shifts to a non-agentive form of
the inquiry, one that does not introduce the relevance of any particular action on Joyces
part (which she might have to report having failed to do, e.g.). Then note that the suppressed item shows up in the next turn by the recipient, Oh, I just decided ta pay it. and
is then repeated by Stan (Line 05) as a form of registering the response (Schegloff, 1997).
Once out in the open, Stan uses it again (at Line 41), as he brings the the topic/sequence
to a close. (For further discussion related to this general topic, see also Jefferson, 1974;
Schegloff, 1979)
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Clift, R. (2001). Meaning in interaction: The case of actually. Language 77, 24591.
Goodwin, C. (1986). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text, 6, 283316.
Goodwin, C. (1987). Unilateral departure. In G. Button & J.R.E.Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 206216). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Jefferson, G. (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society, 2, 181199.
Lerner, G.H. (1991). On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. Language in Society, 20, 441458.
Lerner, G.H. (1996). On the semi-permeable character of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional entry into the turn space of another speaker. In E. Ochs, E.A. Schegloff, &
S.A.Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and Grammar (pp. 238276). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ochs, E., Schegloff, E.A., & Thompson, S. (1996). Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge, England:
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. (2 vols.). G.Jefferson, Ed., (with introductions by
E.A.Schegloff). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Schegloff, E.A. (1979). The relevance of repair for syntax-for-conversation. In T.Givon (Ed.), Syntax and semantics 12: Discourse and syntax (pp. 261288). New York: Academic Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 101114.
Schegloff, E.A. (1988). Description in the social sciences I: Talk-in-interaction. IPRA Papers in
Pragmatics, 2, 124.
Schegloff, E.A. (1992). In another context. In A.Duranti & C.Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context:
Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 193227). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1997). Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair. Discourse
Processes, 23, 499545.
Schegloff, E.A. (1998). Word repeat as a practice for ending. Paper presented at the 84th Annual
Meeting of the National Communication Association, New York, NY, November, 1998.
15
Sex, Laughter, and Audiotape: On Invoking Features
of Context to Explain Laughter in Interaction
Phillip J.Glenn
Emerson College
Laypersons and analysts sometimes invoke gender as an explanatory variable that, it is
presumed, shapes or even determines some feature of interaction. In its simplest formulation, this variable shows up in studies devoted to identifying differences in how women and
men talk, move, listen, and so on. Underlying such studies is an assumption that particular
features of speech or interaction reflect and constitute gender differences. For example,
there are claims that women use more tag questions, disclaimers, and hedges; and that
men interrupt women more than women do men. Tannen (1990) claimed that women give
more audible and visible feedback when listening than men do. Wood (1996) summarized
research findings indicating a tendency for women to do more conversational maintenance work, including behaviors to signal interest and involvement (p. 157). The differences then are found in particular features but also in clusters of these features adding up
to activities, such as maintenance, affiliation, or support.
Researchers offer various conceptual explanations for such differences. Some argue
that these may not reflect behavioral differences as much perceptual differences: that people perceive women and men as speaking differently. Initially researchers were willing to
explain such differences in terms of lesser confidence or competence on the part of women.
Recent studies tend to treat such claims as problematic (see West, 1995), and suggest that
differences may in fact show women as being highly competent, perhaps more so than
men. Another explanation lies in asserted power differences: that speech features reflect
varying degrees of relative power, and that differences between men and women reflect
more fundamentally different power currencies. Others account for variations as reflecting
different primary styles of communication. Pushed to an extreme, style difference arguments pose women and men as coming from different cultures or even different planets
(e.g., Gray, 1992; Tannen, 1990).
Laughter may be one feature of discourse that reflects and constitutes gender differences.
There are shared cultural assumptions (perhaps based in stereotypes) that men produce
more laughable, humorous behavior, and that women do more laughing in response to men,
than the converse. Laughter can do such conversational work as displaying involvement
or interest and achieving maintenance; to the extent that such work is more common for
women, this may suggest women do more laughing in the presence of, and responsive to,
men. In an observational study Robert Provine found that most instances of conversational
laughter between two persons occurred when men were talking and women were listening,
and the least took place when women were talking and men were listening (reported in
Kluger, 1994).
Sex, laughter, and audiotape 225

Two recent studies make use of naturalistic data to investigate gender differences in
conversational laughter. Jefferson (1994) explored the possibility that in male-female
interaction, if the male laughed, the female would join in laughing; if the female laughed,
the male would not join in laughing (p. 1). From analysis of a collection of instances of
laughter in interactions of women with men, she found tentative support for some gender
difference trends. However, her claim is not a straightforward one that women laugh more
than do men. Rather, it is that laughing (or not laughing) may, depending on sequential
environment, display receptiveness or resistance to what the other speaker is doing.
Her gender difference argument is that men more often display resistance and women tend
more to display receptiveness. Whether laughing or withholding laughter in any particular
instance displays resistance or receptiveness is shaped in part by the immediate sequential
environment. Thus the organization of laughter seems subsumed under the organization
of a more fundamental set of activities, displaying receptiveness or resistance. However,
Jefferson cautioned against making too much of these tentative claims; emphasizing the
cartoonish nature of the crude female-male binary split, she referred to participants in her
data as Tarzans and Janes.
Glenn, Hoffman, and Hopper (1996) set out to test Jeffersons preliminary claims in a
larger corpus of laugh instances. In general, their counts did not match the trends Jefferson
identified. When they separated data into two kinds of interactions, courtship-relevant
and noncourtship, some numerical gender difference trends emerged. However, the
increasing number of cells made for such small sample size that results remain inconclusive. Outside of courtship situations, men more often showed appreciation for womens
laughables-with-laugh-invitations by laughing along than women did for men. This contradicts Jeffersons receptiveness-resistance theory. Within courtship, however, instances of
laughter produced responsive to anothers laugh more closely supported patterns described
by Jefferson. When one speaker offered a positive laughable without laughing and the
other showed appreciation for it by laughing, a female speaker of the laughable would
provide second laugh, but a male speaker usually would not. In courtship-relevant interactions, women were much more likely than men to produce negative laughables at their
own expense and offer first laugh. This suggests another way in which laughter may mark
gender differences: that women may be more likely than men to laugh as an accompaniment to self-deprecation.
Research questions driving such studies begin with the presumption that communicative differences do exist, or at least may exist, and that the binary, biologically based categorization scheme of women and men is an appropriate way to conceptualize this
variable. Claims of gender difference notice trends across numbers of cases. Empirical
findings reflect this in proquantifier terms like more often or less likely. However, we
do not live our communicative lives in the aggregate. We live them one moment at a time,
or, in researchers terms, one instance at a time. If people communicate differently from
each other, and if they do so systematically in some way linked to biological sex or gender
role, then our task as analysts is to examine the means by which people accomplish such
differences in single instances.
Increasingly, scholars are calling for more context-sensitive treatments of gender as
socially constituted (see Wodak, 1997). Garfinkel (1967) noted the omnirelevance
(p. 118) of sexual status in everyday life in that humans continually display features

readable as gendered. However, this does not mean that people orient to gender equally
at all times. Many individual attributes or features of context are potentially available as
participant resources in the ongoing tasks of organizing and making sense of conduct.
For analysts too, gender is but one of many features available to draw on for explanations
of communicative phenomena. How can we develop and support a claim for gendered
communication being part of a particular communicative moment?
This may be understood as a question of context (see Tracy, 1998). Making a distinction
between text and context helps us examine words, actions, utterances, sequences, and so
on, somewhat apart from features of the individuals, setting, surrounding talk, relationship,
culture, and so forth, that shape and help explain features of the text. In the present study,
I treat context as emergent, fluid, and locally occasioned by participants in interaction.
Consistent with this perspective (one advocated by Schegloff, 1987, among others), we
may make the strongest empirical claims about the relevance of some feature of context
(such as gender) in explaining communicative phenomena when evidence exists in the data
that participants themselves orient to that feature as relevant. This intrinsic-to-messages
approach (Hopper, 1992) helps avoid the danger of the researcher imposing a priori theories that may unduly limit or mislead analysis.
The sense of contextual features being located in the moment is different in an intrinsicto-messages approach. If a man interrupts a woman, or a woman uses a tag question and
a man does not, there is not an a priori assumption that such differences arise because the
actor is a woman or a man. Rather, the initial interest is less in individual behavior than in
joint construction of actions, and less in imposing external explanatory variables than in
trying to characterize the procedures by which people do whatever it is that they do. Thus,
the moment can be investigated, not as a site for the inevitable realization of gender or
some other feature(s) of context, but as a site for creativity, change, and constitution. The
analytic focus, then, is on details of talk and action as patterned ways of accomplishing
activities in interaction. There is a suspension of theoretical explanations in order to retain
as long as possible analytic focus on what is being done and how it is being done.
The following analysis is aimed at investigating the possibility that people orient to gender in the organization of conversational laughter. For this purpose I selected an instance of
talk in which gender (and sex) clearly become relevant for participants, in close proximity
to laughter. In other words, I begin with a hunch that something gendered is happening
with laughter here. I argue, with evidence from this instance, that acoustic and sequential
features of laughter can display participant orientation to gender. Thus, this analysis stands
as an example of how to demonstrate empirically the relevance of gender as a feature of
context.
EXAMPLE: EVEN WILDER
The following instance comes from the radio program Car Talk, broadcast live on National
Public Radio affiliate stations. In the show, brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, who run an
automobile repair shop in the Boston area, dispense advice to people calling in with carrelated problems. In addition to giving advice, the brothers joke and play, often punctuating
the talk with laughter. The show combines face-to-face interaction between Tom and Ray,
telephone interaction with the caller, and broadcasting to an overhearing radio audience.

The interactions with callers typically reflect a structure common to other advice-based talk
shows: opening, problem formulating, advising, and closing (Crow, 1986).
The fragment under consideration is shown in its entirety as follows. It comes from the
beginning of a phone call, the second one broadcast on this particular day:
Car Talk, National Public Radio, 30 March 1997 Tom and Ray Magliozzi and Caller
1
Ray:
One eight hundred (.) three three two (.)
2
nine two eight seven=Hello youre on Car

3
Talk.
4
Chand:
Hi this is Chandler? Im calling from
5
Denver?
6
Ray:
Chandler=
7
Tom:
=tsh::andler
[
8
Chand:
Yes
9
Ray:
From Denver=
10 Chand:
=Yes
11 Tom:
sh:andler
12 Chand:
Yes
[
13 Ray:
Thats an unusual (.) first name?
14 Chand:
Well (.) I know Im not supposed to tell you
[
15 Ray:
for- for a woman
16 Chand:
my last name my last names even wilder.
17
(0.9)
18 Chand:
Anyway
[
19 Tom:
Even wilder
20 Chand:
Yes=
21 Tom:
=Ooh! Chandlers even wilder than the last
22 Ray:
23 Chand:
24 Tom:
25
26 Tom:
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH (.) hh huh huh
27 Chand:
:-huh huh u h h h h [We:ll.
[
28 Ray:
Theres a
29 Ray:
theres a hyphen in there?
30 Chand:
ehNo
31 Tom:
No its just a sentence
32 Chand:
Its just a sentence? Thats right
33 Tom:
[Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hh
34 Ray:
Well?
35 Chand:
Anyway, I: have (.) I have this problem.
36
I have a Ford Escort (.) wagon (.)
Of particular interest for this article are Lines 2127. In Lines 2122, Tom playfully assesses
the caller as even wilder in contrast to the last girl he went out with. As is shown later,

in this utterance he treats the caller as female, as someone he might go out with, and as
wild with possibly sexual implications. All three participants laugh, although her laughter displays a different, less affiliative stance toward the laughable than those of the brothers. This appears to be a moment of highly gendered, laughable, and laugh-inducing talk.
Are the laughs themselves contributing to gender marking? Do they display orientation to
gender? Before addressing this question, lets back up and trace how the participants get
to this moment.
The caller identifies herself as Chandler from Denver. This use of first-name-only plus
location for self-identification is standard practice on the show.
4
5
Chand: Hi this is Chandler? Im calling

from
Denver?
The name gets immediate and marked attention. Ray repeats it with increased melody and
emphasis; Tom does the same, shifting the pronunciation of the initial affricate ch to sh and
stretching it.
4
Chand:
5
6
7
8
Ray:
Tom:
Chand:
Hi, this is Chandler?, Im calling

from
Denver?
chandler=
=sh::andler
[
Yes
Repeats can function as next-turn repair initiators (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). At
the least, they retrieve some prior item and make it available for further talk or action (they
also divert, at least momentarily, from moving toward the purpose of the call; in Car Talk
such playful diversions are common). Consistent with the structure of repair sequences,
the repeat returns the floor to other to confirm or amend the repeated item. In overlap with
Toms second repeat, Chandler confirms that this is her name.
Ray now repeats the second half of Chandlers self-identification, from Denver. This
repeat has a marked melody paralleling that which he used in repeating her name a moment
earlier. It is a poetic moment: the melody echo emphasizes the rhyming of Chandler and
Denver. This too fitting the structure of a next-turn repair initiator, it returns the floor to
her, and she confirms Denver as correct.
7
8
9
10
Tom:
Chand:
Ray:
Chand:
=sh::andler
[
Yes
From Denver=
=Yes
Tom repeats the name again (line 11), once more with marked, melodic intonation. She
again confirms it.

11
12
Tom:
Chand:
sh:andler
Yes
That its been repeated multiple times and already confirmed provides evidence that this
is not a problem of hearing or understanding on their part. Rather, the repetitions open up
possibilities for topicalizing her name as something to talk about, and/or for keying a playful treatment of it (on repetitions role in keying play, see Hopper & Glenn, 1994).
Ray assesses the name as unusual (Line 13). This assessment, with questioning intonation, would make relevant further talk about her first name, perhaps including an account
for it. Chandler begins to speak. In overlap, Ray (Line 15) produces a delayed completion
(Lerner, 1989) of his prior turn:
13
14
Ray:
Chand:
15
16
Ray:
Chand:
-Thats an unusual (.) first name?

Well (.) I know Im not supposed to tell
you
[
for- for a woman
my last name my last names even wilder.
This added prepositional phrase modifies his assessment such that the name Chandler is
unusual, not for all people, but for a woman. By this he introduces gender explicitly into
the talk, for the first time in this call.
Her unfolding turn does not attend explicitly to the delayed completion. Instead, Chandler shifts to discussing her last name. She does not actually produce it, but states the programs rule prohibiting use of last names. She assesses this name comparatively as even
wilder than her first. Through this turn she continues the pattern of playful assessments of
her name yet shifts attention from her first name to her last.
After she says her last name is even wilder, there is a pause. Several possibilities are
relevant here. They could talk more about her first name, although she now has shifted
focus to her last name. They could talk about her wild but unstated last name, although
such talk might be limited because Tom and Ray do not have the name itself as a present
resource. They could go on with the business of the call. Two of these three possibilities
get pursued almost simultaneously. Chandler speaks, and her Anyway displays willingness to close this section of talk and move on. In overlap, Tom repeats her preceding phrase
even wilder.
16
Chand:
17
18
19
20
Chand:
Tom:
Chand:
my last name my last names even

wilder.
(0.9)
Anyway
[
Even wilder
Yes=
Toms repeat/repair initiator picks up on and furthers the topical shift she had made from
her first name to her surname. In contrast to her Anyway, his repeat displays willingness
to delay proceeding to the business of the call. She confirms his repeat.

Now comes Toms joke. Its prefaced by an exclamation of delight or excitement.
21 Tom:
=Ooh! Chandlers even wilder than the

last
girl I went out with
22
He repeats the assessment even wilder but applies it to her, not to her last name as she
had done. To retain the contrastive form of the adverb-adjective assessing pair, Tom must
provide something or someone against which to compare Chandler. He does so by inventing the last girl he went out with. The jibe is clever: he uses her words to assess her playfully by invoking a nonexistent dating/romantic relationship between them and implying
that within it she is wild.
In this utterance, it is not just gender that creeps into talk (Hopper & LeBaron, 1998);
it is also sexthe act, not the biological category. Toms use of girl in the jest about
her being even wilder suggests a younger orientation and perhaps playfulness on his
part (contrast to Rays prior use of the term woman). It seems fitted as category to the
activity go out with (see Sacks, 1992, Vol. 1, pp. 515516, 594597, on category-bound
activities). More specific than simply the broad categories female and male, the talk
now invokes, albeit jokingly, participant identities as heterosexual woman and man who
represent, for each other, potentially dateable partners. For such persons, the assessments
wild or even wilder may carry sexual meanings.
Now comes the laughter. Ray begins to laugh immediately after the words last girl,
displaying recognition of the joke in progress. He produces a lengthy and mirthful stream
of laughter.
21
22
23
Tom:
Ray:

[
Hu hu hu ha ha ha ha ha ha
Chandler starts laughing at completion of Toms utterance and following several syllables of Rays laugh. She produces two initial closed-mouth syllables then six open-mouth
syllables:
21
22
23
24
27
Tom:
Ray:
Chand:
Chand:
=Oooh! Chandlers even wilder than the last

[
[
Hhhh hhh huh huh huh huh
huh huh uhhhh
Toms is the biggest laugh of all, loud and hearty (Lines 2526).
21
22
23
24
Tom:
Ray:
Chand:

[
[
Hhhh hhh huh huh huh huh

25
26
27
Tom:
Tom:
Chand:
[
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH]=
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH (.) hh huh huh
= [huh huh u h h h h [We: ll.
Rays laughter ceases. Chandler produces an audible inbreath (Line 27), and Tom pauses
briefly, produces an inbreath, then laughs a bit more (Line 26). More laugh particles
following inbreath may show willingness to keep laughing and constitute an invitation to renew and extend shared laughter. At that moment, however, Chandler resumes
nonlaughing talk, and Tom ceases laughing (ends of lines 2627).
26
27
Tom:
Chand:
huh huh
[
We:ll.
The word well is spoken with a tone of mock indignation. Placed here, following Toms
jest about her wildness plus shared laughter, it shows some degree of resistance (albeit
playful) to what has just gone on. Perhaps sensitive to this, the brothers abandon the laughable plus shared laughter to resume speaking. Ray suggests an implicit pun, for his reference to hyphen invites a hearing that Even-Wilder literally is her last name.
26
27
28
29
Tom:
Chand:
Ray:
huh huh
=[We:ll.
[
Theres a
theres a hyphen in there?
Rays grammatical jest provides a way for them to continue playing with her name without
continuing the explicitly gendered, sexual talk (although gender still may be remotely relevant, in that hyphenating surnames is a practice more often characteristic of women than
of men, and may invoke marital status). Tom laughs, but neither of the other participants
does. Chandler then moves on to the business of the call:
2829
30
31
32
33
34
35
Ray:
Chand:
Tom:
Chand:
Tom:
Ray:
Chand:
36
Theres a- theres a hyphen in there?

ehNo
No its just a sentence
Its just a sentence? Thats right
[
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hh
Well?
Anyway, I: have (.) I have this problem.
I have a Ford Escort (.) wagon (.)
In this passage, the callers name serves as a resource for play. Tom uses Chandlers name
and her own words to construct a sexual jest about her. The brothers laughs align with
each other and appreciate the jest, which is done (however innocuously) at her expense.
By laughing at the sexual jest, Chandler displays some willingness to play along (cf. Drew,
1987, concerning the range of responses to teases). By laughing less enthusiastically and

responding with Well, she displays some resistance to the jest. By resuming talk, she
helps move them away from the sexual reference. At the first sign of lack of enthusiasm
from Chandler, Tom and Ray immediately move away from sexual innuendo. Talk continues on topics for which gender/sex seem not to be foregrounded: a hyphen in the sentence,
a Ford Escort wagon, and more.
Participants mark the relevance of sex categories and sexuality as features of context.
They do so in the service of word play and shared laughter. The laughs themselves reflect
and constitute different orientations to this invoking of context. Laughs orient to context
through their acoustic features, length, and sequential placement, all of which contribute to
marking laughters footing in relation to the laughable, the participants, and the situation.
The instance here turns out to be consistent with Jeffersons (1994) preliminary claim that,
in laughing along, Janes interacting with Tarzans exhibit receptiveness (p. 17). That is,
Chandlers laughing shows her to be receptive to what the brothers are about. This Jane
may not be thrilled about what happens, but she is willing to laugh along while at the same
timethrough features of her laughterdistancing herself somewhat from the stance of
the two Tarzans.
Participants sometimes foreground gender issues explicitly as topic of talk. Perhaps
more subtly, they sometimes orient to gender through features of the sequential organization of interactions. The choice to laugh or not to laugh provides partial clues for hearers
and analysts concerning the work that laughter may be doing. Placement and production
features of laughs help show laughter to be affiliating, disaffiliating, or partially affiliating
with some evident resistance. To the extent that these displays are about gendered issues,
they allow participants to orient to gender and thereby, allow analysts access to the social
constitution of gender in discourse. This analysis, then, offers a method for demonstrating
empirically the relevance of gender to interaction. It is intended as an alternative to beginning with a priori assumptions that gender is always equally relevant for participants. It is
also intended as an alternative to assuming that the study of gender equates to the study of
difference. The laughing that women and men do may not always differ from each other,
but laughter stands as one of a host of phenomena through which people engender sexual
identities. Finally, all pragmatics researchers must deal with how and under what circumstances to invoke features of context to explain discourse. This argument shows one way
to locate context in talk. Providing evidence in details of interaction that participants are
orienting to some feature of context (such as gender) provides an empirical warrant for
invoking that feature in an explanatory fashion.
REFERENCES
Crow, B.K. (1986). Conversational pragmatics in television talk: The discourse of Good Sex.
Media, Culture, and Society, 8, 457484.
Garfinkel, H (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Glenn, P.J., Hoffman, E., & Hopper, R. (1996, March). Woman, laughter, man: Gender and the
sequential organization of laughter. Paper presented at the American Association of Applied
Linguistics Convention, Chicago.
Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in relationships. New York: HarperCollins.

Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Repetition in discourse: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Vol. II,) (pp. 2940). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Jefferson, G. (1994). A note on laughter in Male-Female interaction. Unpublished manuscript.
Kluger, J. (1994, January). Survival of the funniest. Discover, pp. 1620.
Lerner, G. (1989). Notes on overlap management in conversation: The case of delayed completion.
Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 167177.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1) (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Cambridge: Blackwell.
Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-repair in the organization of
repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361382.
Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Between macro and micro: Contexts and other connections. In
J.C.Alexander, B.Gieson, R.Munch, & N.J.Smelser (Eds.), The macro-micro link. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Tannen, D. (1990). You just dont understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: William
Morrow.
Tracy, K. (1998). Analyzing context: Framing the discussion. Research on Language and Social
West, C. (1995). Womens competence in conversation. Discourse & Society, 6, 107131.
Wodak, R. (1997). Introduction: Some important issues in the research of gender and discourse. In
R. Wodak (Ed.), Gender and discourse (pp 120). London: Sage.
Wood, J.T. (1996). She says/he says: Communication, caring, and conflict in heterosexual relationships. In J.T.Wood (Ed.), Gendered relationships (pp. 149162). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
16
Gender Differences in Telephone Conversations
Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra
Utrecht Institute of Linguistics
When we read Harvey Sacks very first Lecture Notes of 1964, we see that conversation analysis (CA) has developed from Sacks observation of how North Americans open
their telephone conversations. Phone openings have been studied ever since, especially by
Emanuel Schegloff and Robert Hopper.
Schegloff (1979) studied North American telephone openings and found a pattern of
four canonical sequences: (a) summons/answer sequence, (b) identification/recognition
sequence, (c) greeting sequence, (d) how are you sequence. For example:
(1)
Hopper et al. 1990/91:370

a. 1
((RING))
2
R.
Hello
b. 3
C.
Hello Ida?
4
R.
Yeah
c. 5
C.
Hi.=This is Carla
6
R.
Hi Carla.
d. 7
C.
How are you.
8
R.
Okay:.
9
C.
Good.=
10 R.
=How about you.
11 C.
Fine. Don wants to know
Schegloff showed how the conversationalists establish the participants identification.

When somebody hears the ringing of the telephone, he or she will answer this summons
by providing a voice sample (hi or hello) to be recognized by the caller. If the caller
recognized the answerer from the voice sample in the answering turn, then the caller should
show (or claim) such recognition in the next turn, the second in the call. Subsequent to the
callers recognition of the answerer, the answerer displays recognition of the caller. For in
example, in Fragment 2:
(2) Schegloff 1986:127
summons:
((ringing))
turn answer:
A. (Hell)o,
1
turn recogniC. Hello Missiz Feldman,
2
tion:
turn recogniA. Hi Bonnie.
3
tion:
Gender differences in telephone conversations 235

This is different from how people in the Netherlands deal with the tasks of identification
and recognition. Rather than doing other-recognition, Dutch telephone conversationalists
self-identify. First the answerer mentions his or her name, and then the caller does. This is
shown in Fragments 3 and 4:
(3) Houtkoop-Steenstra 1991
((ringing))
SelfA.
Met Mies Habots=
ident.:
A.
With Mies Habots=
SelfC.
=Da:g, met Anneke de Groot.
ident.:
C.
=Hi:, with Anneke de Groot.
(4) Houtkoop-Steenstra 1998
((ringing))
SelfA.
Goedenvond. Met Francien de Veer.
ident.:
A.
Good Evening. With Francien de Veer.
SelfC.
Goeienavond. U spreekt met Annette
ident.:
Bos van Marktonderzoeksbureau
((NAAM)) uit Amsterdam
C.
Good evening. Youre speaking with
Annette Bos from Market Research
((NAME)) in Amsterdam.
Before Dutch answerers mention their names, they may provide a greeting token, usually
Good Morning/Evening as in Fragment 4. This greeting token then tends to be returned
by the caller in his or her next turn. A more common way of answering the telephone is
to say (Hello), with So-and -So, as happens in Fragment 3. Note that the with is the
remains of youre speaking with
In 1991 I reported a study of 87 Dutch phone openings (HoutkoopSteenstra, 1991) that
were recorded in the later 1980s by Paul ten Have and myself. In 78 cases the answerers
provided a self-identification, and in 5 cases they provided a voice sample. The rest of the
4 cases were referred to as variant cases, for example, answerer picking up the phone by
saying just a second please. In Table 16.1, I refer to this set of data as late 1980s data.
TABLE 16.1: Late 1980s Data
Answerer provides self-identification

Answerer provides voice sample
Variant cases, e.g., switch calls
78
89.6
5
4
87
5.7
4.5
100%

It was on the basis of these data that I came to the conclusion that in the Netherlands we
find a strong preference for answerers explicit selfidentification, whereas in the United
States, we typically find other-recognition.1
Such a difference then suggests that there are differences between speech communities
with respect to how people answer the phone. Robert Hopper and his students, as well as
various other authors, have shown differences with respect to how members of different
speech communities routinely answer the telephone in domestic contexts. In the literature
we find three variations: providing a voice sample, explicit self-identification, and mentioning the households telephone number.
Answering the phone by using some form of voice sample was found in Taiwan (Hopper
& Chen, 1996), in Lebanon2 and England (Hopper & Doany, 1989), in Northern Mexico,
Spain, and Paraguay (Hopper, Doany, & Drummond, 1990/1991), and in Greece (Sifianou, 1989). English answerers say either Hello or give their telephone number (Sifianou
1989). Based on her own intuitions as a member of French society, Godard (1977) claimed
the French use voice sample too. However, Hopper & Doany (1989) did not find evidence
for this in a follow-up study.
Lindstrm (1994) showed that, in Sweden, explicit self-identification is the most common answer to a summons, followed by the phone number. Although Hello is used in
Lindstrms data, it is as infrequent and marked as in the Dutch data.3 Adler (1993) reported
a similar procedure for Germany.4
The example that follows shows how two speakers from different cultures, here North America
and The Netherlands, may stick to their own opening procedure. The opening has been transcribed
from memory immediately after the call took place.
A.
B.
A.
B.
A.
((ring))
Met Hanneke Houtkoop
Hanneke. ((with an American
accent))
Yes?
Its Doug.
oh. Hi: Doug.
In fact, Hopper and Doany (1989) spoke of Arabic openings. This suggests that their findings
also apply to other Arabic-speaking countries, such as Morocco, Egypt, and the like. Hopper et al.
(1990/1991) mentioned the possible effect of language on opening sequences. It seems plausible
to expect possible differences to occur in speech communities rather than in languages. It is possible that the ways in which members of speech communities answer the phone may have been
influenced by a countrys colonial history. As Hopper and Doany pointed out for the former French
colony Lebanon: the use of allo as a response type in Arabic calls in Lebanon is the result of
linguistic borrowing of the term (pp. 165166).
3
Hello was found in 5 of the 100 transcribed openings. One of these appeared in a call that
seemed to involve some technical problem. Three of the four remaining instances were produced by
the same person.
4
As telephone technology is changing, it should be stressed that all studies mentioned apply to calls
to pre-modern telephone sets, that is, no cell phones and no telephone sets that have the provision
of displaying the callers telephone number. Especially in countries in which answerers selfidentification is the norm, it is possible that such technical devices may change the way in which people
2

There is an ongoing debate in CA on the question as to whether or not these differences
in how members of certain speech communities routinely answer the phone reflect a cultural difference. More generally, how universal is Schegloffs description of the four canonical sequences? Hopper et al. (1990/1991) seemed to suggest that the difference between
answerers providing a voice sample versus explicitly self-identifying falls within the scope
of withincultural variance in the details of telephone openings as Schegloff (1979, 1986)
and Hopper (1989) found in North America. They considered the systematic practice of
answerers and callers self-identifying as fitting within Schegloffs model: In fact, Schegloffs (1979) discussion of identification and recognition includes virtually every format
that have been argued as being unique to Greece, France or Hollandand all from North
American data! (p. 378). If we read Schegloffs work closely, especially his unpublished
dissertation (Schegloff 1967), it is clear that he saw the voice sample Hello as the typical answer to the summons. He wrote: Hello is the unmarked form of answer to the
telephone; whereas yeah or Hi may type a prospective conversation as expected, and
a self-identification form of answer, such as Police Desk may type it as business (p.
43). For the Dutch situation, we may state that selfidentification is the typical, unmarked
form, and all other forms of answering the phone (e.g., yes, hello, and hello?) are
marked forms.
Schegloff (1967) furthermore stated that it is up to the caller rather than to the answerer
to start the identification work. In discussing self-identifications by North American
answerers (e.g. Police Desk), Schegloff wrote:
The work of identification [is] the initiators work, in the case of telephone conversation the callers work, for it is his entitlement to [start] the conversation that may be
at issue. Answering the telephone with a self-identification is pre-emptive because
it does the work of identification before the turn-taking organization has provided
caller his first opportunity for doing so. (pp. 4445)
This is fundamentally different from the Dutch situation, in which the answerer begins the
work of identification.
So, there are two clear differences between the North American and the Dutch situation,
(a) Hello versus self-identification being the typical answer to the summons, and (b) the
caller versus the answer beginning the work of identification.
Whether or not these are cultural differences depends on how we define the concept
of culture. I see them as cultural differences, because I see culture as a set of typical behavanswer the phone. Cell phones provide for the possibility to be used in public spaces such as streets,
shops, and public transportation, where strangers can listen in to the conversation. This may have
an effect on the way people answer these calls. A second feature of cell phones is that they usually
are not shared with other members of the household, and callers know this. Answering the call by
mentioning ones name is thus a redundant action, because a voice sample suffices as a selfidentification (cf. Sanders, 1998). In the situation in which answerers can read the incoming telephone
number, they may know who is calling before the telephone has been picked up. Theoretically
speaking, this provides for the possibility to answer the call by saying, for example, Hi Mom.
(Compare Hopper et al. 1990/1991 on the possible effects of technology on how people answer the
phone.)

iors, norms and values that are largely shared and oriented to by the members of a (speech)
community.
Apart from the issue of whether or not these are cultural differences, it seems safe to say
that the Dutch practice does not quite fit Schegloffs description of the first two sequences,
the summons/answer sequence and the identification/recognition sequenc: especially not
because the party who starts the identification sequence in the United States is the caller (in
Turn 1), whereas in the Netherlands it is the answerer (in Turn 2). Schematically, it breaks
down as in Table 16.2.
TABLE 16.2
Turn
1
Turn
2
USA
The Netherlands
Summons
A. Voice sample
Summons
A. Self-identification
C. Self-identification
C. Other-identification
HISTORIC DEVELOPMENTS IN ANSWERING THE PHONE

My Dutch colleague Leo Lentz (Lentz, 1997) introduced me to the thought that conversational practices (like answering the phone) may change over time within a culture. Lentz
asked himself: Did the Dutch always self-identify, or may they have started out in a different way? The problem with studying the history of telephone conversation is that we
do not have recordings of calls that were done before the last few decades. However, there
is an indirect way to approach the issue. Lentz analyzed theater plays and novels written
between 1920 and 1940 with respect to the use of the telephone. He also studied early telephone directories that not only provided telephone numbers but also instructed the Dutch
people how to use the phone. What Lentz found is the following.
The very first Official Guide of the Dutch Bell Telephone Company, No. 1 of 1881
instructs telephone conversationalists as follows: If the member is called by the telephone
bell, one takes the telephone off the hook, pushes it against the ear, makes clear he is present, and listens. The Namelist for the Interlocal Telephone Service of 1925 says: In
case of a call, one says his name and does not shout Hallo. The call should be answered
immediately. Ten years later it was said: One does not answer the telephone with Hallo,
but mentions name or telephone number. This time the directory also gave accounts for
the advice: this in order to prevent loss of time, and in case of a wrongly dialled number,
to give the caller the opportunity to put back the receiver and disconnect.
Not only directories, but also books on etiquette would instruct the Dutch how to behave
in case of a call. In 1945 it was written that The etiquette requires that the one who is
being called self-identifies immediately. A book from 1960 not only explained how to
do it: In case you are being called, mention your name, but also how not to do it: Do
not say just Hallo because this does not inform the caller. A few years later, in 1964,
another etiquette book is even more precise: We do not begin our conversation with the
silly Hallo, whos there? but mention shortly and consisely ones name or give ones tele-

phone number. As we see later on, providing ones telephone number never made it as a
practice in the Netherlands.
Lentz came to the conclusion that in the early days of telephone communication, the
Dutch must have started out their answering practice by saying hello. Only after World
War II and after the Dutch phone company had kept telling their costumers to mention their
names, rather than saying Hello, the Dutch gradually developed from providing a voice
sample into selfidentifying.
An interesting point in Lentzs work is the idea that some new piece of technology
requires a conversational practice that does not yet have a precedent that can simply be
followed by newcomers in the conversational arena.
A second point of interest is that people can gradually change a conversational practice
for whatever reasons. As a member of Dutch society, I had the impression that the Dutch
way of answering the phone was slightly changing over the last several years. This impression was based on two mundane observations. First, Dutch people, especialy women,
sometimes state that they say Hello when picking up the phone, because, as they say:
You dont know whos calling, after all, right? They seem to see this as a safe practice
that protects their privacy. This may well be in line with the fact that more and more Dutch
people have unlisted phone numbers nowadays.
The second mundane observation derives from my research on interaction in telephone
survey interviews, that I have done since 1991. I collected hundreds of recorded survey
interviews that are carried out from Dutch survey research centers. These interviewers randomly phone to Dutch citizens homes. Listening to these recordings I got the impression
that, compared to the late1980s data, more people who answered the phone would say only
Hello or Yes, either with a rising or a falling intonation contour. Moreover, it seemed
as if these were the people who angrily inquired how the interviewer got hold of their
phone number, as it was an unlisted number. So, I wondered if the Dutch might be moving
up a little toward the American system.
When one day, my student Titia Houwing asked me for an idea what to study for her
thesis, I proposed she might look at my interview data and compare the openings with
the late 1980s data that were reported in HoutkoopSteenstra (1991). Titia transcribed the
first 142 opening sequences of these interview tapes, leaving out the cases that would fall
into my 1991 category of variant cases. Table 16.3 shows what she found. Note that the
four variant cases of the late eighties data reported in Houtkoop-Steenstra (1991) are left
out here.
TABLE 16.3
self-identification
78
non-self-identifi5
cation
83
X2=0.70, DF=1, P=0.40
LATE 1980s
DATA
SURVEY INTERVIEWS
1995
%
94
6
N
129
13
%
91
9
100%
142
100%

Let me first make clear why I use the term non-self-identification rather than voice sample
in this table. Anita Pomerantz pointed out (personal communication) that if my Dutch
informants claim they say hello in order not to be recognized by creepy callers, they can
not be seen as providing a voice sample. Remember that a voice sample is meant to be
recognized by caller (Schegloff 1972, p. 353; 1986, p. 123).5
Table 16.3 shows that there is no significant increase in the percentage of answerers who
withhold self-identification. Maybe the people who claim they answer the phone by saying
hello nowadays, do not actually do say hello once they are being called. Perhaps it is less
easy to say goodbye to a conversational routine than one might wish.
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN 1995
The next step in this study was to look for possible gender differences in the way Dutch
people answered the phone in 1995. Could it be that the 9% of the answerers who withheld
self-identification were mainly women?6 As was said earlier, it were especially women
who claimed they answered the phone by saying Hello in order not to be identified. After
going through the transcripts again in order to find out whether the answerer was male or
female, we did not find significant gender differences, as Table 16.4 shows.
TABLE 16.4
% of Men
1995
self-identification
54
non-self-identifi4
cation
58%
X2=0.60, DF=1,P=0.439
% of Women 1995
93
7
75
9
89
11
100%
84%
100%
As we reanalyzed the transcribed openings, we came to realize that selfidentification is

a broad category that comprises different ways of selfidentification. When answerers perform the activity of self-identification, they also choose a certain formulation with which
they self-identify. There were four ways in which the Dutch self-identified in these 1995
Pomerantz remark is a challenging one, which, however, can only be confirmed if we would
know what action the Dutch answerers intend to perform when saying Hallo. And it may well be
that some mean to withhold self-identification and/or to invite the caller to self-identify, whereas
others mean to indeed provide a voice sample to be recognized by the caller. As we have no clear
means to decide on participants intentions, we need a less interpretive term than voice sample for
the Dutch situation. Therefore I use the more descriptive term non-self-identification.
6
Conversation analysts are very reluctant to engage in quantitative and distributional studies of
conversation for reasons that were laid out by Schegloff(1993); see also Hopper (n.d.) and Schegloff (1987). I wish to point out that the problems that Schegloff discussed appear not to apply to
the study at hand, that is, the study of the response to yet unknown callers summons.
5

data: (a) mention first name: (With) Hanneke; (b) mention both names: (With) Hanneke Houtkoop; (c) mention last name: (With) Houtkoop; (d) Title+last name: (With)
Misses Houtkoop. Theoretically speaking, one could also provide ones telephone number, but nobody did so.
After we did a statistical analysis of our data, we found some striking gender differences
in ways of self-identifying (see Table 16.5).
TABLE 16.5
Self-Identification
Male
Female
%
N
N
First Name
8
15 19
First+Last Name
18
33 24
Last Name
28
52 16
Title+Last Name
0
0 16
54 100% 75
X221.77, DF=3, P=0.000
%
25.0
32.0
21.5
21.5
100%
The most striking finding is that whereas 21.5% of the women in this sample say Mrs. Last
Name, not one man says Mr. Last Name. The background of this difference is unclear.
Another result is that only when it comes to the percentage of persons using First+Last
Name men and women act the same. The genders score very different on the other two
ways of self-identifying. The women provide First Name almost twice as often as the men
do (25% vs. 15%), whereas the men provide Last Name more than twice as often as the
women do (52% vs. 21%).
What do answerers do when they identify themselves as First Name or as Last Name?
Providing a self-identification as such may well be a cultural specific routine, but making
the choice for one form of self-identification over another, is a different issue. Do people
present a certain aspect of themselves, when choosing for one or the other form? Do people
project informality when they present themselves by First Name, and do they project formality when they present themselves by Last Name?
There is a yet unmentioned aspect of these calls to domestic homes that may be relevant here. In two thirds of the cases, the phone was answered by women.7 If we leave
out all women and men who live on their own, and concentrate on households, this may
mean that answering the phone is primarily the business of the woman in the house. So for
women, the telephone may be part of the domestic and private world of relatives, friends
and aquaintances. And in answering the phone by providing first name only they recipient
design their answer and are doing being intimate (cf. Lindstrm 1994). Dutch men, on
the other hand, may consider the telephone as belonging, in the first place, to the public
domain, where more formal ways of speaking are being used. So, one might suggest that
Ton Boves (personal communication), a Dutch survey researcher confirmed that in The Netherlands calls from survey research centers are answered far more by women than by men.

the different ways in which a large proportion of Dutch men and women answer the phone,
reflect their different orientations to the category of people whom they expect to call.8 One
could object to this line of reasoning by saying that Dutch women, just like Dutch men, are
being called by potential strangers in their workplaces. However, if we look at the statistics
of the Dutch labor market (NRC Handelsblad 1998), it turns out that in 1969, only 30 years
ago, no more than 30% of the Dutch women had a paid job. For the men, this was 98%
(See Table 16.6).
TABLE 16.6
Dutch Labour participation (2064 years old)
1969
1998
Men
98%
80%
Women
30%
58%
If we also consider the fact that a large percentage of these womens jobs were, and still
are, part-time jobs, it seems reasonable to say that for Dutch women the telephone used
to be primarily part of their domestic lives. And for Dutch men, the phone used to belong
to their public lives. These then are the different settings in which the genders may have
come to develop their gender-related ways of answering the phone. For the time being I
think that the gender-specific way of self-identifying is, in the first place, a reflection of
the traditionally and still existing very unequal labor division in the Netherlands. If this
suggestion holds true indeed, and considering the growing number of working women in
the Netherlands, we may expect the gender-related differences in answering the phone to
gradually decrease in the future.
From a conversation analytical point of view, one might say that in the way the Dutch
men and women in our data answered the phone they displayed an orientation to a different class of potential callers, and that they recipient designed their answering utterances.
Although this may well have been the case in specific cases, I strongly believe that the
way in which individuals answer the phone is a case of socialization and routine in the first
place. Dutch children are explicitly taught to answer the phone by mentioning their names.
There is no research on how Dutch children develop their phone answering practices, but
one may expect the following: They start out answering the phone by saying Hello? as
my collection of telephone openings suggests. Soon their parents instruct them to mention their name when answering the phone, which they take as mentioning their first name
only. And in hearing how adults answer the phone, they will gradually come to see that
adult women provide First Name or First 4- Last Name, whereas the adult men provide
First+Last Name or Last Name only. At some point in their lives a large proportion of the
Dutch children will adopt this gender-specific way of answering the phone. Had these
children been raised in the United States, they would have learned to answer the domestic
phone by saying hello. As Hopper (1992) says about this American routine, it was established in the early years of telephone use and has remained somewhat stable.
I owe this perspective to Gitte Rasmussen, with whom I discussed these gender-related differences
in self-identifying.

The way in which people answer the phone is not only a matter of socialization, but also
of routine behavior.9 Each Dutch person has his or her own idiosyncratic routine; they not
only differ in the form of self-identification they use but also in whether or not they begin
their self-identification with Hello and/or with, and in the intonation contour of the
answering utterance and their speech rate.
CONCLUSION
When discussing how telephone conversationalists proceed in establishing the parties
identities, it was already suggested that cultural differences exist with regard to how to
carry out the interactional task of mutual identification. In some cultures, answerers typically provide vocal recognition cues; in other cultures, they typically self-identify. This
study shows that there may also be genderrelated differences within one and the same culture when it comes to how to answer the phone. These differences may be seen as stylistic
differences (cf. Hopper et al. 1990/1991). In Dutch society, the genders do not differ in
whether or not they self-identify, but in how they self-identify.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Huub van den Bergh, Paul Drew, Paul ten Have, Henk Lammers, Leo Lentz, Joost
Schilperoord and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier
version of this paper.
REFERENCES
Adler, J. (1993). Telephoning in Germany. Telecommunications Policy, 281296.
Godard, D. (1977). Same setting, different norms: Phone call beginnings in France and the United
States. Language in Society, 6, 209219.
Hopper, R. (n.d.). Quantity envy. Unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Austin.
Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
Hopper, R., Doany N., Johnson, M., & Drummond, K. (1990/1991). Universals and particulars in
telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 369387.
three languages. In S.Ting-Toomey & F. Korzenny (Eds.), Language, communication and culture (pp. 157179). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Hopper, R., & Chen, C.H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction 29, 291313.
Houtkoop-Steenstra, H. (1991). Opening sequences in Dutch telephone conversations. In D.Boden
& D.H.Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and social structure (pp. 231252). Cambridge, England: Polity
Press.
Lentz, L. (1997). The history of opening sequences in Dutch telephone conversations. In L.Lentz &
H.Pander Maat (Eds.), Discourse analysis and evaluation: Functional approaches (pp. 87111).
Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi.
It is striking that in Lindstrms Swedish data it was one individual who was responsible for 3 of
the 5 Hello-answers.

NRC-Handelsblad. Vrouwendeelname groeit. [Womens participation grows]. (1998, July 2). p. 4.
Lindstrm, A. (1994). Identification and recognition in Swedish telephone conversation openings.
Language in Society, 23, 321352.
Placencia, M.E. (1998, July 19). Telephone conversation openings in Ecuadorian Spanish and British English. Paper presented at the 6th IPrA conference, Reims, France.
Sanders, E. (1998, October 7). Ik zeg: Hallo. [I say: Hello.]. NRC Handelsblad.
Schegloff, E.A. (1967). The first five seconds. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of
California at Berkeley.
Schegloff, E.A. (1972). Sequencing in conversational openings. In J.J. Gumperz & D.Hymes
(Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics (pp. 346380). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Schegloff, E.A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G.
Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 2378). New York:
Irvington.
Schegloff, E.A. (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies, 9, 111151
Schegloff, E.A. (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on
Sifianou, M. (1989). On the telephone again! Differences in telephone behaviour. England versus
Greece. Language in Society, 18, 527544.
III
Talk in Institutional Settings
The importance of social institutions is indicated by the extensive attention devoted to
them in scholarly work (e.g., Drew & Heritage, 1992; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Morris &
Chenail, 1995). Drew and Heritage pointed out that an occasions institutionality is not
derived simply from its setting. Rather, interaction is institutional insofar as participants
institutional or professional identities are somehow made relevant to the work activities in
which they are engaged (p. 4). Thus interaction is central to the constitution of institutional settings. As Heritage (1984, p. 242) pointed out, interaction is both context shaped
and context renewing. Work in language and social interaction (LSI) has examined institutional settings from a number of different perspectives. In this section authors focus on
a range of institutions from several different perspectives, showing both how institutions
impinge on interaction, and how interaction is constitutive of institutions.
A formal distinction between casual and institutional talk (see Heritage & Drew, 1992;
Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) assumes that casual conversation occupies one end of
a continuum of speech-exchange systems, the other end of which is marked by increasing
restriction on turn taking. Other than distinguishing various institutional events by their
turn-taking features (such as meetings, interviews, and debates), little work has attempted
systematically to explore variations in talk in different types of institutions. In chapter 17,
Paul Drew explores the possibility that formulations, which are utterances providing a
summary or gist of preceding talk, might vary across four different institutional contexts.
Drew addresses this question while reflexively considering analytic issues raised in the
process.
Robert Sanders (chap. 18) explores how methods and findings designed for studying
face-to-face and telephone talk might apply to interactions taking place over Marine VHP
radio between people on different boats. This medium carries particular constraints on
interaction due to the limitations of being unable to use the same channel for both listening
and speaking. Sanders shows how participants manage coherent interactions despite these
limitations. In particular, he demonstrates how laughter gets accomplished between speakers who cannot hear each other laugh in overlap.
Next, the article by Jennifer Molloy and Howard Giles (chap. 19) exemplifies work on
intergroup communication, taking up the important but understudied area of communication between civilians and law enforcement officers. This chapter shows how sociolinguistic research can have real-life applications that offer hope for improving communication
between groups. It pays tribute to an interest area of Robert Hopper, who coauthored with
his former student Dennis Gunderson a textbook for law enforcement officers on communication (Gundersen & Hopper, 1984).
The next three chapters examine interaction in a therapeutic setting. This has been a
popular site for research on LSI. Harvey Sacks, a founder of conversation analysis, made
some of its earliest applications in the study of a therapy group for troubled teenagers
(e.g., 1992, pp. 281299). Since the publication of Labov and Fanshels (1977) classic,
Part III: Talk in institutional settings 247

Therapeutic Discourse, analysis of clinical discourse has flourished. Through close observation and analysis of therapy recordings (e.g., Morris & Chenail, 1995), researchers
have shown how therapeutic discourse may be structured in ways that ordinary talk
is not, which has practical import for the discourses of healing that clinicians and clients
interactively bring about.
First, G.H. Bud Morris (chap. 20) examines preventatives, that is, utterances that orient
to and forestall the possibility of interactional trouble. In this study he builds on previous
research on disclaimers and accounts, grounded in the study of alignment as a fundamental interpersonal activity. He briefly introduces seven types of preventatives and offers
an instance of each type, arguing for both an ordering of them in terms of seriousness
and a time sequencing of them, such that speakers may start with the mildest and build
toward the strongest. He suggests that preventatives serve an important role in minimizing interactional problems that could deepen; he also argues that a rule of the earlier, the
better guides the doing of preventatives, as people seek ways to keep interactions going
smoothly.
Next, Duff Wrobbel (chap. 21) examines a recording of a family therapy session, focusing on several minutes of interaction leading up to an aha moment in which the wife
experiences (or at least displays) a sudden flash of insight or self-revelation. The author
identifies various external antecedents associated with the wifes internal experience,
including subtle communicative moves on the part of her therapist.
Taking seriously the social constructionist view that individual selves and psychological states are largely products of social interaction, Kurt Bruder (chap. 22) promotes
a discourse analytic approach to therapeutic intervention. The author argues that therapists can (perhaps should) analyze (in real time) the moment-by-moment and turn-by-turn
unfolding of therapy sessions, noticing and calling clients attention to the inevitable display and enactment of identityconstituting talk. Not only would the therapist gain insight
into a clients discursively generated psychosocial experiences, the argument goes, a therapist could share these insights with the client, who might thereby be acculturated into
processes of self-healing.
The last three chapters in this section examine interaction in the medical setting. Anita
Pomerantzs article (chap. 23) on modeling as a teaching strategy is part of an ongoing
research project concerning medical precepting, the process through which supervising
physicians train and oversee medical students working with patients in clinical settings.
She argues that modeling provides a solution to the complexities of needing to ensure
proper patient care, instruct interns, and yet avoid compromising the interns professional
role in front of patients. The chapter examines not only interactional phenomena, but also
participants perceptions of the effectiveness of a particular pedagogical strategy, as determined through surveys and interviews, which are standard ethnographic methods.
Douglas Maynard and Richard Frankel (chap. 24) examine a sequence of conversations
between a doctor and a female patient whose mammogram results were mixed, warranting additional tests (e.g., ultrasound) that also turned out to be indeterminate. The authors
focus on diagnostic news as an interactive and emergent accomplishment: The patient in
this case happens to also be a registered nurse, able to interpret test results and ready to
resist the doctors conclusion that the results constitute good news. By attending to the
details of this particular case, the authors show how diagnostic negotiations are delicately

woven into conversations between health care professionals, who sometimes joke (in a
self-conscious or self-reflexive way) about the medical practice in which they simultaneously participate.
In the final chapter of this section, Daniel Modaff (chap. 25) investigates coordination of
talk and subtle body movements during doctorpatient interviews. Specifically, he examines
transitional moments interactively brought about: Doctors sometimes turn away from their
patient and toward some object in the room (e.g., a stool), indicating a shift in the immediate focus of attention, giving the patient an opportunity to align with the transition possibly
being cued. Through such small and subtle forms of interaction, large social institutions
(such as a medical community) are sustained day by day, mostly taken for granted.
REFERENCES
Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). Talk at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gunderson, D. & Hopper, R. (1984). Communication and law enforcement. New York: Harper &
Row.
Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New
Morris, G., & Chenail, R. (Eds.). (1995). The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of
medical and therapeutic discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Sacks, H. (1992). An Introduction Sequence. In Lectures on Conversation (2 vols.) (G.Jefferson,
Ed.) (pp. 281299). Oxford: Blackwell.
turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50, 696735.
17
Comparative Analysis of Talk-in-Interaction in
Different Institutional Settings: A Sketch1
Paul Drew
University of York
INTRODUCTION
There has in recent years been some discussion and debate (e.g. Hak, 1995; Hopper, 1995;
and Schegloff, 1992) concerning the study of talk that takes place in institutional settings. Much of this debate is about how (and whether) institutional interactions are to be
distinguished from those that are not institutional: for instance, if the family is an institution, why then are telephone calls between members of a family not institutional? But
the question about what is special or different about institutional interactions shades into
others, including whether, since the practices and organizations of talk are generic to talkin-interaction, and are not specific to talk in any given setting, it is appropriate to separate
the study of talk in one setting (for instance in medical consultations, courts, or in news
interviews) from others? There is a tendency, it is argued, to treat the conduct of talk and
interaction in a particular institutional setting as unique to that setting. Because researchers generally focus on one specific institutional setting, they commonly assume that any
patterns or practices that are observed in that setting can be attributed to the particular
organizational features and exigencies associated with that setting.
The analytic connections between the very identification and delimitation of institutional interactions, and the readiness to attribute to features of talk in a given setting a
certain kind of uniqueness, is summarized succinctly by Hopper in a trenchant commentary
about whether the study of institutional settings might, as he puts it, blunt the cutting
edge of conversation analysis?:
A problem with analyses of institutional talk is embedded in describing it as institutional talk. This terminology carries the traditional setting divisions of communication study. Given a characterization of a strip of talk as the opening of a medical
interview, or given a title of an essay as Host Talk on X TV Show it becomes
difficult to resist offering an institutional setting explanation as the explanation for
whatever we find in these materials. (Hopper, 1995, p. 374)
This paper is based on a talk which I first gave at a meeting of Nordic sociolinguistics projects,
held at the Swedish School of Social Sciences, Helsinki University, in May 1992. A previous version was published in H.Lehti-Eklund ed., 1998. In revising this for publication in this volume, I
have benefited from the particularly thoughtful comments of two anonymous reviewers: although I
have not accepted all their suggestions, I have borrowed from these at certain points without further
acknowledgement.
1

Hopper develops these arguments in a number of directions, some of which have also been
articulated by other voices in this debate. I would like to take up just one of these directions
hereone which is more or less implicit in his commentary, but which is quite explicit at
some points in his own research (Hopper and Drummond, 1992; Hopper and Chen, 1996).
That is, that comparative analysis may be required in order to assess how far a certain pattern, device or practice is generic to talk-in-interaction, and therefore not restricted to any
one type or setting; or whether, perhaps, there are systematic variations in the occurrence,
scope, properties and form of certain practicesvariations associated with the specific
settings in which they occur and the activities in which participants are engaged in those
settings.2
Although work on institutional interactions often implies or explicitly claims a comparative justification for attributing a pattern or device (or the salience and import of that
pattern or device) to a given setting, nevertheless it is true that those claims are generally
not supported by comparative research. Hopper is correct when he points out that Most
essays about talk within institutions have treated just one setting, which foregrounds setting-based explanations for things happening as they do (Hopper, 1995, p. 373). Typically,
researchers (and I include myself here) investigate interaction in the particular setting they
are studying, perhaps with only an indistinct comparative perspective in minda general
awareness that what they are finding in their data/setting is unlike patterns or features which
(probably) obtain in other settings, but without exploring that suspected comparative difference at all systematically. And there is something further which is worth highlighting in
a remark which Hopper makes about such comparisons, Analyses of talk in institutional
settings frequently proceed by posing comparisons between practices used in that settings
and those in mundane conversationpractices that seem relatively context-free (Hopper,
1995, p. 372). I take this to mean, in part at least, that we can claim about a practice that it
has some relatively specialized use or consequences in a given settingeven though the
practice itself is not restricted to that setting (just as oh is not restricted to mundane conversation) and is therefore relatively context-free, and despite our not having investigated its
various uses or properties in other settings (hence the tendency to attribute to that practice
in that setting some unique properties, or to explain its occurrence in terms of the special
properties of that setting).
As a way to begin to address some of these issues of comparative analysis, to sketch
what such an analysis might involve and what kinds of properties of a practice we might
investigate, it occurred to me to bring together some findings about a particular conversational practice, that of formulating what another speaker is saying or has said. Plainly
the practice is in some respect context free; it is not restricted to any particular context,
whether mundane or institutional. However, I wondered whether the practice may exhibit
some systematic variations associated with the settings in which it is used. What follows,
This is a slight re-statement and amplification of the proposal which Heritage and I made, that
The basic forms of mundane talk constitute a kind of benchmark against which other more formal or institutional types of interaction are recognized and experienced institutional forms of
interaction will show systematic variations and restrictions on activities in their design relative to
ordinary conversation (Drew and Heritage, 1992, p. 19).
Comparative analysis of talk-in-interaction 251

then, is a sketch, the objective of which is to enquire whether, if a practice appears to be
context free, we should let it rest there, assigning this to one of those generic practices of
talk-in-interactionor rather, whether the practice is molded into distinctive shapes by
participants when they engage in the specific interactional work associated with certain
institutional settings.
FORMULATIONS
The sense or meaning of a conversation, part of a conversation, or a turn in a conversation,
is not unambiguous. The meaning of what someone said or what we have been talking about
can be describedor formulatedin different ways. Of course most of the time, participants in a conversation take it that they have understood the others meaning sufficiently
to be able to produce a relevant response, without first having to check their interpretation
of what the other meant. But from time-to-time, participants May treat some part of the
conversation as an occasion to describe that conversation, to explain it, or characterize it, or
explicate, or translate, or summarize, or furnish the gist of it, or take note of its accordance
with rules, or remark on its departure from rules. That is to say, a member may use some
part of the conversation as an occasion to formulate the conversation (Garfinkel and
Sacks 1970, p. 350). Thus formulations are a means through which participants may make
explicit their sense of what we are talking about, or what has just said: they are a means
for constructing an explicit sense of the gist of the talk thus far.
In their seminal paper on formulations, Heritage and Watson (1979) (following Garfinkel and Sacks) identify and describe a range of types of formulations. I shall focus here
on those in which a speaker offers his or her interpretation of what the other meantan
activity which generally takes the form (So) what you mean/are saying is, or something resembling that. These are familiar to linguists as metacommunicative acts, expressions through which participants comment on the nature of the discourse in which they are
engaged, or are about to be engaged. One reservation I have with the term wetacommunication is the implication that such expressions stand above or outside the talk. Heritage
and Watson (1979) argue cogently that formulations are themselves events or moves within
the talk, and as such may be geared primarily to participants ongoing, specific practical
interactional tasks. In this respect, they are as much part of the talk as any other kind of turn
or discourse practice. Indeed we can see that formulations are produced in very specific
interactional environments or circumstances in various kinds of institutional discourse, and
that they serve to perform specific interactional tasks which vary according to the setting.
But more of that in a moment: for the present, I want to make an initial observation about
the claim I made earlier that they are contextfree.
FORMULATIONS IN ORDINARY CONVERSATION
In their title Formulations as conversational objects, Heritage and Watson can be taken
to imply that formulations are the realizations of a generic practice in talk-in-interaction
(mundane conversation as well as other forms of talk). Just parenthetically, I take it that
formulating is the practice, and that a formulation is the object or device through which
the practice is mobilized by participants in a given interaction. At any rate, I supposed

from the title that Heritage and Watson were describing a practice/device that had its home
base in conversation.3 I was wrong. Re-reading the article, I discovered that none of the
instances they show (at least, none resembling the form I outlined above) was taken from
ordinary conversation: instead, they were from a variety of institutional contexts, mostly
news interviews.
This led me to make a search of the recordings of mundane (mostly telephone) conversations we have (much of this data obtained in the years since Heritage and Watson wrote
their article) in order to check whether their data were skewed by their happening to have
been working at that time on news interviews. I was surprised to find almost no instances
of formulations which in any way resembled (So) what you re saying is. This is one of
the only two clear cases I found during a not-quite-exhaustive search.
(1) [HG: 45] (Talking about Nancys skin problems, and the medication she has been given) the
l
1
Nan: So e gay me these pills tih ta:ke=
2
Hyl: =What.Tetracykuhleen?
3
(.)
4
Nan: .PT NO: cuz I usetuh take that an it didn
5
he:lp so e gay me something e:lse.=

6
Hyl: =Hm: .
7
(0.2)
8
Nan: He sai:d- yihknow, (0.2) sometimes Tetracyklene
9
jus doesn he:lp.

10
(0.4)
11
Nan: Also he sid that (0.3) .t what you ea:t, (0.2)
12
end how you wash yer face has nothing tih do

13
with it,
14
(0.8)
15
Hyl: Yer kiddin[g.
16
Nan: [nNo:,
17
(0.4)
18
Nan: He says ts all inside you its n emotional
19
thingn, .hhh e[:n,

20
Hyl: [Yeah buh whatchu ea:t if you
21
eat greasy foo:d=
3
I think that the use by Heritage and Watson of conversational in their title was owed in part to
how enquiries in conversation analysis were cast, at the time they wrote (1979). They were describing the properties of what they took to be a general (if not quite generic) practice: they did not then
have the more accurate nomenclature talk-in-interaction (which as far as I know was introduced
by Schegloff in the early 1990s) with which to refer to its scope. What they might have meant by
conversational was general: however that misled me, at least, into assuming that it was primarily in
ordinary conversation in which participants employed this practice.

22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Nan:
Hyl:
Nan:
Hyl:
Nan:
Nan:
Hyl:
=We:h he said its no:t the fact thet youve

eaten the greasy food its a fact thet you
worry about it. En that makes you
[break ou[;t.
[.Teh.k.h[hhhhhh Ymean I cd sit here en eat
french fries n ez longz Im not worrying
about it I [wont break ou]hhhthh
[I g z a : :]:ctly,
(.)
.hh[hh] tsa [buncha [h:::::::[horse:]:
[I] belie [ve im [too hes[rilly-]
(.)
[e.-hes rilly a [smart,]
[(isk-skih-) f: [father]s, .huhh [.hn
Here, in Lines 2628 Hyla seems to offer an interpretation of what the other has said (note
that in #1 Nancy reports in Lines 8, 11, 18 and 22 what the doctor said to her, as he said
such-and-such: these are instances of indirect reported speech, and not therefore the practice on which I am focusing here). However, without being very technical about this, it is
reasonably clear that Hyla is being tendentious in her interpretation (remembering that
Nancy is reporting what the doctor said to her; but she is doing so in a fashion which makes
it evident that she is aligning with or accepting what he said). Moreover in producing this
version of what Nancy means, Hyla is making a move that is a preliminary to expressing
her scepticism with the doctors advice (Lines 30 and 31, its a bunch of horse feathers).
So this practice of offering an interpretation of what the other meant is employed in
mundane conversationbut apparently only very infrequently. This is in contrast to various institutional settings in which, as I knew from some previous research,4 such formulations are very frequent indeed. This then is a practice/device that might be generic, though
not much found in conversation. However, to regard this as a generic practice, we need to
explore whether it has properties which are context-free in so far as they are exhibited in,
and underpin, its use in talk in any setting in which it occurs (this to paraphrase Hopper,
1995, p. 372). This led me to considering how this practice was employed in other settings,
and whether its properties, its form or linguistic features, were identical; or whether instead
the design features associated with formulating in various settings differed systematically
according to the kind of interactional work which formulating is done to manage in particular settings (a kind of correspondence between form and function)in which case,
whilst the practice of formulating may be context-free, we cannot discern a generic device
through which the practice is implemented.
In order to pursue this question, I will briefly describe instances of formulations in
psychotherapeutic consultations, call-in radio programmes, news interviews and industrial
I am drawing here particularly on work of two of my previous graduate students, Ian Hutchby
and Esther Walker. Their research into, respectively, radio call-in programmes and negotiations
between management and unions in an industrial setting is cited in the bibliography. I would like to
acknowledge my indebtedness to their work, from which many of the data extracts are taken.

negotiations. Space allows me to show only a single example in each setting: but this will
perhaps be sufficient to sketch a comparisonone which will suggest that the precise
linguistic forms that such formulations take may differ, and do so in ways which seems to
relate to the interactional task (function) which the formulation serves in each setting.
FORMULATIONS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
An instance of a formulation in psychotherapeutic sessions, which illustrates what
appear to be some of the characteristic features of such expressions in this setting, is the
following:
(2)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
[Therapy: PB:53172:7]
Brenda:
Well hhm I ve been ah:m,hh .k better:
with her. (.) u-lately, then I had been (.) in
a long ti.-ime. (0.2) .p.hh (0.9) e-Oh: Go:d but
that couldnt I mean if that ever created a
problem like Im having no:w.
(l.7)
Laurel:
May not create a problem: it might make it
possible for a problem to come ou:t
(12.1)
Brenda:
You mean she couldve always felt like this.
(0.4)
Laurel:
Mmhm
(26.4)
Brenda:
.pl.hhhhh (0.6) mYou know Sams been very
upset
about this. N he: (0.4) s-aid that I shouldnt
have sent her to school when I did. (1.5) And
thats probably what caused it.
The patient (Brenda) has been telling about some aspect of a problem she is having with
her very young daughter: in her first turn in this fragment she appears to notice a paradox
between an improvement in her conduct (Ive been better with her lately) and the worsening of her childs problems (a problem like Im having now). The therapist responds
(Lines 78) by commenting on, or making an observation about, the patients account, and
seems to offer an alternative association between Brendas improvement and her daughters apparently increasing problem (in other instances, such commenting may be done in
an interrogative form, as in Think she might be trying to tell you something about you?).
The patients formulation (Line 10) is an expression through which she offers her interpretation of the characteristically implicit, allusive or indirect message which she discerns in
Laurals remark. The patient is constructing a sense of what the therapist might be alluding
to in her comment/observation, putting that implicit message into so many words, for the
therapist to confirm. The sense of the therapists intending to be allusive, to hint at but not
make explicit some point to be found in the patients telling, is perhaps to be found also in

Laurels minimal and unelaborated confirmation of Brendas formulation/understanding
check (see Line 12). Moreover, in this kind of therapy at least, there is evidently an orientation to a strategy whereby the therapist guides the patient towards finding for herself
what might be the true nature of her problem. But at any rate, it is evident that the patient
treats the therapists comment or observation in Lines 78 as implying or alluding to something about the problem, which goes beyond what she (the therapist) has said explicitly.
Brendas formulation is an attempt to put into words that implied message, and thereby
constitutes an action that is part of her finding, and showing that she is finding, the direction
in which the therapist is pointing her.5 In this way, her formulation embodies an orientation to the reciprocal role of therapist and patient, and the behaviors expected of each (on
formulations in psychotherapeutic settings, see also Davis, 1986).
FORMULATIONS IN RADIO CALL-IN PROGRAMMES
In his study of radio call-in programmes (specifically, a program broadcast by a London
radio station, in which listeners called in to air and discuss with the program host their
views about any matters of current interest, or which concerned them), Hutchby (1996)
focused on the ways in which the host constructed controversy. Whatever topic a caller
had called in about, and whatever position he or she held, the host invariably managed to
challenge their point of view and contested their argumentso that often the most unexceptional views were turned into the subject of a controversy between host and caller.
Among the moves which the host made in seeking to defeat the callers view was to
formulate the callers argument, to summarize the gist of what he or she was saying.
(3) [BH:2/2/89:12:12] (from Hutchby 1996, pp. 7071) (The caller has phoned in to
recommend a product which will prevent dogs fouling the footpath outside ones home)
1
Caller:
U: sually when a dog fouls:, .hh e::r it, it
2
lea:ves-=the scent that is left behind even if

3
you:, clean up with boiling wa:ter an

4
disinfectant, .hhh is a mar:ker. .h An when e

5
comes on is e::r, (w-) wa:lk the next da:y,

6
when e gets tuh that ma:rk, he does the same

7
thing again.
8
10Host:
Er you s-seem tuh be suggesting that they go
A simple way to put this is that Brenda is checking her understanding of what Laurel has said.
However, she may be doing so in the service of another activity, namely showing that she is seriously considering the implications of the alternative association which is implied in Laurals remark
(that the daughters problem hasnt been caused by Brendas recent conduct, but is the result of
pre-existing circumstances or events which have only now come to the surface). So that checking
her understanding can be a way to show that she is considering this possibility.

11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Caller:
Host:
Caller:
Host:
tthe same place evry ti:me. Becuz theyve

been there buhfore,
Ooh yes,=quite often ye:s.=
=Yeah but er(h)n(h) then:, .h e:r,=
=An[d other [dogs will: also.
[This- [This mea:ns that they never go in
a diffrent pla:ce,=doesnt it.
In Lines 1012 the host formulates the callers account (opening turn) as amounting to
an argument that when dogs poop on the pavement they go tthe same place evry ti:me.
Becuz theyve been there buhfore,. It is readily apparent from this extract that that formulation is the first part in an argument sequence: after the caller confirms this formulation,
the host subsequently constructs an upshot of the callers position, an upshot which reveals
the absurdity of that position (here, the absurdity of holding that a dog always poops in
the same place). Three features of this formulation are worth drawing attention to at this
stage. First, it is tendentious; it is constructed to serve the hosts purpose to challenge and
undermine the callers position (there are several features which are associated with that
tendentiousness, including extreme case constructions such as same place every time).
Second, the callers attempt to qualify his confirmation of that formulation, in quite often
(Line 13), is possibly evidence that he has recognized the hosts strategy and is trying to
head off an anticipated line of argument. So the hosts formulation is likely to have been
analyzed by the caller as a move which has the aim of setting him up. And third, the
formulation is the initial move in a sequence designed to challenge and defeat the callers
position, the third turn in that sequence being the hosts rebuttal in Lines 1617 (an attempt
having been made in Line 14 to go straight to that third turn rebuttalan attempt which
collides with the caller continuing to support or defend his position, perhaps as further
evidence that he understands the hosts strategy, and is trying to deflect it).
FORMULATIONS IN NEWS INTERVIEWS
Heritage reports that in news interviews, interviewers do not respond with news marks
(particularly, oh) to answers which interviewees give to their questions (Heritage, 1985).
In order to avoid being seen to align with the IE, or in other ways to treat his or herself
as the primary recipient of the talk, IRs regularly use formulations of the gist of the IEs
prior answerformulations which do not exhibit any empathy or alignment with the IEs
position, but which topicalize or highlight an implication of what the IE has said in answer
to a prior question (Heritage, 1985). All that such formulations do, officially, is to make
explicit something in the prior answer, for the IE to confirm or disconfirm. But by highlighting some particular aspect of what the IE has just said, the IR manages to give the IE
the opportunity to comment further, or elaborate, or defend, his or her position.
(4) [News interview: TVN:Tea] (from Heritage, 1985, pp. 108109)
1
IE: What in fact happened was that in the course of
2
last year, .hh the price went up really very

3
sharply, .hhh and-uh the blenders did take

4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
IR:
IE:
advantage of this:-uh to obviously to raise

their prices to retailers. (0.7) .hhh They
havent been so quick in reducing prices when
the world market prices come down. (0.3) .hh
And so this means that prd.ce in the sh- the
prices in the shops have stayed up .hh really
rather higher than wed like to see them.
(0.7)
So you-youre really accusing them of
profiteering.
.hhh No theyre in business to make money
thats perfectly sensible.=Were also saying
that-uh: its not a trade which is competitive
as we would like it.=Thre four (0.2) blenders
which have together eighty-five percent of the
market .hhh and-uh were not saying they (.)
move in concert or anything like that but wed
like the trade to be a bit more competitive.
The IRs formulation in #4 is an instance of the kind of formulation that Heritage describes
as an inferentially elaborative probe (1985, pp. 108112): it invites the IE to assent to
a rather strong or dramatic version of what he has said in his previous answer. The IR
characterizes the IEs stance as being particular critical of the tea blenders: this is perhaps
designed to commit the interviewee to a stronger (and more newsworthy) version of his
position (in relation to the blenders) than he was initially prepared to adoptthe point
being to test how far the IE is prepared to go in criticizing the blenders (Heritage, 1985, p.
110). In formulating the IEs position in such dramatic, controversial or conflictual terms,
the IR might, of course, expect the IE to deny such a strong version of his position. The IR
may do so in the interests of making the item more newsworthy or controversial (if only by
getting the IE to go on record as denying something).
FORMULATIONS IN INDUSTRIAL NEGOTIATIONS
The final setting that I want to consider as part of this comparative exercise is that of industrial negotiations. In her study of negotiations in the workplace between management and
trades union representatives, Walker (1994) reports that formulations are used at particularly critical junctures in negotiations. Following periods of extensive discussion on a matter under dispute, one or other side (i.e., either management or union) may formulate the
position each is taking, summarizing where they now stand, in an effort to explore whether
they can reach an agreed settlementa compromise, in which well agree to x if you agree
to y. The following is a particularly transparent instance.

(5) [PORT: WGE:2:A:314] (From a wage negotiation between management, here Andy, and
the work staffs union, represented here by Pete. Management are offering a flat rate pay
award, with no additional deals/inducements. The union is seeking a package, to include discussions about a shorter working week) (from Walker, 1994)
1
Andy:
Er:m (1.4) er so (1.0) youre (.) com- on the
2
basis of feedback youre getting from (.) from

3
people (.) you (.) started off giving me the

4
impression that we were (.) still hundreds of

5
miles apart (.) we now seem to have come down

6
to a position where (.) in essence what youre

7
asking us to consider is the six percent on

8
basic which weve already offered you (.) but

9
you would like in addition to that for us to

10
consider the possibility (.) of: an increase

11
(.) on the (.) bonus rate (.) and to include in

12
any agreement we reach (.) a paragraph

13
indicating the willingness to (.) have dialogue

14
on the subject of a thirty seven hour week

15
(1.2) during the period of this agreement.

16
(3.4)
17
Pete:
N:o (.) thats not whaI said.
18
(1.0)
19
Pete:
I says in six months time to have a look at it
20
(.) again
21
Andy:
You want to be specific an say six months do
22
you
23
(1.3)
24
Pete:
I think you have to () bu I mean if you:
25
(.) talked about it for six months as well
Andys extended formulation, which begins with in essence what youre asking us to
consider is (Lines 615), is an attempt to summarize where they have got to in their
discussion, and to construct a package in which the union will recommend a pay rise of
6% (they had been asking for more), in return for management agreeing to enter into talks,
during the next twelve months (i.e., during the period of this agreement.), about reducing
the working week. It may be noted that although the union representative (Pete, in Line
17) objects to this formulation of what his (union) team has been demanding, his objection
is only to one aspect of it. In effect he is correcting only that part of Andys formulation
of his (Petes) position which concerns the period in which the union are seeking to have
discussions begin on the issue of a shorter working week (Lines 19, 20). Andys enquiry
(Line 21)to which Pete responds with an interpretation of the six months stipulation
which would make it more acceptable to Andy (ie. starting in six months, and talking
for six months, would bring it into line with the managements preferred timetable)is
a preagreement move towards his accepting the compromise settlement adumbrated

in his formulation of what the union is now asking for. So his formulation of the other
sides position played a key role in achieving an agreement on the matter of the wage rise.
Through that formulation he was proposing a compromise that struck a balance between the
interests of the two sides, in a (successful) attempt to reach agreement.
In summary, then, formulations in these negotiations occur after there has been discussion about some issue of contention; and they are constructed to articulate what each side
may be willing to offer by way of a compromise package. That is, although ostensibly
formulating only what the other side is saying, these formulations are constructed in a turn
package which conveys what the proposer (i.e., the one doing the formulation) is willing
to agree to. Hence formulations are the objects through which a settlement is proposed.
Because of their strategic characterone side may be trying to slip in to the wording of
the formulation something in line with their preferred outcome, and something which the
other side may wish not to acceptthe other side may be cautious in confirming such formulations: for instance in #5 the formulation was rejected, and an alternative one proposed
(Lines 2125), whilst elsewhere the other side may avoid explicitly accepting or rejecting
the formulation but instead give a very qualified version of what they are saying (a version
which avoids commitment to the principle which the other sides formulation attempted to
build into the settlement).
DISCUSSION: COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE INTERACTIONAL
FUNCTION AND LINGUISTIC FORM OF FORMULATIONS IN
DIFFERENT SETTINGS
The single instances I have shown of formulations in each of the four settings are taken
from collections of such objects in these settings. Although these are likely to be representative of such collections, one cannot yet draw firm conclusions on the basis of this preliminary review. So in comparing formulating in the different settings considered above, I am
not claiming that these are anything like definitive findings. Recalling that this is a sketch
or an exercise, all I mean to indicate is that these are the kinds of comparisons that can be
made, and the kinds of conclusions that emerge, at least on the basis of these limited data.
So the following points sketch the dimensions or properties in terms of which formulating in different settings can be compared, if we are to consider whether formulations are a
generic device of talk-in-interactionand I think it would follow from these comparisons
(if the observations on which they are based hold for large-scale data sets) that whilst
formulating is a generic practice in talk-in-interaction, the forms through which it is realized are not. These forms (objects or devices) are not unique to particular settings, so they
are not setting-specific; rather there are clusters of similarities which relate to the kinds of
activities which are managed through formulating.
It appears that formulations have different interactional functions in the different settings reviewedwhere by interactional function I mean that participants manage different activities through formulating, which is therefore associated with different kinds of
activity sequences. In psycho therapeutic sessions, the patient formulated a version of the
therapists prior comment, by way of checking her understanding of the therapists implicit
meaning (this being associated with the therapists strategy of making a comment, or asking a question, which leaves it to the patient to find for herself what the problem is, what

should be done etc.). In the radio call-in programmes, the host formulated a (tendentious)
version of the callers argument, as an initial move in an argument sequence (confirmation
by the caller of the formulation, leading to a reductio ad absurdum by the host). It is worth
noticing the similarity between this and the formulation shown from ordinary conversation, in extract #1in which Hyla constructed a tendentious version of what Nancy was
saying, before expressing scepticism with the latters argument (or rather, with the doctors argument, with which she was aligning). News interviewers offered formulations of
interviewees prior answers, as a means to invite or encourage them to elaborate on some
particular aspect of that answer (often as a means of dramatizing the issue, and making it
more conflictual and newsworthy). And finally, in industrial negotiations one side offers a
formulation of what the other is saying/proposing, in an effort to construct a compromise
which will settle the matter under negotiationthe formulation being designed strategically to hold on to one sides preferred conditions, whilst characterizing this in a package
designed to be acceptable to the other side.
Each of these activities is central to the tasks in which participants are engaged in these
settings. They are not peripheral, epiphenomenal activities. Constructing controversy and
undermining the others argument, getting the interviewee to elaborate, figuring out the
implicit meaning in a therapists comment, and trying to arrive at a compromise settlement
with which both sides in a negotiation can agree, are each core activities in these settings.
So that formulations are associated with activity sequences which are especially characteristic of certain forms of talk-in-interaction (psychotherapeutic discourse, negotiating, etc.).
We begin to see, now, why formulations of this kind might be so rarely employed in mundane conversation: formulations are the means of conducting these activitiesand though
these activities are not unique to these settings, they are relatively restricted, in so far as
we do not, generally speaking, need to arrive at compromises after long negotiations in
mundane conversation, nor do we need to be allusive, set someone up in order to challenge
their argument, or present what theyve said in a more dramatic or newsworthy way. We
may engage in these activities in conversation from time to time,6 but they are not the kinds
of routine, organizationally salient activities that they are for the settings discussed here.
Moreover, it appears that small but significant differences in the linguistic realization of
formulations in these settings may be associated with their different activity environments.
In psychotherapy (at least, of the kind represented here), formulations are done in interrogatives, in the form of You mean. In the call-in program in which the host challenges
callers arguments, he used formulations such as What youre saying is and You seem to
be suggesting. News interviewers formulate the upshot of what an interviewee has just
answered, in So. .; and uses a wider range of verb forms, including for instance accusing, as
well as suggesting, in constructions like So youre really accusing them. And in industrial
negotiations, formulations seem restricted to forms such as (What) youre saying is, and
Youre asking us. The principal difference between these is the lexicalisation of the verb
describing the kind of saying attributed to the other. Mean occurs in psychotherapy, but
not in the other settings; saying is used in each of the others but stronger forms, such as
On being allusive in conversation, see Schegloff, 1996.

accusing, predominate in news interviews and are not used in the others; and suggesting is
used in news interviews and in the radio call-in program, but not in negotiations. But there
are differences also in other features of the turn design package, So yourebeing used in
news interviews, but not in the others; and you seem to beoccurs in the radio call-in program, but apparently not in the others. I think also that there may be prosodic differences
between otherwise identical lexical verb forms, so that saying in radio call-in programmes
has different prosodic features from saying in negotiations (on prosodic aspects of the
realization of the same lexical token, see Couper-Kuhlen and Selting, 1996).
These varying patterns of lexicalising the verb with which a formulation is proposed
(i.e., the verb of saying) are associated with the different activities in each of these settings
in the following way. In psychotherapy, the patient is involved in a search for the meaning
to be found in the therapists allusive remarks or questions: the patient is endeavoring to
interpret and show that she understands what the therapist is meaning to sayhence the
lexical selection you mean with which the patient formulates a sense of the therapists prior
remark. In the other settings, most notably in industrial negotiations, there might be good
reason to avoid any suggestion that one is having to interpret what the other is saying. A
speakers purpose in formulating what the other said is to claim a certain transparency to
what they said, whereas interpretation is associated with speech that is opaque in its meaning. So in an industrial negotiation, a speaker is aiming to be able to pin on the other side
this transparent sense of what they are saying (rather than having to resort to an interpretation). The more dramatic verbs to be found in news interviews, such as accusing., are
associated with attempts by interviewers to inject something controversial or newsworthy
into the interview: of course such a verb would be alien to psychotherapy and to industrial
negotiationsin the latter case, were one side to claim that the other is accusing, this might
lead not to resolution and compromise, but rather to outright breakdown.
So in a very exploratory fashion, I have tried to show that we can track a particular
linguistic phenomenon through its use in a range of different (institutional) settings,here
the phenomenon of formulating what the other is sayingand find that the same object is
associated with different core activities in each setting. Hence the object or phenomenon is
employed in different activity sequences. Furthermore, associated with the different contexts in which it occursand by context now, I mean the different activity sequences in
which it is to be foundare patterns of different linguistic realizations of the object: for
instance, the lexicalisation of the verb with which what the other is saying is formulating
is different in the different settings/activity contexts. Hence if formulating is a generic
practice, the devices or objects through which it is realized are shaped by the activities, and
thus the settings, in which they are employed.
REFERENCES
Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (1996). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davis, K. (1986). The process of problem (re)formulation in psychotherapy. Sociology of Health
and Illness, 8, 4474.
Drew, P. (1998). Comparative analysis of institutional discourse: The case of formulations. in H.
Lehti-Eklund (Ed.), Samtalsstudier: A Festschrift for Anne-Marie Londen (pp. 2942). Helsinki:
Forffatarna.

Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garfinkel, H. and Sacks, H. (1970). On the formal structures of practical actions. In J.D. McKinney
and E.A. Tiryakan (Eds.), Theoretical sociology (pp. 337366). New York: Appleton-Century
Crofts.
Hak, T. (1995). Ethnomethodology and the institutional order. Human Studies, 18, 109137.
Heritage, J. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis (Vol. 3) (pp. 95117). London: Academic Press.
Heritage, J. and Watson, R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.),
Hopper, R. (1995). Studying conversational interaction in institutions, Communication Yearbook,
18, 371380.
Hutchby, I. (1996). Confrontation talk: Arguments, asymmetries and power on talk radio. Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Schegloff, E.A. (1997). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American
Journal of Sociology, 102, 161216.
Walker, E. (1994). Negotiating work. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York.
18
Conversational Socializing on Marine VHF Radio:
Adapting Laughter and Other Practices to the
Technology in Use1
Robert E.Sanders
University at Albany, SUNY
Marine VHF radios are the primary medium for communication between vessels in coastal
waters and between vessels and shore facilities.2 They are standard equipment on commercial vessels, and widely but not universally installed on recreational vessels. Unlike
CB radio, marine VHF radio is not intended as a folk medium. It is used for official communications by law enforcement (the Coast Guard, marine police and harbormasters), in
search and safety operations, by towing/salvage services, and commercial operations in
coastal waters (drawbridge operators, port operations and traffic control). There are prescribed protocols and languagedrawn from long-standing procedures for signaling at
seafor hailing other stations, repeating information, acknowledging transmissions and
ending them, requesting priority on a channel, prefacing messages to index their urgency,
pronouncing some words and numbers (see-lonce for silence and niner for nine) and
pronouncing letters when spelling (Alpha, BravoYankee Zulu), and so on.3 And
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has designated for whom, or for what
purpose, each of a marine VHF radios approximately 55 talk-receive channels is reserved
(including two channels for hailing, one for search and safety, one channel for digitized
emergency broadcasts, six channels for the Coast Guard, eleven channels for port operations and traffic control, ten channels for commercial users, six channels for marinas and
recreational boaters, and nine channels for connecting to a landside telephone line).
I cant think of a more fitting place for this study than in a volume in honor of Robert Hopper. Its
not so much because it resonates with his interest in telephone conversation, but more his broader
interest in the adaptation of conversational particulars to the technological environment. I have in
mind at least one project of his I know of, some relatively early work on the way persons playing
pinball adjusted their turn constructional practices to accommodate the interruptions to be expected
from the noises and activity of playing the game.
2
A growing number of boaters are also using cell phones for communication in coastal waters,
and some recreational boaters use a cell phone exclusively. However, marine VHF radios are not
becoming obsolete. The broadcast capabilities of radio make it essential for vessels in distress to
call for help from anyone in the vicinity, for coordinating search and rescue operations, for making
known the location of obstructions, or movements of vessels, in channels and harbors, and so on.
3
Perhaps in conjunction with the FCC having stopped requiring recreational users to have radio
station licenses, a number of recreational boaters do not observe these restrictions and protocols of
use (at least in the waters of Long Island Sound, and probably around the United States generally).
Many have imported CB-radio jargon and protocols, and, as on CB radio, use any clear channel for
transmission rather than just the ones reserved for them.
1

However, in practice marine radios are not consistently used as the FCC intends, that
is, for carrying out the business of safely operating vessels at sea and providing marine
services. They are also commonly used for matters of logistics and convenience, especially by recreational boaters (contacting marinas to arrange for overnight dockage; calling
water taxis for transportation ashore when moored; contacting fellow boaters about mooring together at days end; contacting others who are fishing to exchange information about
where the fish are; and so on). And sometimes, furthest from FCC intent, these radios are
not used in service of marine operations at all, but as a folk medium for conversational
socializing when there is no particular business at hand.
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
Because the phenomena of interest here come mainly from this genre I call conversational
socializing, and because the genre itself is of interest, it needs a brief exposition. When
persons engage in conversational socializing, they talk about matters that are entertaining,
or present each other with news items, commentary, and gossip about subjects or persons
of mutual interest. It is definitive of such talk that it not be material to transacting business on any practical matter, nor for bringing about any particular resultexcept to have
spent time together entertainingly. Use of marine VHF radios for conversational socializing is most widespread among recreational boaters, but occasionally tugboat captains
engage in it while in transit between harbors or while docked waiting for a barge to be
loaded or unloaded.
It is while auditing conversational socializing on marine VHP radio that I observed
the two practices of interest here, involving gaps and conversational discontinuities, and
laughter and other affiliative responses. Although the practices I observed in that regard
might occur in other media, other genres of conversation, other cultures, what is of
interest here is how those phenomena reflect and have been adapted to the operational
contingencies of the medium of two-way radio.
THE TECHNOLOGY
There are two prominent technological differences between the telephone and two-way
radios in general that seem responsible for the phenomena I examine below. First, the radio
technology makes it physically impossible for more than one person at a time to occupy
the floor. Anyone transmitting cannot hear (i.e., receive) others who are transmitting at the
same time. Further, if two persons in a conversation speak (transmit) at the same time, they
cannot tell they are doing so as long as they continue speaking. And if a person in a conversation and a third party outside that conversation transmit at the same time, only the one
with the strongest or closest signal can be heard by the other(s) in the conversation. Hence,
third persons outside a conversation can inadvertently step on (block) the transmission of
someone with whom one is speaking, with neither of the speaking persons aware of it and
the person(s) listening unable to intervene.
Second, unlike other aural media, to make oneself heard one has to do more than just
vocalize. One has to take the prior, physical steps of bringing the microphone up near ones
mouth, and pressing and holding down the microphones transmit key. This alone delays
Conversational socializing on marine VHP radio 265

response and reduces its spontaneity. The spontaneity of responses is further reduced by
being unable to make oneself heard until the other person stops transmitting. And there is
a potential for further delay in responding if something occurs just then that is material to
operating ones vessel, or to fishing, so that one may temporarily not have a free hand to
operate the microphone even if one could otherwise have continued talking while taking
action at the same time.
THE DATA
Because conversational socializing comprises a minority of the transmissions being made
at any time on marine radio, and they can occur on any of about 40 talk-receive channels on
which boaters contact each other,4 locating and recording such conversations is somewhat
happenstance (barring the use of 40 receivers each on a separate channel and 40 recorders).
I relied on a scanning radio: My radio completes a scan of all talk-receive channels roughly
once every 3 seconds unless it comes to a channel on which someone is transmitting. When
transmission on a channel is detected, scanning is suspended for 4 seconds so that the
transmission can be listened to, and then scanning resumes unless it is manually stopped.
Conversations thus got found in that way and recorded, usually after they had already
begun. Further, in recording a conversation, other conversations that may have been taking
place at the same time on other channels necessarily went undetected. Sometimes when I
resumed scanning after a conversation had been recorded, I came upon a final fragment of
another conversation that exhibited a practice in which I had become interested, too late
to record it. I took notes on some of these. Hence, the methods I employed do not make it
possible to estimate the relative frequency of the practices of interest here, but they occur
more often than I was able to record.
I should note (given Hoppers interest in gender and communication) that the great
majority of speakers on marine VHP radio are men. This is probably an artifact of the extent
to which men dominate boating (though women have the option: Two boats of approximately 46 on my dock are owned and operated by women). On those relatively few occasions when women use the radio, it is often as a stand-in while the captain is engaged
in operation of their vessel. Hence, with the exception of one example in my notes, the
conversations in which the phenomena of interest were exhibited were all between men. It
remains to be seen whether this is incidental to the corpus or reflects a gender bias in the
medium itself, and whether women would adopt different conversational practices.
The transcripts of these social conversations use notation conventions developed by Jefferson (e.g., in Atkinson and Heritage, 1984), but with two slight modifications. First, gaps
of less than 0.5 seconds are not hearable as delays in response in this medium and were not
Although there are a total of 55 talk-receive channels on marine VHP radios, some channels
are not potential sources of conversation between boaters. A few of these are now in use by civil
authorities ashore and are avoided by boaters. On the nine channels dedicated to connecting with
the land-based telephone system, only the land-based side of the conversation is hearable; the
marine telephone company that provides this service sends out a masking signal that prevents the
boaters transmission from being heard on other VHP radios.

noted: It takes at least that long for the next speaker to register that the prior transmission
has ended, and to then press his or her transmit key and begin speaking. Second, the symbol
# denotes the electronic click sound made at the end of transmissions when the current speakers transmit key is released: Notating this serves as a reminder that the ends of
transmissions are audible, and allows notating any occurrences of dead air between the
speakers last utterance and release of the transmit key. Finally, laughter was transcribed
with symbols intended to more closely reflect its actual phonetic qualities, and it appears
in boldface to set it apart visually from the surrounding talk, not to indicate any relatively
greater loudness.
GAPS AND DISCONTINUATIONS
It is not uncommon in the conversations I recorded for there to be gaps between conversational turns of 56 seconds and longer. Based on my own experience in the region and
subcultures of the Northeastern United States, these gaps are much longer than what these
same speakers would generally find tolerable in face-to-face or telephone conversations
ashore. Yet on marine radio, these prolonged gaps are almost always tolerated and not oriented to as breaches, something I attribute to the operating requirements of this medium,
as explained below. Persons waiting for a response often do not prompt the other at all,
and if they do, it is not as quickly or directly as they might in a different medium. Moreover, the party waiting for a response is careful generally to avoid making the other person
accountable for the gap. At the furthest extreme, these gaps are sometimes terminal: The
conversation just ends for lack of anyone taking a next turn, without any closing.
In the following examples, gaps of 9 seconds and longer went unremarked, and ended
when the next speaker finally did respond:
(1)
M1:
M2 :
M1:
M2 :
(2)
M3 :
M4:
(3)
M5:
M6:
M5:
M6
M5
M6 :
Hey:, the guys on the boat here, they invited us to go out to Hooters tonight
theyre so happy. #
That right? Theyre gonna go hoot n holler. #
Yeah:, they want Ja:ck n Gary myself, they all (want) us to go up to Hooters. #
(95)
Read todays Newsday? #
Okay, then you must be in sight o:f me. #
(9.7)
I got a visual on Penfield reef now:.#
Cant Ginny talk % im into: (.) goin out to eat? #
Ah, I wish she would, itd be so much nicer. #
Well take im. (.) Well pay for im, well do anything. #
(5.2)
Thats right, lets- lets take up a collection,= well seh-h-nd im to Alaska h- #
heh-heh-heh-heh #
(19.2)
Howd doctor Mike do today? #

The likely reason for the occurrence of such notable gaps and the evident respect they are
given is that, as noted, the technology requires the speaker to have one free hand to hold
the microphone and operate the transmit key. Having a hand free is not something one can
count on from anyone currently operating a vessel or fishing. This is evident even in the
one instance in my corpus when the prior speaker did directly prompt the next speaker
after a gap of 6.2 seconds (Example 4 below: Diyou copy that, i.e., did you receive my
transmission). The next speaker replied by citing his current attention to fishing as a reason
not only for the gap but for thereupon ending the conversation. This was accepted without
protest and the conversation ended exactly then:
(4)
M7:
M7:
M8:
M7:
Ill tell ya, you gotta use these ci.rcle hooks. (0.5) Theyre great. (0.5)
You stick the rod in the rod holder, ya put the brake on: (0.5) -hh uh: ya
hook (.) ninety nine percent of all yr fish in the (lip). (0.7) Ah:: theyre
a son of a gun t get ou:t, (0.5) but- ya dont gut hook many fish at all, ya
get a really () fish. (0.5) Works pretty nice. (0.2) over. (.) over. #
(6.2)
Diyou copy that, (Dan)? (0.5) #
Ah:, I gotta leave now, like we gotta fish on. (0.7) Talk tya later. (0.2)
over. #
Awright. (0.2) Coin back to nine ((nine is the standby/hail ing channel; this
declaration is equivalent to hanging up a telephone)). #
Long gaps were not always ended by the next speaker eventually taking a turn, as in Examples 13. Although it is atypical as in Example 4 to directly prompt the next speaker, same
speaker sometimes resumed after a gap to prompt the other indirectly for a response. The
person seeking a response after a gap begins hailing the silent vessel, as one would do in
making initial contact. This implicates that it is not a matter of a response delayed too long,
but of having lost contact, an accidental happenstance that warrants an effort to reestablish
contact:
(5)
M3 :
M4 :
M4:
Okay, then you must be in sight o:f me. #

(9.7)
I got a visual on Penfield reef now:. #
(8.2)
Alone Again, Alone Again, Happy Days. # ((a hail to the vessel Alone Again to
answer the vessel Happy Days))
(7.2)
M4: Alone Again, Alone Again, ya got Happy Day#
(7.0)
M3 :
How farre you from Penfield? #
(6)
M9:
Nine miles n hour. #
(4.1)
M9:
M10:
M10:
():
M10:
M10:
(Whatre) you doin? #

(5.5)
(it) like Jo:hn. #
(9.1)
(uh) I got eight point o:ne. #
((possibly his speed))
(0.5)
(Any ideas?) # ((possibly a transmission from a third party in another conversation))
(6.7)
Bout fifteen hunderd. # ((possible reference to RPM))
(32.2)
(Glitterbox), whe:re are ya?
Finally, as was noted, gaps sometimes were not closed at all; the conversation just stopped
continuing. There are several examples of this in my corpus. A case from my notes in
which the conversation does continue after a gap reveals an orientation by both parties
to the potential for discontinuation after such a gap. In arranging for their boats to tie up
together at anchor that night, M11 expresses the joking concern to F1 that F1s husband
might snore too loudly:
(7)
M11:
M11:
F1:
Yeah, but I dunno. Do you think well get any sleep? You know,
Franks snoring and all.
((710 second gap))
Switching back to nine, ((nine is the standby/hail ing channel))
No, sorry Tom, we were just working on a comeback.
Mils announcement after the gap that he was switching to the standby/hailing channel is the
equivalent of simultaneously saying goodbye and physically hanging up the telephoneit
is not the same as opening up a closing where one then waits for the other to respond. That
M11 did this after a notable gap displays an orientation to gaps as possibly terminal. However, Fl responded anyway (probably aware that while persons often do switch channels
right when they make such announcements, they are sometimes slow to do so and may still
be listening). What is important about F1s response is that she apologizespresumably
for producing a gap that it would be warranted for M11 to infer was terminal. She continues
by giving an account for the gap as interactionally produced, thus canceling the implicature
of termination.
There is thus a relatively greater tolerance for gaps during conversations on marine VHF
radio, and the potential for discontinuations, than one is likely to find in conversations
ashore among these same speakers. However, note that similar tolerances and potentials
have been observed among Native Americans, and attributed to the communal value they
give to privacy and autonomy (Basso, 1979; Scollon and Scollon, 1981). With two different accounts of the same practiceattributed to the practicalities of boating on one hand,
and to Native American communal values on the otherit would be parsimonious to find a
common denominator. As it happens, there is one. It seems that in both cases, if talk occurs

at the same time speakers are engaged in an activity that the community of speakers gives
precedence, the talk will be suspended whenever it interferes with that activity, and the
resulting gaps and discontinuities tolerated. For boaters, there are certain practicalities that
are given precedence over talk. Perhaps what has been observed among Native Americans
arises from their giving most or perhaps all other concurrent activities priority over conversation, whether these are practical/material activities, or spiritual or cognitive ones. The
cultural aspect of the tolerance for gaps and discontinuities, then, is not about values placed
on privacy or autonomy, for example, or marine exigencies. Rather, it is about the priority
that the community gives to conversation relative to specific other activities that persons
can be engaged in concurrently.
LAUGHTER AND OTHER AFFILIATIVE RESPONSES
In conversation generally, whether on a two-way radio or not, the presumption is that ones
substantive reply to, or follow-up on, what the current speaker is saying in the moment
will be withheld until it is ones turn to speak (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974). A
notable exception is affiliative responsesfor example, acknowledgment tokens, newsmarks, laughterspontaneous responses to what is just then being said that are ordinarily produced by the listener while the current speaker still has the floor. However, in
conversation on two-way radios, not only substantive but affiliative responses have to be
saved up until one has clear air in which to transmit. The opportunity for and the spontaneity of affiliative responses is thus greatly reduced during conversational socializing on
marine VHP radio.
This has the apparent effect of pruning out some, and simplifying other, affiliative
responses in radio conversations. In my corpus, there are few or no newsmarks, acknowledgment tokens, supportive assessments, and so on. Speakers did sometimes produce linguistically elaborated acknowledgments at the next opportunity (in this corpus primarily,
I gotcha, I hear ya, I copy that and Yeah::), but they lack a functional complexity on
two-way radio that they can acquire in conversation ordinarily. In other media of aural
conversation, such elaborated acknowledgment tokens not only have an affiliative function
but a turn coordination function. If a person produces simpler back channel acknowledgment tokens during the current speakers turn, and then produces an elaborated form, it
often implicates the speakers readiness to take the floor just then and produce a full turn
at speaking (Drummond and Hopper, 1993; Jefferson, 1993). But on two-way radio it is
impossible to bearably make simpler back channel responses while the others turn is in
progress, so that producing an elaborated acknowledgment token cannot display a change
of state. Besides that, if one has clear air to transmit the elaborated token and does so,
one already has the floor and the issue of speakership is moot anyway. Accordingly, such
acknowledgment tokens can only serve an affiliative function on two-way radio.
The one affiliative response that is not pruned out or functionally simplified on marine
VHP radio is laughter. At times, persons who are conversationally socializing via marine
radio press down the transmit key, they transmit laughter, then end that transmission. In
that case, they took the special steps needed to transmit just to make laughter heard. This
in itself is evidence that speakers are capable of being knowing and deliberate, even

calculating, about the social functionality of laughter, more so than previous analysis has
revealed. Further evidence of this is presented below.
Ordinarily the functionality of laughter as an affiliative response depends on its being, or
being made to seem, an immediate and spontaneous response to what occasions it (Glenn,
1989, 1991/1992; Jefferson, 1979, 1984). But this is impossible to display on a two-way
radio. One has to wait for clear air, then transmit, so at minimum there is an unavoidable
micro-delay before laughter is heard, and a marked deliberateness about making it hearable. Ordinarily this would make laughter seem artificial.5 But laughter is produced on twoway radio anyway, moreover with the apparent presumption that it is genuine unless there
is reason to think otherwise. The evidence for this is that persons laughing on marine radio
sometimes take special measures to register their laughter as artificial, and conversely,
sometimes take special measures to establish it as genuine when there is a circumstantial
reason to doubt it. It is these phenomena that are of particular interest here.
Let us posit that a laugh response on a two-way radio is presumed genuine the extent to
which it has the requisite vocal qualities of genuine laughter, and is transmitted immediately (though not spontaneously)that is, at the first opportunityafter it is occasioned.
It is not any more difficult to produce laughter with the requisite vocal qualities on two-way
radio than any other medium, especially if it actually is genuine. The relative immediacy
of a laugh response will be enhanced the extent to which the current speaker ends his
transmission just when laughter is occasioned, and this is common. In example 8 (from
the same excerpt as example 3), there is actually a gap of a few l0ths of a second between
M6s occasioning remark and laugh particles, and M5s laugh response, but my own experience is that such gaps do not register as a delay in response when one is accustomed to
the mechanics of two-way radio:
(8)
M5:
M6:
M5:
M6:
M5:
Cant Ginny talk im i.nto: (.) goin out to eat? #

Ah, I wish she would, itd be so much nicer. #
Well take im. (.) Well pay for im, well do anything. #
(5.2)
Thats right, lets- lets take up a collection,= well seh-h-nd im to Alaska
h- #
heh-heh-heh-heh #
However, it was not unusual that when the current speaker ended transmission as soon as
he or she occasioned laughter, there was a marked delay before the laugh response was
transmitted, sometimes several seconds in duration. In itself, in any other medium, this
The one exception would be if laughter were delayed because the person did not immediately
get it. But when this happens, there is usually a marked display of getting it when the delayed
laughter begins, even verbalizations such as Oh:: I:::: get it, that function to cancel any implicature that the delayed laughter is artificial. Although there is no obvious reason why delays for that
reason would not occur (or be feigned) over marine radio as in other aural media, and be marked in
that way, this did not occur in my corpus.

would mark the laughter as artificial. Although extra effort could be made to establish
laughter as being genuine anyway, as we see in examples 12 and 13 below, no such effort
was made in the following examples, 9 and 10, despite a notable gap between the occasioning utterance and the laughter in response. Of course it is possible that in these instances
the persons responding did not care whether their laughter seemed genuine or not. But then
why take the trouble to transmit it? The alternative is to suppose that delays in transmission
on marine radio are accepted as potentially unavoidable, canceling the implicature that
delayed laughter is artificial.
(9)
(10)
M12
M12 2
M13
M12
M12
M13
M14:
M15:
(in) Anthony. #
(1.5)
Come in Anthony. #
(1.5)
Chuck- pa:l, how are ya?
(1.5)
That voice. #
(1.5)
I missed that voice. #
(1.2)
hah-hah-hah-hah #
It doesnt work that way. (0.2) Set the anchor, (.) two guys on top, (.) pull
against the anchor, it works.#
(5.2)
heh-heh-heh #
In contrast, there were instances when active steps were taken to mark transmitted laughter
as artificial. In general, laughter can be made to seem artificial (not genuine, insincere) by
positioning it so that it is bearably delayed or withheld, and/or by giving it vocal qualities
that are not natural. Of course, delaying or withholding laughter is not distinguishable on
two-way radio from being unable to immediately transmit it, and so persons have to rely on
vocal quality alone to register laughter as artificial. In example 8, M17 produced laughter
that was too loud and intense a response to what occasioned it, his final laugh particle was
artificially elongated, and he gave the laughter a guttural quality reminiscent of the villains
laugh in an old movie:
(11)
M16 :
M17:
M16:
M17:
Hey (A1), whaddya suppose hes doin over there? (0.5) #

(2.1)
Probably (checkin on our) maneuvers. #
(1.5)
Yeah::. Thats okay:, we know how ttake care o that, right pal?
#
(3.5)
*YEAH: : : : .HEH-HEH-HEH:::::::::::::*#

Conversely, one does occasionally find that speakers take steps to establish their laughter
as genuine. In general, the laugher was marked as genuine by means of transmitting it
twice, separated by an interval. In the instances when this happened, there was reason to
doubt that the laughing person would have been genuinely amused by what occasioned the
laughter. In example 12 M18s laughter could potentially be regarded as insincere because
it came in the context of a mild disagreement, where it expressed M18s affiliation with
M19 on something that Ml8 had been disputing. In their conversation, Ml8 and Ml9, apparently commercial fishermen or lobstermen, disagreed whether a supplier of theirs treated
customers badly because of the business pressures involved (as Ml8 contended) or because
he was a hateful person in his own right (as M19 contended). After Ml9 finds a pithy way
to make his point that it was this persons intrinsic qualities that made him hateful, not the
business context, M18 responds with laughter even though he presumably disagrees. Note
that he transmits laughter twice in two contiguous transmissions separated by a gap of 4.2
seconds, even though nothing new (interactively) occurred in that interval to occasion the
second transmission.
(12)
M18:
M19:
M18:
M19:
M18:
M18:
Well, dont forget, too, I mean, uh:::, ya know -hhh n always sitting
there trying to collect money from thirty different guys, n uh::: you
take any thirty guys Zs gonna be: : hh a certain
amount of em thata al:ways pay their bill on time=n theres gonna be
a certain amoun:t v em yalways gonna have t chase down:: n look
for. hhh Ya know, n I think thats ((mic noise)) where we had problems. #
(2.2)
Was always the same guys. #
(0.5)
W ha-ha yeah:: h-h- ya know, I:: -hhh I:: Im not- pickin out any names
or anything like that, but I mean thats just the rule of thumb, ya know:
hhh ya know ya (never) gonna have thirty people all make their payments on the exact same time or be prompt.= Theres always ((noise))
fusing, ya know, hhh n I think thats where a lot of problems used to
stem from, -hhh N Im sure Pete had to do that with some of us too,
but- ya know, (.) now he doesnt have to worry about as many. #
(2.5)
(), when he- (was/noise) at Bayshore we hated him. (0.2) I mean(.) we
havent changed. We still hate him at (Jethreys). #
(0.7)
hu-hu-hu yeah-h-h- gotchah-h- #
(4.2)
eh: heh-heh- #
By transmitting his laughter twice, Ml8 gives the appearance of finding M19s quip so
funny that he actually sustained laughter during the interval between his two transmissions
(or at least the appearance that on reflection he had found M19s quip funny again and

resumed laughing). He thereby marks his first laugh response as genuine by transmitting
the second one.
In the instance that follows, M20 and M21 are tugboat captains who evidently have
known each other for a time, but have been out of touch for several years. In the course
of catching up on personal news, M21 reports that he has a young daughter now. He then
complains that continuing to have children would leave him without a seat at the dinner
table, and M20 comments that he should therefore not have more children. At that juncture,
a potentially delicate matter is introduced. I take M21s response as an indirect disclosure
that he had a vasectomy ((I) better not [have more children]. (0.2) Ill be after that doctor
with a baseball ba:t.). M20 responds with laughter and then moves to closing. A second laugh particle is transmitted after they have closed, though I could not identify who
produced it.
(13)
M20:
M21:
M20:
M21:
M20:
M21:
M20:
M21:
M20:
Ho::ly smoke, I havent seen you in awhile. #

Yeah, I got two and a half, (almost) three year old daughter,=shell be three
in uh: : (0.5) (just) before Christmas. (0.5) (little Emma). (#)
((1.5/garbled utterance, either a continued transmission by M21 or a transmission from some third party, ending with rising inflection)).
Su: re! #
(0.5/open mic) ( ), just screw yourself right out of a seat at the table ya keep
goin. #
(Then) dont have no mo:re. #
(I) better not. (0.2) Ill be after that doctor with a baseball ba:t. #
(0.5)
WA- ha-ha- -hhh I:: gotcha. (Alright there, Rod), (.) hh you have a good
trip back in there. #
Yah, okay Steve, well be talkin to ya.=((smiley voice)) Take ca::re, (keep
your sanity with the cattle). ((Tugboat captains sometimes refer to pleasure
boats or boaters as cattle, perhaps because they dot the landscape and are
slow to move out of the way)) (0.5) Well talk to ya. #
Aw:right.#
(2.2)
heh-heh (0.2) #
Of interest here is the second laughter token in the transcripts last line, transmitted after
they closed. No matter which of them transmitted it, that token has a similar functionality. The only evident laughable is M21s allusion to his vasectomy, where M20 did laugh.
Hence, given that that second laugh particle was transmitted long after it was occasioned,
it displays sustained amusement, as in the prior example. If it was M20 who produced the
laughter, then like M18 8 in example 12, he affirmed the genuineness of his laughter about
a matter he might have not found amusing. However, if it was M21 who transmitted that
laughter, it could not mark previous laughter as genuine because he had not previously
laughed (aside from a smiley voice in closing). But it would affirm that he had alluded
to his vasectomy as a joking and not a delicate matter, and underscore his own residual

amusement and good feeling about the conversation. The production of that laughter might
also have dispelled any doubts on M20s part about the appropriateness of his laughter or
whether he had given offense.
CONCLUSION
The operational differences between the telephone and two-way radio foster the distinctive
effect examined here that the radio technology has on conversational practices. But marine
VHP radio is also distinct from the telephone functionally, and is a source of data of a kind
not readily available otherwise. The difference between them makes conversational socializing on marine radio different in important ways from conversational socializing on the
telephone. Of course, I am basing this comparison on personal experience coupled with
much of the published data on telephone calls, and the distinctions I am making involve
general tendencies, not absolutes.
First, when there is a business reason for telephoning someone, talk on other matters
besides the reason for call may also take place, including conversational socializing. On
marine VHP radio, however, the two functions are strictly segregated. When there is a
business reason for making contact, the calling party, and often all parties, are engaged just
then in the operation of a vessel or a marine service. There is no room for conversational
socializing. When there is conversational socializing, conversely, it is when there is no
practical business for either party to address. In my corpus, there is only one clear exception. A conversation between a tugboat captain at the dock and the company dispatcher
late at night started with the business of checking the schedule, and then they engaged in
conversational socializing. Besides that, infrequently, boaters may conclude talk on nonessential businesssuch as checking time of arrival with another boaterwith a quip and
then a closing, and to that small degree conversational socializing may also take place. We
see this in example 7, where, after arranging to tie their boats up together at anchor, M11
makes a joke about F1s husbands snoring. But note how relatively quick M11 was to infer
that in not getting an immediate response to his quip, the conversation was over. Perhaps
this reflects a standing presumption that business-related radio traffic will end when business is concluded, and excludes conversational socializing.
Second, when telephone calls are made, it is to a particular person who is being sought
out, whom the dial-up system allows one to seek out specifically. Hence, even when a
telephone call is made solely for the purpose of conversational socializing, it is for the
purpose of socializing with that particular person, and to that extent the socializing may
have a functional aspect (e.g., it discharges an obligation to stay in contact, or strengthens
or affirms the relational tie, or indirectly checks on the well-being of the other person
or the relationship). In contrast, when persons make contact on marine VHP radio and
engage in conversational socializing, it is usually serendipitousbetween persons who
know each other who happen to be on their boats at the same time. Occasionally they
bump into each other when one hears the other transmitting to some third party and
makes contact. More often, boaters do actively seek contact with particular others, but not
necessarily because it is that person in particular with whom they want to do conversational
socializing. Persons may seek to contact some specific person just because they know that
that person is boating just then and available, and they want to engage in conversational

socializing with someone. One sometimes hears a boater hail first one boat, then another,
until someone he knows answers. This can also happen on the telephone, of course, but
unlike telephone callers, recreational boaters can count on the persons who answer their
call to be at leisure (at least, if the other person is at the dock, or in open water in good
weather), whereas persons making phone calls have no basis for anticipating the others
availability for conversational socializing.
Conversational socializing that takes place in serendipitous encounters is likely to
exhibit aspects of conversation we would not otherwise see, not even in conversational
socializing with others who are specifically sought out for the purpose. This is because
persons engaged in serendipitous conversational socializing potentially face two problems
unique to that genre of social interaction.
First, in business-related or socially functional conversation, the topics that are available or obligatory to talk about are known in advance. But in serendipitous conversational
socializing, topics are not given in advance. Topics have to be found in the moment that
both persons would find interesting, that they would be able or willing to talk about, and
that would be safe, i.e., not usher in anything serious or business-related. Even when there
are matters to talk about from a prior encounter, there is no assurance that they would be
of interest or would be safe in the present encounter. Hence, there is likely to be a process
of proffering, assessing, and pursuing or discarding topics in serendipitous conversational
socializing one will not find in other genres.
Second, in business-related or socially functional conversation, the stance that each
speaker will take regarding the topic(s) at hand can be anticipated (serious or amused, pro
or con, engaged or detached)if not on the basis of personal knowledge of the other, then
on the basis of role-stereotypes. But in serendipitous conversational socializing, the stance
that each speaker has toward the topic at hand is contingent and emergent, not given in
advance. Even the person speaking cannot fully anticipate his or her stance towards the
topic at hand, because the matters that topic will range over for the other(s) involved are not
fixed. Hence, more has to be donein phrasing, vocal qualities, affiliative responses, and
so onto display (or conceal) ones stance during serendipitous conversational socializing
than in other genres of social interaction.
It is arguably something that should concern us that the stuff of conversation analysis
is mainly agenda-driven conversations, especially phone conversations when there is a
reason-for-call and business-related conversations in institutional settings, as opposed to
serendipitous conversational socializing. This is understandable. It is a genre to which it is
hard to reliably gain access, let alone record. Yet such conversations, with their structural
fluidity, their shifts from the serious to the playful and back, their potential for crab-like
progress or no progress at all, potentially have much to reveal about how conversation worksits coherence and coordinationand language and social interaction more
broadly. I do not claim that serendipitous conversational socializing only takes place on
marine radio. It also happens when acquaintances or friends run into each other on a bus,
at the market, and so on; or when persons go to a restaurant or tavern where they expect
to find acquaintances, any acquaintance, with whom they can socialize. But as a site of
conversational socializing, it is more accessible on marine radio. Hence, marine radio is a
medium that should be of interest for more than the effect of its operational peculiarities
on conversational practices.

REFERENCES
Atkinson, J.M., & Heritage, J. (Eds.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation
analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Basso, K. (1979). Portraits of the Whiteman: Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the
Western Apache. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drummond, K. & Hopper, R. (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 157177.
Glenn, P.J. (1991/92). Current speaker initiation of two-party shared laughter. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 139162.
Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination.
In G.Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 7996). New York:
Irvington.
Jefferson, G. (1984). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In J. M.Atkinson &
J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 346369).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, G. (1993). Caveat speaker: Preliminary notes on recipient topic-shift implicature.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S.B.K. (1981). Narrative, literacy, and face in inter ethnic communication.
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
19
Law Enforcement and Community Policing: An
Intergroup Communication Approach
Jennifer L.Molloy
Howard Giles
On August 14, 1998, ABC news reported the story of a Los Angeles police officer, shot
through the head as he sat in his patrol car. Wearing a uniform showing his identity as a
police officer was his only crime and, in certain circles, killing a cop earns one much envied
status. But to kill a police officer, one must also kill the other social identities attached to
the human being wearing the uniform (e.g., son, husband, father, basketball fan, etc).
Social identity theory (see Tajfel & Turner, 1986) suggests that people relate primarily to one another in terms of their memberships in different social groups rather than
as unique individuals. This example is but one of many involving charged police/citizen
interactions that are principally intergroup and communicative in nature. However, our
discipline has not been involved much in police/citizen relations, police training (see, however, Giles, in press; Gundersen & Hopper, 1984; Perlmutter, 2000), or law enforcement/
community policies. In tandem, research and thinking in police science has rarely drawn on
communication theory and research to assist its insights and approaches.
Intergroup theories of communication offer a unique and useful perspective to aid in
our understanding of the complex psychological and communicative dynamics of police/
citizen relations that can lead to strained relations between these groups that can end in
violence and even death. Efforts to improve police/citizen relations can already be seen in
community-oriented policing (COP) programs such as foot patrols, public relations campaigns, ministations, and door-to-door visits by the police. Unfortunately, although some
efforts have been made to utilize theory to better understand COP and its implementation
(see Greene & Taylor, 1988; Guarino-Ghezzi, 1994), most empirical investigations are
hindered by a lack of relevant theory (see Yates & Filial, 1996).
In this brief chapter, we address police/citizen relations and COP in light of the insights
that intergroup theories of communication can provide. Toward this end, we first address
the importance of communication in police/citizen encounters and explore the somewhat
conflicting social roles inherent in being a police officer, and how this can contribute to
citizens images of the police (both positive and negative). Then, we examine some of the
intergroup dynamics currently challenging effective COP development and implementation. Finally, intergroup theories of communication, combined with a discussion of the
stigma associated with policing, are utilized in order to better understand police/citizen
relations and the effectiveness of COP programs.

COMMUNICATION AND POLICE ROLES
When reference to theory is made in COP research, attention to the significance of communication issues in COP is all but ignored. This oversight is ironic given that Womack and
Finley (1986) viewed communication as the central, most important commodity that the
officer has at his [or her] disposal (p. 14). Patrol officers serve as mediators and diffusers
of potentially volatile interactions between citizens in our community. In their research,
Sykes and Brent (1983) found that conflicts between citizens tended toward confrontation
or reassertion (of a position) rather than cooperation. They noted that, because these civilians are unable to limit their conflict and come to some resolution, [police] intervention
seems necessary (p. 188). In effect, we often call on the police when efforts at communicating, with neighbors and spouses, for example, have failed or when we have not even
bothered to communicate in the first place.
The safety concerns inherent in officer/citizen interactions are further complicated,
according to Thompson (1983), by the fact that officers, on a daily basis, deal with numerous people whose backgrounds, needs, points of view, and prejudices vary dramatically,
moment to moment (p. 9). The very different personalities that officers encounter necessitate that they adapt their style of communication to those of citizens, all while striving to
address each situation. In actuality, effective communication, rather than brute force, is the
best weapon officers have to ensure the safety of civilians, as well as their own. In fact, one
of the implicit criteria for hiring officers today is the latters codeswitching skills in being
able to shift, sensitively and strategically, back and forth through their accommodativenonaccommodative gears (see Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991).
The neglect of communication theory and research in the study of COP holds potentially
serious implications for officer training in COP and the implementation of COP in various
communities worldwide (see Kidd & Braziel, 1999). The potential consequences could
not only include perpetuating peoples negative attitudes toward the police, but also potentially place strain on officer/departmental relations, officer/citizen relations, and police/
community relations, thereby putting officers and civilians in psychological or physical
harms way.
Further complicating the picture are the seemingly conflicting roles police play in society. The advent of COP revealed a new era in attempting to redefine (the nondefined) and
improve the police role and image. COP revealed a public belief that crime prevention was
at the heart of the police role. That said, Bayley (1994) attributed this myth:
That the police are not able to prevent crime should not come as a big surprise to
thoughtful people. It is generally understood that social conditions outside the control of the police, as well as outside the control of the criminal justice system as a
whole, determine crime levels in communities. In a phrase police often use, they see
themselves as a band-aid on cancer (p. 10).
Klockars (1985) suggested that the belief that police should be able to do something
(e.g., prevent crime) inaccurately defines them in terms of end results rather than means.
He suggested that the ability to use coercive force is the universal and distinguishing means
of policing in that:
Law enforcement and community policing 279

[No] police anywhere has ever existed, nor is it possible to conceive of a genuine
police ever existing, that does not claim the right to compel other people forcibly to
do something. If it did not claim such a right, it would not be a police (pp. 910).
In his final analysis, Klockars defines the police as institutions or individuals given the
general right to use coercive force by the state within the states domestic territory (p. 12).
This useful definition (which we revisit later) reveals how power in policing makes them
both a valued and devalued social group. Reiss (1967) described this as a double-bind situation, stating that citizens are skeptical, if not distrustful, of police power, yet they see
police power as the most obvious solution to their problem (p. 36). In other words, the
power woven into the fabric of police identity is simultaneously desired by, and a source
of concern to, citizens. The fact that police have this power opens up the possibility for it
to be abused, thus symbolizing the potential for police violence even toward law-abiding
citizens (Lawrence, 2000; Ross, 2000). Such fears can foster a reluctance for civilians to
partake in seemingly well-intentioned COP programs. Grinc (1994) noted that:
community policing projects are usually initiated [in] typically poor, disorganized
areas of the city where residents have for generations borne the brunt of police abuses.
The apparent unwillingness of residents to involve themselves with the police may
thus be less a product of apathy than of fear and suspicion grounded in their largely
negative experiences with police in the past (p. 451).
Ironically, given a prior metaphor, COP may seem to citizens like, in turn, an insignificant band-aid covering a deep and infectious wound. Reciprocally, any citizens resistance
to COP can serve to damage police attitudes toward community members. The obstacle
of COP overcoming historic wounds within communities fearful of the police illustrates
but one intergroup issue hindering the development and implementation of effective COP
programs.
INTERGROUP ISSUES CURRENTLY AFFECTING COP
We see such precursors to strain in police/community relations in Lurigio and Skogans
(1994) work on staff perceptions of COP, which claims that to be successful, community
policing initiatives must be compatible with the existing culture and organizational climate
in a department and with the basic concerns and needs of police personnel (p. 329). Moreover, COP efforts can sometimes be viewed as the cart-before-the horse phenomenon
because programs have been implemented without first creating the organizational environment to sustain them on a large scale (Rosenbaum, Yeh, & Wilkinson, 1994, p. 332).
However, Lurigio and Skogan also noted that officers can and do experience resentment
when community members are consulted before they are about COP which touches a deep
and sensitive nerve in the police culture (p. 316).
This is not to say that COP cannot have beneficial effects on officers by means of
increased job satisfaction (see Rosenbaum & Lurigio, 1994; Wycoff & Skogan, 1993),
and officers felt improved relations with community members (see McElroy, Cosgrove,
& Sadd, 1993; Sadd & Grinc, 1993; Wycoff, 1988). However, even police administra-

tors and officers initially excited about COP can meet with unaccommodating citizens
out in the field, thus leading them to feel hostile toward community members unwilling
to better their own lives by partaking in COP activities (Grinc, 1994). Clearly, police
and civilians need a better understanding of each others social identities in the process of
COP instigation and development. After all, if officers do not believe in COP, why should
civilians? Lurigio and Skogan (1994) also found that minority officers (especially African
Americans), older officers, and higher-ranking officers expressed more favorable attitudes
toward community policing in Chicago (p. 329). This finding raises some interesting
notions about the influence of various social identities within the police force on attitudes
toward COP.
Just as the implementation of COP may strain intradepartmental relations by disrupting
the status quo, so too may it damage relations between groups in the community (who,
otherwise, could benefit from its enactment). As Grinc (1994) noted, that people live
in the same ecological space and possess the same racial and class backgrounds is by
no means an indication that they define values and problems in the same way (p. 461).
He further suggested that more heterogeneous community populations make the task of
assessing community values and the perceptions of problems all the more difficult for
police departments shifting to COP programs. Although more contact-based approaches
to policing have become popular recently (see Grinc, 1994; Rosenbaum & Lurigio, 1994),
current research shows no guarantees that residents will actively involve themselves in the
process. However, despite COPs definitional ambiguities, few would argue that community involvement is central to the success of COP.
Without clear operational definitions of COP from those developing and implementing the programs, though, many citizens are also unaware of what COP means, and what
roles they can play in it. Even citizens highly supportive of the police and their efforts are
restricted from active involvement without such clarity. Ironically, such an oversight could
serve to strain police/community relations during efforts to strengthen them through COP.
THEORIES OF INTERGROUP CONTACT AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
At all levels, then, communication research and theory is virtually invisible in the COP
literature. We will now draw on intergroup communication theory with the conviction that
it can contribute to a much fuller and pragmatic understanding of COP effectiveness, from
the interpersonal to the organizational level. To be truly effective, COP must improve citizens attitudes not only toward local officers, but law enforcement in general. Interestingly,
COP programs typically reveal an unreferenced reliance on encouraging very favorable
contact between officers and civilians. This notion plays off traditional intergroup contact
theory (see Hewstone & Brown, 1986), which suggests that positive interpersonal contact
between members of groups can lead to liking between the individuals involved (e.g., having officers be plain-clothed and talking about their own personal lives as citizens, too).
COP implementers assume and trust that citizens newly acquired positive feelings toward
COP officers will carry over to all officers in their department.
However, to be truly effective in changing attitudes toward the police per se, positive contact must be combined with citizens beliefs that the target officers are typical
representatives of the social category, police. Otherwise, citizens can either discount

such contacts as individual exceptions or confine them to a unique subcategory while leaving their previous attitudes toward officers, in general, intact (see Hewstone, Hopkins, &
Routh, 1992). Indeed, the need to build strong personal relations between civilians and
officers (so-called high interindividual contact) while not underplaying or camouflaging
the fact that two distinct groups with their own codes and values are actually engaging each
other (high intergroup contact; see Tajfel & Turner, 1986) is often neglected in the COP
literature.
Contact (and hence communication) between groups can then bring both our personal
and our social identities into play. The essence of Tajfel and Turners (1986) social identity theory (SIT) suggests that we define ourselves in terms of our membership in various
social groups. These groups of ours can range from being a police officer, female, Asian
American, gay, and so on. The authors argued that we constantly strive to feel good about
our membership in our social groups in order to maintain a positive self-image. In effect,
we feel good about ourselves when we have achieved a positive group identity. Knowing
whether these social identities are positive or not depends on where our particular social
groups stand in comparison to other social groups in society. Negatively stereotyping other
groups (i.e., through the use of taunts and slurs) is a not infrequent way in which people can
feel good about their own group membership and obtain a feeling of positive distinctiveness. Such differentiation between self and others is readily apparent in an examination of
the stigma sometimes associated with policing (see later).
An important feature of SIT is the so-called social creativity strategies that members
adopt in order to assume a more positive identity (e.g., by adopting more positive group
labels, developing new, valued art forms including dance and music). A further set of social
competition strategies are invoked, under certain psychological conditions, when a group
vocally, and sometimes with civil actions, questions the status and power of another, more
dominant, outgroup. The communicative parameters of the processes involved have been
applied to a number of different intergroup settings, such as between: the genders (Boggs
& Giles, 1999); ethnic groups (Giles, 1979); persons with and without physical disabilities
(Fox & Giles, 1996); and the generations (Harwood, Giles, & Ryan, 1995) as well as in
critically examining training and social policies designed to engender healthy intergroup
contact (e.g., Cargile & Giles, 1996; Fox & Giles, 1993).
In all of these, moves to nonaccommodate to, or diverge from, the speech and nonverbal styles of outgroup members are fundamental strategies of social differentiation by
people in search of a sustained or enhanced positive identity. To date, however, intergroup
communication theory has not been utilized with regard to police/citizen relations where
the creation of communicative distances from both parties are rationale tactics leading to
misattribution, miscommunication, or even worse. With national attention being brought
to this issue by former President Clinton and a number of high-profile cases involving the
charge of police brutality, a clear need exists for a better theoretical understanding of how
to best improve police/citizen relations and communication through COP.
Returning to SIT, COP efforts are socially creative because they demonstrate an innovative repackaging of the police image. Examples also come in the form of having law
enforcement refer to themselves as peace officers and using negative terms to their
advantage (as in adopting the negative slur for an officer, pig, and changing the meaning with the acronym, PrideIntegrity-Guts). Indeed, Weatheritt (1988) noted that the

nebulously defined COP was actually used by British police to raise their public image
without making substantive behavioral or organizational changes. Although the typical
goals of COP appear to be legitimate and admirable, COP is an attempt, in effect, to make
policing palatable to the public by challenging negative media images and stereotypes
about the police.
Indeed, much of citizens (oftentimes negative) attitudes toward the police (see Ennis,
1967; Reiss, 1967; White & Menke, 1982) are not based on personal experience (e.g., with
COP programs, traffic stops) but, instead, may be informed substantially by media influences (Perlmutter, 2000). However, to combat negative media images of the police is not
an easy task. According to Van den Bulck (1998), in almost every movie or television
seriesbe they serious or comic, action oriented or romantic, mainstream or alternative
there is at least one cop (p. 1). Furthermore, stereotypical images of the police characteristic of the U.S. media are exported throughout the world. In fact, Arcuri (1977) argued
that even television shows that help the police image by portraying officers as competent,
well trained, dedicated, and professionalqualities that are valued in our culturemay,
ironically, lead the public to expect too much (p. 237). Combined with the taunts and slurs
often lobbied at the police, all of this makes it difficult for officers to be treated fairly in
society, a characteristic shared by stigmatized, and stigmatizable, groups.
STIGMA AND POLICING
As with taunts and slurs, the stigma often associated with policing further reveals the
dynamic of differentiation (distinguishing us from them) inherent in SIT. Gofftnan
(1963) used the term stigma to refer to an attribute of an individual that is tarnishing in a
highly discrediting way. The possession of such an attribute reduces that individual in the
eyes of the nonstigmatized from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one
(p. 3). A master status stigma, then, is all-consuming in the eyes of others and nearly
eradicates the possibility that this stigmatized person will be viewed as a unique individual
who merely happens to have a devalued attribute. Crocker, Major, and Steele (1998) made
the important point that the devaluation of a particular social identity resides not in the
actual stigmatized attribute one possesses, but in the possession of that attribute in a particular social setting. This reasoning opens the door for the possibility that anyone may be
stigmatized depending on the social context, including those in a position of power.
Unlike being a member of a stigmatized group, being a member of an outgroup in and of
itself is not sufficient to indicate societal oppression or make clear ones place in the social
hierarchy. Although Crocker and Major (1989) did note similarities between ingroup-outgroup and stigmatized-nonstigmatized group interactions, they are quick to mention that
stigmatized groups are devalued not only by specific ingroups, but by the broader society
or culture (p. 609). The advent of COP was based on recognition of a societal negativity
felt toward officers and an acceptance that coercive force needed to be publicly accountable, and should, wherever possible, be balanced by, or even give way to, creative and joint
problem solving with the community it serves and of which it is a part.
However, being a member of a profession such as law enforcement challenges the
assumption of a societal consensus of devaluation with respect to stigmatized groups in
general. As an outgroup, the police can at times be both revered and despised depending

on the situation and the social identities of those interacting with these officers. The fact
that officers can be hailed as valued heroes or frowned upon as evil-doers reveals a dimension of social status attainment unlike that of typically stigmatized groups. Ironically, having power both separates the police from typically stigmatized groups and helps make
them one.
Furthermore, the perceived controllability of stigmatizing marks also play a role in
classifying the police as stigmatized. According to Jones et al. (1984):
[Many scholars] concerned with stigma hold that the afflicted persons role in producing the mark is an important influence in the stigmatizing process[and] that a
marked individual is treated better when he or she is judged not to be responsible for
the condition (pp. 5657).
The fact that people choose to go into law enforcementwith the ease of putting on or
taking off their uniforms reflecting the voluntary nature of this identitydemonstrates the
likelihood that citizens who do stigmatize law enforcement may judge them more harshly.
This increased degree of felt responsibility for the creation of the mark runs counter to Goffrnans (1963) first type of stigma, abominations of the body. Because having a physical
deformity usually stems from a genetic anomaly, such people are often treated more sympathetically than those believed to have some control over it. However, because Jones et al.
believed that those who can conceal their stigmatizing mark will do so, uniformsa major
form of nonverbal communication (Gundersen & Hopper, 1984)practically become
abominations of the body due to the negative attitudes that can be triggered in citizens
simply by seeing an officer on duty. Indeed, the example of the slain officer at the opening
of this chapter shows this to be the case.
The desire to go into law enforcement may be viewed by many as being most akin to
the second of Goffmans (1963) three types of stigma, blemishes of individual character,
which includes supposed character flaws such as being weak-willed, domineering, or rigid
in ones beliefs. Having any of these traits suggest that one could control them if only
one tried. With respect to law enforcement, a commonly held belief is that those with an
authoritarian personality are more prone to go into law enforcement. Although this perception could stem from the legal and weaponry powers accorded them, they contribute
to construing law enforcement as a stigmatized group when viewed through the lens of
Goffmans third type, tribal stigmas.
Although Goffman (1963) claimed that tribal stigmas are explicitly related to race,
nation, and religion (rather than law enforcement), he did argue that this type of stigma
can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family (p.
4). The notion of passing down a tribal stigma makes sense with respect to law enforcement when the history of their power is taken into account. For instance, before the Civil
Rights Act (1964), officers enforced seemingly now unethical and immoral laws of racial
segregation, thereby helping to create and reinforce negative public attitudes toward the
police.
All this makes law enforcement similar to, yet different from, an oppressed group. Officers have been thought of as oppressor. One example comes from an NBC television miniseries, The 60s, in which two AfricanAmerican men try to convince a peer to join the Black

Panthers in the midst of a street riot. One of them says, We dont blame you if youre
scared. Every time a black man tries to show his pride, The Pig takes him down (February
8, 1999). This vividly illustrates that, at least at this point in time, law enforcement was
viewed by some members of stigmatized (and nonstigmatized) groups an instrument of
societal oppression.
This shoot the messenger type tribal stigma is still evident today. George Carlin, in
his HBO Comedy Special suggestedto raves of cheers from the audiencethat, They
oughta have two new requirements for being on the police [force]: intelligence and decency.
You never can tell, it might just work, it certainly hasnt been tried yet (February 1999).
Although just one example, this reflects both current and decades-old notions about law
enforcement acting inappropriately, irresponsibly, and brutally. Having been perceived as
agents of oppression through both tribal and blemishes of character stigmatization, officers have become, to some degree, boomerang recipients of oppression themselves. COP
reflects an attempt by police to retool their public image. Although they have power, this
means little without widespread community support.
In fact, instances of perceived police brutality have called police power into question,
suggesting that social competition, the final stage in SIT, may start to unravel more traditional methods of policing. For example, although four White police officers were cleared
of any wrong doing in their shooting of a 20year-old African-American woman (December, 1998), numerous members of the African-American community challenged the courts
findings through public outcries and protest marches. Long-standing racial and police/citizen divides are further strained by a lack of public understanding for police action. Indeed,
a large-scale police presence and zero tolerance for even seemingly inconsequential misdemeanors (e.g., jaywalking) on festive, family occasionswhere gang violence in previous years had been intolerably acuteare not only historically-misunderstood by young
people, but any convincing rationale for it has been under-disclosed to the community
by the police via the media. And, although the police assisted in desegregating the public
school system in the 1960s, public questions concerning racism in policing today seem
almost natural given the legal and weaponry power available to the police.
EPILOGUE
The complexities of police/citizen relations suggest that COP programs face many challenging obstacles that must be addressed and overcome before such programs can be very
effective and truly change negative public attitudes toward the police and police practices.
The communication inherent in police/citizen encounters dictates the need for more theory-based research concerning the development, implementation, and evaluation of COP
programs. The use of intergroup communication theories in our understanding of COP
and officer/citizen relations becomes all the more important given media depictions of the
police, the stigma associated with policing, and the conflicting attitudes toward the police
due to their controversial legal power. It is our believe that intergroup theories of communication such as intergroup contact and social identity theory (as well as communication
accommodation theory; see Giles et al., 1991) can aid the COP process at all levels by
providing predictive and explanatory power.

Given spatial constraints here, only a flavor of the implications of the aforementioned
theoretical positions, as they apply to COP, can be explicated, and they include:
1) A blend of high intergroup plus high interindividual contact between officers and
citizens is most conducive to changing civilians attitudes toward law enforcement in
general.
2) An awareness of each others social identities can aid departmental and community
members alike in understanding and predicting their relationships, within and between
their groups, with respect to COP implementation and development.
3) The kinds of accommodative strategies adopted by these groups in their intergroup
encounters are critical if COP is to be effective.
Clearly, this intergroup arena, in turn, holds many unique possibilities for testing the tenets
of a range of inter cultural and intergroup models.
COP is in many ways a conceptual enigma. However, the definitional flexibility of COP
allows us, as communication scholars, to hone in on and study its various dimensions. This
knowledge would allow the developers and implementers of COP programs to fully utilize
the aspects of COP that work. Negative attitudes toward law enforcement, stereotypes,
media images, and perceived power differences between officers and citizens may all serve
to undermine COP efforts. Departmental, police/community, and community divisions can
erupt from a lack of understanding of just what COP is intended to accomplish and just
who is responsible for its success. Taking into account intergroup communication dynamics allows for a fuller understanding of what happens before, during, and after COP implementation. Simply put, however, this chapter is a call to scholarly arms for communication
theorists and researchers to contribute their much needed expertise to the timely area of
communication and law enforcement (Giles, in press).
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20
Preventatives in Social Interaction
G.H.Morris
California State University, San Marcos
When individuals feel they have been wronged by another party, they face the choice to
pass over the present (Hopper, 1981) or to take some form of remedial action (Goffman,
1971). Similarly, when individuals are in the process of doing something they anticipate
another person may not approve, they can choose whether to desist, to acknowledge the
pending problem, to disclaim, or to account for their actions. In either case, overlooking or
avoiding a problem has much to recommend it because it might avoid transforming nonserious troubles into more serious problematic situations: If it aint broke, dont fix it.
On the other hand, taking an early opportunity to remedy a potential or actual problem can
restrict or contain the problem and keep it from growing in seriousness. When problems
do occur, they can be dealt with before neglect or poorly executed remedial work worsens them: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This dichotomy is of some
importance for the study of alignment (Hewitt and Stokes, 1975; Morris, 1991; Morris &
Hopper, 1980, 1987; Ragan & Hopper, 1981) because it gets to the heart of how and when
people align.
Alignment is interactional sensemaking. Its key processes are creating expectations for
interactants conduct, formulating divergences from such expectations, and accounting for
divergences. By engaging in alignment, participants forge tighter correspondences between
their actions and expectations. But how serious must a divergence be in order to warrant
remedial intervention? Can earlier, milder remedial actions make later, more drastic actions
unnecessary? Overall, how and when is it prudent to engage in the process of alignment?
This essay is a celebration of early, preventive attempts to keep interactional problems
from deepening. It argues that when it comes to alignment in social interaction, the earlier,
the better. Several opportunities, each of which arises before the chance to accuse another
person of wrongdoing, are illustrated. These opportunities include: (a) Not creating an
expectation that will probably be violated, (b) crystallizing expectations, (c) giving an
advisory, (d) notifying someone of a pending divergence from expectations, (e) disclaiming offensive intent, (f) giving a proactive account for an apparent divergence, and (g)
formulating a problem with anothers conduct without making an accusation. These earlier
opportunities to align, collectively referred to here as preventatives (McLaughlin, 1984),
occur before and may make unnecessary, explicit reproach by another person.
NOT CREATING AN EXPECTATION THAT WILL PROBABLY BE VIOLATED
When one person invites another to do something and he or she agrees, an expectation
is established that the agreed upon action will occur. Similarly, when a promise is made,
the promised party has the right to expect that the promise will be fulfilled. Thus, one can
avert being held accountable for actions by declining to promise to do them or otherwise
Preventatives in social interaction 289

creating an expectation for performance. Examinations of declined invitations show that
when invitations are declined an account is generally provided, and this account explains
why the invited party cannot do what has been invited (Heritage, 1989; Morris, White, &
Iltis, 1994). For instance:
UTCL, A21:1213 (simplified)
01 Pam: Id love for you to come if you want to
02 Glo: Well I would but I just talked to my sister
03
a few minutes ago...and I promised her that I
04
wouldgo over there cause I haveto return
the
05
car and then shes babysittin so weregoing
to
06
take the little girl to go get her something to
07
eat
08 Pam: ((laughter)) Okay well just thought Id call.
In this instance, Glos description of her prior promise suggests that it would not be possible to both do what she has previously obligated herself to do and also go with Pam.
She declines the invitation with no equivocation and it appears from Pams reply that no
expectation was created. This would appear to be superior to another choice available to
her, which would be to accept the invitation, try to accomplish all four expectations, and
possibly fail to conform with one or more of them. Such failures would occasion later
remedial attempts that would be more challenging for the parties to negotiate than if no
failure had been allowed to crop up in the first place.
CRYSTALLIZING EXPECTATIONS
Morris and Hopper (1980, 1987) considered alignment partly as a matter of achieving
greater consensus on rules governing interaction. When people experience problematic
situations, one outcome of their remedial/legislative interaction is a crystallization (Cushman & Whiting, 1972) of rules, and this has the potential to avert problematic interaction
in the future. Moreover, earlier crystallization of rules might circumvent later troubles. For
instance, in the following excerpt from Jones and Beachs (1995) analysis of therapy talk,
the therapists instruction to one party to let another speak may have been unnecessary had
ground rules for this already been established and understood:
FAM:B2 (simplified)
01 TH:
Oh you gotta house er somethin?
02 RP:
Hes gotta property right around the corner he
03
doesnt havta pay rent deposit he doesnt havta
pay
[anything (he owns his own) property]
04
05 TH:
[Let me hear it from him cause hes]
06
gotta deal with the reality
07 F:
Im probably not going ta stay in the area

It is not known whether earlier opportunities to align were used in the preceding case. But
such opportunities do occur typically in early sessions and/or when particular kinds of
interventions are being set up. For instance, when initiating talk in first sessions of therapy,
it is typical for a marriage and family therapist to call for an explanation of what brings a
couple to therapy. Recognizing that members explanations are likely to differ, the therapist
might establish some ground rules to govern what will be talked about, by whom. In the
following instance, the therapist queries the couple about this, asking explicitly for each
member, in turn, to reply:
OHanlon Session (Simplified, from Gale, 1991).
01 TH:
how will you know when actually (.) things are
02
better? and uh or things are where you want them
03
to be in your relationship or whatever you are
04
coming for. So .hh I wanna ask each of you (.) how
05
will you know and then I may ask you some questions
06
so I make sure I understand that in a pretty good
07
way and I wanna know how youll know ultimately
08
and what will be the first sign youll see (.)
09
things are going in a good direction. So, either of
10
you, whoever wants to start
11 H:
You made the call, you could
12 W:
hhhhh Alright
In subsequent talk, the womans narrative about what brings the couple for therapy unfolded
without unsolicited contributions from the husband, and it is plausible that the therapists
clarification of his expectations helped to bring this about.
GIVING AN ADVISORY
It sometimes happens that a person can anticipate that another person is likely to commit
an error in a particular circumstance. For instance, an error might be probable because that
person lacks a critical piece of information. Giving an advisory (Morris, 1988) is a technique for averting the problem by issuing the needed information or reminding the other
person of the need to perform some act. For instance:
Parking lot (Morris, 1988, simplified).
01
Attendant: Okay now Doctor Smithers.
02
Now you come back here to pick up

03
your car by seven today. We dont close at

04
midnight on Saturday like usual
The aim of this advisory is to forestall a repetition of a problem that had happened the
previous day. Giving this warning at this point was, in fact, successful in preventing a more
serious problem of either having to stay open for 5 hours in order to release a car or closing
and ruining the goodwill of a regular customer.

NOTIFYING SOMEONE OF A PENDING DIVERGENCE
FROM EXPECTATIONS
When a social actor first learns that he or she is going to be unable to do something another
person expects, the opportunity often exists to alert the expectant party to the pending problem in time for him or her to be less inconvenienced by the failure. For instance, teachers
are often notified that students are not going to be in class on the date an assignment is due.
Following is a note that illustrates this kind of prior notification:
TS1, 1978:4 (A students note sent through an intermediary)
Im sorry but I will not be in class to give my speech today. I woke up yesterday with a
fever. I also had some stomach and diarrhea problems. Today the fever is gone but I still
have diarrhea with an upset stomach. I know this will put a bind on your speaking schedule
and Im very sorry. Quite truthfully, Im not quite through with the speech but probably
could have managed if I hadnt gotten sick. I hope we can work something out.
This students account of his illness explains how the troubles he encountered kept him
from finishing the assignment on schedule. Recognizing that his failure presents a scheduling problem for the teacher, he also bids to work something out. A couple of the features
of this note may be characteristic of such advance notifications: First, if someone is not
going to be performing up to specifications, perhaps he or she can at least get credit for a
good attempt to comply, which may lessen the penalties that may be assessed. Second, the
note seems to minimize the extent of the failure by characterizing the situation as a near
miss. Because the students speech is almost ready, it shouldnt be too hard to make new
arrangements. Achievements such as these would be more difficult to undertake after a
failure has already occurred.
DISCLAIMING OFFENSIVE INTENT
By offering disclaimers (Bell, Zahn, & Hopper, 1984; Hewitt & Stokes, 1975), social actors
forestall an undesired-but-likely-to-be-ascribed interpretation of their conduct. Disclaimers are given along with or immediately preceding a potentially offensive deed. Hewitt and
Stokes wrote that: Unlike accounts and quasi-theories, which are retrospective in their
effect, disclaimers are prospective, defining the future in the present, creating interpretations of potentially problematic events intended to make them unproblematic when they
occur (p. 2).
In the following example, a woman is telling a marriage and family therapist why she
and her husband sought his help. Because there are many ways to explain such a thing,
some of which represent him more negatively than others, and whereas she is shortly going
to explain their problems as stemming from his having had an affair, she offers a disclaimer
of her intention to hurt him as she discloses his affair to the therapist.

Laying in Limbo
01 W:
and thats what led up to this point
02
Recently .hhh February thirteenth Ill never forget
03
the date .hhh he had beem .hhh um coming home late
04
from work
05
(1.6)
06
pt and- Im not saying this to hurt you=
07 H:
=Î know
08 W:
Its to help us=
09 H:
=I know
10 W:
so::- Hed been >comin home< late from
11
work and he just was- didnt didnt care,
12
he wasnt there I just could see it in his eyes.
13
Well he came home February thirteenth
14
and announced that he was seein somebody
In terms developed by Hopper, Ward, Thomason, and Sias (1995), the disclaimer in the
preceding example is embedded in that it occurs close to the possibly offensive action it
is designed to cushion. These authors argued that such embedded disclaimers were superior to early disclaimers in the medical hotline calls they examined, in each of which
some form of medical disclaimer was obligatory. The important distinction here, however, is between an embedded and a late disclaimer, and the superiority of the embedded
disclaimer should be evident. It averts surprise and elicits consent.
GIVING AN UNSOLICITED ACCOUNT FOR AN POSSIBLE DIVERGENCE
After a possibly inappropriate act has occurred but before being reproached, an actor can
account proactively for the situation, and this account may or may not be relieved (Gofftnan, 1971). In addition to giving explanations and possibly providing relief, however, parties can and do discuss and attempt to manage consequences of the divergence. This may
include considering the penalties that may be assessed. A key advantage of providing an
unsolicited account is that lesser penalties may result.
Providing an unsolicited account of a problem gives the actor the first chance to characterize the situation and provides an opportunity to suggest ways to handle the consequences of the situation. If the consequences of the failure can be handled easily, perhaps
the account will appear more acceptable. To illustrate, in the follow-up meeting to the
student note case previously examined, after an exchange of greetings, the student first bids
to address how to handle the situation:
(3C)
01
TS1,
S:
02
1978:1
((greeting exchange))
Im trying to figure out how I can get my speech
in.
Uh Uh What I came up with is that I could prepare
it

03
04
05
06
so like I could have it ready and then like if

somebodys absent and didnt show up to do their
speech, I could do mine then.
Uh
When the teacher did not reply, the student recycled his earlier apology and account before
again bidding to address how to handle the consequences of his failure:
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
T:
Im really sorry about what happened, it (.)

I didnt get better until Thursday (.)
I found out I had some sort of flu ((cough)) but uh,
Ive got everything pretty much finished now
and the only thing I have to do is get the outline
typed up. Had it, uh written out lengthwise for the
speech, uh, Saturday, and I was gettin ready to do
the note cards when (.) I dont dont what it was (.)
it was something (.) fever and diarrhea, but uh (.)
What do you think about that? About having it
ready
and like last time at the end there was people who
didnt show up to give their speeches or anything,
and
then if I dont get a chance to do it (.) just turn it
in (.) turn in what Ive done and everything and get
partial credit or something for it.
Well, uh. There is another option
In later action not shown, after the student accepts her counterproposal of Line 22, the
teacher measures out the penalty she plans to exact. Only then does she provide relief for
his account. The parties agreed to a lesser penalty than would have been assessed had the
student not taken the initiative to account for and address the consequences of his failure.
FORMULATING A PROBLEM WITH ANOTHERS CONDUCT WITHOUT
MAKING AN ACCUSATION.
When it comes to the point that one persons conduct has diverged from expectations, no
previous opportunity was taken by either party to align, and another person opts to initiate a remedial episode rather than passing over the present, there is still a chance to align
without engaging in an aggravated reproach (Cody & McLaughlin, 1985). Simply by formulating the problem with anothers conduct (Morris, 1988), a person can elicit an account
and thereby foreswear blaming (Pomerantz, 1978) and aggravated disparagement (Morris,
1998, November). In the following instance, a state tax enforcement officer is calling a
delinquent taxpayer:

Tax Collector/Merchant
01
TC:
Mr. Warrens Good morning. This is Ernest Joseph sir.
02
Im with the state comptrollers office

03
TP:
Yes sir
04
TC:
Im looking at your record in front of me? and we:
05
do not have a return (.) in April May and June.

06
TP:
Right
07
TC:
Right
08
TP:
And (.) Im in the process of getting all that
09
together at the present time I- at that time (.7)

10
I:: uh stopped using the accountant that I had

11
been using up to that point. (1.4) a::nd so I got

12
behind but I have (.) everything and I am putting it

13
togethe::r a:::nd uh I am planning to have it all (1.5)

14
together hopefully this weekend is what I- is what I

15
Im tryin to use as a target time for myself

16
(2.4)
17
Urn and I you know to get everything up to date. Youyou

18
dont have one for that period or for the next period
19
right
20
TC :
No we don t.
21
TP:
Not quite. Well, lets see it isnt over- ov- overdue
22
now is it
23
TC:
No sir the third quarter will be not is will not be due?
until Mundie. Mundie will be your [last

24
25
TP:
[yeah
26
TC:
day.
27
TP:
Yeah
28
TC:
HHH If you can get that postmarked Mundie? And mail
it
29
to me we can honor it without chargin you penalty

30
TP:
Yeah. Okay
As the caller, the tax collector is obliged to make known why he is calling. He does so by
announcing that he does not have a tax return for the taxpayer, stating also the evidence
he has for this claim. When the taxpayer has acknowledged that this is correct, the tax collector did not use his turn at Line 07 to further expound on the problem or attribute blame
for the problem to the taxpayer. Instead, by repeating the taxpayers certification of what
he had reported (right), he seems to treat his announcement as now complete. This occasions the taxpayers report about his attempts to file the returns and the troubles he has had
in the process. At Line 16, the tax collector might have offered some sort of response (e.g.,
an assessment) to this account, but he did not. He focused entirely on the technical problem of acquiring the tax return and never addressed the taxpayers account. The problem

formulation with which he commenced the business of the call was entirely sufficient to
dispose of the problem and the need to reproach the taxpayer never arose.
DISCUSSION
Both parties in problematic situations have several chances to dispose of shallow troubles
before they become deep troubles. Through a succession of opportunities prior to, at the
point of, and after the commission of inappropriate actions, participants can manage to align
their actions without ever resorting to any sort of aggravated reproach (Cody & McLaughlin, 1985). In fact, aggravated reproach would appear to be a measure of last resort, finding
a use only when parties failed to grasp or execute earlier opportunities to align their actions
and expectations. There may be a general preference for self-repair (Schegloff, Jefferson,
& Sacks, 1977) in social interaction which would operate to make reproaching anothers
conduct an accountable act. If so, by the time an actor is reproached, alignment has been
made more difficult because there are at least three accountables, not just one. The actor is
accountable for an actual failure to comply with expectations and is also culpable for not
having used the prior opportunities to avert the problem. The reproacher is accountable
for failing to allow the person who committed the offensive deed to initiate his or her own
aligning actions with respect to it. Thus, early alignment is in both partys interest. For
the perpetrator of actions that others might disapprove, there are very powerful strategic
advantages of providing aligning actions without first having been reproached. With such
a proactive approach, expectations can be revised, interpretation of the possibly offensive
deed can be transformed, and arrangements can be made that lessen the consequences of
inappropriate acts. Making use of the earliest chances to align, finally, allows participants
to formulate, explain, and correct for an unfortunate situation without prompting cycles
of blaming and accounting (Buttny, 1993) that may be repetitive and may compound and
intensify the problem (Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch, 1974).
REFERENCES
Bell, R., Zahn, C., & Hopper, R. (1984). Disclaiming. Communication Quarterly, 32, 28-36.
Buttny, R. (1993). Social accountability in communication. London, Sage.
Cody, M.J., & McLaughlin, M.L. (1985). Models for the sequential construction of accounting
episodes: Situational and interactional constraints on messages selection and evaluation. In
R.L.Street, Jr., & J.N.Cappella (Eds.), Sequence and pattern in communicative behaviour
(pp. 5069). London: Edward Arnold.
Cushman, D., & Whiting, G.C. (1972). An approach to communication theory: Toward consensus
on rules. Journal of Communication, 22, 217238.
Gale, J. (1991). Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic
agenda. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Harper & Row.
Heritage, J. (1989). Accounts as explanations: A conversation analytic perspective. In C.Antaki
(Ed.), Analysing everyday explanation (pp. 127144). Bevery Hills, CA: Sage.
Hewitt, J.P., & Stokes, R. (1975). Disclaimers. American Sociological Review, 40, 111.
Hopper, R. (1981). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195211.
Hopper, R., Ward, J.A., Thomason, W.R., & Sias, P.M. (1995). Two types of institutional disclaimers at the Cancer Information Service. In G.H. Morris & R.J.Chenail (Eds.), The talk of the

clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse (pp. 171184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jones, C.M., & Beach, W.A. (1995). Therapists techniques for responding to unsolicited contributions by family members. In G.H.Morris & R.J. Chenail (Eds.), The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse (pp. 4969). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
McLaughlin, M.L. (1984). Conversation: How talk is organized. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Morris, G.H. (1988). Finding fault. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 7, 125.
Morris, G.H. (1991). Alignment talk and social confrontation. In J.\Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, 14 (pp. 401411). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Morris, G.H. (1998, November). Alignment and aggravated disparagement: Malignant receipt of a
problem formulation in therapy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, New York.
Morris, G.H., & Hopper, R. (1980). Remediation and legislation in everyday talk: How communicators achieve consensus. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 266274.
Morris, G.H., & Hopper, R. (1987). Symbolic action as alignment. Research on Language and
Morris, G.H., White, C.H., & Iltis, R. (1994). Well, ordinarily I would, but: Reexamining the
nature of accounts for problematic events. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27,
123144.
Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair for conversation. Language, 53, 361382.
Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and
problem resolution. New York: Norton.
21
The Interactional Construction of Self-Revelation:
Creating an Aha Moment
E.Duff Wrobbel
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
We generally think of self-revelationthe sudden flash of insight the instant that we understand what something meansas something wholly individual, internal, and psychological.
Conversation analysts, on the other hand, build their arguments only from the interactive,
communicative behaviors that are available to the participants themselves. Is understanding then beyond the reach of ethnomethodology? Conversation analysts suggest otherwise.
Frankel and Beckman (1989), for example, argued that speakers and hearers continually
negotiate meaning in and through conversational exchange and in so doing create social
reality (p. 61). In other words, what someone understands in interaction is not so much
a psychological question as a social one. Pollner (1979) suggested that understanding is
neither an entity nor an object in the mind or psyche of the actor, but rather is a shorthand
way of referring to a behavioral process or transaction in which the actor participated (p.
247). These authors and others argue that understanding is a social creation, negotiated
through interaction. Thus, it follows that understanding can never be a wholly individual
phenomenon. It exists, not in one persons mind, but rather in behaviors exchanged by
interactants. Any consideration of understanding then should include a close examination
of the participants interactive construction of that understanding. Of particular interest to
this study is the as yet unaddressed question of how new and novel understandings first
emergewhat occasions a so-called aha moment? This brief essay provides data and
analysis showing that even this seemingly most internal and psychological of moments in
the understanding process may have an interactive component. It also implicates several
conversational devices in the construction of an aha.
ANALYSIS
Let us now visit the data and consider how, during a therapy session, a wife (W) moves
from one understanding of a discussion with her husband (H) to another. In a previous
meeting, their counselor (C) discussed the need for this troubled couple to do a better
job working out the details of their child care. They had been given the task of working
through their next child care discussion calmly and effectively as homework. During
this session, already in process, the counselor asks the wife for an account of the results of
their discussion, which she provides in the following (see Jefferson, 1984, for transcription
conventions):
The interactional construction of self-revelation 299

408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
C:
W:
C:
W:
C:
W:
C:
W:
420
421
422
423
424
425
H:
W:
C:
Um
Because were making a a change on Tuesday
nights because Im 11 be helping a friend
go to some birthing classes?
Urn hm?
And um (.) Im her coach
Urn hm?
And uh we start tonight and so I asked him
is: if he would watch em both on Tuesday
nights (.) for six weeks
Um hm
And he agreed hes gonna watch em at my
hourse
and get em in bed and everything cause then
I wont get home til like nine fifteen
Well not for six weeks but for six (.)
Tuesday nights [yeah
[six Tuesday nights=
=Yeah=
In this sequence, the counselor provides continuers (see Schegloff, 1982) in Lines 408, 412,
414, and 418 that result in a fleshing out of the discussion by the wife. Here, we learn that
the wife (a) recently accepted an outside obligation as a friends birthing coach, (b) that
her husband agreed to watch the children while she is gone, and (c) that the class will run
for 6 weeks. The husband then offers a correction in Lines 422423 (6 nights rather than 6
weeks), this correction is ratified by both the wife (Line 424) and the counselor (Line 425),
and the conversation continues:
426
427
428
429
430
W:
H:
C:
W:
H:
=You can handle
=Six
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
C:
W:
C:
W:
C:
W:
Um hm
And uh and right after we (.) decided that we
called them in and told them we was gonna do.
Um hm How was that- how was the negotiation
process for the two of you (0.2) did you
feel like you had been heard (0.2) like your,
(1.0)
Yeah
So have you been heard?
Uh huh
(0.8)

442
443
444
445
C:
H:
How bout you did you feel like you had

been heard?
(0.4)
Sure was okay
it yeah (.) yeah
446 C:
A brief moment of levity (Lines 426430) is brought to a close by the counselor in line
431. The counselor then asks both W and H (Lines 434436) about the relative success
of their discussion (the first query), and she receives a positive response from W in Line
438. She then checks in individually with both the wife (the second query, Line 439) and
the husband (the third query, Lines 442443) to see if each agrees that their needs were met
in this discussion, and each responds in the affirmative. The wife then continues to offer
details (beginning as follows in Line 448) which the counselor encourages with additional
continuers (Lines 450 and 454). To this point, then, the counselor has asked three times
about various aspects of this couples discussion, and both husband and wife have provided
positive responses each time, thus collaboratively negotiating a positive understanding of
this event. All interactants seem to be on the same page when the wife resumes the
discussion:
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
C:
W:
C:
W:
C:
W:
Okay
He said that he wouldnt be taking one of em
at night then
Mm hm
Since hed be <putting em in> bed and
everything hh which is fine and it was fine
with them
Mm hm?
And then
At this point, the husband rejoins the conversation and interjects a qualification:
456
H:
457
458
459
460
461
C:
462
463
464
465
466
H:
C:
H:
also said that theres a

possibility that something could come up for
me:: (0.2)that (0.2) I you know that I may (.)
not be able to (.) make one of those nights
also h
=as much advanced notice I me- I dont kno:w
of anything
Um hm
And I cant see anything happening but theres
a:lways that possiblity so

467
468
469
470
H:
H:
(0.8)
You know
(1.0)
(life) goes o:n
The husband suggests that he was happy to commit as long as the wife was willing to
allow him some flexibilityan aspect of the discussion that the counselor also initially
draws out with continuers (Lines 461 and 464). Note, however, the difference in the quality of the counselors responses as she changes from continuers (Lines 461 and 464) to
nonresponsiveness at the TRPs (Lines 467 and 469). This, though allowing the husband to
continue, provides less overt encouragement for him to elaborate. The husband orients to
the nonencouraging nature of the counselors first instance of nonresponse by ceasing to
provide additional elaboration and instead soliciting further encouragement in Line 468.
When none is forthcoming, he offers the life goes onclich, thus seemingly signaling the
completion of his qualification. At this point, the counselor then continues:
471 C:
Hm (0.2) so (0.4)
478 H:
while while while I was

committing to it you know (0.2) to doing
that
just to know that (1.0) theres always
something that could happen (0.3)
*although I
dont (.) (have a)
479
480
481
482
that
When the counselor finally does provide the uptake the husband sought in Line 468, he
immediately (in overlap beginning at Line 478) adds to his earlier qualifier. Note, however,
that there is no substantively new content added here.
The counselor continues:
483
484
485
C:
486
H:
487
So hows that feel to you when theres

(0.2) like a window open and
dont put it in cement
(1.0)
There are three issues of import in this brief exchange. First, it is notable that the counselor
has once again asked the wife a question about how she feels about her discussion with
her husbanda query very similar to several already asked and answered. Recall that
when asked earlier, the wife described her discussion with her husband as successful (Lines
404407), and then twice again responded to more specific questions (Lines 434436 and
439) positively (Lines 438 and 440). Why might someone ask a question so similar to
ones that have only just been answered? One possibility is that this may suggest that a

different answer is now preferred. Note that this previously asked and answered question is revisited immediately after the husband has finished detailing his qualificationa
qualification that the counselor has pointedly not encouraged. Also, when the counselor
asks this version of her question, she provides a reformulation (Heritage & Watson, 1979)
of the husbands qualifier as an open window (one that he readily ratifies in Line 486)
and directs her question directly and only to the wife about this particular aspect of the
discussion. The combination of these sequential elements serve (a) to refocus the discussion from one about the couples discussion to one about the couples discussion in light of
the husbands qualification, (b) to suggest that something is amiss with the wifes previous
answers to questions of this discussions success, and (c) to suggest an alternative reading
of this qualification. In a very real sense, the counselor has just actively sown the seeds of
a specific revelationhardly a professionally neutral role. These seeds immediately begin
to sprout, as seen in the following:
488
489
490
491
493
494
495
496
W:
C:
W:
497
498
499
500
C:
W:
Well I dont remember him saying that

earlier but
(1.8)
Whats that,
(0.4)
well (0.8) I mean I guess I always knew there
d be a possibility (1.0) Ill just have to
get my brother or somebody to watch em for
me
(0.4)
Hm
If he could
(1.4)
Throughout this exchange, the wife begins the slow process of reconsidering the discussion
in light of the counselors reformulation. The counselor nurtures the seeds she has sown
by allowing the wife to twist in the wind a bit through pauses (TRPs at Lines 490, 493,
497, and 500) and the use of only very minimal prompts (Lines 491 and 498). The wife
now describes her understanding of the discussion not as a success, but rather as something
she has resigned herself to accept. After allowing the wife this period of reconsideration,
the counselor then asks her once again to consider her understanding of this event, as
follows:
501
502
503
504
505
506
C:
W:
C:
507
But thats (0.2) then thats alright with you?

to be responsible to find someone if he (.)
cant?
(2.4)
<I didnt really> thi.nk about it like that
just felt like I probably didnt have a

508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
C:
C:
W:
W:
C:
choice but to do that

Okay
(1.0)
Okay
(2.0)
Cause I- its something that I cant mirss
(1.0)
I mean I cant just tell her I cant go one
week [you know]
[Mm hm ] Mm hm
(1.0)
Here again, the recycled question has a consistent alternative reformulation nested within
it. In this permutation, the counselor first calls the wifes prior acceptance into question,
thus suggesting that her answer is still not the preferred response, and then summarizes
Ws acceptance with another reformulation (we have now moved from her flexibility to
his irresponsibility). The very long pause at Line 504 suggests that this time, the question,
answered promptly so often before, requires more thought. This reading of the pause is
validated in Line 506 when the wife explicitly indicates that her understanding is evolving.
The okays in Lines 509 and 511 function as continuers and prompt the wife to pursue this
reevaluation, which she finally does in Line 513. As the wife begins to display a different
(and less favorable toward the husband) understanding of the event, the husband rejoins the
conversation and attempts to mitigate his earlier qualification as follows:
519
H:
Theres probably nothing (0.6) you know that
520
would (0.2) come up but
521
(1.2)
522
H:
Its uh
523
(0.4)
524
W:
But if there did and if there was I mean if
525
all else failed I probably- Id have to take
526
her to the Kids Playhouse or something an (.)
527
pay for a babysitter
528
(1.0)
529
C:
Hm
530
(2.0)
His mitigation seems to have some effect, as at this point, the wife seems to be vacillating
between her (and his) earlier, more positive understanding and the new alternative, less
positive understanding. The husband interjects as the wife continues:

531
H:
532
W:
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
H:
C:
C:
my brother could watch me or someone

Which I would also feel responsible for
So youd feel like if you couldnt come that
would be your responsibility to pay for a
sitter
(1.2)
To take care of them
(0.6)
Having raised the question of paying for a baby-sitter after the counselor has recast the
husbands qualification as evidence of his irresponsibility rather than of her flexibility, the
husband is then prompt to accept some responsibility for paying the sitter. The counselor
attempts to clarify in his prior turn in Lines 534536, asking the husband if he is saying
that he will, in fact, accept this responsibility, but he does not answer (pause at 537), suggesting a possible moment of disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984). She tries this again in Line
538, and is again unsuccessful. She finally receives the husbands qualified response as
follows:
540
541
H:
We: 11 I was thinking of haj_lf of a sitter
542
C:
543
544
H:
(0.4)
545
C:
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
556
557
W:
W:
C:
talk about that issue cause that (.)

sounds like an important (.) thing
that may
(0.6)
That would be fair (.) half
(3.0)
It wouldnt be that mu:ch anyway it li- itd
be like four dollars an hour (0.2) fer (0.2)
two and a half hours (0.4) total (0.4)
something like that
Hm
(2.0)
actually
When the husband provides his qualified answerthat he would feel responsible for
halfthe counselor uses repetition in Line 542 to flag half of one as important, though
she does not suggest why it is important, and then directs the wife and husband to talk
about it. The wife indicates her understanding of this as reasonable in Line 549, but
receives no response whatsoever from the counselor. And, though transcripts do provide an

excellent visual representation of spoken interaction, one really must hear this exchange to
appreciate the palpable pressure and oppressive weight of this particular pause. The wife
finally offers an account for her assessment in Lines 551554, but again receives minimal
uptake from the counselor. Thus, although the counselor continues to create opportunities
for the wife to adopt and display the alternative understanding, the wife continues to defend
the previous one. Finally, it seems that there is little more to be said, and so the counselor
begins a summary sequence (Wrobbel, 1994) to put closure on the whole exchange:
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
C:
h So it sounds like (2.0) when there are

commitments that either of you need to make
which doesnt involve just the children but
(.) there are times when i- (.) for either
parent you need to be away from the children
(0.8) that there are times: (0.4) its
important for the kids to know that they can
count on the other parent to be there to fill
that gap but sometimes both parents are c
called away h (0.6) and its important to be
able to negotiate (.) what is fair around
child car (0.4) and whos going to be taking
the responsibilty so
572
W:
573
cause I didnt
574
C:
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
W:
someone would be there

(0.4)
I mean I guess I was just thinking of it as he
was doing me a favor? (0.4) and if something
happen he couldnt then he just couldnt and
it would be my responsibility h (0.4) but
really I mean thats (.) these are like your
set nights for visitations (0.4) and if (0.6)
if we really had those s:e:t (.) like you know
these were your set nights for visitation?
(1.0) then if (1.0) if you couldnt be there
you would have to get your own babysitter
that (0.2)
kids are certain that someone
I GUess that would be ri:ght

of that
Between Lines 558 and 570, the counselor pulls together and positively reformulates the
details of this couples discussion as she understands them. This would suggest that she has
discontinued her efforts to move the wife to a different understanding of the discussion and
is now just making the best of it. Then in Line 572, at what is for all practical purposes
the last possible moment to do so, the seeds the counselor planted earlier burst into full
bloom (quite literally, as this utterance emerges loudly and in overlap) as the wife suddenly

gets it. She has a moment that she clearly marks in Line 573 as novel understanding, thus
marking this as her aha, or the precise moment of insight. The counselor immediately
breaks off her summary to allow Ws insight to emerge. At this point (Lines 576585), the
wife then displays her new understanding of her husbands qualification as (voil) his
irresponsibility rather than her flexibility.
So what does the analysis of this extended segment of dialogue reveal? First, it provides
evidence that even the most seemingly internal of psychological experiences, such as this
moment of self-revelation, may have communicative antecedents. In this segment, much
of the substance of the wifes changed understanding was shown to have actually come
from her counselor through an extended negotiation. When the wife initially indicated that
she understood her child-care discussion with her husband to be successful, the counselor
said nothing to directly contradict her. However, the counselor then went on to construct a
therapeutic environment that clearly facilitated the wifes change of mind.
This analysis also shows that the method the counselor used to occasion this revelation
included two elements: (a) revisiting previously asked questions as a way of displaying a
preference for a different response, and (b) reformulations of the subject of those questions
as a method of pointing the way toward the preferred response. These elements, coupled
with the use of various speakerselection devices and continuers to keep the question on
the floor, conspire to create an interactive environment conducive to the emergence of
self-revelation. Through his participation in this process, the husband displays his clear
vote for the extant understanding, working hard to keep it alive, whereas the wife first
interactively evades the new perspective, and then not only accepts it, but displays it as her
own unique insight into this event. All three participants in this interaction played a role in
the construction of Ms self-revelation.
REFERENCES
Frankel, R.M., & Beckman, H.B. (1989). Conversation and compliance with treatment recommendations: An application of micro-interactional analysis in medicine. In B.Dervin, L.Grossberg,
B.J.OKeefe, & E. Wartella (Eds.), Rethinking communication: Vol. 2: Paradigm examplars
(pp. 6074). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Jefferson, G. (1984). Transcript notation. In J.M.Atkinson & J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social
action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. ix-xvi). London: Cambridge University Press.
Pollner, M. (1979). Explicative transactions: Making and managing meaning in traffic court. In
G.Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 227256). New York:
Irvington.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J.M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies
in conversation analysis (pp. 57101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1987). On the preference for agreement and contiguity in sequencesin conversation. In
G.Button & J.R.E. Lee (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp.
5469). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
turn-taking. In J.Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction
(pp. 757). London: Academic Press.

Schegloff, E.A. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of uh huh and
other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 7193). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Wrobbel, E.D. (1994). Microanalysis in therapeutic interaction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
University of Texas at Austin.
22
A World in a Grain of Sand: Therapeutic Discourse
as Making Much of Little Things1
Kurt A.Bruder
Emerson College
To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
In the field of discourse analysis, scholars have typically emphasized adequate (if not
exhaustive) description and explanation of communicative events in various contexts.
Some have employed these tools in order to explore and account for the mechanisms of
conversation as such; others have sought to disclose important features of the life world
shared by members of diverse speech communities and/or by humanity at large. Among
some discourse analysts, however, there has been a growing aspiration to the development
of discourse-sensitive means for the deliberate alteration of peoples communicative practices in pursuit of improved personal, and even societal, outcomes. We may distinguish this
as a kind of prescriptive turn in the discipline.
This essay, offering a demonstration of the prescriptive use of discourse analytic concepts and
practices in a therapeutic setting, is situated against the backdrop of my own history as a student of
Robert Hopper, who taught me to pay attention to the minuscule details of everyday social activity
as transparent to the infinite web of relations that structure our world. I think that this theme best
summarizes Roberts effect on me, both professionally and personally. Perhaps it will resonate with
others who have had him for their hearing aid.
I am not suggesting that my work as a therapist is altogether an outgrowth of my training as a
student of talk-in-interaction. Nor am I implying that Robert Hopper would endorse the use that
I routinely make of discourse analytic tools in therapy. However, Robert always impressed me as
someone motivated not merely by an academic wish to know more, but by a profound desire to
help others. This is something that I seek to emulate in my analysisboth in session (on-the-fly)
and after the fact (with recordings)of talk-in-therapy.
As I have studied such talkin terms of its structure, flow, and consequencesmy practice as a
helping professional has matured. Roberts contribution to mean improved capacity to notice and
make use of little things people do in interactionhas proved beneficial in its therapeutic, no less
so than in its scholarly, application. I would not be as helpful to the people I counsel were it not for
Roberts guidance and inspiration.
A world in a grain of sand 309

In helping relationships such as those that occur in counseling, the counselor is frequently cast in the role of detective, distinguishing those features in the clients unfolding story that call for therapeutic interaction and intervention. Such a feature may be a
major narrative theme. Often, it will be rather more subtle; a slip of the tongue, or a
pause of greater-than-expected duration. Whatever their qualitative or quantitative character, aspects of the clients participation in the therapeutic encounterlike the broader
repertoire of communicative practices that are the clients means of manufacturing and
maintaining her or his self-structureconstitute the raw material with which the counselor
may work.
My effort in counseling (evidenced in the fragment under examination later) is to problematize features of the clients discoursemaking things said, things unsaid, and the way
theyre said into objects of reflective awareness. In this way, clients have an opportunity
to organize their subjective responsesacts of self-creation in the presentaround this
or that bit of their own very recent (though, perhaps, habitual) symbolic behavior. The
now-objectified symbolic behavior was itself subjectively organized around the clients
past (i.e., reconstructed memory) or future (i.e., plans, hopes, fears). The point is that clients, in this very moment of reflective awareness, encounter the possibility of noveltyof
changing who they arein and through the creative revision of their self-presentation.
Such self-presentation is, of course, made to others; but equally, and more significantly, it
is made to themselves.
In the remainder of this essay I propose, first, to discuss how the close analysis of
talk has been used thus far in the talking cure. Second, I draw a theoretical connection
between ones particular communicative practices and ones psychological experience,
especially ones subjectivity. This connection is observable in, though by no means limited to, therapeutic interaction. Finally, I attempt to unpack a stretch of talk-in-therapy,
paying attention to the manner in which each of the interlocutors coordinately, if differentially, make use of the little things that are said in the local (re)construction of the clients
subjective response.
THE ANALYSIS OF TALK AND COUNSELING
With his pioneering commitment to recording and transcribing therapy sessions, Carl Rogers (1942) anticipated the inception of discourse analysis (in its several forms) by decades.
Believing with Rogers that through the examination of such recordings, psychotherapy
[may] become a process based on known and tested principles, with tested techniques for
implementing these principles (p. 434), others interested in clinical discourse have turned
their attention to the investigation of the therapeutic process that close inspection of talk
(typically assisted by electronic recording) allows (Buttny, 1990; Buttny & Lannamann,
1987; Frankel, 1984, Freeman, 1987; Gale, 1991; Morris & Chenail, 1995; Waitzkin &
Britt, 1993).
Gale (1991) suggested several areas pertinent to counseling that require inquiry, including the interactive talk of the clients and the therapist, the nonverbalfeatures of the
therapy talk, and the issue of the observer as helping to shape the research system (p. 16;
emphasis in original). Gales own study of the recording of a single family therapy session,
responsive to these concerns, demonstrates how the close inspection of therapeutic talk

may be employed to discover the means by which counselors effect change in the clients
experience. He modeled an approach to counseling research that is alert to the manner in
which participants themselves construct and define the meaning of their actions (p. 32).
THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF TALK AND SUBJECTIVITY
When examining the details of interaction, it is possible to recognize both the lifeconstructing function of discourse and the identity of social and psychological phenomena.
The accumulation of particular actionsor, rather, of moments of interaction between
peopleform the psychological, relational, and institutional experience of the interlocutors; indeed, discourse is the essence of that experience. Harr (1992) described this
identity relationship as follows:
Many, perhaps most cognitive, affective, and cognitive states, phenomena, entities,
processes, etc. that are naively attributed to individual minds just are properties of
conversations, engendered in certain discursive practices. [But] it is a fundamental
error to think that psychological processes are internal states that are manifested or
displayed in the uses of language and other symbolic systems. The manifestations
and displays just are the psychological phenomena, (pp. 515516; emphasis added)
In other words, the commonsense notion that language is merely a vehicle for the expression
of psychological entities and processes that already exist or that have already occurred,
manifestations of hidden goings on in mind or brain (Harr, 1992, p. 520), blinds us to
the reality that our talk is the very stuff of thought, feeling, and action. Even our sense of
self is the outgrowth of social interaction with others.
This as yet unconventional perspective on talk affords us the possibility of exploring
what has been supposed to be largely, if not altogether, inaccessible: the substance of human
consciousness, personality and relationship, as these are formed, modified and displayed in
discourse. Rather than seeing the important business of psychological processing taking
place underneath [the] content of conversation, this perspective treats this content as literally where the action is (Potter & Wetherell, 1995, p. 82). Of course, that portion of the
internalized conversation of gestures (Mead, 1934, p. 156) that we may call a persons
self talkthat which is not spoken aloudremains empirically unobservable. However,
by examining ones talk-in-interaction, substantial insight into ones discursively generated
psycho-social experience may be obtained.
Because all of our talk (even that which is not externalized) contributes to our psychological experience (to a greater or lesser degree), one may alter ones life experience in
terms of the symbolic operations by which one represents it to oneself and others. We may
observe that in counseling interviews, there is the potential to noticeand call clients
attention totheir own inevitable display and enactment of identity-constituting talk. And
this noticing allows the client to adopt an external perspective vis a vis her own social
activities.
When we attempt to examine our own behavior (whether in the moment of its performance or at some temporal remove from it), we become an object to ourselves. To make
use of the language of Meads (1934) model of social selves, the T phase of the self

looks at the me of a moment before, assesses it, and owns it (or otherwise). On the
other hand, inspecting ones own talk may also lead to the blurring of conventional distinctions between self and other. Such a recognition may, in turn, permit an understanding of
ones interconnection with others, of the interdependency of oneself and other people (and
everything else), a grasp of the integrated character of life that may prove to be profoundly
therapeutic.
If, as OHanlon (1991) suggested, what we try to do when were doing good therapy
[is to] get people to see things from new angles (p. x), the analysis of ones own talk-ininteraction would seem to be an excellent counseling tool, affording both practitioner and
client an uncommon depth and clarity of insight. Ironically, this capacity to see within is
gained by looking closely at externalized representations of ones own social conduct.
The therapeutic benefits of giving attention to the self-as-object in the context of social
interaction have been long recognized across cultures, spiritualities, and psychotherapeutic
traditions (e.g., Watts, 1961). Corey (1996) said the role of the counselor is to create a
climate in which clients can examine their thoughts, feelings, and actions and eventually
arrive at solutions that are best for them (p. 22). Despite distinctions among sundry therapeutic approaches, all share an orientation to assisting clients in their attempts to examine
and improve their lives. They may focus on making the unconscious conscious, developing
insight, or cultivating self-acceptance and responsibility, but each is designed and applied
with a view to affording clients increased awareness of, and control over, the shape of their
lives.
In attending to ones own talk-in-interaction, one looks at the interchange between self
and other; this process also encourages the client to perceive the self as if it were an other,
resulting in a shift the viewpoint of the observer through the doubling of perspectives. One
is both subject and object, self and other. Increasing ones sensitivity to what, when., and
how one says things in conversation (even in as contrived an environment as a counseling
interview) allows one to recognize ones own communicative practices as the objective,
yet identity-generating, artifacts of social activity that they in fact are. What clients themselves have said at a point in timeand to which their conscious attention is currently
being drawn in the interviewmay be treated with a quality of detachment (as if it were
anothers behavior) that would be otherwise unavailable. This results in a kind of defamiliarization of the artifact. Such identity-talk is rendered strange by the objective stance
facilitated by and in its inspection.
Watts (1961) said that the more unfamiliar, the more other the form in which man learns
to recognize himself, the deeper his knowledge of himself becomes (p. 92; emphasis in
original). By enabling clients a defamiliarizing glimpse of the very discursive practices
that constitute their psycho-social experience, examining ones own talk-in-interaction
becomes a means to insight and personal transformation.
ANALYSIS OF THERAPEUTIC TALK
In my capacity as counselor, I have actively imported the theoretical understandings
just presented into counseling interviews like that discussed herein. As can be seen,
my effort was to draw the clients attention to the fact and manner of his interactively

constructed self-sense, highlighting the possibility of personal transformation through the
positive manipulation of perhaps otherwise unexaminedand unquestionedhabits of
self-representation.
Two potentially controversial issues should be addressed at the outset. First, one of the
participants to the interaction to be examinedmyselfalso occupies the role of analyst.
Certainly, were the goal of this essay to explicate features of so-called naturally occurring
discourse (i.e., the sorts of conversational activities that might happen in the absence of
the student of communication), the fact of my participation would present an insurmountable obstacle to any claim for the generalizability of my findings. Because the objective
is, rather, to illuminate a potentially useful intervention in counseling, my dual status as
interlocutor/analyst seems less problematic. Second, the idea that one can perform analysis
of talk-in-interaction in real time (i.e., as the social exchange is unfolding) may be greeted
with some skepticism. Surely, the potential for depth and precision in analysis is, in principle, increased when undertaken after the fact using recordings of the talk in question.
But this does not preclude the possibility of insights gained on the fly in conversation;
the testimony of those who have considerable experience in the close investigation of talk
provides (admittedly anecdotal) evidence for increased capacities in distinguishing subtle
interactive detailseven within communicative events to which the analyst is party.
At several points in the following encounter, we may observe the counselor orienting
to the factand, critically, the relative adequacyof the clients self-constituting talk. I
argue that there is a recurrent metacommunicative pattern of talk in which certain identityimplicative interactive particulars are recognized and depicted (i.e., brought to the attention of the other), and that these social activities are organized with a view to achieving
therapeutic results.
I transcribed approximately 4 minutes, 30 seconds, of a 1 hour counseling interview
with a college student in his mid-20s. Harlan (a pseudonym) comes from a deeply religious African-American family. Like his father, Harlan was an ordained Pentecostal minister, but he had begun to question formerly unquestionable facets of his life and world, in
part because of his program of study in college. The dissonance between his former and
present worldviews was part of a radical, painful revision in what he knew, how he acted,
and who he was.
Harlan felt himself to be divided in terms of his several roles: preacher, father, student,
party-goer, etcetera. The multiple, social., and temporal nature of his (and every human
beings) self-experience became apparent to him. We pursued this area of concern for several months on a fairly regular basis. The theme of integritybeing who one says one is;
doing what one says one will doemerged as a useful construct in our discussions. Harlan
had on several occasions expressed his appreciation for and aspiration to integrity, including early in the interview from which the accompanying transcript is excerpted.
The following excerpt occurred late in the hour-long interview. K is the counselor/
author; H is Harlan.
1
2
3
4
K:
K:
Well I mean<< thats a:ll (0.2) the same theme

(0.5)
Its all about integrity.
(2.5)

5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
K:
H:
K:
H:
Which
Its kind of a motif ah (0.3) a recurring theme
K:
H:
H:
H:
K:
H:
H:
K:
H:
In our talks:
Right
(0.5)
I (0.3) Im just uh-
(1.7)
Im anxious to:: (1.0) anxious to (0.8) have- have that
complete so called integrity I guess
(0.2)
Hmm
(.)
Ah: :mm and Im unco:mfortable now being aware of
the::>> (1.0) importance of integrity
(1.2)
Ah::m (0.8) ah- (.) become disturbed (1.0) when I
find
myself not in integrity it really does bother me.
Uhum?
(.)
Ahm especially after our talk:s: ya know it really
does bo:ther me
(0.7)
In Lines 1030, Harlan confirms the recurring character of the issue of integrity throughout
our talks and displays his anxiety to have it operating in his life. Harlan says hes uncomfortable, disturbed, and bother[ed] now when he sees that he is not in integrity.
Harlan acknowledges that integrity has become for him a criterion for living; he now has an
existential standardwho he says he is and what he says he will doagainst which he may
subjectively compare his objective actions. Harlan locates the discursive source of much of
his discomfort with his own inconsistency in our prior talks together (Lines 2829).
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
H:
K:
H:
K:
K:
Ahm:
(0.5)
Why
(7.5)
>>Because
(.)
Umkay,
(.)

40
H:
41
42
43
44
45
46
H:
K:
I dont (0.5) hhhh Im Im s:ick and tired of not,

being,
(2.0) me,
(0.1)
And then when Im not in integrity I- (.) begin to
(0.3) its almost like I lo::se me.
(0.8)
Humm=
In Line 33 I asked Harlan why he is bothered. Harlan responds (Line 35) that it is because
hes not being himself. Using a common idiom, Harlan employs the metaphors of disease
and exhaustion (Line 40) to characterize his displeasure at not being himself; he identifies his failure to maintain integrity with the ambiguous feeling of losing himself (Lines
4344) as if he only truly possesses himself when he can recognize an integral relationship
between who he says he is and how he behaves.
47 H:
48
49
50
51
52
K:
=Nbw I I- its like everything (1.5) becomes

blurred I
an- and its like well who are you really trying
to be<< and it goes back into this: cycle of (0.5)
nothingness
(0.2)
Hum
Harlan uses the visual metaphor of a blur to characterize the phenomenological experience of a lack of distinction and clarity concerning his own person (Line 47). In Lines
4849, Harlan adopts the second-person pronominal relation vis a vis himselfwell,
who are you really trying to be?suggesting a critical awareness of self-as-object.
Harlan metaphorically expresses his anxiety over his felt inability to be himself in terms
of a cycle of nothingness. Harlan is acutely aware of his failure to live in integrity as
implying an abortive attempt at being anyone at all.
53
H:
54
55
56
57
H:
58
59
60
61
62
K:
H:
And I(h) I- I dont want- Im uncomfortable (.)

with
that and Id rather (1.8) chuhh I need to be
<<comfterble>> (1.7) about (.) who I am,
(2.1)
<<A: :nd>> (1.8) not having to::>> (1.0) always
(.)
confo:rm to: (0.2) the society in a box <<societal,>>
(1.0) concerns=
=Umhum?
(.)
A:nd um

63
64
65
66
67
68
69
K:
H:
H:
H:
Well who would you be if all that wasnt there,

(1.0)
Hhhhh >>I donknow.<<
(1.0)
I really dont know I um:,
(1.0)
I dont know. Thats a good question
Harlan restates his discomfort, and signifies his felt need to be comfortable about who
he is (Lines 5355). In Lines 5758, he indicates a preference for internal (i.e., self-definition) as opposed to external forces (i.e., definition by others), but intimates that he has
conform[ed] to the society in a box, a term reserved (here, as in previous conversations) for his religious community, which is metaphorically represented as a small, narrow
container that encloses, or even isolates, its members.
In Line 63, I ask who Harlan would be if all that wasnt there. In asking this question,
I was not implying that it is possible to fabricate a self in a vacuum, only attempting to
query Harlan about the sort of person he authentically wishes to be, were he to be freed of
the contingent, dependent association with his former cluster of significant relationships.
With a marked sigh, Harlan displays his uncertainty concerning his identity apart from his
past associations (Line 65). It is significant that Harlan thrice says that he doesnt know
(Lines 65, 67, 69), nevertheless concluding that its a good question (Line 69).
The fact that we human beings routinely and recursively experience and, as in this
fragment, express uncertainty regarding who we areand even who we wish to beis a
compelling demonstration of the plasticity and symbolically organized quality of the selfsystem. Harlans allegiances to multiple communitiestogether with their corresponding variety of values, each vying for the exclusive subscription of the subjectyield the
palpable tension manifest in his talk.
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
H:
H:
H:
K:
(.)
Im still, (0.3) I think because Im partially still in
the box that- (0.5) I havent completely allowed- (.)
ayuh I know I would enjo:y, (1.2) oh like tonight
theres a-<< (0.4) giant birthday party for me.
(.)
Yah ther- (.) going to be a party >>in which<<
(0.3)ah:m:
(1.7)
Therell be activities that w(h) (h)hhh no(h)t condoned
H:
K:
(.)
/Hhh Um: : I have in fact I played aha significant
h by bo- the box people,
part in initiating this party,

86
87
88
89
90
91
H:
H:
K:
And uh I
(1.5)
Um have full intentions of taking part, in the
festivities=
=Umhum,
(.)
Harlan offers an insightful hypothesis as to the reason for his continuing uncertainty: Hes
still partially in the box (Lines 7172). Harlan beginsbut does not completetwo further utterances on this theme (Lines 7273), before turning to a specific, illustrative case in
point: a birthday party to be held that evening in his honor (Lines 7374). In Lines 7680,
Harlan distinguishes the party as an event at which therell be activities not condoned by
the box people. Though remaining nonspecific about these activities (perhaps signaling
his embarrassment concerning them), Harlan fully expects that the party-goers will be
involved in behaviors that will be inconsistent with the official morality of his religious
community. Harlan admits his role in initiating the party (Lines 8383), and frankly states
his intention to take part in the festivities (Lines 8889). In other words, Harlan plans to
do those very things of which his religious compatriots disapprove.
Harlan recognizes the disparity between his commitments in two personally important
social domains, one inhabited by his religious persona and the other his irreligious, partygoing persona. Each of these communities is acknowledged as a relevant social referent
in the fabrication and maintenance of Harlans sense of self. Harlan exhibits his awareness that the respectiveand mutually exclusivebehavioral expectations of each community, together with his membership status within each context, is both constitutive and
illustrative of the source of his inner conflict.
92
93
94
95
my
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
Ah:::m::, parts of me, (1.2) are uncomfortable

(0.7)
Ye
it even though its:<< (.) a party for
birthsday.
Yeah.
(0.4)
Ah::!!!:, (1.2) parts of me ar-ar- are <<questioning>>
that
Hmm
(0.4)
And then again ny-=
=But you have every intention of partici
ev(h)ery intention I know that Im going to
particirpate

In Lines 9295, Harlan employs the metaphorical figure of parts of himself to describe
his discomfort; some of these parts have very different sorts of ethical commitments than
others. Harlan reiterates his dualistic identification both with the party (it is for his birthday) and with the parts that are questioning his participation in the selfsame affair (Lines
9599). In Line 104, I use a paraphrase to underscore Harlans intention to participate, a
statement that he enthusiastically echoes (Lines 105107).
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
121a
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
(0.2)
My names on the invitation so I have to participate no
I choose to participate I dont have to hh uh:m: =
=Although there is a kind of (.) commitment
that as as like
Right. I feel an
=Ri:ght (.) a:nd
Even if you printed em mbff-hhhh huh huh
print them, but-, Hhh bu(h)t uh huh, Hhh my name is
on it and-and the tea:m that put to- (.) the uh
party together I guess (ge-
look at
In Line 110, Harlan reasserts his ownership of the party with an appeal to an external
artifact: His name is on the invitation. In a telling moment of reflective awareness, Harlan
first says that he has to participate, rapidly amending his description of agency to the status
of choice rather than mere obligation (Lines 110111). I suggest that the existence of the
invitation does intimate a kind of commitment to attend the party (Line 112), a sentiment
that Harlan readily confirms (Line 113). In Lines 116120, we share laughter over the
suggestion that Harlans commitment to attending the party might be emboldened by the
possibility that he himself printed the invitation.
120
121
121a
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
K:
party together I guess (gelook at
that as as like
(.) a bit of (1.0) behavior

H: Okay,
(0.7)
K: Or discourse (.) although it shows up in text=
H:
a printed invitation with your name on it
K: =Rig
H: Right.
K: Hhh can you <<feel>> how that does provide an
obligation?
(0.5)

132
133
134
135
H:
K:
H:
sure (.) yeah, ah- my names gonna be there, (.)

people expect me to he there.
Yeah.
Ive invited people.
In Lines 121127, I problematize Harlans involvement in organizing the partycalling

attention to the invitation, and his ambivalent talk about itmaking it into an object for
reflection. I ask if Harlan can feel how that does provide an obligation to attend (Lines
129130). Harlan again affirms that his name is on the invitation, that people expect him
to be there (Lines 132133), and that he is responsible for inviting these people (Line 135).
My effort was to foreground Harlans prior social activities (i.e., preparing and sending the
invitation) as projecting a commitment to a sequence of future activities that, given his (at
least sometimes) divided self-system, now results in internal controversy. I am suggesting
to Harlan that in so doing he, in essence, set one version of himself up for condemnation
by another.
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
146
K:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
158
K:
159
160
H:
K:
And even which you is gonna show up is pretty much

determined=
=Oh ye a:h
By the
of the
show
up there preaching can I.

(.)
No cause it wouldnt fit the cont
(.) so I
have
you know this.
(0.5)
Right
And there are certain s:- expectations that are gonna
live in that environment,
(0.3)
Right
(.)
That are gonna provide for:, (1.0) this Harlan as
opposed to another Harlan to show up (0.2) at the
party.
Exact
party Harlan will show up,
Right
Although (.) not without perhaps a certain amount of

161
162
163
164
165
H:
K:
discomfort cuz
(.)
Right, the preacher Harlan ( )
(dudnt) preacher man is- is gonna be uncomfortable.
In Lines 136139, I direct Harlans attention to the reality that these historical facts certainly influence the quality of personal performance, or selfpresentation, that would be
likely at the party. Harlan affirms this analysis (Line 138), adding that he cant show up
there preaching (Lines 140141). I confirm that such behavior wouldnt fit the social context (Line 143); the expectations of his fellow party-goers would be violated by Harlan if
he were to present himself in his preacher persona.
After Harlan verifies this assessment (Lines 144145), I emphasize his mindfulness of
this systematic connection between his historical commitments and anticipated behaviors
(Line 146), and suggest that the party-goers expectations for Harlans behavior have been
determined by conventions for parties as social environments. I call Harlans attention to
the projective, programmatic character of expectations (his own and others) in relation to
the matter of self-presentation in a particular social environment (Lines 154156). Specifically, I state that the self-created exigencies for the event determine that the party Harlan
will show up, to the exclusion of any other style of selfpresentation, each with its own
repertoire of predetermined behaviors (Line 158). I suggest that although certain social
environments call for coordinate behaviors, Harlan may still feel discomfort because of
the multiplicity of lifestyles he enacts from context to context (Lines 160161). Harlan
identifies the specific self, preacher man, whose concurrent existenceor, rather, whose
availability in memorywill be the cause of his discomfort (Lines 163165).
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
(.)
So. what if you arranged your lif :e (1.0) in such a
wa:y that (1.5) the: you that you prefer (0.3)
could always show up
(2.3)
Theres a problem with that.
(.)
Okay, why,
Well becuz (0.4) I prefer to be me: :, (0.2)>it depends
on which me youre talkin about.<<
(.)
Right. but you s:- you talk about a real me:,
Right.
(1.2)
As opposed to (1.0) other me:s including preacher man
(.)
Right. (.) (there would

182a
183
184
185
K:
never once: (.) I ca

have ever heard Hh have drawn an identity relation
(0.5) between preacher man and the real me
In Lines 167169, barkening back to our earlier discussion of integrity, I ask the provocative question, what if you arranged your life in such a way that the you that you prefer
could always show up? Understanding Harlans discomfort as a product (at least in part)
of inconsistency in self-presentation, I ask him to imagine what his quality of experience
might be if his manner of communication of himselfboth to himself and to otherswas
unified.
Following a long pause (Line 170), Harlan admits to the fact that theres a problem
with such a strategy (Line 171). After I ask why this should be a problem (Line 164),
Harlan says that although he prefers to be himself, it depends on which self one is talking
about (Lines 174175). That is, Harlan acknowledges that there are multiple selves that
he enacts, changing from context to context. I call Harlans attention to the fact that he
hasin this conversation and otherstalked about a real me that is distinct from several
others that he routinely personifies, including preacher man (Lines 177180). I then state
that Harlan has never drawn an identity relation between preacher man and the real me
(Lines 183185), attempting to lead Harlan to the realization that his discourse provides
evidence that he does not identify but, rather, distinguishes his genuine, real self from
Harlan-as-preacher.
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
H:
K:
H:
K:
H:
H:
H:
K:
H:
>>There is none-<< ther- theyr- theyre uh: :

distinctive the [re (
okay. so youve already labeled
[
a certain style of being Harlan
Umhum=
=As the real Harl[an.
oh::::.. I see what youre saying
[
(1.7)
Yeah but I don-, Ive never, uhm,
(6.0)
Hes always the guy thats looking so Ive never be
hes never been looked at.
(.)
Chum (h) hhhhh huh hah (well)
[
>> (Yeah and ya know)
In Lines 186187, Harlan confirms that these inconsistent selves are distinctive, whereupon I infer that he has already labeled a certain style of being Harlan ... as the real
Harlan (Lines 188191). Harlans uptake of my meaning is marked as immediate and
emphatic (Line 192). Harlan provides an account for the fact that he does not identify
his real me and preacher man (Lines 194204), interspersed with two long pauses
suggesting careful consideration (Lines 193, 195).

This account is telling both of Harlans internal struggle and of his capacity for reflective awareness. Harlan distinguishes his real self as a subjector, rather, as the experience of subjectivityas opposed to the object of perception. Harlan identifies his real
self with the I-phase, and the other selves-in-presentation with the me-phase (Mead,
1934). The real self is the subject onlooker; the other selves are objects of the real self s
metaphoric gaze.
Of course, the self-system is conventionally composed of both subject and object, of
I-phase and me-phase. Harlan is displaying an appreciation of the distinctive functions of these two phases of his own interactive process of selfing (Bruder, 1998). This
understanding, however rudimentary its quality, admits the possibility of discursive reorganization with a view to positive change in ones sense of self. The self-as-subject may
observe and critically appraise the self-as-object, and employ such knowledge in the organization of present action, the province of the subjective aspect of oneself (Mead, 1934).
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
K:
H:
K:
H:
Chum(h)hhhhh huh hah (well

he aint gonna be)<< and hes the guy thats always
examining everybody else. Hes the one thats trying to
figure out (1.0) ah:: :: >>excuse your french but<<
what the hells goin on=
=Umhum,
=And (2.0) so no: hes (1.2) hes (.) I dont know if
he has a (0.8) uh: :m: (1.0) a personna or a character or
he- well hes gotta have a character,
In Lines 201204, Harlan depicts the real self as examining everybody else, as the
one thats trying to figure outwhat the hells going on. This realization leads Harlan
to question whether his real self actually has a persona or a character (Lines 206208).
The tentative quality of Harlans utterance suggests, perhaps, the novelty of his ruminations regarding the different aspects of his self. Yet Harlan has begun to grapple with the
implications of the multiple phases of his own discursively ordered self-system.
CONCLUSION
In the foregoing, we may observe the counselor guiding the client in a sustained, recurrent
consideration of the sorts of social actions whereby the latter fashions his sense of self.
Harlan is an intelligent person who sincerely wishes to be real with himself and others.
I endeavored to direct the flow of the interview so that Harlan would realize that and how
he creates and maintains his identity in and through his interaction with othersand with
himself. This identityconstructing social work is accomplished no matter our level of intentionality, but the systemic quality of the process admits the possibility of purposiveness:
the deliberate application of interactive means to programmatic ends.
This possibility suggests that, within certain personal and social limits, one can be who
and what one chooses to be. Such a choice may serve as a kind of fixed point in social
spacea commitment into which one enters with others in the context of relationship
that holds one to the course of action one has articulated. Inasmuch as one can secure

agreement from significant others to modify their expectations of onean essentially discursive venturethe horizon of ones self-reconstruction remains open. When integrity
came up in this therapeutic encounter, I recognized and thematized it. We then played
out that theme through a cooperative examination of Harlans symbolic presentment of
his own recollected and projected life experience. Focusing on his own selfpresentation
afforded Harlan the possibility of discursive self-transformation.
The present essay extends the range of application of this method for analyzing therapeutic interaction in terms of its practitioners, objects, and effects. Counselors wishing to
expand the therapeutic tools at their disposal might profitably undertake to increase the
level of magnification through which they consider clients talk, even to the appreciation
of what would otherwise seem to be insignificant detailsespecially those that feature
(because they are constitutive of) clients efforts at self-presentation.
Counselors might also assist clients in examining discourse to which they themselves
are a party (both within and outside of the therapeutic context), with a view to affording
clients a new way of seeing themselves. This way of seeing, of experiencing life, produced
in the practice of looking closely at talk in which one has participated, is organized around
two central, and related, themes: first, that ones life and world are constantly created in and
through specific discursive practices, many of which may be rendered visible through the
examination of talk-in-interaction. Attention to these practices is itself therapeutic, yielding not only substantial self-knowledge, but fostering increased capacity for generating
the same over a lifetime. Second, inasmuch as one cultivates awareness of ones discursive practicesactivities that are responsive to the moves of ones interlocutors, yet
also capable of intentional selectionone may be empowered to modify ones life and
world through the programmatic performance of practices productive of more satisfying
psycho-social outcomes.
REFERENCES
Bruder, K. (1998). Monastic blessings: Deconstructing and reconstructing the self. Symbolic Interaction, 27(1), 87116.
Buttny, R. (1990). Blame-accounts sequences in therapy: The negotiation of relational meanings.
Semiotica, 78, 219248.
Buttny, R., & Lannamann, J.W. (1987). Framing problems: The hierarchical organization of discourse in a family therapy session. Unpublished manuscript.
Corey, G. (1996). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy (5th ed.). Pacific Grove,
CA: Brooks/Cole.
Frankel, R. (1984). From sentence to sequence: Understanding the medical encounter through
microinteractional analysis. Discourse Processes, 7, 135170.
Freeman, S.H. (1987). Introduction. Verbal communication in medical encounters: An overview of
recent work. Text, 7, 317.
Gale, J. (1991). Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic
agenda. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Harr, R. (1992). The discursive creation of human psychology. Symbolic Interaction, 75(4),
515527.
Mead, G. (1934). Mind, self, & society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Morris, G., & Chenail, R. (Eds.). (1995). The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of
medical and therapeutic discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
OHanlon, W. (1991). Preface. In J.Gale, Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic agenda, (pp. ix-x) Norwood NJ: Ablex.
Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1995). Discourse analysis. In J.Smith, R.Harr, & L.Van Langenhove
(Eds.), Rethinking methods in psychology (pp. 8092). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Rogers, C.R. (1942). The use of electrically recorded interviews in importing psychtherapeutic
techniques. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 12, 429434.
Waitzkin, H., & Britt, T. (1993). Processing narratives of self-destructive behavior in routine medical encounters: Health promotion, disease prevention, and the discourse of health care. Social
Science & Medicine, 36, 11211136.
Watts, A. (1961). Psychotherapy east and west. New York: Vintage Books.
23
Modeling as a Teaching Strategy in Clinical Training:
When Does It Work?
Anita Pomerantz
University at Albany, SUNY
Two important goals of clinical training in medicine are to teach interns to become competent professionals and to ensure that patients receive quality care. In training programs
in ambulatory clinics in the United States, medical consultations are structured with the
dual goals of teaching and patient care. After a medical intern takes history and examines
a patient, he or she presents the case and discusses it with a supervising physician, called a
preceptor. The preceptor then may see the patient. In some circumstances, it is institutionally and/or legally mandated for the supervising physician to gather firsthand information
on the patients condition; in other circumstances, it is discretionary. When the preceptor
sees the patient, the intern is present in the examining room and participates to a greater or
lesser extent with the patient and the preceptor. On the more participatory side, an intern
may interject information he or she previously elicited or inquiry about areas of the patients
history that need clarification. On the less participatory side, an intern may situate him or
herself on the sidelines and minimally acknowledge information that the patient gives to
the preceptor. When the preceptor concludes the interaction with the patient, the preceptor
and intern leave the examining room and confer again. After conferring, the intern returns
to the patient to discuss diagnosis and treatment plans.
Although the preceptors seeing the patient clearly serves the purpose of ensuring good
medical care, it also affords a training opportunity. This training opportunity, however,
has a built-in complexity: Whatever teaching and/or learning is displayed occurs in front
of the patient. Though teaching is important when preceptors see patients, it needs to be
accomplished with some sensitivity to potentially conflicting interests of the intern and
the patient. Because the activity of teaching defines the one being taught as not fully competent, teaching in front of the patient puts the intern in an awkward position, potentially
compromising his or her position as a professional in the patients eyes (Pomerantz, Fehr,
& Ende, 1997).
The dilemma of the preceptors wanting to teach while at the same time wanting to
avoid compromising the interns position as a professional in front of the patient has a
variety of solutions. One solution is to move the teaching out of the examining room. It is
precisely this choice that the intern, quoted as follows, appreciated about the preceptors
teaching strategy.
Modeling as a teaching strategy in clinical training 325

8/22/95II Stimulated Recall with Intern
Intern: [Its annoying when] the physician comes in and kind of takes charge, and
starts more like kind of telling me what to do in front of the patient. He [the
current preceptor] always waits to talk to me outside. Always does that.
Which I think is great. Its never the sort of thing Well we should do this,
this, and this. (emphasis added)
As would be expected, we found that the ways a preceptor interacts with an intern in front
of the patient generally is an important issue for interns.
There are lessons, however, that cannot be taught outside of the examining room and
away from the patients presence. These include demonstrating ways of taking history
about sensitive matters, pointing out physical manifestations of medical problems, and
showing the intern how to manipulate the patients body as part of the physical examination. There are different ways of providing learning opportunities, ranging from the preceptors observing and commenting while the intern interviews and examines the patient to
the preceptors interviewing and examining the patient while the intern observes. On only
one occasion in our corpus did a preceptor instruct by commenting on the inadequacy of
an interns performance while she interviewed the patient in the presence of the preceptor.
More frequently, the preceptors interviewed and examined the patients with the interns
looking on. They sometimes explicitly instructed with asides that consisted of medical
explanations or commentaries. However, much of the time, they did not explicitly teach.
They conducted the interview and/or physical examination in ways that allowed the interns
to observe and learn from their conduct. This chapter describes some features of using
modeling as a teaching strategy and discusses some strengths and weaknesses of this
practice.
METHODS
Data Collection
This investigation was part of a larger study of medical precepting conducted in a general
medicine clinic at a university hospital. Between May 1990 and August 1995, 32 patient
visits in the General Medicine Clinic were videotaped with the consent of all the participants. These recordings included the five interactional phases of each case: intern/patient
interaction in an examining room, intern/preceptor discussion in the teaching room, preceptor/patient/intern in the examining room, preceptor/intern interaction in the teaching
room or the hallway, and the intern/patient interaction in the examining room.
Post-patient-visit commentary of preceptors and interns were solicited in 20 of the 35
cases. For 6 of these 20, preceptors and interns were asked to speak on their own into an
audiotape recorder about their impressions of the sessions. For the remaining 14 of these
20 cases, stimulated recall sessions were held. For stimulated recall, the preceptor or the
intern, together with a member of the research team, viewed the videotape of the medical
interactions in which he or she had participated. The instructions to the preceptors were
Stop the tape when you think the intern needed to be guided, or when youre trying to

teach or correct, or for anything else you want to say. The more you say the better. The
instructions to the interns were Weve been studying precepting and focusing on preceptors. Now we need your point of view. Wed like you to comment on what was helpful and
what wasnt helpful about precepting. Stop the tape at any point to make comments. The
more you say the better. Interns who completed the stimulated recall sessions were paid
$100 for their participation in the study.
Identifying Instances of Modeling
Teaching implicates learning; the use of a particular teaching strategy structures the occasion such that some learning strategies over others become available for use. From the
preceptors perspective, teaching via modeling involves conducting the interviewing and
examination of the patient with some awareness of being observed by the intern. From the
interns perspective, learning from a preceptor who teaches via modeling involves observing aspects of the preceptors conduct that he or she appreciates as useful
Although the preceptors use of a particular teaching strategy structures the occasion in
which the intern presumably is engaged in learning, there is some independence between
teaching and learning strategies. Even when a preceptor is aware of being observed and
conducts an interview and examination in model form, an intern may fail to observe the
preceptors conduct or view any of it as useful. Likewise interns can learn from witnessing
a preceptors conduct even when that conduct is not intentionally pedagogical.
The method used to identify instances of modeling relied on the explanations and
accounts given by the preceptors and interns. They gave explanations and accounts in two
contexts: (a) in commentaries that they gave individually, speaking into the tape recorder
at the conclusion of the case, and (b) in stimulated recall sessions with a researcher while
watching the videotape of the medical interaction. All instances were collected in which
preceptors indicated that their conduct involved attempts to teach the interns and in which
interns reported that they found some conduct of the preceptors useful. As would be
expected, the preceptors offered more commentary than the interns.
Because instances of teaching via modeling and/or learning via witnessing cannot be
identified by simply analyzing the videotaped interaction, this project heavily relied on the
participants commentaries and stimulated recall comments. Even though the primary data
for this study are the commentaries and stimulated recall comments, the availability of
the videotaped interaction permitted the identification, review, and analysis of the specific
conduct commented on by the participants. The benefits of analyzing both the interaction
and the commentaries were discussed by Arliss (1989/1990) in her study of long- standing
relationships:
Based on the examination of interaction episodes, and related accounts of those
episodes provided by the participants, it is argued that incorporating the accounts
enriches (and complicates) the understanding of the particular interaction. Moreover, it is argued that the contextual information in the accounts provides background
that is vital to understanding the generalizability and relational significance of the
episodes under investigation.

In this study, the materials contained in the participants comments provided a way to
claim the teaching/learning significance for the participants of the episodes of interaction.
Identifying Instances of Successful/Unsuccessful Modeling
An instance of successful modeling and one of unsuccessful modeling are discussed in this
chapter. The criterion for selecting instances of successful and unsuccessful modeling was
the compatibility or incompatibility between the preceptors and the interns accounts. For
inclusion in this chapter, the clearest case of successful modeling was when the preceptor,
having noticed the interns difficulty in obtaining information about the HIV status of the
patient, solicited the information from the patient and the intern commented that he appreciated the way the preceptor solicited the information. The clearest case of an unsuccessful
modeling was when the preceptor commented that he had hoped the intern would learn a
lesson from some particular conduct and the intern commented that she found that conduct
disruptive.
FINDINGS
Two Different Contexts for Learning and Teaching: History
Taking and Physical Examination
When a supervising physician sees the interns patient, he or she may ask the patient questions and/or physically examine the patient. These two activities are seen to comprise different contexts with respect to the types of knowledge to be taught/learned and the teaching
strategies that are appropriate. The participants are aware that there are different types of
knowledge to be taught/learned during history taking and during the physical exam. In the
following two excerpts, interns display that they are aware of the different types of lessons
to learn. In the first excerpt, an intern commented on observing the supervising physicians
history taking:
Stimulated Recall with Intern. 2/16/93:2:13
Intern:
And I think the interactions in terms of the patient, see(ing) somebody who
has a lot more experience than I interact with the patient, I think thats informative in the sense of how they narrow questions down or attain a history
from a patient, I mean, I think thats just general learning, patient interaction..
In the next excerpt, an intern contrasted observing the supervising physicians physical
exam and his verbal interaction.
Commentary recorded by Intern. Set 2:5/31/90
Intern:
he [the preceptor] did some of the physical exam, which actually I find
to be just as if not more helpful than the verbal interaction, because these
are things, him being an emergency doctor, he knows a lot of these points
and that was helpful to me.

In the first excerpt, the intern reported that she appreciated observing the preceptors taking
history and interacting with the patient. In the second, the intern commented that she found
observing the preceptors physical exam particularly useful. The interns seem to treat what
may be learned during the history taking as principally verbal interaction. In contrast,
they treat what may be learned during the physical exam as physical manifestations of the
patients complaints and physical manipulations and tests by the preceptor.
Not only do the participants distinguish between the different kinds of lessons that can
be learned during history taking and the physical exam, they also see differing pedagogic
strategies appropriate for teaching during history taking and during the physical exam. One
supervising physician put it this way:
11/22/94 Supervising Physician Stimulated Recall:7 (Interviewers mm mhms omitted)
P: Whenever I go see patients with interns, most of the time, I try to teachjust by
doing, and watching the intern watch. As opposed to specifically pointing out things,
unless they require that. So, for example, I wouldnt necessarily point things out
that I was asking; I would just ask them and hope that he was listening. And with the
physical exam, obviously its different. You might say Look at this particular finding, or something like that.
The supervising physician distinguished between two kinds of teaching strategies: (a)
teaching just by doing, or modeling, and (b) pointing things out in the course of performing medical activities. The preceptor suggested that modeling was appropriate most of
the time during the history-taking phase whereas pointing things out was appropriate during the physical examination. This chapter discusses issues related to teaching and learning
during the history-taking phase of the medical consultation.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Modeling as a
Pedagogical Strategy
With modeling, the preceptor acts in ways that could serve as lessons for the intern. There
is no explicit talk directing the intern to attend to certain bits of the preceptors conduct
over other bits. There is an obvious benefit to modeling: that teaching can be done, and
learning can occur, without an appearance of pedagogic activity. In an environment in
which being a novice undermines the role of the professional clinician, the preceptor can
provide learning opportunities without undermining the intern.
When a preceptor uses modeling, he or she has less control over what the intern will
pick up on and see as valuable. The conduct needs to speak for itself. A drawback to
modeling is that lessons may be lost in a variety of ways. One way is that an intern may not
attend to the conduct in question. For example, sometimes preceptors consciously select
particular words for specific purposes. In the following two instances, it seems that the preceptors were aware that the word selection they were consciously using as a model might
go unnoticed.

11.22.94 Preceptor, Stimulated Recall:8
P:
the intern said the reflux, and I said heartburn. And that was a
deliberateI thought reflux might be too technical for the patient.
10/25/94 Preceptor, Stimulated Recall:15
P:
Yes maam is something I try to teach them too. The older Black
women from the south, thats right to say yes maam to them. It sort
of helps to let the patient relax I think. And every once in a while, an
intern or resident will pick up on it and will do it.
An intern may not attend to the modeled conduct because he or she is focused on other
conduct or issues relevant to the situation.
Another way that a lesson may be lost is that the intern may notice the conduct but fail
to appreciate the basis for using it. Notice that in each of the two preceding examples, the
preceptor in the stimulated recall session gave a rationale for, or principle behind, his word
selection. In the first instance, the preceptor said that he selected heartburn because he
wanted to speak with vocabulary understandable to the patient. In the second example, the
preceptor wanted to use a term of address that showed respect and hence would relax the
patient. Understanding a lesson involves putting together a bit of conduct with a basis for
its use.
To illustrate this point, I provide two examples: The first is an instance of successful
modeling; the second is not. In the first case, the intern found the conduct instructive; in the
second case, she found it annoying.
Successful Modeling
During the precepting interaction, the intern reported that he neglected to find out about the
patients sexual history. The preceptor, during the stimulated recall session, commented:
11/8/94 Preceptor:10
P: ... obviously he felt uncomfortable asking about sexual orientation which
would have been, I mean given that his friend died and there was no mention
of girlfriend, so it was probably a male friend that died a week ago. And HIV
was so much on my mind from the very beginning of this discussion about
the patientsI assumed that he was gay. And it was pretty amazing to me
that the intern didnt actually directly ask.
When the preceptor went to see the patient, the preceptor and patient spoke about the
friends death.
P:
Pt:
P:
Pt:
Was it AIDS, er
No it wasnt AIDS.
No.
I think he had like a ()

In stimulated recall, the intern stopped the tape and appreciated the way the preceptor
inquired about the topic.
11/8/94 Intern, Stimulated Recall:16
That was kind of a nice way of asking about You know,
If he had a close friend who had died of AIDS, often its, at least in an initial interview it would be inferred that it was possibly his lover. And then from there it sets
the stage for evaluating him later for him being HIV positive. So that was a nice
way of asking there.
AP:
Do you think in watching it you know how to replicate it?
I:
In a way. I think its over time. Its something that I could try to emulate. With
the more patients I see, its easier it is to ask those. Seeing that come up, the
way she did, helps in terms of my future discussions with patients about the same
topic.
This instance of modeling was successful because the intern noticed the conduct (how the
preceptor asked about AIDS) and recognized a use or purpose for that conduct.
Unsuccessful Modeling
In this next case, both preceptor and the intern commented on the preceptors inquiries
regarding the patients religious affiliation and activities. However, the sense they made of
the preceptors inquiries were quite disparate.
10/25/94 Preceptor, Stimulated Recall:18
P:
Heres another card you have to play when it comes up, which is the religion
card. You always have to honor it, and listen to it, and explore it and (make it
out) . It turns out to be fairly important for this woman.
This preceptors inquiries apparently were aimed at getting a better sense of what was
important to the patient. This goal fits with a previous comment that he made in stimulated
recall, namely that when he meets a patient, he attempts to form an image of the patient as
a human being.
The interns reaction to the preceptors pursuing the topic of religion was fairly
negative.
10/25/94 Intern, Stimulated Recall:15
I: Thats kind of distracting. I think its important to have a rapport with the patient. It
was kind of distracting though. I think that what we were trying to getbasically the
object The other thing was, it was a little distracting, though, when he starts talking
about the church and all, because we sort of lost track of that teaching point, which had
been: Try to find out exactly whats bothering the patient. But then we sort of get sidetracked. Its kind of hard though, if you want to establish a rapport, but if youre trying
to make a teaching point, its kind of helpful to try stay focused on that, so it doesnt get
diffused.

The intern assumed that the preceptors purpose for talking about the church was to build
rapport. Given that purpose, she felt that the topic took them away from delving into what
was bothering the patient. Rather than learning a lesson, she was annoyed that the preceptor did not stay focused. The lesson that the preceptor may have hoped to teachthat
religion can be an important part of understanding a patient and understanding a patient is
important in the medical encounterapparently was lost on this occasion. In this instance,
modeling as a method of teaching was unsuccessful, because the intern did not appreciate
the purpose of the preceptors asking about church affiliation.
DISCUSSION
The set of features associated with the teaching strategy of modeling makes it particularly
suited for use in some circumstances but weak in others. Two significant features of modeling are: (a) the teaching is invisible, and (b) the learner plays a greater part in shaping the
lesson than is the case with other teaching strategies.
The fact that persons can teach, or attempt to teach, without appearing to do so makes
modeling a particularly good teaching strategy whenever the participants have good reason
to avoid assuming the roles or identities of teacher/learner or expert/novice. One such circumstance involves interactions between preceptors, interns, and patients. In that interns
need to maintain the status of competent professionals in front of the patients, modeling
is a way of teaching that is designed to avoid compromising their status. There are other
kinds of circumstances in which the participants would want to teach invisibly. The status of either of the participants, or both of them, might be seen to conflict with assuming
the role or identity of expert-teacher or novice-learner. One can easily imagine an individual modeling conduct rather than more overtly teaching when the lesson is aimed at a
superordinate or a recognized expert.
The fact that the teacher plays a relatively a small part in shaping the nature of the lesson
learned and the learner plays a relatively large part has the consequence of the teachers
having less confidence that the learner is learning the intended lessons. If the preceptors
stream of conduct has no special markings indicating that a lesson is in progress, it is up to
the intern as observer to analyze the ongoing stream to see if there are lessons to be learned
and, if so, what they are. The successful use of modeling as a teaching strategy relies on the
learners attending to the teachers conduct, analyzing what the conduct seems designed to
do, and appreciating it as good way to do it. For example, recall that the preceptor, having
heard the intern say reflux in front of the patient, used the less technical term, heartburn,
to the patient. If the intern attended to the preceptors use of heartburn, he or she would
have had to appreciate it as a less technical synonym of reflux. He or she would have had
to seen the use of a less technical term to the patient as good practice. The lesson, then, is
not simply about using the word heartburn but rather about the advisability of using less
technical terms when speaking to patients. The teaching strategy asks the intern to attend
to the word heartburn, hear it as a substitute for reflux, infer a basis or reason for its use as
a less technical term appropriately selected for the patient, and apply the principle to other
circumstances.

There are several ways in which an attempt to teach via modeling can fail. One way
is that an apprentice may fail to attend to the particular modeled conduct, insteadattending to other aspects of the discourse or activity. A second way is that an apprentice may
attend to the particular modeled conduct but see it as performing different functions or
actions than the teacher intended. A third way is that an apprentice may view the teachers
conduct as something other than a normal performance by a competent professional. On a
few occasions, interns who observed the preceptors conduct interpreted what they saw as
the preceptors attempts to produce model conduct rather than perform as they usually
do in such circumstances. They commented that the preceptors were more thorough in
their questioning during the videotaped teaching situation than they would otherwise have
been. It seems likely that when interns perceive the preceptors as attempting to perform in
atypical ways, they are less receptive to learning from the conduct.
Because teaching via modeling involves the learner, rather than the teacher, largely
determining what the lesson to be learned is, the success of the teaching technique relies
on active and receptive learners. In two types of situations, interns expressed or displayed
irritation: when the intern perceived the preceptors going over the same ground that he
or she already covered, and when the intern perceived the preceptors spending too much
time with the patient and being too thorough for no apparent medical reason. If a learner
is angry, pressured, or annoyed, it is unlikely he or she will be receptive to learning the
potential lessons to be gleaned from modeled conduct.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Jack Ende and Frederick Erickson who, together with me, developed the
research project out of which this chapter grew. Together we collected the data and analyzed it. I also am indebted to B.J.Fehr who transcribed the stimulated recall sessions and
collaborated in the analysis. I would like to thank Jenny Mandelbaum and Kristine Fitch
for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
REFERENCES
Arliss, L. (1989/1990). An integration of accounts and interaction analyses of communication in
long-standing relationships. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 23, 4164.
Pomerantz, A., Fehr, B.J., & Ende, J. (1997). When supervising physicians see patients: Strategies
used in difficult situations. Human Communication Research, 23, 589615.
24
Indeterminacy and Uncertainty in the Delivery of
Diagnostic News in Internal Medicine: A Single Case
Analysis
Douglas W.Maynard
Indiana University
Richard M.Frankel
Fetzer Institute
In his book on telephone conversations, Hopper (1992) wrote, As we examine telephone
conversations details, the notion that people own topics recedes before the workings of
interactive emergence (p. 155). By interactive emergence Hopper meant that participants
manage and negotiate topics collaboratively. This matter may be plain enough, even
expected, in conversations between status equals, who can codetermine how the trajectory
of a conversations topic may go. However, even in more restrictive circumstances where
status and interactive dominance would be expected when, for example, a physician is
talking to a patient,1 the phenomenon of interactive emergence shows its face. This is particularly true about the interpersonal delivery and receipt of news, including that which
occurs in clinical settings. To paraphrase Maynard (1997), diagnostic news does not represent something fixed and existing objectively in the world except as doctors announce,
patients respond, and the two parties co-establish the presence or absence of some medical
condition as tidings of a particular kind.
Our spotlight is on an interview in which a physician reports on a number of tests that
his female patient had taken during a previous, routine physical checkup. Most of the
tests are routine and the results are inconsequential. The patients mammogram, however,
unexpectedly showed a lump in the womans breast. Because the presentation of this result
occupies the central part of this interview, it is also at the center of our analysis. The doctor
and patient decide on a follow-up ultrasound test, which is performed later in the day at a
breast clinic. After the results of the ultrasound become available, the physician calls his
patient. Having news that the ultrasound apparently shows a cyst rather than a malignancy,
he opens the phone call by saying that he has good news. However, his patient does not
accept her physicians proposal of good news, and wants to know what should be done next
to resolve the still indeterminate status of the lump. In fact, the patients responses to the
physicians suggestions for treatment codetermine the topical trajectory of the conversation
and effect a different course of action than that which the physician, following radiologists
advice, initially advocated.
1
For discussions concerning the shortcomings of the theoretical literature on doctor-patient communications, see (for example) Treichler, Frankel, Zoppi, Kramerae, and Beckman (1985), and
Maynard (1991b).
Indeterminacy and uncertainty in the delivery of diagnostic 335

Besides explicating the ways in which doctor and patient interactively handle the mammogram result, our purpose is to situate this focal news delivery in the overall context of
the medical interview. Previous conversation analytic research on the delivery of diagnostic news (Heath, 1992; Maynard, 1992; Perkyl, 1998) involves collections of such
deliveries from different interviews. Within these collections, each episode of delivery and
receipt is examined as a singular instance, to be compared with others in the collection, but
largely apart from the overall medical interview in which it is originally embedded. Ours is
a single case analysis and complements these other studies by showing how physician and
patient handle a troublesome diagnostic matter in relation to other news deliveries within
the same interview.2 It appears that when there are numerous results to report, the physician and patient may buffer the troublesome matter by dealing with news about benign and
inconsequential conditions at the opening and closing of the interview.
LEADING UP TO THE MAMMOGRAM RESULTS
In this case, the physician has three kinds of news to convey. First, several tests show
normal readings, and represent good news. Second, several test results are indeterminate
but inconsequential. Third, the mammogram results, showing a dense area in one of the
patients breasts, are both indeterminate and of potentially great consequence, although (in
the physicians own view) he and his patient had different perspectives on this. The interview illustrates a classic dilemma that the sociologist Hughes (1951) identified: Something
that is one persons crisis may be another persons routine. The physician involved in this
case was confident that the patient did not have a malignancy and saw the indeterminate
mammogram as a relatively routine matter. However, because his patient had called him
for the mammogram result the day before this visit, and because dense areas on mammograms represent, at a minimum, watching the dense area over time and entertaining the
possibility of more testing, the physician was aware that the patient would be more anxious
than he about the result.3 To some degree, the breast result was a crisis for the patient.
The patient is a nurse who works in the hospital with which an internal medicine clinic
and site for our data collection is affiliated. This nurse, Ms. V, is therefore not just a regular
patient but a professional acquaintance of Dr. K. Prior to the interview that is the focus for
Maynard (in press, ch. 3) discussed the difference between episodic and longitudinal studies
of bad and good news. Episodic studies are those that examine singular instances apart from larger
courses of action in which they are embedded. Longitudinal studies are those in which, over time,
news is delivered and received again and again. Parties may at one time be the recipient of the news
and, later, the deliverer of the news to others. Or, when an individual becomes seriously ill, family
members may be monitoring the situation and hearing and telling news according to how the individuals health status waxes and wanes. For longitudinal studies, see, for example, Beach
(1996, 2001).
3
In a post-hoc interview with the first author, the physician said, I was not regarding this report
as bad news really I did not expect that this was going to be a breast cancer. [But]anything
seen on a mammogram for a woman is bad news in that sense because it means more medical care.
Something to worry about in the meantime.
2

our study, Ms. V had visited Dr. K for a regular medical examination and number of tests.
Consequently, Dr. K now has various results to report to Ms. V. The encounter begins with
the patient complaining about how difficult it was to get an appointment in the clinic; physician and patient discuss this difficulty and what might be done about it. Dr. K signals the
commencement of the interview as follows:
(1)
1.4:164
Dr.
hhh Well you were interested in your mammogram
K:
resutlts
Ms. Yeah an [that xray.]
V:
Dr.
[an proba]bly all the other results too.
K:
Ms. Yeah
V:
Notice how, in signaling the interviews commencement, Dr. K prioritizes the mammogram. As mentioned, this patient had telephoned Dr. K the day before and left a message
that she wanted to know what that particular result was. Although Dr. K had returned her
call, he was unsuccessful in reaching her.4 In any case, this opening appears to index those
calls and his knowledge of what her primary concern is.
At this point in the interview, rather than discussing the mammogram right away, Dr. K
tells Ms. V that he has not gotten back a stool blood test, and she tells him that she has not
done the test yet. Dr. K then urges her to complete that procedure, writes in her record, and
goes on to read other results that he does have in hand:
(2)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
1.4:235
l Dr.
K:
Ms.
V:
2-> Dr.
K:
Ms.
V:
Dr.
K:
Ms.
V:
Yer pa::p (.) is negative?

(0.4)
Oh good.
Yer: leg xray is negative?
(1.0)
So di- So are you gonna tell me whats wrong with
my leg [then?]
[I alrea]dy told you whats wrong.
Oh just tendinitis?
This information is from the interview of Dr. K by the first author (see Footnote 3.)

Whereas a negative pap test (arrow 1) is received as good news (Line 3), Ms. V treats
the leg X-ray announcement (arrow 2), whose production format (your x is negative)
parallels that containing the pap report, in a different manner. Instead of a close positioned
assessment, there is a substantial silence (Line 5), and then a query about whats wrong
with the leg. Here is an example of what Maynard and Frankel (in press) called the symptom residue: The X-ray may be negative for disease or injury, but this leaves possible
persistent discomfort or pain (whats wrong, Lines 67) unexplained. In some circumstances, there is no explanation. In this interview, the patient and her doctor, in a joking
way, settle on the tendonitis diagnosis:
(3)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
1.4:240
Ms. V:
Dr . K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
So di- So are you gonna tell me what s wrong with

my leg [(then)?
[I already toldju what was wrong.
Oh. just tendinitis,
Uh: : :m:, is that what I told you? [(I think)
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
[.hh hah hah

[tendinitis
[hah i(h)s th(h)at whatchu told me. Y(h)eah.
Well:, [(I know is-)
[.hh Well you gave me uh choice,
tendiniti[s slash bursitis?
[Tendinitis er bursitis, [okay.
[Take yer pick.
[Alright, [an then youyou like tendinitis,
[(Okay,) [.hh
We:h I li [ke tendinitis:, [(so.)
[better? [Good.
(0.9)
.hh Alri:ght,
(1.0)
Heres thuh results of your: femur ex ra:y,
That whatever discomfort Ms. V has in her leg is a relatively mild condition is exhibited in
the downplaying of diagnosis by mutual joking. Dr. K initially proposes that he has already
told the patient (Line 3), thereby declining to retell her. She interprets this declination as
diminishing the condition (just tendonitis, Line 4), and Dr. K follows this with a display
of forgetfulness and tentative diagnostic formulation (Lines 5, 7), to which Ms. V responds
with laughter and a laughing receipt of his tentative diagnosis (Lines 6, 8). The two parties then portray the diagnosis as having been a two-pronged choice for the patient (Lines
1017), with her choosing and liking tendonitis better (Line 17). Physicians often use the
device of giving patients a diagnostic choice to indicate a condition for which the treatment
is the same, regardless of how it is named.

THE DELIVERY AND RECEIPT OF MAMMOGRAM RESULTS
Just as Ms. Vs leg problem is jokingly put aside, doctor and patient remark on another
result, concerning a femur X-ray (Lines 12 in Excerpt 4) as good news (Lines 46), and
dismiss this topic as Dr. K moves to a discussion of the mammogram (Lines 910):
(4)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
1.4:263
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Heres the results of yer:: femur xray, you can

read it yersel:f? Its perfectly normal.
(8.6) ((Patient is reading))
Ah good.
(2.4)
.hhhhhh Thats good news ay:?
(0.2)
(Uh huh)
And this is the results of the mammogram. Im
gonna just scan it again, before hh I give it to
you.
(0.4)
You have this one.
What kind of a pen is this
As Dr. K gets ready to present the results (Lines 910), he shows Ms. V a copy of the report
(Lines 1213). Ms. V initiates a teasing routine about Dr. Ks pen (Line 14), which goes on
for several turns with Dr. K and Ms. V trading jokes about the pen and doctors handwriting
(data not shown) while Dr. K gazes at the mammogram report. Subsequently, Dr. K delivers the results to Ms. V, and both parties become very serious. Whereas testing showed the
right breast to be normal, the report for the left breast is not so good. In Lines 110 in the
following excerpt, Dr. K is reading from the report:
(5)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
1.4:311
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
Well:: circumscribed density, is identified in the

central portion o the breast, with the lo:ngest
axis about one point three centimeters. This could
represent a cys:t but was not clea:rly: identified
.hhh on [a pr]ior mammogram.
[mhhh]
(0.4)
It says either ultrasou:nd to determine if this
mass is cystic or a single view: followup in six
months is warranted, .hhh to assure stability
(1.2)
So what theyre say:ing is::: (0.6) they see

13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
something that they cannot (1.2) say::: is

perfectly nor:mal.
(0.4)
Mm hm[: :]
[But th]eyre not very; worried about it
either, because they suggest we can do another
picture in six months ta tell if its stable.
.hhh >Okay-< but it wasnt on my las:t mammogram?
Thats what they said.
(1.0)
Sh:::- okay.
After Dr. K finishes reading (Line 10), Ms. V is silent as she continues looking at the report
(Line 11). By citing the evidence from the report, using an inferential form (This could
represent a cysit), and not asserting any condition (Maynard, 1991a; Perkyl, 1998),
Dr. K takes a cautious approach to delivering the news. Subsequently, Dr. K looks up and
at his patient, offering an interpretation of the testing information (Lines 1214) as suggesting a possible abnormality. When Ms. V says Mm hm:: at Line 16, she also moves
her gaze from the report to Dr. K, who then provides a positive cast to the recommendation for another mammogram (Lines 1719). Ms. V asks to check her understanding about
a possible contrast between the current mammogram and her last one (Line 20), which
understanding Dr. K confirms (Line 21). After a delay (Line 22) Ms. V produces an okay
receipt at Line 23. The preceding, cut-off Sh::: sound and hesitation may be deleting an
expletive.
Jefferson (1974) showed that an error avoidance format, consisting of [WORD!
+HESITATION+WORD2], can operate to indicate that an initially produced object projects an error or inappropriateness and that a subsequent object is its correction. Participants deploy such formats particularly for obscenities, whose use in conversation can
indicate relational intimacy (Jefferson, 1974). Although Ms. V and Dr. K display a joking and informal relationship, it may not be one in which a word like shit (if that is what
Ms. V projects at Line 22) is regular. However, Ms. V does use the word later in the
interviewsee excerpt 6. Here, Ms. V, by avoiding an obscene term, may be providing for
relational distance that is sensitive to the participants invocable doctor-patient identities.
Physicians, after the delivery of uncertain news, proffer suggestions and remedial
actions to deal with the announced situation. In this case, Dr. K raised the possibility of
an ultrasound test, which could tell if the density in Ms. Vs breast was a cyst. He also
proposed that if on a physical exam, he did not feel anything in the breast, they wait 6
months and repeat the X-ray at that time. Ms. V agreed to these decision-making options,
whereupon Dr. K proceeded to do the physical, during which he did find a dense area in
the breast. In the mode of what Stivers (1998; see also Heritage and Stivers 1999) called
online commentary, Dr. K says, I think Im feeling what theyre talking aboutits kind
of like a jelly bean laying horizontal. And he goes on:

(6)
1.4:502
1.
Dr. K:
They said it was one point three centimeters in
2.
the lo:n:gest axis an that- that is about what I
3.
feel as well I: would be:t that this is not
4.
(.) a malignant lump, ((noise)) It doesnt feel
5.
like a malignant lump.
6.
(0.5)
7.
Dr. K:
But thats not a hundred percent as you know.
8.
Ms. V:
Yea: :h. (.) If it is:, I dont, give a sh:it.
9.
Dr. K:
Why.
10.
Ms. V:
Becu- (0.5) Ive managed to stay suicidal so if I
11.
(get-) get any diseases I dont care.
12.
(0.7)
13.
Ms. V:
AnI will not have chemotherapy or anything else.
14.
I dont care for that. All I wanna know is if I
15.
get cancer I wanna know so I can <quit working.>
16.
Dr. K:
But if it were lump youd probably want it tuh be
17.
removed huh,
18.
(2.0)
19.
Ms. V:
I dont know. Maybe if they do it under a local.
20.
Dr. K:
There are- Well they probably will.
21.
Ms. V:
Oh. Oka(h)y. .khh (I know.)
22.
Dr. K:
Things have changed a lot you know
23.
Ms. V:
Thats true.
Online commentary, as a version of forecasting some diagnostic upshot (Maynard, 1996),

regularly works to fashion a recipients expectations by minimizing a condition (Heritage
& Stivers, 1999). Here, discussing a possible malignancy according to how it feels upon
physical manipulation,5 Dr. Ks commentary (Lines 15) offers an optimistic version of her
condition. Ms. V is silent at this point (Line 6). Dr. K then slightly hedges his optimistic
rendering (Line 7) and Ms. V, in a step wise shift that moves from a focus on the proposal
that the lump is not malignant, invokes the contrasting case of a possible malignancy and
depicts her reaction to it with dont care announcements (Lines 8, 1011). In the latter
Reference to what he feels, as Perkyl (1998) noted, marks the inconclusive epistemic
grounds of Dr. Ks physical exam and tentative conclusion. It projects the need for more reliable
and certain information.

announcement (1011), she also mentions feeling suicidal. Dr. K receives this announcement with silence (Line 12),6 after which Ms. V, in another step wise topical transition
that still preserves the theme of a possible malignancy, moves away from the not-caring
announcements and mention of suicidal feelings to project how she would avoid treatment
options and quit working (Lines 1315). Dr. K produces a disagreeing counterproposal
that she would probably want the growth removed (Lines 1617), to which the patient
hesitatingly (Lines 1819) and contingently agrees (Line 19).
Overall, in a few seconds, doctor and patient migrate topically from a probable benign
condition (doctors version) to a possible malignancy (patients version) to a brief mention
of suicidal feelings to the very practical consideration of lump removal, and they end with
a display of agreement regarding this matter (lines 2023). Shortly after the excerpt, Dr.
K repeats that he would believe that this is not a malignant lump, and, according to the
options they had discussed earlier, suggests a referral for her to see the physician at the
breast clinic, for an immediate ultrasound.
EXITING FROM THE MAMMOGRAM DISCUSSION: RETURN TO TEASING;
OTHER BENIGN RESULTS
As Dr. K writes out the referral and then jots notes into his patients chart, the two parties
return to the teasing and joking way of conversing that preceded the mammogram discussion. Ms. V, for example, offers to bake bread for him (as she has for other physicians), Dr.
K accepts this offer, and then he quips that he is going to be caught on videotape extorting
baked bread from his patient. Ms. V next initiates further talk regarding her test results:
(7)
I.
1.4:627
1
Ms. V:
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
2->
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
7.
8.
9.
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Oh(hhh) we(hhh)11 hhh. What else thehall my

blood work was okay?
(1.0)
Yes: maam
(0.4)
.hhh [But we] cant even tell: if yer having=
[( )]
menopause or no: t.
Oh we ca: :nt? =
Sacks (1972) argued that reports of suicidal feelings may be treated as either serious or humorous,
somewhat independently of what the reporter may actually intend. Dr. Ks silence stays away from
the suicide topic and thereby avoids making an overt choice between responding in a serious or
humorous fashion. However, in his interview with the first author, Dr. K indicated that this patient
had been treated for depression and that she had even attempted suicide in the past. He and his
patient regularly discussed her psychiatric state; it was his judgment in this interview that the reference to suicidalness was nonserious.

10.
II.
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
Ms. V:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
MS. V
Dr. K:
MS. V:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
Ms. V:
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
Dr. K:
V:
Dr. K:
=No.=
=Oh good cuz I cant tell ei(heh heh)
ther(heh
heh).
(0.4)
Lets see yer sodium.
(1.0)
What is it.
(0.2)
Sodium? Is this sodium?
(0.4)
Yeah [these two.] Sodium an::d whats
this.
[Heres sodium.]
Greatine.
Great inine are normal.
(0.4)
Okay goo:d.
But yer ef ess aich level
(0.2)
Is that- =
=is intermediate. See if you look down
here at
the:se
.hh [hhh oh:::::]
[r:esults its sort of in] the=
=oka[:y: :]
[inde]terminate (0.2) area.
(0.8)
Its a little hi:-gher than what wed
expect fer
a cycling woman (0.2) .hh but its not
hi:gh
enough to clearly be in the menopausal
range
either.
And its definitely not pre- (0.2) pubertal
either. [Puber]tal. (What was the
[word.]=
[No::.] [Right.]
=pubertal pre-pubertal.
(1.0)
So. According to the ef ess aich yer a post
pubertal woman

47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Dr. K:
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
(.)
Heh hm
Who is not yet clearly menopausal.
(0.2)
Go:od.
(1.2)
So yit means you could be nor: mal.
(1.0)
Anit means you could be: (.) just moving into
yer menopause.
(1.2)
Mmkay.
Alright? (0.4) So. Lotta help huh?
hhhhhh ((sigh))
We have arrowed four news delivery segments that become progressively more specific.
The serial fashion in which the doctor proceeds involves a battery of tests that have individual and collective meaning; one test affects the interpretation of the group. First, in
response to the patients generalized query about her blood (Arrow 1), Dr. K confirms that
it was okay (Line 4). Second, Dr. K produces a summary report of indeterminacy regarding whether patient has entered her menopause (Arrow 2, Lines 610). The patient receives
this news with an oh good assessment, tied to a laughing report of her own uncertainty
(Lines 1112). Third, presenting particular test results, Dr. K announces that her sodium
and creatinine are normal (Arrow 3, Lines 1423), which Ms. V receives with a positive
assessment (Line 25). Fourth, he announces an intermediate and indeterminate FSH
(ef ess aich) level (Arrow 4, Lines 26, 2930, 32, 34). Dr. K also explicates the indeterminacy (Lines 3639), and Ms. V receives this news in a light or joking manner (Lines
4041, 43). Dr. K subsequently offers an interpretation that is marked with further uncertainty (Lines 4546, 49) and ambivalence (Lines 53, 5556). The patient assesses the first
part of this interpretation positively (Line 51) and then acknowledges the second part with
a soft okay token (Line 58). Finally, Dr. K produces a summarizing, ironic assessment
(Lines 59), to which the patient responds with a sigh (Line 60).
Shortly after this, the interview arrives at a conclusion, as Dr. K recommends taking his
referral to the breast clinic now, asking the patient if theres anything else (to which
she replies that she got more than she expected), and both of them exit the room while
talking about referral forms and the clinic administration (a topic with which the interview
had commenced).
The end of the interview fits patterns that West (in press) identified. When a physician produces the anything else query after the patient and he have closed a topic and
agreed upon the next step for treatment, it proposes a close to the encounter. The making
of arrangements (Button, 1991) for subsequent medically oriented activities and visits,
argued West, is an aspect of how doctor and patient collaboratively make visible what is
glossed as continuity of care as a feature of their visits.

FOLLOW-UP PHONE CALL: FURTHER UNCERTAINTY AND A RESOLUTION
Ms. V did visit the breast clinic that day, and obtained an ultrasound exam of her breast;
the clinic then sent the results to Dr. K, who called his patient to report these results. This
phone call was approximately 3 weeks after she had visited him in the clinic. The two parties had tried but had difficulty connecting on the phone in the interim. At the beginning of
their conversation, they briefly discussed these difficulties, and then Dr. K proceeded with
his news:
(8)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
1.4 Follow-up
Dr. K:
.hhh Well w- uh: : :m. I have good news for you.
(0.4)
Ms. V:
Yah?
(0.8)
Dr. K:
About yer ultrasoun::d.=
MS . V:
=Uh ha: :
Dr. K:
Have you been expecting it?
(1.0)
Ms. V:
No: I wanna know whether er not I agree that its
good new:s.
Dr. K:
Ya::h. hh Well what the ultrasound .hh uh: :
sh::owed, is:: (.) uh: that they f:ound that lump,
that was se:en on the mammogram: an that we::
felt on the physical exam. .hh[hhhhhh] they f:

Ms. V:
[uh huh]
Dr. K:
they found also: n they sa: :y it appears .hhh
uh:: ta be: a cys:t
(0.6)
Dr. K:
But uh: :m (1.2) tch but they cant be enti:r:ely
.hh um (0.2) tch reassur:ed about it because they
said it doesnt look like a simple cyst in other
words they think that the wa:ll of the cyst might
be a little thicker in one place, .hhh n
therefore they cant be real: s::ure that its no:t
uh: : something gro:wing on e:dge. .hhh

Ms. V:
Mm h [mm
Dr. K:
[But theyre not very worried about it
obviously because they: say that they do not
recommend biopsy at this ti:me.
(0.2)
Ms. V:
Okay
Dr. K:
An that they recommend uh: just another mammogram,
a lateral vie:w, a medial lateral view of the left
breast in six months. .hhh[h Now:] when they=

35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
Ms. V:
Dr. K:
Ms. V:
[Okay.]
=recommend tha: :t hh uh: :m one can be (hih) pretty
assur::ed that theyre not very worried about the
way thit looks.
Okay.
Whereas Dr. K initially characterizes the results as good news, Ms. V avoids aligning
with this assessment (Lines 24, 910).7 Subsequently, Dr. Ks delivery embodies citing
the evidence (Maynard, 1991a) and confirming what was previously seen (Lines 1114).
That is, he prefaces the report of a previouslyobserved lump with a formulation that this
was f:ound and follows this report with a formulation that this was found also:. Having
confirmed the lumps existence, Dr. K next (Lines 1617) announces a diagnosis. He does
so in a mode of uncertainty: It appears to be a cyst. There is no turn transfer at this point
(Line 18), and Dr. K goes on to explicate the uncertainty (Lines 1925).
Subsequent to Ms. Vs continuer (Line 26), Dr. K produces a bright side, good news
exit from the uncertain report of ultrasound results. We are drawing a parallel here to
Holts (1993) observation that subsequent to the news of a death, which is acknowledged as
bad news, participants describe and evaluate the deceased persons life prior to death, and/
or they characterize the manner of dying in a way that provides for positive assessmentsa
bright side to the death. Furthermore, Maynard (1989), analyzing the delivery of diagnostic news about developmental disabilities to parents of the involved children, showed that
clinicians follow the bad news with a good news exit, such as the proposal that a mentally
retarded child can learn and will continue to learn. Here, at Lines 2729, Dr. K suggests
that although a lump has been confirmed and has thicker wall, the radiologists (they)
are not very worried, and he produces an account for this assessment (Lines 2729).
Ms. Vs okay is slightly delayed (Lines 3031), and Dr. K then relates the recommendation for a follow-up mammogram in a way that mitigates its significance (Lines 3234, it
is just another one). Again, Ms. Vs okay (Line 35), produced as Dr. K takes an inbreath
and starts another utterance (Line 34), is slightly delayed, and Dr. K goes on to complete
the bright side, good news exit with a further proposal of the radiologists not being worried.
The delayed okays may indicate Ms. Vs slight resistance.
Dr. K proposes to place interpretation of the results in other hands. For primary care
physicians, who are generalists and often rely on the expertise of specialists, providing
quality and continuity of care involves a shared responsibility with these others. In this
case, Dr. Ks references to they involve the radiologists who read the mammogram. At
this point, Ms. V asks Dr. K whether he thinks it a good idea to wait rather than do an
immediate biopsy (data not shown). Dr. K answers in an ambivalent mode (Lines 19):
See FrankeFs (1995) discussion of how physicians formulations of good news can be at odds
with the patients own perspectives and experiences, and Heaths (1992) discussion of how a physicians relatively upbeat diagnosis can question the severity of a patients symptoms and threaten
the legitimacy of his or her having sought professional treatment. Also see Maynard (1997) and
Frankel (2001).

(9)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
1.4 Follow-up
Dr. K:
the only thing I can tell you based on this
ultrasound is that the radiologists appear to be:
very much not worried abour:t it. .hhh Uh it
depends upon::: what ones attitude is about it. I
know some people would say Gee thats good new:s
Id be glad to wait six months .hh Im cuz Im
not very concerned about it and other people might
say Gee: I wanna be real su:re. An the only way
we can be absolutely sure as you know .hhh is to::
uh biopsy it.
Ms. V:
Yeah, .hhh I know Ive been rea:ding a lot about
biopsies an the controversy about whether or not
one ought to do the workI jist wonder

Dr. K:
Su: re .hh
Ms. V:
whats better. Ta kno:w,
Dr. K:
Wh[at
Ms. V:
[once n fer all er
Dr. K:
Y: [ea:h
Ms. V:
not.
Dr. K:
We:ll thats a matter of how you feel abou:t it. I
think that I cannot make a very clear medical
recommendation either fo:r biopsy .hh or for:
waiting [and I] think uh this is the- t- this is=

Ms. V:
[Mm hmm]
Dr. K:
=the kind of thing when you have ta help me: weh
you kno:w decide whats best fer you; .hh cause
the truth the medical truth here is not so clear.

Ms. V:
Yeah
Ms. Vs response is also ambivalent (Lines 1113 and in data not shown), and she goes
on, at Lines 13, 15, 17, and 19, with a kind of my side statement that can further fish
for Dr. Ks opinion (Pomerantz, 1980). Once again, Dr. K demurs (Lines 2023) and then
invites Ms. V to help him make the decision and formulates (Line 2527) the uncertain
medical position.
Patient and physician here exhibit the limits of rational, authoritative medicine (Maynard & Frankel, in press), and perhaps the physicians role in providing care. Friendly as
these two parties seem to be, indeterminate test results and uncertainty about what to do
with regard to the breast lump pervade their interaction, with each one looking to the other
for making a decision in the face of this indeterminacy and uncertainty. Almost now at an
impasse, Dr. K proposes an intermediate sort of stepto have a regular medical examination after 3 months (data not shown). This would mean holding off the biopsy but not
standing still for the full 6 months until another mammogram. Ms. V agrees to this, contingent on talking to her husband about it, and the telephone conversation comes to a close.

DISCUSSION
Depictions of professional authority (Friedson, 1970) suggest that doctors, with their
access to esoteric knowledge that the patient does not have, are in a unique position
among consulting experts because they need not try to persuade patients of anything in
terms of therapy and treatment. Rather, they can simply assert, and expect to have followed, diagnoses, recommendations, and advice. However, studies of actual interaction
in medical settings show many layers of complexity to this abstract picture (Heritage &
Maynard, in press). Accordingly, interactive emergence (Hopper, 1992) rather than unilateral imposition and formal role adherence is a useful organizing principle for studying the
doctorpatient relationship. For example, when doctor and patient deal with relatively minor
conditions, as in the case here, there may be considerable mutual teasing and joking, even
about indeterminate results. The news delivery and receipt, therefore, is not necessarily a
straightforward information transfer and can be laden with reciprocal banter and tokens
of laughter that have positive relational implications (Glenn, 1995; Jefferson, Sacks, &
Schegloff, 1987).
With potentially more serious problems, the physician still does not unilaterally determine how the delivery of diagnosis and recommendations for follow-up will go. If, as here,
the patient disagrees with the doctor, that patient may use silence and other mechanisms to
resist assessments or advice a doctor makes. Particularly with the mammogram and physical examination, the patient withholds affiliating to her doctors optimistic assessment.
Furthermore, in the follow-up telephone call, the patient challenged the doctors proposal
of good news and persistently sought clarification of his view of the experts opinion,
eventually obtaining a suggestion for a 3 month checkup that cut in half the radiological
recommendation of waiting 6 months (and then performing another mammogram). This
avoidance of overt disagreement or conflict also preserves solidarity in the doctor-patient
relationship.
The problems of indeterminacy and uncertainty were paramount in this case. In the past,
researchers have emphasized the anxiety that uncertainty produces in patients (Charmaz,
1991; Fallowfield, 1991; Jacobs, 1969) and physicians (Buckman, 1984), not according
much attention to the interaction surrounding actual displays of indeterminacy and uncertainty. One picture emerging from the literature is that physicians deal with anxiety over
uncertainty by concealing their lack of knowledge from patients (Fox, 1957; Katz, 1984).8
Such a tendency is not apparent in our interactional data: Dr. K is forthcoming in his displays of not knowing either what the lump in Ms. Vs breast is or what course of action to
take to resolve the issue. Of course, handling uncertainty is part of clinicians taken-forgranted, tacit, and practical repertoire of skills that are rarely articulated in the medical
curriculum (Hewson, Kindy, Van Kirk, & Gennis, 1996), so there may be considerable
variation in different clinics. In any event, as a matter of interaction, our case study shows
the physician being faced with having to define and interpret what the lack of definitive
8
On the various sources of uncertaintyincomplete mastery of available knowledge, limitations in
current medical knowledge, and the interaction of both of these, see Fox (1957).

results imply. If the interview here is any indication, this often entails displays of hope
work on the part of physicians (Good, Good, Schaffer, & Lind, 1990), who, facing the
dilemma of their routine being the patients crisis, may give optimistic renderings of
indeterminate results.
CONCLUSION
Past research, using collections of diagnostic news deliveries from multiple interviews,
analyzes such deliveries as episodic encounters and not fully within the overall interviews
of which they compose a part. Our inclusion of the broader context of the interview shows
that physician and patient may collaboratively buffer serious and inconclusive news with
nonserious and good pieces of diagnostic news, cautiously approaching and exiting from
the serious news by dealing teasingly and humorously with each other during the prelude
and the aftermath. When their focus is on the serious news, and doctor and patient have different perspectives on what it means or what to do to resolve the indeterminacy, they may
work with the discrepancy in ways that also preserve their otherwise affable relationship.
In considering how physicians learn and practice medicine, therefore, it may be useful to
broaden the scope of training to specify how to handle the drama (Miller, 1992) of sharing serious results, the practices involved in less consequential diagnostic work Perkyl,
1998), the sometimes overarching problems of uncertainty and indeterminacy, and the
relational implications that are also pervasive in deliveries of diagnostic news.
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25
Body Movement in the Transition From Opening to
Task in Doctor-Patient Interviews
Daniel P.Modaff
Ohio University
The medical consultation, like other forms of social interaction, requires the participants to sustain some semblance of mutual involvement in the business or topic at
hand and to thereby coordinate their actions and activities.Heath (1984, p. 311)
Though many doctor-patient interviews begin with an opening phase consisting of mutual
identification and a series of rapport-building utterances, these encounters must at some
point shift to the task at handthe question-answer or information-gathering phase. When
the coparticipants reach the point in the encounter when they must make the transition from
the opening phase to the task phase of the interaction, they must do so interactionally. In
other words, at least one of the participants in the interaction must display to the other an
intention to move to the task of the interaction. Both participants must then coordinate their
actions (vocal and physical) such that the transition is coaccomplished.
How do the patient and the doctor coordinate their actions and activities (Heath, 1984,
p. 311) during the transition from opening to task in the medical interview? Consider the
following segment from a doctor-patient interview:
Street 5
7
Dr:
8
9
P:
10
N:
11
Dr:
12
N:
13
Dr:
Ya visited the E R en- (0.8) they said no

we-wanna send you over here
*O::*kay.1
Uhuh
Whats happening to you
1
The
indicates that a frame grab from the video at that particular moment in the interaction
has been taken and imported into the text. Digital video computer technology was used in this project to isolate and more closely study the details of the interaction.
Figure 25.1: Street 5 (Line 11).

In this example, the doctor constructs an utterance in Line 11, *O::*kay., that serves to
mark the transition from the opening phase of the interaction to the task phase, with the
task beginning in Line 13 when the doctor utters, Whats happening to you. As he utters
*O::*kay., the doctor shifts his orientation from the patient to the stool on his right (see
Fig. 25.1). Why does the doctor orient toward the stool instead of to his cointerlocutor at
this turning point in the interaction? It is argued here that orientation away from a coparticipant toward a task-relevant physical object at the point of transition is a resource available
by one participant to orient the other to the transition.
MARKING THE TRANSITION TO TASK IN INSTITUTIONAL INTERACTION
Prior research has addressed how the task is oriented to or how the topic is shifted in
different forms of institutional interaction (Atkinson, Cuff, & Lee, 1978; Beach, 1991).
The research illustrates how coparticipants interactively construct and orient to transitionrelevant utterances that allow them to move on to next-positioned matters. For example,
Atkinson et al. described the recommencement of meetings and distinguish between
background talk during a break and the utterance(s) that serve to recommence the meeting
(i.e., stop the small talk and officially begin the business part of a meeting). They argued
that there must be an utterance or an act by one of participants that is heard as an intention
to recommence the meeting. Additionally, that utterance or set of utterances must be uttered
by a participant who is seen by the other participants as having the power or position to
recommence the meeting.
Beach (1991) detailed how an utterance, such as okay, can display a state-of-readiness (p. 2) for movement to next-positioned matters (e.g., the task phase of an interaction).
He argued for the dual character of okay by saying that okay can simultaneously
resolve the problem of attending to prior talk (e.g. acknowledging/affirming) and pavingthe-way-to next-positioned matters (e.g. reassuring/assessing) (p. 14).
Body movement in the transition 353

Although the transition marker is useful explication of what is said at the time of transition, it offers no detail of what is being done with the body(ies). It would seem that body
movement would be involved at this time to either reflect or display that a transition is
about to occur or is occurring. Because the transition marker is a vocal display of the
transition, we concentrate our analysis of body movement at or near the time of production
of this marker.
Erickson (1975) suggested that body movement may be used at times of transition:
changes in interpersonal distance during interaction (proxemic shifts which may also
involve changes in body orientation of speakers) seem to accompany changes in topic or
in the social relationship between speakers (p. 176). In his analysis of 26 10-minute films
of junior college counseling interviews, Erickson found that proxemic shifts operated as
markers of important segments in the interaction. Erickson also found that a proxemic shift
is the best predictor of a new segment of talk.
Heath (1986), in an investigation of body movement and speech in British medical
encounters, found that eye contact and other nonvocal activities are used within the openings of these interactions for various purposes, one of which is to aid in the transition into
the business at hand. Consider the following segment from his data. The utterances are
transcribed in Transcript 1. In Transcript 2, the gaze of the participants for the segment of
interest is transcribed:
Fragments 2:4 Transcript 1
Dr:
Hello
P:
Hello
Dr:
P:
Dr:
Yes yes
(.5)
Dr:
Just come in an:: sit down Mister Hough
(-7)
Ohhh (.5) its Mister

Hough
(.) No
Dr:
Er:: (.4) you saw Doctor Lehar::
(.3)
P:
ah
Dr:
a fortnight ago
P:
two weeks ago
Dr:
two weeks ago
(1.0)
Dr:
cos you were getting::?
P:
um:: (.3) gastric ulcer

Fragment 2:4 Transcript 22
-----------------------..______________
Dr:
Mister Hough-------------- err::----------- you saw Doctor Lehar::
. .____________
Heath argued that the beginning of the doctors utterance (), Err::, is content free and
is in response to the coincidental gaze of the patient toward him. The doctors utterance,
Err::, is a way of indicating to the patient that he has recognized the patients gaze as a
display of recipiency. The doctors gaze at this point is down, orienting toward the medical record in front of him on his desk. After the doctor looks up from the medical record,
he begins the content portion of his utterance, you saw Doctor Lehar. Heath argued:
Though not ready to begin, the doctor acknowledges the patients nonvocal action, the
shift of gaze, and produces a response, transforming the environment from one of open
opportunity to his responsibility at some particular moment (p. 31). In other words, the
doctor shows the patient that the transition into the business at hand may be about to occur
by orienting his gaze away from the medical record to the patient. This indicates to the
patient that the doctor is orienting to the business at hand and that it is time to engage in
activities that promote the facilitation of the task. It is important to note that this transition is accomplished interactionally. By orienting gaze toward the doctor, the patient puts
himself in a recipient mode, thereby allowing the doctor to construct the next utterance.3
Heath showed in his analysis of British medical interviews that body movement can
work in conjunction with speech near the point where the task of the interaction is begun.
The same holds true in the Street 5 instance presented earlier. If we revisit that instance,
we can see how body movement is used to mark the transition to the task phase of the
interview:
The gaze of the speaker (doctor) is transcribed above the line and the gaze of the receiver (patient)
is transcribed below the line. A series of longer dashes,------, represents gaze toward an object; a
series of continuous dashes, ------, represents a pause, with each dash equal to one tenth of a second; a series of periods, , represents gaze that is being moved toward the coparticipant, whereas a
series of commas represents gaze that is being moved away from the coparticipant.
3
The medical interactions Heath (1986) used as his data are from Britain. It appears that in British
medical interactions, the patient enters a room where the doctor is already present. This is markedly
different from the American medical interaction where, the majority of the time, the doctor enters a
space already occupied by the patient. This contrast seems to have one primary implication that can
be seen in a passage from Heaths book: The doctor is able to discern when the patient is physically available and ready to begin, frequently withholding the start of business until the patient has
sat down and assumed a face-to-face orientation (p. 47). In American medical interactions, the
doctor does not have this resource available because the patient is already in position and it is the
doctor who is mobile. The data used in this essay were gathered from a clinic in Lubbock, Texas.
2

Street 5
5
Dr:
P:
Dr:
8
9
10
11
12
P:
N:
Dr:
N:
13
Dr:
Pleased ta meecha
Me too
Ya visited the E R en- (0.8) they said
no
we-wanna send you over here
*O: :*kay.
Uhuh
Whats happening to you
In Lines 56, the doctor is standing in front of the patient, who is sitting on the examination table. His gaze is toward her. During the (0.8) second vocal pause in Line 7, the doctor
shuffles twice to his right. His right arm bends at the elbow, down, in the direction of a
stool to his right. He then puts his arm back to his side. In Line 9, while uttering Yeah,
the patient turns her head to her left and orients her gaze down toward the stool. During the
production of his utterance in Line 11, *O: :*kay. the doctor bends down to his right and
grabs the stool with his right hand as shown earlier in Fig. 25.1. The patients gaze is still
orienting toward the stool at this point. As he utters Whats happening to you in Line
13, the doctor sits on the stool and orients his gaze toward the patient.
It appears that the doctor is using both a verbal transition marker in the form of *O:
:*kay. and a nonvocal transition marker simultaneously to mark the transition to the task
phase of the interaction. The nonvocal transition marker is his reaching for the stool at the
time of the transition. This movement is not a product of one actor acting alone; it appears
to be in response to the patients gaze orientation away from the doctor toward the stool.
After the patient removes her gaze from him and orients to the stool, the doctor removes his
gaze from her, reorients his body toward an object in the room, and reaches for that object
eventually coming to rest on it.
The type of physical object to which the doctor orients is important because of its relevance to the task of the interaction. The stool is a task-relevant physical object that puts
the doctors body in a task-ready position. The task phase of the medical interview usually
begins with data gathering (as evidenced by the doctors utterance Whats happening to
you). By orienting to and sitting on the stool, the doctor not only physically marks the
transition to task but also readies himself for the next actions he must perform, namely,
recording the patients answers to his questions.
The fact that this coconstructed set of body movements happens at the time of transition does not seem coincidental. Consider another doctor-patient interaction where a very
similar set of movements takes place:
Street 22
1 Dr:
2
3 P:
Hi Corretta ((patient flipping through magazine))

(0.3) ((patient gaze toward doctor))
Hi ((patient gaze back at magazine; flipping

4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Dr:
P:
Dr:
11
12 P:
13
14
15
16
17
18
Dr:
P:
Dr:
Dr:
19
pages))
(0.2)
How r you doin ((gaze at patient))
(0.4)
Im alright ((gaze at magazine))
(0.7)
Are you a good
patient))
(.) actress ((gaze at
the nurse told me) ((gaze

toward doctor))
(0.5) ((patient hands magazine to doctor))
Uh (.) huh
huh huh
((noise:, (0.7) well, got the
Okay. (0.2)
results of your ultrasound here
This instance begins with an exchange of greetings (Lines 12) and then moves to an initial
inquiry by the doctor with an appropriate response by the patient (Lines 68). The interaction progresses through some rapport building (Lines 1017) and then the doctor utters the
transition marker Okay and begins the task phase of the interaction.
Figure 25.2 Street 22 (line 15)

If we consider the body movements in this interaction, we find that they are very similar
and seem to operate as do those in the previous example (Street 5). During the (0.5) second
pause in line 14, which is in the middle of the rapport-building utterances, the patient hands
the magazine she has been flipping through to the doctor. During the shared laughter in
Lines 1516, the doctor puts the magazine away in an open drawer to his immediate right
and he starts to close the drawer while the patient orients her gaze toward her feet. After the
doctor completes his laugh token in Line 17, he completely closes the drawer and there is

an audible sound. After the sound, the patient orients her gaze toward the drawer (which is
in the direction of the doctor). At this point, the doctor utters the transition marker Okay,
which serves to close off the previous talk and display his readiness to move on to nextpositioned matters. During the (0.2) second pause that follows Okay. the doctor reaches
his right leg toward the stool to his right (see Fig. 25.2). The ((noise)) transcribed after the
(0.2) second pause is a result of the doctors foot coming in contact with the metal leg of
the stool. During the (0.7) second pause that follows, the doctor pulls the stool toward him
with his right leg. As he utters well he begins to sit, and by the time he utters ultrasound
he is sitting on the stool.
As in Street 5, it appears that the doctor in Street 22 uses body movement to mark the
transition from the opening to the task phase of the interview. Directly after the production
of the transition marker Okay. the doctor engages in a body movement that indicates a
transition is taking place. It is important to note here that the transition markers, both vocal
and non-vocal, may have been constructed as a result of the patient having engaged in a
body movement that signaled her readiness to move on to the task. The patient, in Line 14,
handed the magazine to which she was orienting to the doctor, thereby indicating that any
future orientation would be toward him (or at least no longer toward the magazine). Additionally, the patient gazes toward the same stool that the doctor is now orienting to thereby
indicating that she has oriented to his move.
The similarities between these two examples are striking (Fig. 25.3). In both instances,
a transition marker in the form of okay is uttered by the doctor. A nonvocal transition
marker is also constructed in the form of orienting to and reaching for the stool. The vocal
and nonvocal transition markers in both instances are preceded by a nonvocal action by
the patient that indicates that they were both ready to move on to the task at handgaze
toward the stool in Street 5 and handing the magazine to the doctor in Street 22.
Figure 25.3: Street 5 & 22

In both examples, the doctor and the patient orient away from each other during the time of
transition. It appears that an orienting away from the coparticipant at this delicate moment
in interaction is actually an orienting to the transition. By the doctor reaching for a taskrelevant object (i.e., stool) available in the space, that participant is able to physically (as
well as vocally) mark the transition. The patient responds both with complementary role

uptake (vocal) and gaze directed at the stool (physical) thereby providing both a response
to and an analysis of that set of actions as an attempt to make a transition into task.
One final example shows how body movement, such as the kind described in the preceding examples, can serve to mark the transition even in the absence of a vocal transition marker. In the following instance, after the participants engage in the activities of the
opening moments, they make the transition to task. But in this instance, the doctor proffers
no transition marker, instead reaching for the stool at the time the transition marker would
have been uttered.
Street 33
6
Dr:
P:
9
Dr:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Michael Steers?
((door closes))
Yessir
My names Doctor Damascous
(0.2)
>>Please to know ya<<
((clears throat))
(0.7) ((sitting down))
Seems to be the problem?
(0.4)
Well jus
After identifications in Lines 69, and a ritual interchange utterance in Line 11, the doctor reaches for the stool positioned to his right in Line 13. Sequentially, this is where the
transition marker would be uttered, but it is absent. At this point in the interaction, both the
physician and the patient orient to the stool (see Fig. 25.4). Immediately after he sits on the
stool, the doctor begins the task phase of the interaction by proffering an initial question,
Seems to be the problem? The task has begun.
Figure 25.4: Street 33 (line 13)

At the beginning of the current investigation into the role that body movement plays in the
transition to task, this last example was treated as a noninstanceone that exhibited no
indications or markers of the transition other than the task-initiating question itself. But
when digital video technology was employed to investigate the nonvocal elements, this
was clearly an instance where the transition was marked. Although there is no vocal transition marker in Street 33, the doctor physically marks the transition with a major postural
shift (i.e., he reaches for and sits on the stool). This indicates to the patient that what is to
follow should be considered part of the official business of the medical interview.
The stool is part of the doctors gear, a part of what makes that room a medical examination room. Hence, by reaching for and sitting on the stool at this point in the interaction,
the doctor is in a sense invoking the institution. By reaching for the stool at that moment
the doctor indicates position in the institution. In doing so, the doctors physical movement
toward a piece of institutionally based medical equipment foregrounds a movement in the
conversation as well, movement toward the medically based reason for the interaction.
In the next section, we see how all three instances described previously unfold similarly.
At precisely the same moment in interaction, the physician invokes the institution and
physically marks the transition from opening to task (see Fig. 25.5).
Figure 25.5: Street 5, 22, & 33

CONCLUSIONS: THE BODY IN TRANSITION
This essay began by asking how the participants manage the transition to task in medical
interviews through vocal and nonvocal activities. Through detailed analysis, it was found
that the doctor may signal the transition vocally by uttering a transition marker such as
Okay, Anyway, or So. The transition marker serves the dual purpose of attending to
prior talk by closing it off and paving the way to next-positioned matters, or the task. The
transition marker is followed by the doctors task-initiating question to which the patient
appropriately responds displaying his or her recognition of the transition.
The doctor may also signal the transition nonvocally through the use of body movement
or postural shift. At the time of transition, when the transition marker is uttered (or would
be uttered), the doctor shifts his or her body away from the participant toward a stool. This
movement is a physical marker of the transition designed to signal the end of the opening
and the beginning of the task phase of the interview.
The data presented in this essay illustrate the subtlety with which the participants construct their actions, which in turn allow them to manage the transition to task interactionally. We were able to live through this transition with the participants as they negotiated it.
We were able to see and hear how moment by moment, movement by movement, they
performed their interactional roles.
As Frankel (1983) reminded us: Phase transitions are of general interest for the ways in
which interactional boundaries are signaled, negotiated, and re-established among coparticipants (p. 33). Given the ambiguity surrounding this phase transition, the coparticipants
relied on vocal utterances and body movements to assist them in interactionally accomplishing the transition. We were able to see how body(ies) and voice(s) work together to
move the interaction forward.
The remarkableness of these data may be underestimated by some readers. Consider
that the coparticipants have no script for this interaction, that they must manage it on the
scene as it unfolds. Given that, at precisely the same moments in interaction, the physicians
rely on a combination of very similar vocal and nonvocal actions to carry the participants
into the next phase of the interaction. The patients orient to these actions both with gaze
(while the physician reaches for the stool) and with a relevant next utterance after the physician has asked the task-initiating question. There is no script that tells the doctor to reach
for the stool at that exact moment in interaction; no medical-interviewing textbook even
mentions this interactional moment. These actions are constructed on the scene. The doctor
utilizes an element of the institution (the stool) at precisely the moment that the institution
is being drawn upon to begin the task.
The digital video technology used in the present project made the findings of this essay
possible. If it were not for the nonlinear capabilities of the computer technology, we would
not have been able to easily manipulate the videotaped data such that comparisons across
instances could be made. By freezing the digitized images of three separate instances at the
moment of transition on the computer screen quite by accident, we were able to see that the
doctors utilized the same postural shift at precisely the same time (see Fig. 25.5). Further
visual inspection in comparison with the transcripts led to the findings described here. In
this case, the technology not only assisted theory building but also generated it.

REFERENCES
Atkinson, M.A., Cuff, E.C., & Lee, J.R.E. (1978). The recommencement of a meeting as a members accomplishment. In J.Schenkein (Ed.) Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 133153). New York: Academic Press.
Beach, W. (1991, November). Establishing transitional regularities in casual okay usages.
Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association annual meeting, Atlanta.
Erickson, F. (1975). One function of proxemic shifts in face-to-face interaction. In A.Kendon,
R.M.Harris, & M.R.Key (Eds.), Organization of behavior in face-to-face interaction
(pp. 189198). Paris: Mouton.
Frankel, R.M. (1983). The laying on of hands: Aspects of the organization of gaze, touch, and
talk in a medical encounter. In S.Fisher & A.D.Todd (Eds.), The social organization of doctorpatient communication (pp. 1954). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Heath, C. (1984). Participation in the medical consultation: The co-ordination of verbal and nonverbal behavior between the doctor and patient. Sociology of Health and Illness, 6(3), 311338.
Heath, C. (1986). Body movement and speech in medical interaction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
IV
Emerging Trajectories: Body, Mind,
and Spirit
To date, language and social interaction (LSI) research has focused mostly on talk, privileging forms of discourse most readily transcribed, attending to features of communication
that audibly scratch upon the surface of human interaction and experience. There is growing recognition that communication is necessarily and fundamentally embodied. Interaction involves our physical bodies, which fill social space as they move, see, smell, touch,
sometimes talk, but inevitably become entangled with the material world within reach
(things, objects, artifacts, tools, representations), which is both a resource for emergent
interaction and a residue of past acts of meanings. As a suggestion of things to come within
the field of LSI, this fourth part begins with chapters that attend more fully to the wholebodied performance of everyday social life.
The trajectory of Robert Hoppers research, as it pertained to the issue of embodiment,
was somewhat of two minds. Although he relied more and more upon videotaped data during the final decade of his career and acknowledged inadequacies associated with audio
recordings, he maintained that speechthe great poem speaking usshould be the
central concern of communication scholars. For example, his (1992) book on telephone
conversation focused on pure speech and celebrated the centrality of speech to communication and the centrality of dialogue to interaction (p. 6). He treated speech as a special
pathway to understanding the human spirit, language, and social interaction (p. 8). The
final chapters of this section are a tribute to Hoppers creativity in matters of the human
spirit, and his openness to extending disciplinary boundaries in a search for solutions to
ongoing social problems and everyday hurts against the human heart.
Jrgen Streeck (chap. 26) contemplates an unfortunate dualism that lingers within LSI
research. The prevailing distinction between so-called verbal and nonverbal communication, couples with the social scientific tendency to separate mind and body (i.e., the
Cartesian view), such that research subjects are routinely and artificially disembodied from
their own communicating bodies, in effect. The author revisits his own research on gesture
and draws upon the philosophy of Heidegger to suggest that human behavior and social
interaction should be regarded as inherently mindful, and that speech is not some sort of
spirit that can be exorcised from bodies being in the world.
Gene Lerner and Don Zimmerman (chap. 27) discover full-fledged sociality among
small children or toddlers (ages 22 to 30 months) within daycare settings. Children who
have not yet learned to speak may nevertheless produce and recognize embodied actions
(e.g., gestures) involving objects (e.g., toys) during social interaction (e.g., play) with
peers. The authors focus upon offer-withdrawal sequences in which one child offers
a hand-held toy to another, but then quickly withdraws it before the other child is able
to obtain it. Such teasing moments captured on videotape evidence of cooperation and
conflict among toddlers, who not only produce and recognize embodied actions but also
employ the appearance of one action in the course of accomplishing something else, thereby
Part IV: Emerging trajectories 363

revealing an orientation to their own body behavior as social action. Social interaction
among small children is more than embryonicalthough limited in their ability to speak,
toddlers are able to move their bodies among toys (the world within reach) and thereby
interact in rather sophisticated ways.
John Modaff (chap. 28) examines the speech intonation contours (or speech melody)
of American radio personality Paul Harvey. Working in the sociolinguistic tradition, the
author shows a keen interest in describing particular features of speech and language
usage in coming to understand how they shape and are shaped by our social worlds.
Using computer-generated transcripts of vocal melody visually displayed, Modaff couples his analysis of speech with an interpretation of the speakers rhetorical devices and
ends. This study reflects the rhetorical criticism tradition long prominent in the field of
communication.
Notions of embodiment and performance are magnified in chapter 29, which resonates
with Robert Hoppers poetic tendencies and celebrates the performance studies tradition within the field of communication. Nathan Stucky and Suzanne Daughton describe
a classroom method called Everyday Life Performance (ELP), which helps students to
appreciateno, to experience as if for the first timethe details and orderliness of everyday social interaction. The method involves recording and transcribing naturally occurring
talk, then reperforming the data according to the trans-scriptincluding the subjects
voice inflections, pauses, speech overlaps, and so forth. Needless to say, such reperformance is difficult. Students soon learn that talk is basically embodied: Lung capacities,
heart rate, flexibility, stress, memory, disposition, muscle tone, body shape, and countless
other factors affect the performers task. As students discipline the bodies and reperform
their subjects, they awaken awareness usually absent. Would-be scientists/humanists who
first analyze their data are then inspirited by it.
Maria Cristina Gonzalez (chap. 30) offers a critique of current ethnographic methods
and calls for an experiment in matters of spirituality and faith. As ethnographic approaches
have grown in popularity, so has experimentation with ethnographic forms of data gathering, analysis, and writing. Gonzalez both calls for a spiritual ethnography and provides us
a glimpse into what that might look like.
Mary Helen Brown (chap. 31) traces parallels between the Tao Te Ching and narrative theory and research. The essay begins and ends with stories that are parts of a larger
story frame. Through several sections, titled with phrases from the Tao, she discusses ways
that the Tao and narrative may be understood in parallel fashions. The study of narrative links closely to LSI interests in naturalistic storytellings and performance in everyday
life. Brown invites scholars of two very different domainseveryday narrative and Taoist
philosophyto consider what they might learn from each others sacred texts.
Kent Drummond (chap. 32) employs conversation analytic methods in combination with
Robert Hoppers notion of the taken for granted and frame theories to explore conceptual
premises of the film The Truman Show. The film provides a fascinating study of a comprehensive, fictional context created for a television audience, unbeknownst to its central
character. Drummond shows that maintaining this deception depends on keeping certain
taken-for-granted understandings in the background. He analyzes in detail key moments in
which these assumptions unravel, allowing Truman to see through the ruse.

Emanuel Schegloff (chap. 33) contemplates uncanny conversational occurrences that
he calls ESP puns, and brings conversation analytic resources to bear on a phenomenon for which traditional conversation analytic resources do not exist. Is it possible for
someone, through a particular lexical choice, to display impossible knowledge of just that
which was unspoken, but on your mind? Schegloff takes up some enchanting interactional
magic, touching Hoppers lay and professional interest in puns and his playful approaches
to scholarship and life.
REFERENCES
26
The Body Taken for Granted: Lingering Dualism in
Research on Social Interaction
Jrgen Streeck
The University of Texas at Austin
Our field has come a very long way since the time when it was common to make a categorical distinction between verbal and nonverbal communication and to use ill-formed
expressions such as body language, even nonverbal language, to conceptualize contributions of body motion to social interaction and communication. We no longer reserve
scrutiny of body motion and action for cases where talk, considered alone, appears ambiguous and inconclusive, but routinely (e.g., in our data sessions) study talk and bodily action
in their mutual embeddedness and contextualization. We are no longer afraid that, once
we turn our attention to the bodily interaction of conversation participants, we might get
lost in a sea of data. Instead, our observations are informed by a large and growing body
of empirical knowledge about the contextualization of talk within embodied frameworks
for participation (Auer & diLuzio, 1992); we know about the roles of gaze in the organization of turn taking (Goodwin, 1981a) and how interactional axes are established and
sustained (Kendon, 1970); we also understand how gestures are incorporated in turns-attalk (Schegloff, 1984; Streeck & Knapp, 1992). We have even begun to move beyond the
realm of communication proper to investigate the orchestration of talk and communicative acts of the body within trajectories of practical, instrumental (rather than primarily
communicative) action (Goodwin, 1996; Heath & Luff, 1992).
And yet, it appears that we are still without an adequate conception of the human body,
of its different, yet overlapping roles within conversational contexts on the one hand and
contexts of practical action on the other, and that some of the terminology that we currently employfor example, embodimentreasserts a conception that we have long
believed to have discarded, notably the body-mind dichotomy. In these pages, I illustrate
this diagnosis by reflecting upon my own research on gesture. I also suggest that a more
adequate and productive conception of the body in communication and practical action can
take inspiration from Heideggers philosophy (Heidegger, 1926/1979; see also Dreyfus,
1991). In fact, it was Robert Hopper who suggested this to me years ago when he gave me
Sein und Zeit for my birthday. Had I heeded his advice sooner than I have, I might now be
in a position to offer more than mere suggestions. As it is, the following remarks can be
considered preliminary at best.
THE SUBJECT-OBJECT DICHOTOMY: THE BODY AS A
COMMUNICATION TOOL
When we examine sequences of conversation in which a participant produces hand gestures to describe phenomena in the world that he or she is talking abouta type of gesture traditionally labeled iconicwe can observe with great regularity that the speaker
The body taken for granted 367

temporarily withdraws gaze from the interlocutor(s) and shifts it to his or her own gesturing hands. The following is one from among numerous instances that we have found in our
corpus of videotaped conversations. (A wave line indicates gaze to the speakers hands;
above the line of transcript, it represents speaker gaze, below listener gaze. A dotted line
indicates that hand movements are frozen.)
The first three segments are taken from a conversation in which a young woman, Christine, gives her friend Susi a report about an avant-garde theater performance that she has
attended. In the first segment, after giving a general assessment of a scene, she describes
part of the stage set.
(1)
1
Christine
Dritte Szene wa:r- ohne Worte. Third scene was- without words.
Fing erst ohne Worte an. Began first without words.
Das war dann irgendwie so:- m .hh sehr metaphThat was somehow- very
metaph
The transcript shows that the speaker brings her gaze to her hands twice during the gesture
phrase, the first time while she performs an unspecific gesture (she wiggles her fingers) that
accompanies the descriptor scraps (of photos), the second time as she utters photos,
during a gesture that shows the format of the photographs.
The turn exhibits several features that are generic for turns housing gestural descriptions: The speaker focuses gaze on her hands as she produces a deictic (or phoric) element that precedes the descriptive element in the sentence; in German, this is typically
the word so (such, like this; Lines 5 and 7), in Japanese ko (also such, like this),
in English this. What varies between languages are the syntactic constraints of these elements. In German, so can easily be merged with an indefinite article, rendering son (masc.,
neutr.) and sone (fern.), but it can also precede verbs (in which case its syntactic role is that
of a deictic adverb), as well as adjectives (so klein, this small). In English, these roles

are distributed between demonstratives (this thing, this small) and demonstrative prepositional phrases (like this) which, in contrast to German so, cannot precede verbs. Different
languages offer different resources for the coordination of talk and descriptive gestures, but
the differences can be considered minor.
Taking into consideration their coordination with deictic elements, we can notice about
the gaze shifts during such turns that they direct the interlocutors attention (and sometimes gaze) to the gesture: Whereas the deictic element in the talk refers the interlocutor
to the environment for a full understanding of the utterance under production, the gaze
shift shows where in the environment this meaning component can be found (cf. Goodwin,
198 1b).
Whether or not the interlocutor also shifts gaze to the gesture depends on the precise
location of the gesture in her field of visual perception, as well as the gestures size. More
often than not, descriptive gestures are made in front of the speakers chest where they can
be observed without the listener needing to shift gaze away from the speakers face, unless
the gesture is micro-motoric and requires an adjustment of vision. If the gesture is made
outside of the listeners field of vision, as in Example 2, we can often observe the listener
also shifting gaze to the gesturing hand:
(2)
1
Christine
Sie stand unten?
Susi
Mit som wein Rock nur?

~~~~~~~~~
Had this white skirt on, only?

(---) Obenrum hatte se nichts an?
Up here she was wearing nothing at
all.
Mit dem Riicken zu den Zuschauern.
Her back turned to the spectators.
What is of greater interest to us in the present context is the relation that the speaker assumes
to her own body in the production of these descriptive gestures, and her stance toward the
world that is embodied in them. She sees her gestures; they are part of the outside world
and under the control of her visual system (Gibson, 1966). In other words, she uses body
parts as communicative tools and visually controls their movements, aiming for a representation that is adequate to her communicative intent at the moment. To the world that
the speaker talks about and represents in part by gestures she also adopts an observational
stance. The gestures, thus, bespeak a twofold subject-object relation, between the speaker
and her body, on the one hand, and between herself and the (reported) world, on the other.

A SPEAKER DIVIDED IN TWO
Compare this to the following bit of talk and gesture by the same speaker, from the same
episode in the same conversation. Here, she mentions that the blond boys on the stage
were playing musical instruments.
(3)
1 Christine
4
5
6
7
Susi
.hh dann hat- (0.2) links und rechts saen so

Then has- to the left and right sat these
( .)
Nee, Cello wa:rs.
No, it was cello.
(0.3)
Cello.
Cello.
Much is the same in this segment: The speaker reports an event that she has observed, and
she uses her hands to describe some of the events visible features. What is different is that
her body enacts these features (rather than, say, drawing them) and that the speaker herself cannot see this enactment. Her gesture is entirely under the control of her haptic system (Gibson, 1966): The gesture is not a phenomenon in the external world that she sees,
but a bodily action that her body knows how to do and that she, the speaker, experiences
kinesthetically but curiously remains unaware of until her turn is completed. It is only after
the completion of her turn that she recovers the meaning that her body has displayed from
the outset. It seems likely that this mismatch between bodily enactment and concurrent talk
is due to the fact that the speaker cannot see what her body is doing.
But the segment raises other interesting questions. Who is she, Christine? The speaker
or her body, or both? For once, the speaker and her body, which produces the gestures, do
not seem to be identical with one another. There is Christine, the body, and there is Christine, the producer of talk. What, then, does the pronoun she refer to? The speakers body
appears to possess knowledge that initially escapes her mind (if we regard the mind as
the source of the content of talk). The previous examples in retrospect appear as successful
attempts, under the control of the visual system, of bringing body and mind (i.e., communicative intent) into alignment. Or, rather, they are cases in which, as we have said, the
speaker relates to her body in a subject-object mode, which is not the case in Segment 3,
where the hands participate in a schematic enactment of a skill that a body may possess (an

em-bodied skill) and that, in the context of the conversation at hand, has representational
functions. How can we conceive of such embodied skills and their roles in gesture?
THE BODYS BEING-IN-THE-WORLD
With an impetus not unlike Wittgensteins pervasive attack against all versions of philosophy that regard representation (or assertion) as the paramount language game (Wittgenstein, 1953), Heidegger has argued that Western philosophy since Plato has unconvincingly
privileged the theoretical or observational stance of Dasein (being-in-the-world) as the
paramount mode in which knowledge is gained. Gaining knowledge in a subject-object
vein to Heidegger (much like the assertive, fact-stating use of language to Wittgenstein) is
only one among an infinite number of possibilities, and a secondary one at that. As Dreyfus (1991) summarized Heideggers view, the subject/object epistemology presupposes a
background of everyday practices into which we are socialized but that we do not represent
in our minds (p. 3). Mindless everyday coping skills are the basis of all intelligibility
(p. 3). Our understanding of the world is, in the first place, contained in our knowing-howto-cope in various domains rather than in a set of beliefs that such and such is the case
(p. 18); it is embodied in our undiscovered, taken-for-granted skills.
Coping skills are primarily bodily skills, bodies ways of being-in-theworld. Heidegger conceived the body not as a natural entity, but in terms of its worldliness, that is,
its primordial practical involvements with the world. Our understanding of being derives
from these involvements. Although mindless and preconceptual, they are nevertheless
epistemic. As our bodies acquire competencies, from walking to opening containers to
playing the cello, they acquire knowledge of the world that constitutes the ground for all
conceptual (Johnson, 1987) and theoretical (or observational) knowing. The situated use
of equipment isprior to just looking at things andwhat is revealed by use is ontologically more fundamental thancontext-free properties revealed by detached contemplation (p. 61). These skillsworldlinessmake up our bodies. The body and the world
that it inhabits (which is largely a human-made world) are not separate, but constitute each
other. Human beings, Dreyfus (1991) wrote, are a set of meaningful social practices
(p. 34).
Most important to our bodies Dasein (being-in-the-world) is their uninterrupted involvement with equipment (Zeug), human-made things and tools whose being-in-the-world is
constituted by their towards-which-ness (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 94), their affordances
(Gibson, 1986), the human purposes for which they are made or, more fundamentally,
their roles in the activities within which they have come into existence and acquired their
features. Equipment is defined by its functionin a referential whole. To actually function, equipment must fit into a context of meaningful activity (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 91).
Thus, knowing and communicating in a subject-object vein, that is, from a theoretical
or observational stance in which the world is perceived as separate from the self and the
communicating body as separate from both self and world, are possibilities. But our shortcoming is that we have focused almost exclusively on them. In the present context, this
means that we have concentrated on gestures and other bodily actions in which the body
serves is in the role of an object controlled by a speaker-subject (but see LeBaron &
Streeck, 2000; Goodwin, 2000). In particular, we have focused on the ephemeral products

that emanate from bodily activity (e.g., gestures), and abstracted them from the bodies that
are making them. Thus, we have treated the body itself as a generic machine that, by virtue
of its motility, is capable of making gesturesmuch as the vocal apparatus is capable of
producing language sounds, but we have regarded this primarily as an abstract semiotic
process, and disregarded what the body, besides its motility, may bring to the process. In
sum, we have in fact been underwriting the very mind-body dichotomy that we have at
the same time been trying so hard to overcome. This conception, a view of the body as a
communicative organ, an object under the control of a disembodied subject, the speaker,
is adequate to the analysis of gestures of the type instantiated in the first two segments;
but it gives us little guidance toward a fuller understanding of the bodys participation in
moments of communication in social life.
What reveals itself in Christines cello gesture (in Segment 3) and takes precedence
over her observers description of the events on the stage, is her bodys practical, nontheoretical skill, however developed, to play the cello. This skill reveals itself in the background, undiscovered by her, before she even provides the first label for an instrument, and
subverts this description from the outset. The speakers body participates in this sequence
as a primordial, autonomous owner of skills, much rather than as a neutral, dexterous
but inexperienced, communicative tool to be used when situated representation needs must
be met.
A WORKING BODYS GESTURES
In our habitual, disclosed, taken-for-granted involvements with the world, we acquire from
the outset mindless skills and practicespretheoretical understandings of the world
that constitute our bodies Dasein. They make up the knowledgeable, intelligent organ
that acts and communicates while we are talking (and sometimes when we are not). When
we state that X makes a gesture, the personal reference term inevitably refers to a body
that is socialized and possesses generic and specific skills and that does not simply belong
to, but is a person. To separate the gesture from the particular person making it and to
imply that the gesturing body is somehow distinct from the body that is otherwise practically engaged with the world may at first seem like a viable research strategy, but it
ultimately conceals the experiential ground from which the skill and practice of gesture
emerge.
We can perhaps best appreciate this by looking at a body that possesses specific skillsa
working mans skillsand routinely displays them gesturally in moments of communication in the workplace, its primordial habitat. The body in the following segments is Hussein
Chmeis, the owner and mechanic-in-chief of a car-repair shop. Hussein gestures abundantly,
but in contrast to most other speakers in our data, we never see him looking at his hands as
he gestures. He gestures in a different mode. In the first segment (4), he is in the process of
inspecting a car that has just been brought to the shop. He has opened the hood, and as he
talks to the cars owner, Ms. Nancy, he instructs her daughter who is in the drivers seat, to
start the car. (Hussein makes several other gestures in the following segmentsall of them
schematic enactments of actionsthat have been deleted from the transcripts.)

(4)
1
Hussein
As he says start the car, Hussein performs a brief gestural enactment of the turning of an ignition key. Now he begins the
diagnosis of the engine trouble by asking Ms. Nancy a number of questions.
(5)
1
2
3
4
5
Hussein
Nancy
Hussein
Nancy
Hussein
When you call me it use to do this.

M hm.
It did that noise?
Yeah.
Again, when he instructs Kathy to start the car (try again), Hussein enacts the turning
of the key. He had done so several times before during this episode, which began by a call
by Ms. Nancy during his lunch break. She told him that her car would not start, and he
instructed her how to identify the nature of the problem and how to push-start the car so
that she would be able to drive it to his shop, rather than having it towed.
(6)
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Hussein
If you have enough light, the car, it should be cranked.
Okay. But you have light,

then you have little bit left in the battery.
Now to push-a start the ca:r,
you need to put- second gea:r,
turn the key to see light on the dash.
you see light its on the da:sh.

That its mean your ignition is okay.

After the phone conversation, Hussein turned to the author/camera-operator and explained
the topic of the conversation.
(7)
1
Hussein
Shes outside of New Brownsville, and her car
broken down (-------) Ima tryin to help her
to start the car, cuz towin too much money,
and she has nobody to know about this.
push, take off, maybe start.
Thus, the body Hussein enacts the turning of an ignition key habitually and in a diverse
range of contexts: when he gives instructions to someone who can see his hand, when
he gives instructions over the phone and the recipient cannot see his hands, and when
he reports these instructions to a seeing interlocutor. One might say that the association
between the concept of the action (variously instantiated as cranking, turning key, and
starting the car) and its physical enactment is habitual for him. But one must be careful
not to suggest that this concept has an existence apart from the body Hussein Chmeis, in
his mind or in the language. Rather, shifting contextual circumstancesthe need to give
instructions, a request for explanations, or a car waiting to get startedtrigger responses
by the body-mind Hussein Chmeis, some of them linguistic and situation-specific, others
bodily and habitual. When he gets into a car that needs diagnosis, his body automatically
turns the ignition key for real; in communication situations, he performs the action schematically in response to a conceived situation.
In other words, this bodys (i.e., this persons) skills and the understandings embodied
in these skills, as well as the bodys stance toward the world are equally visible in contexts of action and contexts of conversation (which more often than not overlap anyway).
We may characterize this stance as a sustained readiness to respond to emerging practical
needs within shifting situation by taking practical action (Joas, 1992). What changes is
the context, not the body/person acting within them. Heidegger has suggested that human
beingsin the first place, human bodiesare ensembles of socialized, intelligent, worldly
skills, some of the endemic to the human race (or rather, its generic habitat), others
specific to the particular work that they do or the material culture that they live in. Our
task will be to unearth these skills and practices and exhibit how they are enacted in the
symbolic realms of communication.
FROM THE DISEMBODIED TO THE WORLDLY BODY
Husseins gestures (of which we have given only one example for many of the same kind)
suggest a reconsideration of our current views of gesture and the bodies making them.

Among gesture researchers whose work is presently widely discussed, McNeill (1991)
has suggested that gestures provide a window into the mind: Gestures are like thoughts
themselves. They belong, not to the outside world, but to the inside one of memory, thought,
and mental images (p. 12). In this view (with its separation between inside and outside),
the body is construed as a container of mental phenomena that are externalized and made
visible as gestures. The body is both container of mental imagery and communicative tool,
but it otherwise has no involvements with the material world (or, at least, remains unaffected by them); it is a mere mediator between mental content and symbolic form. McNeill
also asserted that gestures are an integral part of language[that] gesture and language
are one system (p. 3). But this suggests that a human body, when it gestures, is entirely
under the control of the process of utterance production, that its linguistic (or symbolic)
productions are an entirely different matter than the actions that it otherwise performs as it
goes about its daily business in the world in which it dwells.
Kendon in some of his older publications has described gestures as visible bodily
action by which meaning is given voluntary expression (Kendon, 1980, p. 13, emphasis
added). Speech and movements[are] manifestations of the same process of utterance;
ideas being encoded in speech are also encoded in the movement patterns being produced (Kendon, 1980, pp. 208209). Speech and movement that directly accompanies
itare under the guidance of the same controlling mechanism (Kendon, 1972, p. 206;
Kendon no longer holds this view but regards gesture and speech as two mutually adjustable modes of expression; Personal Communication with A. Kendon, Spring 1999). In
this view, Husseins gestures would appear to be deliberate encodings of the idea of
starting a car (or cranking it, etc.). But Hussein does not give any indication that he is at all
aware of making these gestures (nor does Christine in Segment 3).
The problem with these approaches (as well as my own previous writings on gesture)
is that they continue to disembody the body: They disembody the body by depriving it of
its own inherent mindfulness (Langer, 1989) and skilled circumspection, of its worldly
experiences that are sedimented in its habits and skills, of its intelligence that it has acquired
in coping with material taskstasks for which a mind in the traditional sense is often
not required; they remove the body from the world in which it dwells and in which each
becomes the particular, singular human body that it is.
What this also means is that we have forgotten that bodies are owned; they belong
tono, they are persons. We have proceeded as if the fact that the body in moments of
communication is an individual, skilled, worldly person, is irrelevant to our project, as if
the body, once it begins to encode ideas or produce symbolic representations, loses its
personhood, its personal unity (Whitehead, 1933). But throughout his working hours,
Husseins body reveals a very specific stance toward the world, an attitude that is not, in
the first place, a theoretical attitude, but an unceasing readiness to act, to become physically
involved with a problem or task. This is just the kind of person that this body is. In practical as much as in communicative situations (which are themselves embedded in practical
ones), it reveals the particular way in which it inhabits a world. The gestures are just one of
the many ways in which this stance plays itself out.
The cognitive-psychological, semiotic, and linguistic approaches to the bodys activities
in communication have taken the body for granted by conceptually and methodologically
depriving it of the competencies that it has acquired in the world, by subjecting it entirely to

the speaking subjects communicative will. The project we will have to take on in the future
is to explicate this body, to identify and describe its worldly skills that display themselves
in gestures, to lay bare the preconceptual schematic experiences and practices from which
our gesturesas much as the conceptual structures of our languages (Johnson, 1987)are
ultimately derived. At the same time, we must take into consideration the various stances
that bodies/persons adopt within the many body games, the practical activities, within
which they act and communicate.
How this can be done is far from clear to me. Obviously, we would not want to replace
our advanced methods for analyzing segments of human interaction by some infinite ethnography of the daily lives of individual bodies. Perhaps we will only be able to recognize
and elaborate upon the identity between the communicating and the working body in limited and specific settings such as places where bodies work. Chances are, however, that the
recognition that we have, unbeknownst to ourselves, reinvoked the mind-body dualism that
we had set out to overcome, will gain us some analytic advantage somehow.
REFERENCES
Auer, P., & diLuzio, A. (Eds.). (1992). The contextualization of language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Dreyfus, H.L. (1991). Being-in-the-world. A commentary on Heideggers Being and Time. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Gibson, J.J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J.J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Goodwin, C. (1981a). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers.
New York: Academic Press.
Goodwin, C. (1981b,). Shifting focus. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada.
Goodwin, C. (1996). Practices of color classification. Ninchi Kagaku, 3(2), 6281.
Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 14891522.
Heath, C.C., & Luff, P.K. (1992). Crisis and control: Collaborative work in London Underground
control rooms. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 1(1), 2448.
Heidegger, M. (1979). Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. Tubingen, Germany: Niemeyer. (Original
work published 1926)
Joas, H. (1992). Die Kreativitdt des Handeln [The Creativity of Action]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kendon, A. (1970). Movement coordination in social interaction: Some examples described. Ada
Psychologies 32, 100125.
Kendon, A. (1972). Some relationships between body motion and speech. In A. Seigmann (Ed.),
Studies in dyadic communication (pp. 177210). Elmsford, NY: Pergamon.
Kendon, A. (1980). Gesture and speech: How they interact. In J.M.Wiemann & R.P.Harrison (Eds.),
Nonverbal interaction (pp. 1345). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Langer, E.J. (1989). Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
LeBaron, C., & Streeck, J. (2000). Gestures, knowledge, and the world. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 118138). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

Schegloff, E.A. (1984). On some gestures relation to talk. In J.M.Atkinson & J.Heritage (Eds.),
Streeck, J., & Knapp, M.L. (1992). The interaction of visual and verbal features in human communication. In F. Poyatos (Ed.), Advances in nonverbal communication (pp. 324). Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Whitehead, A.N. (1933). Adventures of ideas. New York: Macmillan.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
27
Action and the Appearance of Action in the
Conduct of Very Young Children
Gene H.Lerner and Don H.Zimmerman
University of California,
Santa Barbara
Young children engage in orderly, recognizable conduct with peers before they are able to
speak. Early-appearing forms of peer communicative action are carried out through visible
body behavior (including the deployment of objects) and nonverbal vocalization. When
children begin to speak, they employ this newly available interactional resource within and
by reference to already established practices of peer sociality.
In this report, we examine the use of body behavior as observable action among very
young children, and in particular, we show how the observability of this conduct is itself
a resource for accomplishing action in interaction. We aim to show that very young children can not only produce body behaviors that count as communicative actions, but that
an orientation to the availability of this conduct to their peersas recognizable action in
a course of actioncan itself be a constitutive feature of those actions. Specifically, we
examine two ways that very young children recurrently employ objects: presenting an
object to another child and putting an object away. However, here we examine cases where
these actions are used to accomplish something else. In each case, the recognizable or
exposed course of action turns out to have one or another embedded trajectories that differs
from or subsumes its initial appearance. That is, we show how very young children employ
the appearance of one action to accomplish another.
From a methodological point of view it seems important to establish, at the outset of
a line of investigation into the social life of very young children, that their conduct is
understood by themthat is, it is produced and treated by themas recognizable actions
in structured courses of action, since this very basic feature of sociality can legitimately be
called into question in the case of these children. Examining practices that look like they
are designed to be recognized as launching one course of action while turning out to be in
the service of another course of action seems like a perspicuous site for establishing this,
in the case of very young children.
The materials examined here come from a corpus of videotape recordings that have
been collected from several classrooms at two infanttoddler programs in an ongoing study
of peer sociality among very young children 12 months to 30 months of age.1 At times, the
daycare setting affords us an opportunity to examine very early forms of peer communicative action relatively unencumbered by the asymmetrical competencies and scaffolding of adult-child interaction. In what follows we first show how presenting an object to
This project was supported by grants from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, through the Research Across Disciplines program.

another child can be used to set up a presentation-withdrawal tease sequence and then we
show how putting a toy away can be used as a method for retrieving a similar toy from a
playmate.2
AN ECONOMY OF OBJECTS
The possibility of object transfer is a commonplace circumstance among toddlers in a
group care setting. Moreover, the mere availability of a play object can provide an occasion for a take attempt whether it is being offered by another child or not, or whether it
is in use by another or not. The looming possibility of object transfer is a source for both
cooperation and conflictand constitutes a training ground for sociality. The practices
involved in the repeated handling and transferring of play objects may provide one basis
for the early recognizability of action and action sequences. Such early forms of sociality
as object acquisition and object defense are built upon the recognizability of object transfer
sequences.
Toddlers can treat objects as being bound to other children in only a very weak fashionthat is, visible social connection to an object may not be regarded as a strong claim
or entitlement for continued possession. Even in hand and in use objects can be treated
as potentially takable by current possessor/user and potential next possessors/users alike.
Potential takers sometimes design their take attempts in a fashion that makes it clear they
are treating the object as a (defendable) possession of the other child and sometimes they
treat it as merely residing with that childi.e., as freely available. In both cases the object
is nevertheless treated as take-able.
This weak purview over objects can shape the structure of peer encounters.3 For
example, one child, involved in play with a toy, can orient to a foreseeable possible course
of action from the mere approach of a second child; the first child can treat the approach
before any outright attempt has been madeas an incipient take attempt. We plan to make
these assertions the subject of a subsequent report (see Lerner, Kidwell, & Zimmerman,
1999, for a preliminary sketch); we mention them now only to furnish a conceptual context
for the more limited investigation reported here.
In both cases, we examine sequences of action that have sequence-initiating and sequenceresponding parts. However, it is important to note that these action pairs do not fully conform to what
has been termed adjacency pair organization (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), since the initiating and
responding actions take place as embodied action in the absence of any talk. As these actions are
not constrained to placement within adjacent turns at talk, they need not be constrained by the organization of turn taking as is the case for adjacency pair organized action sequences. For example,
the relationship of a presentational offer of a toy figure to its acceptance/rejection can include its
continued production until recognized or responded to and does not have to come to an end or be
renewed at the next possible completion of a turn-constructional unit.
3
Correspondingly, one recurrent task for caregivers seems to be detecting and enforcing the entitlement of a current possessor of an object to continued use until the object is voluntarily given up or
the child loses interest in it.
2
Action and the appearance of action 379

We now turn to an examination of how presenting an object (ostensibly to launch
an object transfer sequence) can be used to conceal and launch a derivative course of
action: an offer-withdrawal or mock transfer sequence.4 We examine a series of three
offer-withdrawal sequences (from VYC tape 980213A1-LC) in which a small play object
(a Mommy figure) is presented by one child (Kelly) to another child (Derrick) and then
subsequently withdrawn each time before the other child can gain possession of it. (Some
may find it useful to know that both children are 22 months old.) In the parlance of childhood (cf. Knapp & Knapp, 1976), one child attempts to trick or fool the other child into
responding, and then when response is provided, the first child teasingly refuses to give
over the object. (Derricks mother [Mom] is also present for the first presentation, but for
the most part, we do not examine her participation in the interaction here.)
In the following discussion we do not specifically address how this series of sequences
may be related to each other as, for example, a sequence of sequences. It will have to
suffice to say that after each of the first two offerwithdrawal sequences the engagement
between the participants is broken off and there are intervening engagements with others
in the setting. And in addition the initiation of each of the three tease sequences constitutes
a fresh approach by Kelly to Derrick during or right after he has been engaged elsewhere.
There is some continuity in Kellys intervening actions, but the later presentations do not
seem to be specifically designed as subsequent versions or attemptsnor do they seem to
be treated as such, (Of course, these are quite difficult matters to establish when examining
the interactions of very young children.)
Presenting an Object
In the first of the three presentation sequences, Kelly approaches Derrick and Mom from
behind as Mom is attempting to disengage herself from Derrick and leave. Kelly extends
her right arm with her hand grasping the small Mommy figure and then, leaning over the
edge of the table, presents the figure to Derrick as shown in Fig. 27.1. There is no attention
paid to the fact that she is entering an ongoing encounter, except insofar as she has to
maneuver around Moms body to get in position to present the doll.
In response, Derrick turns his gaze from Mom to the approaching figure (i.e., to the
approach of the figure that is coming toward his face) and then to the (stationary) figure
itself. He smiles as he does this, but as far as we can tell does not make an immediate move
to reach for it.5 At just this point, after Derrick has fixed his gaze on the figure, Kelly rapidly
withdraws her hand (seemingly, from Derricks possible reach which could foreseeably
come next) and then brings the figure to rest against her chest as in Fig. 27.2. Just as Kelly
withdraws the figure, Mom says, Oh::, youre giving that to Derrick? What is that.
Developmental psychologists begin to observe teasing behaviors such as this in children who are
about 20 months of age. For example, Shatz (1994) mentions two examples of teasing at about
this age. However, she does not distinguish the very different types of action sequences involved
in these two cases, nor does she explain the practices that comprise them. It is only through the
description of these practices and sequences of action accomplished through these practices that we
can gain an appreciation of the specific analytic resources that are available to very young children
in the management of their daily lives.
5
This event was caught in the crossfire of two cameras, so in addition to the view visible in Fig.
27.1, we were able to examine a frontal view of Derrick from a second camera.
4

The timing and relative speediness of the withdrawal and the destination of the retreating hand seem designed as a response to an anticipated attempt at taking the figure. Demonstrating resistance to an anticipated (or even hoped for) attempted retrieval shows that
Kelly is oriented to her object presentation as a recognizable proffer which has made
relevant an impending retrieval by Derrick Kellys action treats Derrick as a possible
Figure 27.1
Figure 27.2
taker (whether or not he was that during the presentation) and this proposed alignment
to the object and action can be consequential for subsequent action. Moreover, resisting
what can thereby be seen as an anticipated take can establish the object as worth having
and worth taking. Thus, Kellys action can embody an invitation to playacting as if the
recipient of the object presentation may be a potential taker invites him to act in just that
fashion at the next opportunity. In sequence-organizational terms, her action establishes or

implicates an opportunity to participate for her recipient as not or not only a viewer of the
object presented, but as a possible taker at the next opportunityand that opportunity is
not long in coming.
Anatomy of a Tease
As Sacks (1992:1, pp. 363369) noted, children learn that their actions are observable
from their appearances. And once they learn this, they can use it as a resource for producing actions that are different than they appear to be. In the case under discussion, Kelly
launches what appears to be one course of actionan object profferwhich turns out to
be the beginning of a mock offer sequence which is one sort of tease sequence. This might
even be characterized as a practical jokea joke that hinges on a completely practical
course of actionin which the recipient is tricked. The success of the mock offer sequence
depends upon the initial recognizability of the proffered figure as a serious offer to hand
it overthat is, success hinges on its concealment as launching a mock offer sequence
in which the offer will be abruptly withdrawn. We now turn to a discussion of the second
presentation, which is also part of an object presentation-withdrawal sequence, but in this
one Derrick actually takes the bait and reaches out to retrieve the figure from Kellys
outstretched hand.6
Fig. 27.3 shows Kelly again presenting the Mommy figure to Derrick. This takes place
about 20 seconds after the first presentation and just as Derricks mother departs. During
this time there are several exchanges between Kelly and Mom about the figure and then
Mom turns back to her son Derrick in order to complete her leave-taking. Kelly first turns
away from the table and then begins to prepare for the next presentation. Kelly moves into
Moms place just as she (Mom) leaves and begins the presentation. The figure is moved to
within Derricks reach, though he is at first turned away from its approach as he is watching
his mother depart; indeed, the figure is almost literally pushed into his face to bring his gaze
to it. One might say Kelly is actively fishing for Derrick to attempt taking what is seemingly being offered to him. This presentation puts the figure into a transfer-ready position
and seems to be treated by its recipient as an offer or even an attempt to give it to him. He
must pull back from the figure, which is at the corner of his left eye, and turn toward it to
be able to see it. As before, he first seems to orient to the movement by turning toward it
and pulling back, and then stabilizes his gaze on the object once his head movement stops.
At just this point he reaches up to take the figure as shown in Fig. 27.4. Kelly has provided
Derrick with an opportunity to take possession of the figureone might even say that she
has tempted him with the figureand he attempts to take it. Significantly, there is no hint
As has been mentioned there is also a third presentation-withdrawal sequence. This occurs about a
minute later and runs off in a fashion similar to the second sequence. We will not discuss it further
in this short report; however, note that even though it is the third presentation of the figure, Derrick does not treat it as a presentation-withdrawal challenge. That is, he still does not compose his
retrieval effort in a fashion that attempts to pre-empt the withdrawal of the figure. This may be in
part because the object is again presented without warning as a form of re-engagement to a child
who does not see it coming. One might even suggest that in all three instances teasing was used as a
method for initiating engagement.
Fig. 27.3
Figure 27.4
Figure 27.5
Figure 27.6
in the manner of his reach that he is oriented to the possibility of a withdrawal of the figure
(even though she had preemptively withdrawn it a few moments earlier). However, she
again rapidly withdraws her hand (Fig. 27.5) just as he begins to close his fingers around
the figure and then she laughs. Derrick then extends his arm and grasping hand in what
appears to be an appeal for the figure (Fig. 27.6). That is, he is pursuing the object rather
than, for example, acknowledging the teasing nature of Kellys actions. In this case, the
recipient seems to treat the presented figure as a genuine offer, since he has not make a
grab for it and when it is withdrawn his hand follows it with what might be characterized as a pleading gesturean open handed reach. Here instrumental action (retrieval) is
transformed into its gestural counterpart (pleading) as the behavior moves from one position in the sequence of actions to another.7 As Kelly withdraws the figure to her chest, she
There is also at least some negative evidence that Kelly is designing her sequence initiating action
as a proffer and not an open challenge. She holds the figure out with a fully extended arm, and does
not wiggle it around in the way someone might if they were marking the proffer as a challenge to
the recipient to try and take what will surely be withdrawn when the attempted retrieval comes.

steps back from the table and so there is no possibility that Derricks reaching hand could
actually grasp the figure. (In fact, she almost stumbles back from the force of the figure
withdrawal.)
One criterion for a successful tease is met when a recipient takes up a course of action
that is seemingly implicated by the teasers initiating action, followed by the teaser withdrawing from that course of action before it can be completedthat is, revealing, post hoc,
the different course of action the presentation was actually launching. In this instance, the
teaser succeeds in eliciting a take response and withdraws the figure. She then marks this
success by laughing. On the other side, the child who has been taken in does not ratify
the success or even existence of her accomplishment in any way; indeed he pursues the
transfer as if it were still the operative course of action. At this point, they are not treating
this sequential environment in symmetrical waysthere is what Jefferson (1981) called
interactional asymmetry in their orientations to the ongoing action sequence and therefore their opportunities to participate within it. This might be compared to one type of
po-faced response to teasing described by Drew (1987) in which a recipient of a teasing
remark ignores the teasing or humorous feature of the action and responds innocently
to the matter that carries the tease. (Note that Drew is describing a response to an openly
teasing remark, whereas Derricks response is to a tease that was accomplished though a
trick he has fallen forthat is, he has already committed himself to an innocent response
to a prior action.)
Of course, this plays directly into Kellys tease in that Derricks continued interest in the
figure allows the tease to be extended. Kelly next upgrades her withdrawal by first drawing
the figure (which is hidden in a twohanded grasp) to her side (Fig. 27.7) and then by moving it behind her and holding it there with both hands behind her back (Fig. 27.8). She is
responding to his plea by pointedly doing moving it out of his reach thus extending the
tease sequence. (Note that she was not actually within his reach and he is trapped in a box
chair he could not quickly exit.)
At this point she initiates a sequence of verbal teasing oppositional assertions between
herself and Derrick concerning whose parent (figure) this figure represents. As he pleads
for the figure (and possibly says something about it), she responds with No, my mommy
to which he responds with an in kind oppositional assertion, and this is then followed by
another round of oppositional assertions. Kelly seems to be continuing the original tease
sequence (which Derrick did not acknowledge) by action accomplished through talk, and
this time Derrick takes part.8
8
It is worth noting that after the second round of oppositional assertions they are clearly no longer
referring to the figure, but to their actual parents (and it may be that even the first oppositional
assertions were not or not only or not distinctly referring to the figure in Kellys hand). From this
point on they no longer address each other, but are both seeking assurance about they parents
whereabouts from a caregiver, while continuing to use the format of the oppositional assertions.

Object-withdrawal teases are not limited to children. In one case involving adults, the
current user of a butter dish, after repeated requests and coaxing, finally picks up the dish
and extends it toward the requestor. But as the requestor reaches for the dish, it is pulled
out of his reach momentarily. This is followed by an exchange of laugh tokens as the
transfer is completed. Unlike the presentation-withdrawal tease discussed previously, this
one is inserted into a transfer that fulfills a request, whereas Kellys proffer of the Mommy
figure seems composed as a tease sequence from its beginning. However, in each case, the
recipient treats the object as transfer-ready when it is presented.
Figure 27.7
Figure 27.8

This type of tease, then, is something like a sequential surprise. To initiate the sequence
it is necessary to produce an action (presenting the figure) that appears to implicate a subsequent action (handing over the figure) which the presenter can then noticeably fail to follow through on, after the responding party commits to the initiated course of action. Note,
however, that there is a risk to the presenter, because the offer that is being feigned has the
possibility of succeeding before it can be withdrawn. An orientation to this possibility can
be seen in the premature withdrawal of an object as seen in Fig. 27.2 described earlier.
So, how then does one produce a successful tease? In simple terms, its realization is
parasitic on the launching of a recognizable object proffer sequence. Here the tease,
when it is revealed, is seeable as having been a second alternative to an object proffer (cf.
Sacks, 1992:2, p. 456).9 This sort of tease plays off of the recognizability of one type of
action sequence in the service of accomplishing another. We now apply our understand
of this practiceusing the appearance of conduct as a resource in producing a course of
actionto another domain in order to show that this form of action organization is not
unique to tease sequences among very young children (though it may find a home there),
but may constitute a more general interactional resource.
ESTABLISHING A PERSPICUOUS OCCASION FOR ACTION EMULATION
In this section, we describe how even a very young child can act in a fashion that is designed
to get another child to follow their lead. This is done by producing an actiontimed and
positioned to be seen by another childthat provides an occasion for, or even makes specially relevant, a corresponding action by the other child, as part of a recognizable joint
activity.10 In the present case, the joint activity consists of putting away toy tools after
finishing with them. Our interest is not only in the emulation of an action per se, or even
in the fact that a child can be shown to be oriented to the position and design of their own
actions in order to get another child to follow suit. We undertake this analysis here because
it illustrates another way in which the appearance of an action as an element in one course
of action can be used as a resource in implementing a course of action with a different
trajectory.
Sequences of action can have a range of relationships to other sequencesfor example, as a preliminary sequence or a reciprocal sequence or a counter sequence, and so on. See Schegloff (1995)
for an inventory of sequence relationships. The second alternative sequence exhibits another
relationship between sequence types.
10
For the most part, the social psychological literature on modeling has been concerned with the
effects that one persons behavior and attributes (usually an adult) have on another persons behavior (usually a young child). The modelers actions are seen as only unintentionally furnishing a
public display that could be noticed and repeated in a disconnected way. This literature ignores the
situated use of modeling by the modeler and the sequential relationship between the first occurrence
of an action and its subsequent emulated realization by another. See Lerner (2002) for one discussion of utterance and gestural matching that takes these matters into account.
9

Putting a Toy Away as a Method to Regain Possession of Another
Before describing the play completion sequence in which a plastic hammer is returned to
its basket, it may be useful to sketch out some of the initial events of the incident. At the
beginning of this course of action (from VYC:980121A1LC) Alan, who has been playing
alone next to a basket of plastic tools, makes a direct attempt to take back a plastic hammer that Barb has just come over and taken from the basket. (Both children are close to 2
1/2 years old.) First, he successfully takes it out of Barbs hands, saying thats my tools,
okay, as he returns the hammer to the basket from which she has just drawn it. However,
she immediately retrieves it again and draws it to her chest. Alan directs her to put it back
into the tool basket as he again attempts to take it from her. This time, however, Barb resists
and carries the hammer off. (As she leaves the play area, Alan appeals to the nearest adult,
but the adult does not intervene.) From the outside, Barb then begins hammering on the
cabinet that forms the boundary of Alans play area, but withdraws abruptly (pulling the
hammer to her chest) when he stands up and moves toward her, even though the cabinet
is between them. When Barb goes off with the hammer, Alan first hammers on the cabinet
with his fist and then picks another hammer from the basket and continues hammering,
while positioning himself so as to be able to monitor Barbs whereabouts and so she can
see his hammering. (He seems to be demonstrating the proper use of the tool to herin his
words, for working.)
A few moments later we come to the sequence of actions we are interested in examining: Alan again attempts to get the hammer backbut this time he does this by putting his
own hammer away. When Barb returns to Alans.play area just under a minute after first
acquiring her hammer, Alan abruptly stops hammering and quickly pivots to face the tool
basket as she approaches it. With Barb gazing at the basket, he stoops slightly and drops
his hammer into it (Fig. 27.9).11 Alan then slowly straightens up while still looking at his
deposited hammer. He seems to be waiting for her to follow suit here. When she does not,
he looks up at heractually he seems to direct his gaze toward her hammer (Fig. 27.10).
He holds this gaze for a moment, but she neither makes a move to follow suit or retreat. He
then does what might be characterized as an instrumentally shaped or iconic point to the
tool basket (Fig. 27.11). That is, his point takes the form of an arm motion that looks like
he is (feebly) tossing something into the basket, again culminating in a point at the apex of
the gesture. Barb begins turning to leave as he completes this gesture and he turns his gaze
from her hammer back to the basket.
Though it is not completely clear, it does look like that when he releases the hammer it is done in
a fashion that results in something like a point. This may just be the result of how he releases the
object, but it is possible that he is building a pointing gesture onto the instrumental action of releasing the hammer.
11
Figure 27.10
Figure 27.11
Figure 27.9

What is Alan doing here? We suggest that he is doing being done. It is not simply
that he happened to finish playing at just the moment Barb arrives back in his play area.
Rather, he seems to be using a play-completing action and therein initiating a possible
play-completing sequence as another attempt to regain possession of the hammer. This is
an indirect attemptor better, an embedded attemptto retrieve the hammer after prior,
more exposed attempts have met with resistance and failure. He is using the appearance
of his action (returning his hammer to the tool basket just as Barb approaches) as a recognizable play-completing action and as a recognizable play-completion sequence initiating
action. Dropping the hammer into the tool basket can here embody the return of a toy to its
appropriate place and thus (hopefully) make relevant or suggest the same action to Barb.
He has constructed an occasiona momentary sequential environment or contextfor
Barb to follow suit and relinquish her hammer. This attempt also turns out not to succeed,
but lack of success does not invalidate the practice. He then makes clear that the hammer
toss was performed on Barbs behalf by looking to her. When she again makes no move to
emulate his action, he then makes explicit the intent of his actions by pointing to the basket
with a tossing motion.12
At this point we can consider the possibility that this form of sequence organization
might draw upon another form of sequence organizationaction emulation sequence organization. The organization of Alans actions around returning his hammer to the basket and
the next action it makes relevant for Barb may build upon the emulation practices that can
structure toddler social play. Briefly, one child will begin some activity and then one or
more other children will produce the same actions themselves, more or less elaborately,
and the originating child can then acknowledge this in some fashion. In sequence organizational terms, action emulation sequences furnish a way to launch social play from Second positionin response to anothers actionrather than from First position, in which a
child must specifically design an action that invites another child to participate in a joint
activity.13
We are just beginning to investigate how such individual play establishes occasions for
action emulation and nascent social engagement. We can only briefly mention the beginning of one such instance here. One child (Randy) walks over to a small portable platform
with wooden sides and begins to hammer on it with a spatula. At the same time, another
child (Veronica) steps off of a different part of the platform and picks up another spatula
Randy had been using earlier. With spatula in hand, Veronica sees and hears the onset of
Randys hammering. She then alters her direction of travel, walks over to the side of the
Additional evidence for what he is up to here comes just after Barb leaves without relinquishing
her hammer. After watching Barb leave, Alan turns back to the tool basket, retrieves his hammer
and resumes hammering, while continuing to monitor the whereabouts of the hammer Barb has
taken with her to another play area. Moreover, sometime later, Alan does sneak over to Barbs
adjacent play area and retrieve the unattended hammer while she has her back turned. He then runs
back with it, places it in the tool basket and moves the basket out of sight.
13
We are not suggesting that very young children do not launch any sequences of action with a First
position initiating action (for example, see Jones, 2000), only that they are just beginning to find
ways to launch joint play sequences. They are still novices when it comes to inviting others to play
with them.
12

platform Randy has just hammered on, and proceeds to hammer on the edge of the same
platform side Randy had targeted. The first child, Randy, then resumes hammering, this
time in exactly the same spot that Veronica is hammering. Each of their actions furnishes
an occasion for the other to act and each acts in a fashion that can be seen by the other
as connected to the prior actionas occasioned by it. Thus, they come to be hammering
together on the same spot. This establishes a visible connection of activities: one child does
something, another child emulates that action in the presence of the first child. This can
be followed by some recognition or appreciation of the shared actionthat it is a shared
actionby one or both participants in the activity. In this example, the first child adjusts
his hammering target to match the child who was emulating his action.
Returning to the case in which a hammer is dropped into a basket, Alans actions may
draw on this form of organization. However, there seem to be two additional organizing
features beyond action emulation; (a) Alan produces actions designed to be emulated, and
then, in pursuit of emulation; and (b) there is the stronger sequence relationship of a next
action being made relevant by a prior action as parts of a sequence of actions. Here following suit would be more than emulating an action; it would be producing an action that
was implicated by a prior, corresponding action as part of a joint activityputting away
toys after use. And here these recognizable and achievable structures of action are used
formally. They are not (just) employed in their own right, but as components in a differently construed course of actionone that could lead to the repossession of the hammer
by Alan.
This episode is reminiscent of an old folk tale popularized in a childrens book by Esphyr
Slobodkina (1988 [1940]). In short, a peddler gets all of his merchandise (caps) back from
a tree full of monkeys when he finds that throwing his own cap onto the ground in frustration is followed by all of the monkeys throwing their caps to the ground as well. Unlike the
peddler, Alan seems to have already learned this lessonthat what you can be seen to be
doing can be consequential for what others do.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The observability of action furnishes members of every society with a fundamental resource
for understanding the organization of human sociality and engaging in predictable, coordinated conduct. In this view, the early development of a theory of mind is bound up
more with the acquisition of commonly held practices for producing and observing action
than with the translation of recognized action into terms of individual motive (cf. Frye, et
al., 1991; Whiten, 1991). It is, in part, the in situ recognizability of action that counts as
knowing the mind of another. One question, then, for investigators of social life must be,
what are the earliest traces and forms of the observability of action? One can describe the
beginnings of full-fledged socialityits organizational formsif one can spot the beginnings of the observability of action. Work in this area must certainly examine mother-infant
and more generally adult-child interaction. However, one can find this resource exercised
in the peer interactions of very young children as well. When left on their own, they can not
only produce and recognize embodied actions, but as we have shown they can also employ
the appearance of one action to accomplish something else, thus revealing an orientation to
their own body behavior as social action.

REFERENCES
Frye, D., & Moore, C. (1991). Childrens theories of mind: Mental states and social understanding.
Jefferson, G. (1981). The rejection of advice: Managing the problematic convergence of a troubles-telling and a service encounter. Journal of Pragmatics, 5, 399422.
Jones, S. (2000). Childrens use of pointing as a sequence initiating action. Paper presented to
the American Association of Applied Linguistics, Vancouver.
Knapp, M., & Knapp, H. (1976). One potato, two potato:The secret education of American children. New York: Norton.
Lerner, G.H. (2002). Turn-sharing: The choral co-production of talk in interaction. In C.Ford, B.
Fox, & S. Thompson (Eds.), The language of turn and sequence, pp. 225256. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Lerner, G.H., Kidwell, M., & Zimmerman D.H. (1999, May). Object transfers, emergent sequence
organization, and the recognizability of actions among very young children. Paper presented at
the International Communication Association, San Francisco.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Edited by Gail Jefferson, with an Introduction by
Emanuel Schegloff. Oxford: Blackwell.
Schegloff, E.A. (1995). Sequence organization. Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology,
UCLA.
Schegloff, E.A., & Sacks H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289327.
Shatz, M. (1994). A toddlers life: Becoming a person. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slobodkina, E. (1988 [1940]). Caps for sale: A tale of a peddler, some monkeys and their monkey
business. New York: Harper Collins.
Whiten, A. (1991). Natural theories of mind: Evolution, development and simulation of everyday
mindreading. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
28
Speech Melody and Rhetorical Style: Paul Harvey as
Exemplar
John Vincent Modaff
Morehead State University
WHY EXPAND TRANSCRIPTS OF SPEECH
Unless something is known about how a certain set of words was uttered, subsequent analyses of a speech are narrowly qualified. That is, whereas literature may be analyzed from a
rhetorical perspective using no more than a nomic text, vivacious speech may not be well
represented nomically. Put another way, there is more to speech than language. Speech
is language plus prosodic features and the pragmatics of interaction. One very important
aspect of spoken language is speech melody (Bolinger, 1986; Rush, 1872). Of the cues
speakers use to manage spoken meaning, speech melody may be most effective (Bolinger,
1986). Speech melody is a term that can be appreciated to entail many if not all features of
prosody. Of prosodic cues, Gumperz (1982) had much to say:
They carry some of the weight of selecting among a variety of possible interpretations by directing the listener among shades of meaning inherent in the semantic
range of the words used; [and] they tie these key semantic features together into a
theme, and mark out a developing line of argument, (p. 104, emphasis added)
Speech melody, otherwise known as intonation, is the musical aspect of speech, formed
by variation in vocal pitch, duration, and intensity. Speech melody is akin to the tune of a
song, but its intervals are less precise; that is, there is really no such thing as a note in
speech melody such as we might find in common music notation. However, people produce
and expect to hear melodic intervals and intonations that can be perceived as expectedor,
in other words, as permissible or impermissible a la Hadding & Naucler, 1980). This
chapter demonstrates some of the means by which a rhetorical analyst can expand the
appreciable qualities of speech by illustrating performance details of a news commentary by American broadcaster, Paul Harvey. Harvey is chosen because his style is highly
melodic, even quaint, and therefore ideal for demonstration purposes.
A rationale for the study of speech melody and rhetorical style requires some clarification of the role speech melody plays in the language culture of Americans. In spoken American English, virtually regardless of dialect, speech melody can be described as
performing several essential functions. First, speech melody has grammatical/syntactic
function (Malmberg, 1968). For example, intersyllabic pitch variation may place sufficient
stress on a key syllable to make a distinction between CONduct (noun) and conDUCT
(verb). Although this stress-accent may also be accomplished by means of lengthening or

intensity, intonation is the most efficient means of accenting. Length and intensity are not
as expressively flexible as the fine increments of variations in pitch (Bolinger, 1986).
Second, when variation in pitch moves beyond the single syllable, it begins to mark the
beginning of a semantic/pragmatic function for speech melody. Bolinger (1986) illustrated
how speech melody makes possible backgrounding and foregrounding of words or word
groups. Consider, for example, the different semantic content and pragmatic coherence of
the following lexically identical questions (read higher pitch if higher on the page, lower
pitch if lower):
Whats that in the road a head
Whats that in the road a head
The preceding comparison illustrates how speech melody may be used to carry essential
semantic information. The first utterance is a common enough question (although questions usually take on a rising melody at the cadence.) One may interpret the first utterance
to mean: I see something ahead of us in the road and I dont know what it iscould you
tell me? The second utterance, lexically and grammatically identical as nomically transcribed, may be interpreted for quite a different meaning: I see something in the road that
looks like a head; can you verify that? Quite different semantic information is conveyed
by speech melody in otherwise identical sentences. A third function of speech melody is
perhaps the most important context of the present studyits expressive function. This third
function makes possible the vocal communication of attitude and emotion (Abe, 1980;
Bolinger, 1986; Ladefoged, 1982; Malmberg, 1968; Ohala, 1985). The rhetors attitude
toward the moment, the audience, and the topic of talk may be in a large part made evident
through speech melody, and perceived attitude has great rhetorical significance. Consider,
for example, the opening line of a hypothetical address: I am very happy to be here today.
If stated:
the question might arise in the mind of a listener, Who said you werent? The marked
melodic stress on the word am could logically induce such a question. In contrast, if the
speaker states:
the lack of melodic marking would render the opening statement routine, and thus noneducive of wonder in the audience. Its effect, if at all rhetorical, is the effect of the cliche,
the expected, opening. In this way, speech melody can evoke an attitude (in the many rich
meanings of that word attitude.)
Speech melody and rhetorical style 395

TRI-TEXT: AN EXPANDED TRANSCRIPTION METHOD
What follows is a brief analysis of a news-commentary presented by ABC announcer Paul
Harvey. Before a demonstration of how analysis including speech melody data might proceed is provided, however, some explanation of the transcription method is in order. The
method combines three lines of data for each line of text: (a) nomic orthography; (b)
phonetic transcription, and (c) computer-generated pitch tracing of variation in fundamental frequency (one aspect of speech melody). Here is a sample, taken from the first line
of the commentary under study:
The lower line is the common alphabetic representation called nomic orthography. The
middle line is a phonetic transcription, which serves two functions: (a) it provides a link
between the nomic and pitch data, and (b) it allows an accurate rendering of the details
of dialect and idiolect as performed by the speaker. The top line is the trace of pitch,
generated by a computer equipped with a Covox Voicemaster speech processor. The name
given by this author to text appearing in this manner is tri-text, because each line of
transcribed performance-text includes three lines of data. Taking the three lines separately
and then together, the analyst is provided with details of performance that no other text
would indicate as thoroughly. Rhetorical analysis can now proceed based on data that indicate performance details that could greatly qualify language choices made by the speaker.
Also, performance details that are not formally linguistic, but are still audiometric, can be
subject to analysis.
DEMONSTRATION ANALYSIS USING TRI-TEXT
Space limitations here do not allow a complete setting forth of the entire 358 lines of
transcribed news-commentary (ABC, network radio, June 4, 1986). Instead, this section
provides analysis of certain key moments in the 15-minute broadcast. The purpose is to
illustrate how rhetorical analysis can be undertaken to consider both language and performance. (Because the original broadcast signal was a radio signal, other nonverbal aspects
of performance are not relevant to this analysis.)
Once the formal matter of the expanded transcription is treated, one is ready to proceed
with descriptive analysis. Some questions one might ask about Harveys performance are:
(a) how does Harvey stress certain portions of utterance? (b) how does Harvey accent and
emphasize portions of utterance? and, (c) how does he express attitudes to educe cohesion
with his audience beyond the mere assumption of attention?

HARVEYS SPEECH MELODY AND STRESS
Harvey uses speech melody to single out parts of words for special notice. There are at least
three specific structures of stress that Harvey uses speech melody to achieve. First, he often
takes a one-syllable word and expands it melodically. For example, in line 002 Harvey
does this twice: on the word by and on the word news.
Uttering the word by, Harvey adds to its length by means of an aspirated, tremulous
[h] between the [b] and the [aI]. There is no abrupt rise or fall of pitch, but the tremulous effect is melodic just the sameakin to tremolo used by singers. The lengthening
accomplished by inserting the over aspirated [h] provides extra material upon which the
tremulous scale may be sounded. The effect is of energy stored (the tremulous restraint)
combined with release (the heavy exhalation of the [h]). This energetic stress comes in the
second breath group of the broadcast.
A second example of Harveys use of length and pitch contrasts with the first. In the
same line (002), Harvey ends the breath group by lengthening the word news. Unlike the
first example, here the stress is accomplished with a quick, high rise in pitch over the
lengthened nasal and diphthong. Unlike his utterance of the word by, no extra phoneme
per se is added here. The abrupt high rise combines with extra length on all phonemes, but
particularly the diphthong.
No other word in the first two breath groups is given the melodic quality of news. By
stressing news in this manner, Harvey melodically underlines the word. This foregrounding of the word news gives the word the primary accent in that tone group. Harvey often
singles out words for special accent, and he does so with such unusual (or unexpected)
combinations of stressed pitch and length as we have seen previously. Such deviations
from the common experience are effective just because people have a background or history of built-up experiences from which to form expectations. Gumperz (1982) noted the
process is always situated or context bound. It begins with informed guessing based on
what we know about the physical setting, the participants and their backgrounds, and how
we relate the situation at hand to other known activities (p. 101, emphasis added).
Another tactic for stress that Harvey regularly uses is best described by Rushs (1872)
term vocule. A vocule is that compact burst of sound that is released after a word has
reached is terminus. The vocule is a punctuating and lengthening tactic. Sometimes the
vocule is simply the isolation and foregrounding of a phoneme that might otherwise go
unpronounced or be minimally pronounced. For example, the command else. up! might
be pronounced with a vocule at the end of both words, in which case the final [t] and the
final [p] are nearly given the currency of syllables. An extra burst of air is used to set them
apart in their terminal position, and the sounds are thereby used to stress the terminal
beyond its citation form. A typical Harvey vocule appears in Line 154:

In this line, Harvey stresses the final syllable of the verb nibbled by performing the vocule
on [d]. The phonetic transcription sets apart the [d] to indicate the stress. The vocule is
remarkable because it contradicts the expected energy fall at the end of the word. The vocules extra burst of energy often comes at a time when air supply is partially or almost fully
depleted. Now that we have illustrated some of the means by which Harvey creates stress
markings in speech using melodic components, let us turn to accent.
HARVEYS SPEECH MELODY AND ACCENT
By what means does Harvey foreground an entire word in a breath group? One tactic that
Harvey often uses combines steady-state pitch and increased length to accent a word. The
word all in Line 130 is accented in this way. Observe how the word is held steady and
given length:
This sustained intonation sets the word apart, providing an opportunity to combine sound
and sense. This combination of sound and sense might be described as an onomatopoetic
function of melody. The word all has an arbitrary relation to its meaning, but when
Harvey lengthens the word and sustains its pitch, he is, in a sense, doing all. He is performing the bigness of all. He is saying all is big; all is a lot, and he says it in a way
to make it materially evident. His speech makes the tiny word all big like its referent.
Perhaps because the word all is so distinctively unpoetic (i.e., its size has no correlation
to its idea) Harvey sees fit to stretch it out to better match its meaning. In this situation, the
rhetorical impact of this otherwise unremarkable word is enhanced melodically. In contrast
to the steady-state pitch described earlier, Harvey accomplishes melodic foregrounding in
at least two others ways: (a) by diminution, and (b) by sustained pause and pitch. Diminution functions by the same rule as increasing force except it is more remarkable because it
is, in fact, less. (Accent is not always equal to more. It can be less. Harvey would seem to
know this.) Take, for example, Line 259, which indicates the end of a breath group:

The diminutive sound Harvey makes at the end of the group gives an accent to that morpheme that no word in the phrase receives. The accent is accomplished by a relatively sharp
fall in pitch and a quick decay. And, to further set it apart, the morpheme is isolated from
the rest of the breath group by a substantial pause.
Harvey is well known for his use of pause to accent. However, pause alone may not be
the only accenting device at work. Consider an example of the combined use of pause and
pitch variation to foreground one key word in Lines 298 and 299:
The pause following the questionsAnd guess which one gives you the most/ opportunity for the least investment/ (slashes here indicating content of Line 298is the longest
pause in the broadcast. It is perhaps the clearest example of Harveys use of pause to contribute to accent. But as mentioned previously, the pause alone is insufficient to accent the
word following, because pause normally functions to signal the end of a breath group and
thus the thought. Harvey maintains a relation between the part before and the part after the
pause by means of matching pitch. His intonation of the word Servicemaster, put simply,
picks up melodically where he left off with investment. The pitches used to utter Servicemaster are the scalar adjacents of the pitches used to utter for the least investment.
In this manner, the word is set apart by pause whereas its connection to the preceding
utterance is maintained by speech melody.

HARVEYS SPEECH MELODY AND EMPHASIS
As we progress from stress to accent and now on to emphasis, definitional distinctions are
difficult to establish. Several examples from Harvey should suffice to demonstrate the benefit of considering theme one achievement of intentional melodic emphasis. Gumperz
(1982) discussed theme extensively. Additionally, the paired concepts of theme and
rheme out of Bolinger (1955; 1986) become useful here. These are established by accent
and stress, but are broader features. The theme is the background that, once established,
provides the contrasting material required to make a rheme stand out. For example, in
metrical scansion of poetry, one might say the thematic foot is the dominant foot, and the
rhematic foot is the exception or substitution. In speech melody, the thematic is the broadly
redundant contour against which the rheme may stand out when the speaker varies the
basic contour in some remarkable way.
Concepts from music theory and appreciation corroborate notions of theme and rheme
but with a slightly different vocabulary. Theme is established by the developmental relationship of motive and phrase. Theme becomes an organizing concept as repetitions of
phrasal motive build up over a piece. Departure from an established musical theme, however, occurs in the same ways in speech melody: Some notable marked change of phrase
and motive occurs, throwing into the foreground a portion of the utterance.
To establish Harveys theme is to note his basic melodic contour, that is, that tone-group
pattern that he strings together more often than any other. Notwithstanding a quantitative
analysis of all contours in the sample broadcast, a careful visual scanning of the pitch
text reveals that the predominant contour is the A contour (rise-fallthe so-called hat
pattern because the trace in a way resembles a peaked hat) (Bolinger, 1986). Thus, Harveys dominant melodic theme would be considered General American English by many
linguists. What is remarkable is how Harvey strays from this background pattern during
phrases wherein rheme or motive are foregrounded. The A contour (or hat pattern) is
established within the first two syllables of the first breath group (Line 001). With his
energetic Hello, Harvey presents his basic thematic material; he uses this contour (risefall) as background for rhematic excursions. Bridging the first two A Contours with the
word Americans on a slow falling pitch, Harvey finishes breath group #1 with three
more quick A contours: this is, Paul, and Harvey. He ends the first series of two
phrases establishing a motive (motif), which in turn becomes thematic. The second breath
group (Line 002) takes the motive and magnifies it beyond thematic boundaries. The pitch
has jumped several intervals, and the A contour is so exaggerated that the grammatical
phrase is broken by melody into short phrases stand by and for news. Quite outside the
expected full fall at the end of the second breath group, to repeat the theme established in
breath group #1 Harvey stresses and accents news as previously described. Now, after
two breath groups a theme has been established and also varied. The motives arising hereafter maintain this unpredictability.
Consider an example more broadly illustrated in the Lines 008 through 026:
These lines provide an illustration of how Harvey establishes a theme and uses it to foreground a central idea by rhematic shift. Notice that all through Lines 008026, Harvey
has maintained an habitual pitch and has used the A contour more than any other. He does
accent the final word in many groups just as he ended breath group #1 (with a sharp fall).
Then a most dramatic shift in pitch height and contour shape comes in Line 026, containing the climactic thought: Arent you glad you have electricity today? From 008 to 025,
speech melody establishes a flat and repetitive theme that corresponds with the lexical
content. When relief is provided by lexical content (i.e., Line 026), melody shifts also to
a new motive and a thematically verified resolution. In this way, Harvey uses melody to
achieve rhetorical emphasis.
HARVEYS PRAGMATIC: EDUCING COHESION
In musical nomenclature, Harveys predominant cadence (ending of phrase, movement, or
piece) is exceptional insofar as he rarely terminates with a full fall (the so-called authentic
cadence). His cadence is best described as the halfcadence (Piston, 1978). This variety of
cadence is distinctive for its abrupt rise in the penultimate tone and the incomplete ultimate
fall toward the tonic.
What is most peculiar about Harveys use of the authentic and exceptional cadence is
his placement. He uses the exceptional cadence to mark major boundaries, such as the
beginning and end of the broadcast, just where one might expect the authentic cadence
(especially at the end of the broadcast). But when Harvey uses the authentic cadence, it
is usually to set boundaries between subsequences in longer series (such as the checklist
of squalor before the electricity pitch noted earlier) or to end a story in the interior of the
broadcast. The pragmatic effect of this peculiar use of cadence is to maintain momentum

into and throughout the broadcast. The finality of the authentic cadence is sparsely used,
and the sense of finality in the broadcast is reduced. Each series leads to another, and
sentences are divided more in their middles than at their grammatical termini.
In conversation, such placement of the exceptional cadence often operates as an invitation to respond. Accenting Servicemaster by long pause and continuous melody, for
example, leaves a peculiar gap that more than simply isolates the word Servicemaster in
time. The pause can also be read as an invitation to respond. It is as if Harvey says guess
which one? And the listener is given the chance to say which? Harvey then responds
with the answer, as if in a riddle: Servicemaster. The cadence on Servicemaster is
the half-cadence, not final in any respect, opening the way for a continuation of the topic
with further information, assuming a need for elaboration, which is then carried on with a
license to elaborate. Harvey thus variously complies with and violates so-called maxims
of conversation offered by Grice (1975). Speech melody can be analyzed in the case of
Paul Harvey to be operating as a sort of invitation to conversationdialogic form within
monologue. This brings us to even broader considerations speech melody and analysis of
rhetorical style.
HARVEYS MEANS AND ENDS
With the means of sound as well as language at his disposal, Harveys choices are nearly
infinite including all the shapes that vocal sound can take. However, Harveys choices may
be limited by what is appropriate and what is possiblethat is, by cultural context. One
might call this limitation of means whats expected. Given his longevity and his institutional standing in the culture, Harveys means are constrained to a certain degree by his
own broadcast history. He must perform himself every day for over 20 million listeners.
His range of possible means now is nowhere near as large as it was when he stepped up to
the microphone for the first time. His broadcast persona has become his own context and a
means to himself. This context is both a limitation and an asset.
Because Harvey is classified as a news commentator, one might infer that his ends
include information and editorial comment. The reverse may also be true: that his ends
are opposed to those of the information giver (i.e., he intends mainly to entertain). That he
wishes to move simultaneously toward these two ends is also possible. Because Harvey is
an employee of a commercial radio network, one might safely infer that his ends include
the making of profit via product promotion during commercial endorsements.
When one tunes in to listen to Paul Harvey News and Comment, one receives a sort of
fresh-off-the-wire headline style that mimics the structure of both newspaper and newscast. There is frequent editorial comment, but the basic structure of the program is that
of a newscast moving through a list of regular topic or departments. Stories are strung
together.
What melody is appropriate to the news provider? Broadcasters are trained to follow
closely the general dialect most widely used by educated people. A form of speech has
developed that is almost too perfect for conversation, designed to reduce barriers for a
diverse listening audience. Given this rather strict and restricted context of performance,
certain of Harveys melodic tactics become relevant here. Of particular interest is the vocule. Harvey uses it frequently throughout the broadcast. When, for example, the phoneme

[s] appears in the final position and the first position of two adjacent words (as in Britains
schools), Harvey overcodes the [s] phonemes and their boundary. He is speaking like a
provider of information, making sure that each sound is made distinctly. But he is also
exaggerating the necessary distinction. The vocule is just one location where Harvey performs this exaggeration. His frequent over application of the rules of clear articulation call
to attention his style, and, like his other melodic features, these over applications may have
the rhetorical effect of re-calling the attention of the listener via a deliberate overcoding of
the rules of clear speech.
HARVEY AND THE POSSIBLE MELODY
Paul Harvey exaggerates the pedantic articulation associated with Broadcastese. However, he also very often provides information using a speech melody appropriate to conversation, thus educing answering. Put simply, his rhetorical style as manifest in speech
melody invites response. A contrast may serve to make the point. Imagine Bob Edwards
(National Public Radio news announcer) or Dan Rather of CBS asking a direct question
over the air and then giving time for an answer. The closest either of them comes to an
implied dialogue with the listener is have a nice evening, wont you? In contrast, Harvey
uses direct address frequently, each time inviting, one might even say mandating, listener
engagement. The exceptional cadence in Harvey derives from his chronic refusal to use
the grammatical period as a terminus. The declarative quality is muted as the general pattern of the rising contour takes the place of the grammatically determined fall. With the
continuous exceptional cadence, Harvey is speaking as a provider of information might in
conversation, making informative statements and all the while melodically asking: did you
know this? Harveys use of pause (rest being another feature of musical melody) may be
considered unconventional if he is perceived as a newscaster only. As a possible conversational partner, he performs quite conventionally. His pauses mark the expected placement
of turns and create opportunities for response to rhetorical questions.
These quaint qualities of Paul Harveys speech melody, which contradict the standard in
newscasting, are not necessarily liabilities. The contradiction of one convention establishes
another. Harveys pedantic articulation places him within (even beyond) the standards of
broadcast news; his widely divergent melody (e.g., exceptional cadence and use of pause)
places him within the norms of lively conversation. Analyzed poetically Harveys melody
emerges as modally lyrical and dramatic. Exaggerated aspects of his speech melody create meaning for him in both modes. At times he follows certain rules of broadcast diction;
at other times he violates the same rules to accommodate the rules of conversation. The
listener is invited to converse in an unusual context. For more than 20 million people each
day, this rule maker and rule breaker is apparently quite appealing. Insofar as he melodically highlights certain silent or non morphemic spaces in his broadcast, Harvey may be
heard to articulate the silences. This notion emphasizes Harveys creation of an empty
acoustic space that must be filled in by the listener. As a manipulator of sounds Harvey
uses the free range available as means. Though his printed copy may not appear poetic
in form, the tri-text of his vocal performance reveals an engaging aesthetic aspect that
relies on conventions and peculiarities of speech melody. One should not be restricted to

phonology alone when considering Paul Harvey. He engages his huge audience with a
rhetorical/poetic embedding of the strange within the familiar.
HARVEY AND THE EXPECTED MELODY
People who have listened to Paul Harvey for decades remark that he sounds little different
today than the first time they heard him. Put another way, Harvey consistently accomplishes himself. Harveys expressive style becomes a constant form whereas his content
becomes variable. Harveys ritual opening and closing of broadcasts form an example of
how expressive form can itself become content. Each repetition is a sign of his longevity, of
his duration. Harveys stories, by contrast, are unpredictable, thus rewarding the listeners
expectation of news. At the same time his purposeful ambiguity allows one to experience novel engagement and surprise, even within a highly predictable and familiar format.
Harvey accommodates basic qualities of broadcast and conversation contexts; his duration
itself creates another context through speech melody. Thus, we may find a certain argument
embedded within his poetic that lends credibility to his rhetoric.
CONCLUSION: TOWARD AN APPRECIATION OF THE SOUND OF SPEECH
Analysis of rhetorical speaking, and perhaps any analysis of language-in-use through
speech, can proceed using transcriptions that include more data than a nomic text provides. Tri-text is an attempt to combine a reliable trace of speech melody, phonetic data,
and nomic text so that students of rhetoric and speech communication can see, appreciate,
and include in critical remarks ever more aspects of a performance. A performer like Paul
Harveyarguably one of the most listened-to Americans in the worldcannot really be
appreciated from a rhetorical perspective without some consideration of the details of vocal
performance. Rhetorical style, then, becomes an expanded concept, one that includes
both language and its musical play through voice.
This chapter has been a brief attempt to illustrate how considerations of speech melody
can combine with an analysis of the inferred rhetorical ends of a speaker. The Harvey
performance may be treated as an aesthetic text idealized by the tri-text transcript and not
just a nomic language structure. Concepts from semiotic, linguistic, and aesthetic criticism
provide some means for considering such qualities as intonation and the articulation of
silence. Harvey uses sound in quite unconventional ways without offending against convention itself. He performs as an energetic provider of information a mild parody of the
news anchor. And he simultaneously performs as a conversational partner for each listener.
What many listeners who both love and hate Harveys style may merely refer to as stylistic
oddity, a careful study of speech melody reveals as a consistent pattern that we might, for
now, label dialogic monologue.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This chapter is a revision of a paper presented at the annual convention of the International
Communication Association, Chicago, May 1996.

REFERENCES
Abe, I. (1980). How vocal pitch works. In L. Waugh & C. H. van Schooneveld (Eds.), The melody
of language (pp. 1-24). Baltimore: University Park Press.
Bolinger, D. (1955). Melody of language. Modern Language, 40, 19-30.
Bolinger, D. (1986). Intonation and its parts. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. Syntax and Semantics, 3, 41-58.
Gumperz, J.J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Hadding, K., & Naucler, K. (1980). Permissible and impermissible variation in pitch contours. In
L.Waugh & C.H.van Schooneveld (Eds.), The melody of language (pp. 127-133). Baltimore:
University Park Press.
Ladefoged, P. (1982). A course in phonetics. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Malmberg, B. (1968). Manual of phonetics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Ohala, J. (1985). An ethological perspective on common cross-language Utilization of f-zero of
voice. Phonetica, 41,1-16.
Piston, W. (1978). Harmony (4th ed.). New York: Norton.
Rush, J. (1872). The philosophy of the human voice. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
29
The Body Present: Reporting Everyday Life
Performance
Nathan P.Stucky
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Suzanne M.Daughton
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
In his classic essay, Romanticism and Classicism, T.E.Hulme (1924) described the poets
challenge in capturing the essence of experience into expression as getting the exact curve
of the thing (p. 137):
You know what I call architects curvesflat pieces of wood with all different kinds
of curvature. By a suitable selection from these you can draw approximately any
curve you like. The artist I take to be the man who simply cant bear the idea of that
approximately. He will get the exact curve of what he sees whether it be an object
or an idea in the mind. I shall here have to change my metaphor a little to get the
process in his mind. Suppose that instead of your curved pieces of wood you have a
springy piece of steel of the same types of curvature as the wood. Now the state of
tension or concentration of mind, if he is doing anything really good in this struggle
against the ingrained habit of technique, may be represented by a man employing all
his fingers to bend the steel out of its own curve and into the exact curve which you
want. Something different to what it would assume naturally, (pp. 132133)
Hulmes metaphor invites the reader to see the process of writing fine poetry as hard physical work, as an embodied form of art, comparable to architecture, or painting, dance, or
sculpture. Hulme was reacting with distaste to what he saw as the romantic metaphysic
which in defining beauty or the nature of art always drags in the infinite, and defending
the idea that the highest kind of poetry may confine itself to the finite, that beauty may
be in small, dry things (p. 131). His words are telling in the care that the artist takes with
details. Getting the exact curve of the thing in order to find the beauty in small, dry things
may be at first glance, but at first glance only, a modest goal, one that rewards the poet, the
artist, and, we argue here, the performer, in subtle yet powerful ways.
In the mid-1980s Robert Hopper, along with a number of his colleagues, students and
former students at the University of Texas and other institutions, began working with the
reperformance of conversation.1 This work has largely been a classroom affair, designed,
in part, to develop understanding about the nature and structure of talk and the organization
An introduction to many issues related to the performance of conversation may be found in a
special issue on Performance and Conversation of Text and Performance Quarterly guest-edited
by Robert Hopper (e.g., Hopper, 1993; Gilbert, 1993; Stucky, 1993; Stucky & Glenn, 1993).
The body present 411

of human interaction. On a few occasions, the work moved into more elaborate theatrical
productions shown to public audiences, and at least one set of performances utilized taperecorded conversations from President Lyndon Johnsons White House instead of more
mundane conversations about who is fixing dinner or picking up the kids.2
In all of these cases, however, actors have worked to get the exact curve of the thing, to
perform the paralinguistic complexity of the voices they hear on recordings. These performances derive much of their power from the work of conversation analysts: first, because
of the detail made apparent through the conversation analysis style transcription techniques
developed by Gail Jefferson, and second, because of the conversation analytic project of
looking for order and structure in ordinary talk. The actors, or students, attempt to reproduce pauses, inflection, overlapping utterances, and other details of the talk. In so doing,
they are putting their bodies through an intensive modeling of the Otheran other whose
life tracings are etched in the magnetic field of the tape and whose behavior serves as the
basis for a subsequent performance. The spontaneous talk captured on the audiotape thus
constitutes a conversational parallel to what Hulmes artist sees; we might then think of the
performers as reperforming body prose to create body poetics.
In the last fifteen or so years of his life, Robert Hopper devoted remarkable energy to
the project of what he called everyday life performance (ELP) (Hopper, 1993). He sought
to humanize the study of human communication, with his conversational research which
included the extensive use of performance at scholarly conventions, in the classroom, and
elsewhere. The first artistic combination of conversation analysis and performance was
developed by Hopper and Nathan Stucky collaboratively in 1984. One early result of that
work was a play, Believe Me, Im Lying, Believe Me, staged at the University of Texas in
1985 (Stucky, 1988). Hopper brought conversational performance to the Speech Communication Association national conference in 1986 (Hopper & Stucky, 1986). From that point
until his death in 1998, Hopper worked closely with students and colleagues to develop
and extend conversational performance and his ideas of conversational poetics. He left his
impression on masters theses and doctoral dissertations, on colleagues in any number of
disciplines, on the many students whose classroom experiences have included ELP, and on
many in the fields of both performance studies and language and social interaction.
Although the methods of developing conversational performances are developed in
more detail elsewhere, it may be useful to offer a brief summary here. We use natural
performance as an umbrella term to indicate a wide range of performance acts from the
ordinary conversational quote to fully staged everyday life performances such as those
drawn from tape-recorded interviews, oral histories, ordinary conversations, and telephone
talk (Stucky, 1993, p. 169). ELP refers to a more limited range of activities than natural
performance, specifically those involved in rehearsed and staged replication of interaction.
Stage performances of conversation-analysis style transcripts include: Believe Me, Im Lying,
Believe Me, University of Texas at Austin 1985, dir. Nathan Stucky; Conversation Pieces, Southern
Illinois University Carbondale, 1987, dir. Bryan Crow; Naturally Speaking, Louisiana State University, 1990, dir. Nathan Stucky; Talking Relationships, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, dirs.
Ronald Pelias and Phillip Glenn, 1991; and Presidency on the Line: Lyndon Johnsons First Month
in Office, University of Texas at Austin, 1996.

The process involves five basic steps: recording, transcribing, analyzing, rehearsing, and
performing. Although there have been a number of refinements over the years, notably the
occasional use of video, the process outlined by Stucky in 1988 continues to serve as a
general pattern:
The collection of materials typically requires that informants are asked to place a
tape recorder in their home, or on their telephone, and turn it on during a time when
they are probably going to be talking. The privacy, consent, and anonymity of
the individuals is maintained. Conversation analysts create detailed transcripts of
these recordings using a notational system developed by Gail Jefferson, which identifies such features as simultaneous utterances, overlap, intervals between utterances,
rising and falling intonations, laughter, louder and softer utterances, and extended
syllables, (pp. 3132)
Students are either given materials by the instructor that have been gathered (and sometimes transcribed) previously, or these steps are part of the class. As Hoppers use of ELP
for his undergraduate classes evolved, he often skipped over the first two steps (gathering recordings and transcribing), moving directly to rehearsal and analysis. His reasoning
was that the students needed to get right to work on the performance experience that was
the core of the project. However they are developed, once the materials are in hand, the
rehearsal phase begins:
The rehearsal process of conversational materials includes frequent use of tapes and
transcripts. Each performer is supplied with a conversation analysis style transcript
of the play and also an edited cassette copy of the original recordings. One technique for learning parts is to listen repeatedly to the tape while following the transcript, then to speak aloud along with the tape, and finally to speak the parts without
the recorder, but still reading from the transcript. [The] performers use two texts
(written and audio) neither of which would have much impact singly. The recording
of the original event itself provides an aural impression which includes a sense of
speaker conveyed through the paralinguistic cues. (Stucky, 1988, pp. 3334)
Scripts that develop in this way, unlike a typical dramatic play script, contain a high level
of detail. They present the actor with specific challenges for replication and they raise
questions about mimesis and verisimilitude (Stucky, 1993, p. 168):
[Although there are variations on the process of working with conversational data
for performance,] working with recording and transcript, [students] practice replicating the talk. While doing the repeated listening required for both transcription and
replication, students focus on the communicative issues in the talk that are relevant
to the specific class. Over the course of rehearsals, students memorize the interaction
from recordings and transcripts and add visual staging elements. They then perform
the scenes for the class. Finally, post-post-performance discussion and papers provide opportunities for audience reaction, individual reflection, and consideration of
course-related issues. (Stucky & Glenn, 1993, p. 192)

In contrast to Americanized versions of Constantin Stanislavskis method acting, with
their focus on the psychological and internal elements of characterization, ELP requires
a careful examination of empirical evidence. In method acting the actor asks, What would
I do if I were this character? In ELP the actor asks, Exactly what did the character do?
The end result of ELP often looks astonishingly realistic (like some method acting), but the
underlying logic is more akin to presentational theater or storytelling than it is to Western
realism because the actor is, in effect, performing a carefully rehearsed quotation. Although
it clearly has value for actors, the primary value of ELP, as we have experienced it within
the context of language and social interaction, is that it works to reveal the intricacies and
nuances of human interaction. It is an embodied study of interpersonal communication.
This chapter examines what is happening when this reperformance occurs. Specifically, we draw on the phenomenological work of Drew Leder and on the deconstruction
of Jacques Derrida as we consider students reports about their performance experience in
university classes where this work has been integrated into the curriculum. We develop an
argument that the difficulty experienced in performing conversation serves as a key source
of its value, that the disciplining of the body awakens an awareness usually absent, that the
act of ELP makes manifest two bodiesthe actors and the invoked Othersultimately
bringing them together.
Leders (1990) conception of absence provides a way to clarify this discussion:
Human experience is incarnated. I receive the surrounding world through my eyes,
my ears, my hands. The structure of my perceptual organs shapes that which I apprehend. And it is via bodily means that I am capable of responding. Yet this bodily
presence is of a highly paradoxical nature. While in one sense the body is the most
abiding and inescapable presence in our own lives, it is also essentially characterized by absence. That is, ones own body is rarely the thematic object of experience,
(p. 1)
For a performer, this absence is the subject of some conscious attention. A pianist, for
example, may focus for a time on the fingers of the left hand perhaps to strengthen or
quicken them to handle a difficult passage, an actor may do vocal exercises to develop
breath control, but in such cases the performer is attending to a bodys need to do something different:
Insofar as the body tends to disappear when functioning unproblematically, it often
seizes our attention most strongly at times of dysfunction; we then experience the
body as the very absence of a desired or ordinary state, and as a force that stands
opposed to the self. (Leder, 1990, p. 4)
In disease or injury, the bodys dysfunction captures our attention. There is a saying that if
your shoes are comfortable, you dont think about your feet. In a more extreme analogy,
sprain an ankle and you become aware of the work your feet have been doing all along.
(And the rest of your body becomes sore and tired because of the contortions it performs to
compensate for the injury.) Leder used a figure-ground gestalt (p. 24) analogy to describe
the bodys awareness of itself. That is, when a person is attending to the use of a given sense

(e.g., the use of the eyes when looking at a painting), the other bodily actions that support
that looking (e.g., use of muscles to hold the spine erect) recede from consciousness.
For the ELP performer, the paradox of the absent body presents two challenges. First,
the original speaker was largely absent during the behavior recorded on tape. Whatever mechanisms, actions, inflections, gestures, involved were habituated into that other
person. Second, the performer likely moves through the world in a similarly absent state.
Even when the performer may develop or possess a conscious mimetic skill, much remains
absent. So, the performer must reenact an absent body through a second absent body. This
performance is not without difficulty. The actor can seldom match all of the details heard
on the tape. The challenge of working with the tape recording can be seen in the following
student commentary:
[The tape-recording is] a shackle because it contains parameters such as pauses
and false starts that define rigid parameters of performance that must not go overlooked. Messing up was the huge fear that loomed over our heads, especially
while we were in the midst of our first performance. Whenever lines were skipped in
rehearsal we would stop and start over again from the beginning due to the difficult
nature of establishing our clashing rhythms of speech.3
Ironically, the performers most daunting challenge often involves the deliberate, controlled
reenactment of an Others disfluencies, her or his original mistakes. And because reallife conversations rarely consist of the clean monologues that typify traditional play scripts,
the two (or more) parties to a conversation must perform their intricate dance of disfluency
in complete synchrony with one another, establishing our clashing rhythms of speech.
So the messing up referred to in the previous quotation can be simply synonymous with
a theatrical performers familiar worry about forgetting or mixing up a line, but it can also
mean the failure to repeat accurately the Others speech error, or the failure to interrupt
or overlap the speech of another in just the right way, at just the right time. In this sense,
the heretofore absent bodies of Other and performer both become most noticeably present
to the performer during times when the conversation is less than smooth, or we might say,
when the linguistic feet hurt.
In Hulmes (1924) terms, the conversational performance artists are struggling] against
the ingrained habit of technique (p. 133), trying to recreate the right mistakes. His
description of the goal of poetry sounds as if it could have been written as a guide to conversation analysts and performers:
The great aim is accurate, precise and definite description. The first thing is to recognize how extraordinarily difficult this is. It is no mere matter of carefulness; you
have to use language, and language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is,
it expresses never the exact thing but a compromisethat which is common to you,
me and everybody, (p. 132)
3
Student responses, from writing projects in one of the first authors Conversational Performance
classes, are quoted here by permission. The authors thank the following students for their contributions: Patreece Boone, Jennifer Gibson, Shane Kreke, Edward Linton, Michael ODonohoe, Valerie
Parga, and Jay Ramer.

Another way to look at the difficulty involved in the reperformance of conversation is
that it attends to the ways in which conversation deconstructs itself, and faithfully insists
on presenting all of those competing nuances available, not simply the ones that further
a given rhetorical point or objective. In his essay on Platos Pharmacy, Jacques Derrida
(1972/1981) documented Platos use of a range of drug imagery in his body of work. In a
move both counterintuitive and convincing, he argued that the overwhelmingly thorough
representation of all but one of the available terms of pharmacology makes noticeable the
one term from that group that is absent, thus making that term present in its very absence:
One can say in any event that all the pharmaceutical words we have been pointing
out do actually make an act of presence, so to speak, in the text of the dialogues.
Curiously, however, there is another of these words that, to our knowledge, is never
used by Plato. If we line it up with the series pharmakeia-pharmakon-pharmakeus,
we will no longer be able to content ourselves with reconstituting a chain that, for all
its hiddenness, for all it might escape Platos notice, is nevertheless something that
passes through certain discoverable points of presence that can be seen in the text.
The word to which we are now going to refer, which is present in the language and
which points to an experience that was present in Greek culture even in Platos day,
seems strikingly absent from the Platonic text.

But what does absent or present mean here? Like any text, the text of Plato
couldnt not be involved, at least in a virtual, dynamic, lateral manner, with all the
words that composed the system of the Greek language. Certain forces of association uniteat diverse distances, with different strengths and according to disparate
pathsthe words actually present in a discourse with all the other words in the
lexical system, whether or not they appear as words, that is, as relative verbal
units in such discourse. They communicate with the totality of the lexicon through
their syntactic play and at least through the subunits that compose what we call a
word.

The circuit we are proposing is, moreover, all the more legitimate and easy
since it leads to a word that can, on one of its faces, be considered the synonym,
almost the homonym, of a word Plato actually used. The word in question is pharmakos (wizard, magician, poisoner), a synonym of pharmakeus (which Plato uses),
but with the unique feature of having been overdetermined, overlaid by Greek culture with another function. Another role, and a formidable one.

The character of the pharmakos has been compared to a scapegoat. The evil
and the outside, the expulsion of the evil, its exclusion out of the body (and out) of
the citythese are the two major senses of the character and of the ritual, (emphasis
in orginal, pp. 129130)
Many different presences, absences, and bodies are featured here: the body of the Greek
language and the body of pharmaceutical terms, the body of Platos works, the body politic,
and the forcibly absented body of the scapegoat, the pharmakos, Socrates. (Even the body
of Socratess work is present only in absence, silhouetted and memorialized only in Platos
dialogues.) In every case, just as in the case of the reperformance of conversation, that
which is absent, although apparently submerged, invisible, irrelevant, is waiting just below

the surface to be called forth by the terms we use and the disfluencies that escape our lips.
Derridas deconstructive reading of Platos body (of work) attends to the linguistic roads
not taken, thereby expanding the textual artifacts in question as it unravels them. Once the
absent term in the lexicon is named, its presence looms over the text, weaving new connections over old. The fact that Plato did not mean to say the term for scapegoat does
not impress Jacques Derrida, just as things that we did not mean to say (such as mistakes
and Freudian slips) in conversation are fair game for ELP practitioners. Perhaps Plato
was not even consciously aware of the seemingly significant omission. No matter. The
absence of attention on the part of the party originally producing the discourse may even
make it more incumbent upon the subsequent analyst/performer to notice these details.
In fact, performers rehearsing for an ELP production often notice subtle poetic repetitions and connections that the original speakers appear to produce unconsciously. When we
practice ELP, the conversational false starts and mistakes expand our awareness of how
ordinary people sound (ourselves, as well as the others whom we perform). In contrast,
when we teach, we tell nervous public speakers not to fret overmuch about disfluencies:
Speech is ephemeral, we say. In two minutes, no one will remember a couple of ums
and ers. But ELP, like deconstruction, is not so forgiving. Neither will politely ignore a
loose end, but will instead tug on it to see what happens. And what happens is always an
expansion of understanding: of the text, of the Other, of the self.
Our concern with bodies and absence is literal and physical as well as metaphorical.
Lung capacities, heart rate, flexibility, stress, memory, disposition, muscle tone, body
shape, and countless other factors affect the performers task. One student wrote that One
of the problems that we all encountered while rehearsing was that there was a natural
tendency to adjust the text to fit our own speaking style, something that was very difficult
to overcome. Another student summarized the challenge this way: Trying to imitate the
characters physical and vocal mannerisms was the first difficulty. Whereas in traditional
theater, an actor may seek to find points of emotional or psychological identification with
a character first, and let that lead her or him to the development of particular patterns of
speaking, in conversational reperformance the performer is presented with the patterns of
speech in all of their glorious, messy abundance, and must work backward to achieve
that sense of identification. In her article, Staged Replication of Naturally-Occurring
Talk, Deleasa Randall (1993) recounted struggling with memorization of the imperfections in the talk and with the necessary attention to the somatic focus on all my sensory
capabilities (p. 197):
My usual ease in memorization was complicated by overlapping utterances, incomplete thoughts and sentences, stutters, stammers, and other imperfections found
in natural talk. My partner and I scheduled additional rehearsal time. I began walking across campus, carrying my Walkman and listening to our segment of talk. As I
walked I repeated my characters words aloud, (p. 197)
Randalls experience, especially the challenges of working to get one body to begin to follow the pattern of anothers prior performance, is a recurrent theme in student writing on
this work:

Randall discusses how memorization became a complex task for her to accomplish
when she had to concentrate on the overlapping utterances, incomplete thoughts
and sentences, stutters, stammers, and other imperfections. I found that this was
also a great challenge for me. In the conversation I performed, my characters stories
were often punctuated by and so and but uh. While I find that theyre not too
hard to say when youre the original author of these words, engaged in your own personal conversation, theyre quite difficult to remember to perform in staged natural
conversation.
In addition to memorization, a second theme arisesthat of identification, or psycho-physical alignment with the character. Randall (1993) argued that carefully reproducing the
details of the talk created a close affiliation with her character:
My character and I became intimately connected. I began to realize that as a performer I could not breathe this womans breaths, pause her sometimes excruciatingly
long pauses (one was 11.4 seconds mid-sentence), and speak her carefully chosen
words without bonding with her in a frighteningly intimate manner. Through working
with the intricacies of her talk, this anonymous someone, this mystery woman
became a person, and part of that person merged with me. (p. 197)
Of course, the very description of the Other as a character is problematic. One of the factors of ELP is that the reperformance is of another living human, not a fictional creation.
This appears to frame the experience differently from that of more traditional theater. In
an earlier essay, the first author argued that What distinguishes this natural outer world
from a work of fiction partly lies in the suggestive power of its status as reality. Because
this is how it was, the performer may feel an additional responsibility (Stucky, 1993,
p. 173). Randall recounted that the person she was playing merged with her. For other
performers this merging remained elusive, as in the following student response:
I did not find that I became connected with my character in the same way as [Randall] did. I did experience the same difficulties in breathing and often found myself
wanting to use my own rate, which imposed on my character. As a theatre graduate
I too had the question of creativity in mind, but also found a great level of creativity
was needed to accomplish this task.
The experience of a disjunct between the performers behavior and that deduced from the
data helps bring into brief focus, not just the Other, but the actors own body. It invokes
the first person I: I cant breathe that way, or speak in that manner. The difference thus
marked suggests a step toward the particularto do a specified action with two different
bodies. Leder (1990) noted, citing Merleau-Ponty, that the body is never just an object in
the world but that very medium whereby our world comes into being (p. 5). Accordingly,
the ELP actor is, in effect, attempting to access an entirely new world.
Often accessing a new world presents specific challenges for the performer. Leder
(1990) approached the mastering of a new skill as a process of incorporation (p. 31). A
skill, he reasoned, is finally and fully learned when something that was extrinsic, grasped

only through rules or examples, now comes to pervade my own corporeality (p. 31). For
example, in learning to swim a person may pay attention to rules of swimming and may
even watch another person swimming, but eventually this watching must give way before
the bodys need for direct performance (p. 31). In ELP the body must move to incorporate
a body different from the performers; sometimes those differences are highly pronounced.
In recognizing those differences, the actor becomes aware of his or her own body, aware of
the typically absent body, aware of both self and other. For example, one student noted both
physical and behavioral differences that required attention in performance:
My character in our class performance was one hundred pounds heavier than I am,
a football player, which I am not, and much less articulate than I am. The more
we rehearsed, and the harder I tried to become Blain, the more connected I felt to
him. I had become a college jock watching television with a strong interest in four
pound burritos.
This practice of incorporation of an Others behaviors, like Derridas expansion of Platos text to include words not-actually-written, recalls the image of the scapegoat, but in
reverse: Whereas the scapegoat was exiled from the body politic to purge the sins of the
collective, in ELP, the Other is recognized as similar to, in some way sharing an identity
with, the self, and is welcomed.
The process of becoming another for a performance makes present the absence of ordinary experience during the times of rehearsal and performance. As Leder (1990) argued,
Incorporation thus has a temporal significance. The body masters a novel skill by incorporating its own corporeal history of hours and days spent in practice (p. 32). The ELP
actor must account, not only for the ordinary behaviors of the Other, but for those skills the
Other has developed. One student noted the specific behavior of smoking, something she
did not ordinarily do, as a skill possessed by the person she was portraying. She described
her process of incorporation this way:
I had to learn the art of smoking. When do I inhale, exhale, and how often do I inhale
all became very critical questions and ones that helped me to deal with the gaps in the
performance. All in all, this was a powerful performance experience as I learned
all the intricacies involved in human interaction and how we as both performers
and listeners can understand and communicate more effectively with each other by
studying everyday talk.
Exactly how this incorporation works, though, is difficult to explain. Leder (1990) argued
that we can experience a bodily transcendence in which the Other serves to expand our
possibilities: I come to see the forest not only through my own eyes but as the Other sees
it (p. 94). Leder called this phenomenon mutual incorporation in which we supplement
our embodiment through the Other (p. 94). But Leder cautioned that we do not become
one with the Other, rather, we put ourselves in others places and adopt their perspectives.
Whereas Leder is using the idea of putting oneself in anothers place in the usual metaphoric sense, ELP (and indeed, all of natural performance) demands a physical investment in that placement. The perspective shift entailed in this work requires flesh and blood

as well as imaginative accountability. Leders concept of mutual incorporation allows us
to get at the process. An actor takes in, incorporates, the Other, just as the transcript and
recording of the Others words ultimately surround the actor, allowing the actor to become
part of the Other. This process of mutual influence is a theme described in the following
account of a classroom performance:
Performing Pam in the classroom presentation that I did with Allan was, certainly,
a challenge. Perhaps, foremost, it was a challenge because Pams 13 year old girls
body has very little in common with my 34 year old mans body. But our bodies do
have some things in common and it was by considering what those things were that
I was finally able to understand and perform Pam. We both engage our bodies to
communicate the clustering of emotions that are bundled in our everyday performance. I found Pams conversation sinking into my skin as I worked on the performance. Phrases that she used and the way she produced them have become part of
my personal lexicon. During the rehearsal stage as I began to notice this occurring it
became easier for me to imagine how Pam would use her body as she said, re::ally
funny. As I began to use my body with Pams conversation it became easier for me
to empathize with her. It was empathy that helped me most to perform Pam. Before
I began to understand Pam with my body, I didnt feel the responsibility that is associated with performing someone elses real story. But empathy helped me feel that
responsibility. It helped me to look deeper than the surface of the conversation to
discover something closer to her soul.
So, for this performer, there is a blending, a mutual incorporation leading to something
that is described as somehow beyond the body, something closer to her soul. What he
describes as empathy arises from the incarnate. He relies on his body to engage a strip
of behavior, copy it, then feel it. This empathy becomes a body, a lived experience, a
way of kinesthetic knowing.
The work of ELP demonstrates one way performance pedagogy leads to a deeper understanding of human communication. ELP is embodied knowledge. The student/actor/scholar
learns something important about the structure of interaction, about interpersonal communication, about what it must feel like to do what another person did. In taking the virtual
breaths of another human being the student experiences an intense contact with an othera
fundamentally intercultural experience. When the performer successfully moves through
the work of ELP, there is a strict attention paid to the empirical details of anothers prior
performance. Because the historically prior performance is immutable (in the data remaining on the tape recording), you cant perform stereotypes in ELP. Ultimately this work
tells us not only about difference, but about ourselves. When working to inflect a phrase,
to breathe, or to pause as heard on the tape recording, the actors own physical apparatus
becomes apparent. This, in Leders sense, truly makes absent bodies present.
How do we explain what may be achieved in such performances? We may conclude
with Leders (1990) point that rejecting the Cartesian dualism of a mind/body split suggests the concept of a lived body, one in which the reasoning mind and the body are
not in fact opposing substances but intertwined aspects of one living organism (p. 149).
Furthermore, our body is made of the same material stuff as the rest of the universe. The

ancient Chinese concept of Chi (vital force, material force, life force) points to
an embodied unity of all things (Leder, 1990, p. 156). When the performer matches
behavior with another, he or she will be channeling the Ch i or life force in harmony
with that other. We term this the oneness of performance. When we say we are at one
with another we mean that, in some small yet fundamental way, we know by breathing
the same life force as another, the Other. And by allowing that life force, messy though
it may be, to come through us in its self-constructing and deconstructing way, we make
briefly present the absent body, creating a conversational poetics of embodiment. For Robert Hopper (1993), this procedure feeds good science, and science thereby regains some
of its poetry (p. 181).
REFERENCES
Derrida, J. (1981). Platos pharmacy. In Dissemination (B. Johnson, Trans.). Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. (Original work published 1972).
Gilbert, J.R. (1993). Inspiration and conversation: Breat(h)ing the Other. Text and Performance
Quarterly, 13, 186188.
Hopper, R. (1993). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 181183.
Hopper, R., & Stucky, N. (1986, November). Message research in the future. Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association, Chicago.
Hulme, T.E. (1924). (Romanticism and classicism). Speculations: Essays on humanism and the
philosophy of art. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Leder, D. (1990). The absent body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Randall, D. (1993). Staged replication of naturally-occurring talk: A performers perspective. Text
and Performance Quarterly, 13, 197199.
Stucky, N. (1988). Unnatural acts: Performing natural conversation. Literature in Performance,
8(2), 2839.
Stucky, N. (1993). Toward an aesthetics of natural performance. Text and Performance Quarterly,
13, 168180.
Stucky, N., & Glenn, P. (1993). Invoking the empirical muse: Conversation, performance, and
pedagogy. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 192196.
30
Ethnography as Spiritual Practice: A Change in the
Taken-for-Granted (or an Epistemological Break
with Science)1
Mara Cristina Gonzalez
Arizona State University
To meditative minds the ineffable is cryptic, inarticulate: dots, marks of secret meaning, scattered hints, to be gathered, deciphered and formed into evidence; while in
moments of insight the ineffable is a metaphor in a forgotten mother tongue. (Heschel,
1997, p. 7)
In 1951, Suzanne Langer wrote of the restriction on discourse that sets bounds to the complexity of speakable ideas (cited in Daly, 1973, p. 152). Daly responded to Langers concern that our language is a repository of faded metaphors (p. xix) by exploring the notion
that we have lost sense of the nature of metaphor. Dalys interpretation is that metaphor
is inherently a feminine linguistic dynamic, that along with other pseudo-propositions
has been cast by patriarchal religious institutions and practices into the lot of that which is
called silence. She challenged us to engage in what she called Webster Work (p. xxiii),
which I see as the creative reinterpretation and reconstruction of language use that does not
serve the purpose of expressing anything but that which has already been taken for granted
as being true. Doing such Webster Work, we may begin to once again see the colors of
Langers faded metaphors, as well as naming into being new ones. This power to name is
the power to call into being. Indigenous earth-based cultures have always practiced this
knowledge, and even today persons and buildings, dogs and automobiles are given names
that allude to a particular reality that is bestowed on that entity. From the time of naming,
all those who knowingly engage with the name (as the entities become identified with the
name) will take for granted all sorts of assumptions about the nature of its being. In that
sense, naming begins the conversation.
With that in mind, I have chosen to name the methodology, that I employ in my
researchethnographya spiritual practice. It is my assumption that both of these terms,
ethnography and spiritual practice, carry with them a heavy load of taken for granted
assumptions. Leonardo Boff, in his examination of spirituality and sex (1995), provided an
insightful view at how we might approach our look at ethnography and spiritual practice.
In the following quote, I have substituted the word ethnography for Boff s use of the word
sex to make my point:
My initial efforts to develop this approach are reflected in my work on the four seasons of ethnography (Gonzalez, 2001) and Painting my White Face Red (Gonzalez, 1997). This essay represents
progress that has been made in my contemplation and practice of the methodology.
Ethnography as spiritual practice 423

The first [approach] is to look at both termsspirituality and ethnographyas a
twofold reality with certain natural similarities and differences, then to scrutinize them for compatibility, suggesting points of contact and divergence. [This
approach] conceives of spirituality and ethnography as essentially separate phenomena as far as our experience of them is concerned. This approach relies on a certain
philosophical understanding[or] notion of reality that objectifies it as so many
self-justifying data in need of no further explanation.

The second approach tries to see spirituality and ethnography as the result of
a more profound vital process. Although in this view we may still think of reality
as consisting of a number of concrete data, we may also see it as made up of various elements that are simultaneously aspects of a single, much deeper process. This
more profound reality is always open. They are not selfexplanatory but call for an
explanation. (Boff, 1995, pp. 163164)
What Boff described, I would suggest, is the elimination of an epistemological obstacle
(Bachelard as cited in Gutting, 1989), which Gutting defined as: any concept or method
that prevents an epistemological break. Obstacles are residues from previous ways of
thinking that, whatever value they had in the past, have begun to block the path of inquiry
(p. 16).
To Bachelard, an epistemological break can occur when objects of experience are
placed under new categories that reveal properties and relations not available to ordinary
sense perception (Gutting, 1989, p. 15). Bachelard was here concerned with the natural
sciences, and my application of his terminology is perhaps naive. However, I seek to construct a new system of value and belief (Anderson, 1990, p. 208) for the methodology of
ethnography:
a new system of value and belief, created, as new systems usually are, out of
bits and pieces of old systems of value and belief, with no apparent feeling of obligation to swallow any of them whole A spirit of innovationincompatible with
absolutism. (Anderson, 1990, p. 208)
The epistemological break that I am claiming to make is that the subject of ones research
need not be objectively observable, its subjectivity preserving its empirical value. This
epistemology is rooted in an ontology that privileges spiritual reality equally with material
experience. Spiritual reality, in this ontology, pervades material experience. The implied
epistemology calls for a relationship to material experience that seeks to identify and know
this pervasiveness. It is an epistemology of subjective openness, of tentative certainty
(Gonzalez, 1994). This subjectivity is located in the experience of logos or the word, more
specifically the unconstrainable reality of spirit that can only find its way into the social
world through language. Metaphor is the preferred linguistic form, due to its nonliteral,
thereby intrinsically less constraining form for conveying meaning. Daly (1973) reminded
us that the word metaphor itself is metaphoric (as is all language) when she told us that
the Greek meta and pherein together suggest:the power of words to carry us into a
Time/Space that is after, behind, transformative of, and beyond static beingthe stasis
(p. xix).

I therefore claim that the methodology based in an epistemology and ontology that
seeks to know spirit must focus on language, on the metaphor, as that which invites us to
a form of knowing that can propel us to a form of understanding that is transformative.
Further, I claim that methodology of ethnography can allow for the consistent practice of
rigorous subjective openness and tentative certainty that seeking the spirit requires.
I have made the claim elsewhere (Gonzalez, 1994) that spirit is a neglected dimension
when we look at human experience, focusing solely on the biological, psychological, and
social. I believe this to be the case because these three areas of experience are the identifiable containers, or organizing constructions that allow us as humans to believe we are
dealing with something of reality. The absence of the definition of the spiritual as essential
to what it is to be human (in much of the literature of social science), as opposed to the
spiritual as something that humans do, indicates an emphasis on the physically or intellectually tangible as essentially human. A definition to me, is the way in which we present
to others our parameters for understanding, a sharing of the struggle of determination in
which we engage with a given phenomenon. The absence of the spirit as essential prevents the understanding of those things characteristic of human experience that can not be
apprehended (in Spanish, the verb aprender is to learn, aprendido is learned) through
physico-deductive methodologies. Methodologies therefore must be adequate enough to
allow such learning.
My definition of spirit is that it is that aspect of existence that is pervasive and One,
and that by its nature, resists organization. Organization, is that feature of existence that
provides order and predictability, and humans are inordinately, among all other creatures,
capable of willful organization, whether through language, adjustment of space, creation
of ideological systems, culture, and so on. However, spirit, as the pervasive Oneness of
existence, cannot be contained or delimited by organization. Paradoxically, as humans, we
must be confined to systems of organization, whether our physical bodies, our language
systems or conversational norms, relationships, and so forth, as ways through which we
engage in our lives. It is the sustained presence in the place of tension between the
inherent pervasive Oneness of spirit, and the reified and thereby taken-for-granted forms
of organization that is the site of mystical experience, or the unio mystica spoken of
by theologians of various religious traditions. It is from experience of this mystical place
of awareness that I believe ethnography can be transformed to provide insights into the
multiple layers of meaning that operate for us as human spirits embodied and functioning
through multiple forms of organization.
Boff (1995) reinforced the unitarian combination that would include spirit with the
mind and body, suggesting that spirituality operates within the dimension of spirit, that
dimension that has the properties of reflection, inwardness, and contemplation among
other features. Boff told us that in order to keep our equilibrium in our everyday lives, we
have to develop a certain degree of spirituality.
Spiritual practice, I offer, is the human behavior that awakens the awareness of pervasive spirit, making its presence something of which we are consciously aware, bestowing
our lives with a degree of spirituality, or tension between the taken-for-granted and the
pervasive One. This spirit, as I have suggested (Gonzalez, 1998) is the aspect of our human
nature that resists organization. It is the impetus for liberation and no, the trademark of
the mystic in everyday life (Fox, 1994). The mystics cry of no to the taken-forgranted is

based on the spirituality of experience of the tension between the pervasive One and organized life. Spirit is not something that is simply in us, but that pervades our being and
with which we can dialogue in a truly elliptical and Escherian sense. Boff (1995) offered
that this dialogue is conducted by means of contemplation, reflection, and inwardness, in
short, through the power of subjectivity (p. 165). This subjectively open awareness of
the simultaneous organized materiality and social nature of life and its pervasive spirituality is soulthat which sees the nature of our existence and experience as a whole. This
subjectivity gains its power, in turn from symbolic forms, including words:
Spirituality feeds on the vast symbolic world and is generally expressed through
symbols. We may say that to the extent that we create a symbolic universe, we shall
be spiritual, and vice versa. Without that language the spirit languishes and becomes
sterile. (Boff, 1995, p. 172)
The traditional methods of ethnography include participant observation, interviewing, note
taking and journaling, and the writing of thick, descriptive texts (i.e., Emerson, Fretz, &
Shaw, 1995; Geertz, 1973; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983; Spradley, 1980, among many
others). In breaking with traditional scientific epistemology, care must be taken if these
methods are to be truly useful as spiritual practice, the search for knowledge of the Spirit.
The traditional emphases on materiality and the initiative of logical deduction in scientific method can place demands on the practice of ethnography, remaining as residues that
hamper the use of the methods for spiritually inclusive (and inviting) learning. The resistance to that which cannot be operationalized, which is not systematically generalizable or
externally valid upon surface inspection will hamper the search and expression of spirit. It
will reflect itself in attitudes of certainty, in broad claims, rigid methodology and concrete
reports with Langers faded metaphors. I refer to these sorts of methodological emphases
as positivistic residue (Gonzalez, 1994), and they are, in fact, evidence of the sort of epistemological obstacles of which Bachelard (cited in Gutting, 1989) reminded us. Therefore,
I propose radical breaks in the practice of traditional methods used to gather data, while
all the while preserving their core activities.
This sort of methodology is highlighted by Neil Douglas-Klotz (1990), in his hermeneutic and deconstructive work on the language of prayer, informing us of the traditions of
native Middle Eastern and Hebraic mysticism:
Each statementmust be examined from at least three points of view: the intellectual, the metaphorical, and the universal (or mystical). From the first viewpoint,
we consider the face value of the word ... the literal meaning From the second
viewpoint, we consider how a statement of story presents a metaphor for our lives
From the third viewpoint, we must embrace the wordless experience to which the
living words of the mystic point, (p. 1)
Perhaps an example of how this works might aid in this preliminary presentation of the
practice.
In the early 1990s, when looking at a poster on the campus of Arizona State University,
I was struck by something very powerful. It was a poster created as part of the universitys

efforts to increase the appreciation of cultural diversity. I examined the poster as a cultural
artifact, and used the methodology of ethnography as spiritual practice. Instead of simply
reading it, recording it among the phenomena and artifacts that made up my catalogue
of acceptable campus activities and efforts, I engaged the poster in spiritual dialogue, or
the opening up to the message that is greater than the taken-for-granted organizing form
presented to me. As I gazed upon the poster, I looked at the drawing of a hand clutching
a bunch of different flowers, and the word diversity so close to the word university. The
literal interpretation was simple: We were being told we must appreciate the difference
among us, as in a beautiful bunch of flowers. The somewhat more deeply metaphoric message was more insightful to meI could see the flowers were clutched, destined to die an
unnatural death, picked for human goals. Such an interpretation could lead to questions
such as how the universitys efforts to appreciate diversity might be similar. From this
metaphoric state of awareness, I could move to the third viewpoint suggested by DouglasKlotz, the embracing of the wordless experience. Just what is this like?
I explain this methodology as being one of surrender, of practicing a disciplined and
well-developed detachment from intentional and conscious acts of interpretation, allowing for an openness to a more purely subjective, intuitive, and spiritual reading. What
makes it subjective is its location within the observer. The intuitive nature is due to its
nondeductive derivation. The spiritual based on the intentionality of connectedness to an
unnamed source or oneness, which permeates and infuses subjectivity if so allowed, leads
to intuitive insights. People are often able to have such experiences on varied and everyday
occasionsthose intuitive hunches and insights that can pop up and greet us throughout
our experience. What I am describing, however, is the intentional practice of this form of
insight as a methodology of meditation, as methodology for insight while in the midst of
observation or listening, even reading.2
When such a practice is engaged, the result is a cooperative one. By this, I mean that it
lends itself to understanding. This is differentiated from ones inner voices, which are
predominantly emotions and preferences finding expression through reflection. The subjective experience of such reflective insights is this is what T think/know/believe/see, and
so on, whereas the result of the meditative practice of ethnographic observation is this is
what I see, when I am willing to suspend my preferences and preconceived notions of who
I am, what I know, what I want, and so forth. In a sense, we are asking for a development
of observation with a sense of a bracketed ego. Because of this, ones insights may often
not be palatable socially, personally, or politically, because they are not in service to ego.
In the case of the poster, upon such meditative reflection, I was struck by the actuality of
the language, rather than the structured message. The words diversity and university were
both prominent on the poster. Opening myself to see what it revealed, I heard the insight,
di-versity is the opposite of university. I was taken aback by the power of this idea and
the many layers of insight that it offered. The whole purpose of what we call higher education began to be questioned in my mind. I was no longer in charge of my thoughtsthe
language was teaching me to see. It became a mystical experience of learning.
2
Such a form of meditative insight as method for insight while engaged in inquiry first became part
of my routine way of understanding, in the early 1980s, after many hours spent with Robert Hopper
discussing interpretations of data.

This sort of mystical experience of interpretation is part of the methodology of ethnography as spiritual practice. It is an opening to the power of metaphoric language to tell
us more than literal interpretation or even literary appreciation will allow at inspection
of symbols. Spirit, unable to be contained in linguistic or symbolic form, will inevitably
break forth if we allow ourselves to stay present long enough to notice. The experience of
discovery thereby becomes one infused with mystical experience that connects us to the
spiritual nature of our existence. The openness to a level of communication of meaning that
is not tied to the taken-for-granted allows us to play with the levels of constructed meaning possible, freeing us from the limitations of taken-forgranted, received meaning, and
opening us to the reality of multiple meanings.
I believe this is vital for us as human beings in what has been called a postmodern
existence (Anderson, 1990; Bohm, 1994; Jencks, 1992). Kenneth Gergen (1991) claimed
that we have become multiphrenic because of the multiple roles and realities which we
face each hour of each day in our postmodern existence. We are, in his opinion, all social
constructionists making our lives what they are through our ways of processing our experience. Paul Watzlawick (1984) went so far as to call our realities invented, demonstrating
the creative and intentional aspect of the process. Similar to all these views is the notion
that nothing in our experience is, in and of itself, real. At the same time, everything and
anything in our experience can be real. Reality, I believe, is at the heart of our love affair
with validity and reliability. Constructivist or constructionist approaches would tell us that
something is valid as long as persons can agree that it is, for reality is such a slippery enterprise that a simple change in perspective can cause it to alter its nature or cease to exist
altogether. Reliability, I presume, would mean that we continue to see it. It tells us of the
social nature of interpretive moves.
But the point I want to make here is related to the nihilism inherently possible in this perspective. Baudrillard (1992) told us that profuse communication and its resultant ecstasy
are aspects of the postmodern existence. In addition to the fact that we realize we are all the
master constructionists of our own realities, we are now bombarded by images and information that in a more constrained social reality were relegated to what he called a private
universe (p. 154). It is an era of hyperreality, in which:
What was projected psychologically and mentally, what used to be lived out on
earth as metaphor, as mental or metaphorical scene, is henceforth projected into reality, without any metaphor at all, into an absolute space which is also that of simulation, (p. 152)
Baudrillard (1992) called this obscene and said it puts an end to representation (p.
154). Using such methodology as I have suggested, we can open up to the words in his
discourse and see what we discover. In my reflection, the word obscene became ob-scene,
and the word obscuro, meaning dark in Spanish, came to mind. Obscuro made me think
of the English word obscure or difficult to see. The ob-scene is the hiding of the scene,
the turning out of the lights, through the transformation of all settings as contexts for all.
We remove the scene. Without context, nothing can be appropriate. Nothing can be in
its place. When the metaphors are removed in this absolute space of which Baudrillard
spoke, there can be an inherent sense of liberation for those who have had their speech

and expression, their symbolic experience, marginalized. The postmodern turn offers the
freedom to express through the absence of identifiable place. But this occurs in a paradoxically meaningless world, where words become ob-scene, without scene, without frame
(Goffman, 1974). One can not take a step without beginning somewhere, in some place.
Owens (1992) told us that there is intention in this effort, that the systems of power that
authorise(s) certain representations while blocking or prohibiting others (p. 334) are being
exposed. Representation is not transcended, or would not cease, to return to the claims of
Baudrillard. A given of the postmodern society, is, according to Walter Truett Anderson
(1990) that:our major issues involve the definition of personal roles and the fabrication
of stories that give purpose and shape to social existence (p. 108). Whereas, Owens would
claim, these were provided for us before. This awareness of our ability to construct powerful social realities that compete with the taken-for-granted and institutional realities of our
world is what I would argue is evidence of our growing awareness of our spiritual nature,
albeit an often ignorant awareness. When place is no longer taken for granted we realize
our own potential to create it. And similarly, our engagement in the study of symbolic
worlds is no longer bound by taken-for-granted realms or trajectories for interpretation.
As Gergens (1991) multiphrenics, we are inundated with messages; we shift roles endlessly to meet the interactive demands of the multiple voices that we encounter each day.
Baudrillard (1992) advised us of the obscenity of the communication ecstasy that characterizes the realities with which we are faced on a daily basis. Not knowing the scene, we
do not know how to interpret. But he also told us that a price for this elimination of the private sphere is the loss of alienation that comes from no longer being able to recognize the
Other. By existing in our private bounded worlds, we could be sure of our selves and
distinguish them from others. When all becomes part of the public screen, or as Baudrillard
suggested part of our private telematics or our remote sovereignty and ability to create,
he claimed that is the end of metaphysics (p. 154). In a sense, I believe I am claiming that
it can actually be the beginning of the mystical.
Another thing that happens when multiple voices begin to be heard is that we become
aware of the plurality of culture. Paul Ricoeur (1965) wrote:
When we discover that there are several cultures instead of just one and consequently
at the time when we acknowledge the end of a sort of cultural monopoly, be it illusory or real, we are threatened with the destruction of our own discovery. Suddenly
it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an other among
others. All meaning and every goal having disappeared, it becomes possible to wander through civilisations as if through vestiges and ruins, (p. 278)
It is these aspects of the social experience that we face as part of an increasingly postmodern existence that suggest to me the immediate need for a break with an epistemology of
mastery for the study of human interaction and culture. Culture, as the systems of representation that groups enable and maintain through routine behavior, interaction, and patterns of interpretation, is no longer a static reportable reality. David Bohm (1994), writing
of postmodern science and the postmodern world, said that we previously:assumed
that nature could be thoroughly understood and eventually brought under control by means
of the systematic development of scientific knowledge through observation, experiment,

and rational thought (p. 342). Ethnography, as a study of culture(s), functioning under the
epistemological assumptions of modern science, is no longer appropriate for the world in
which we live. We can no longer be concerned with mastery as the imperative motivator
for inquiry.
The ecstasy of mysticism is distinct from the ecstasy of postmodern obscenity from the
perspective of Baudrillard. The mystical methodology of surrender to the pervasive Oneness present in all organization transforms relativism into a cosmology of potential creativity and discovery, rather than a nihilistic place of meaninglessness and nonaccountability.
Stories become full of meaning, as meaning is seen as the enterprise in which we, as human
spirits are primarily engaged. And as such, ethnography becomes richer, more dynamic,
and not tied to description, but morphogenic discovery.
With the so-called enlightenment and the resulting transformation of knowing to the
application of the scientific method, spirit disappeared from conscious awareness. The
strict scientific form of thinking is a hard form of thinkinginflexible. Horkheimer and
Adorno (1994) claimed that, The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter
myths is ultimately selfdestructive (p. 45).
I believe we are seeing this self-destruction with the light of the postmodern experience.
In the postmodern era, I believe we are being invited to open our conscious minds to the
real presence of spirit, to return the mystical power of language and its ways of production, to come to know these through a radically different way of studying culture. In the
widespread meaninglessness of a world in which everything and anything can have its own
meaning at a moments whim, there is a need for something that can provide a sense of
truth. However, our experience with the enlightenment and its rational epistemology, and
the spread of scientific modes of thinking to support it, have left the individual living in a
postmodern society often handicapped in the search for a truth. As Horkheimer and Adorno
(1994) reflected: The individuality that learned order and subordination in the subjection
of the world, soon wholly equated truth with the regulative thought without whose fixed
distinctions universal truth cannot exist (p. 48).
The idea that fixed distinctions must accompany the existence of truth is an epistemological obstacle that must be transcended in order to reach an experience of universal
truth in which spirit plays a part. But first, we must remove the obstacle we face with the
word universal, itself plagued with epistemological baggage that implies the theoretical
possibility of generalizability according to fixed distinctions (to borrow the language of
Horkheimer and Adorno) of phenomena. If we look at the word universal, we see that it
is much like the word uni-versity. A uni-verse and uni-versity are places in which there is
one verse or one way of expressing something. It is linked with language. However, the
notion of oneness itself can get caught up in the obstacle of the assumed goal of mastery
inherentan example of scientific residue.
Gregory Bateson believed the greatest epistemological fallacy of the Western world
was to see the self or I as separate from others, rather than as part of an interlocking,
co-orienting processes (Macy, 1992). It is this same epistemological fallacy that creates an
obstacle when we consider the possibility of a universal truth. A uni-versal truth from an
epistemology of spiritual engagement is one in which uni means one, as in the unbroken
wholeness (Bohm, 1994) of the scientific universe. It is the one word of spirit, the

unbroken, unorganized, uncategorized Spirit. Macy (1994) referred to this as a form of
non-dualistic spirituality (p. 297).
In ethnography as a spiritual practice, it is this universal truth of the pervasive One,
present within the organization of culture that we seek. As we swim in a sea of multiple
interpretations, what do we find as we engage spiritually with the field? With our subjectivity unfettered and open to experience that does not fit into previously defined categories,
what do we find in the other? As we report with tentative certainty, our experience of
sharing our knowledge can become transformed from one of masterful authority to one of
spiritual engagement with the universal wholeness of what it is to be a human, social being.
And the iterations continue.
In their groundbreaking work, Womens Ways of Knowing, Blenky, Clinchy, Goldberger,
and Tarule (1986) shared with the academic world their concern about the lack of personal
involvement in the pursuit of knowledge (p. 124). The solution to this was to seek a form
of knowledge that went beyond a procedural knowledge that is tilted toward accommodation to the shape of the object rather than assimilation of the object to the shape of
the knowers mind (p. 123). The shape of this mind, when considered outside of the realm
of science, as we have known it, is without limits.
The methodology that is suggested by this epistemological break has several characteristics. First, it is pervasive, reflecting the nature of spirit itself. What this implies is that it
involves a discipline in ones style of living, where the enterprise of learning is no longer
ones job or professional career, but ones lifes work (Fox, 1994). It becomes the purpose
for ones life. Second, it is organic, or natural, finding its order from the signs and signals
provided in ones environment. This requires a development of attention to the small details
of ones everyday contexts, rather than simply to ones ideas, intentions, or desires. Third,
the methodology is often cyclic, reflecting the inherently forgiving nature of the spiritual
world, in which opportunities arise repeatedly, with only ones stubborn will interfering
(i.e., but I wanted to do it this way). A cyclic methodology lets go of attachments to plans
that impede knowledge as it is emerging. Horkheimer and Adorno (1994) reminded us that
with the enlightenment and notions of mastery came the idea that, the process is always
decided from the start (p. 48).
Fourth, a methodology for ethnography as spiritual practice will include meditation,
reflection, and introspection as regular practices. This would involve traditional spiritual
meditative practices, guided journaling, and honest reflection and introspection.
Abraham Heschel (1997) provided us with the wisdom for the fifth and sixth characteristics of this methodology. Fifth, it would be a methodology of awe:
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are
what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supremewhat we
cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. (p. 3)
We do this when we look at something or someone we have taken for granted as knowing and suspend this knowledge, allowing the mystical aspects of their being to speak to
us, as much as when something catches us off-guard and does the same. Sixth, it is one of
humility, or the awareness of the nature of that upon which we gaze. Heschel told us, the

right of interpretation is given only to one who covers his face (p. 6). Tentative certainty
is a reflection of this characteristic.
Seventh, this methodology would be integral. The works of Ken Wilber (1995; 1997)
have demonstrated this openness to the wisdom of knowledge from all sources, seeking
the oneness in wisdom and awareness that surfaces if the seeker maintains the subjective
openness that I have earlier mentioned. Eighth, it is honest. There is no need to feign. One
reports only what one has experienced, and is forthright about the source of ones insight
or interpretations. The practices of reflection and introspection are based on the honest
seeking, and provide the answers for how to frame ones eventual texts.
Ninth, it is relational. As a reflection of the essential wholeness, the notion of the lone
ethnographer in a tent vanishes. Even in remote sites, traditional methods change, as in the
practice of writing letters to significant others about ones field experiences, and allowing
these letters to stand as field notes that do not feign objectivity, but honor the perspective always present in our gaze. And tenth, the methodology is one that honors the creative
power of images and word. Poetry, metaphors, stories and visual images are recorded and
used as both record and text.
The epistemological break suggested is more than a plea from a standpoint epistemologist begging to be heard among others. It is a call to transform the nature of what is
understood when one hears the word, university, and what is considered scholarship.
The scientist in the true spiritual sense of the word, is one who seeks to understand. The
distortion of the metaphor through the institutionalization of methodology to support an
epistemology of mastery maintains the occult nature of spirit from the world of that which
is considered knowledge. To engage in ethnography as spiritual practice is but a step along
the path that leads to the reinvention of work (Fox, 1994) in the academy as we see it. It is
not an attack on what we have gained through the discoveries of science as it took form,
but a call to consciencitization, the bringing of consciousness, to the academy about the
wholeness of the uni-verse, and the illusion of a uni-versity. Using the methodology of
mystical understanding, consciencitization itself is the opening of science in our minds.
The opening of science to its spiritual form.
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31
The Tao and Narrative
Mary Helen Brown
Auburn University
I was walking by a river one day and came across two great teachers having a conversation about life. One was an old man with a long white beard; the other was a youngish fellow with the slightest bit of a Texas accent. Both had a twinkle in their eyes.
The old man said: He who stands on tiptoe doesnt stand firm. He who rushes ahead
doesnt go far. He who tries to shine dims his own light.1
The younger man agreed, adding: Just like the guy whos looking for his keys under
the street light. When you ask if thats where he lost them, he says, No, but this is
where I can see.2
Precisely, the old man laughs.
They talk for a while longer and the old man says, The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world.
Precisely, the younger man responds, its like roller skating on clouds.
Attempting to examine the Tao Te Ching as narrative may be like roller-skating on clouds.
The surface may be puffy and white, flat and slate colored, or boiling with thunderheads. The crucial variable, however, is its underlying structure, and to be successful, one
must take-for-granted that it will hold long enough to get across. Above all, one should
never look down or back. On the other hand, roller skating on clouds may be completely
impossible and not to be attempted at all, but wheres the fun or challenge in that?
Robert Hopper was always one to roller skate on clouds, so I also take the challenge and
try what may prove impossible, but I do not look down or back. The Tao Te Ching is one
of the most translated texts in the history of the world. Three major reasons at least partially account for its popularity. First, the Tao Te Ching is a basic source book for religious
and philosophical Taoism and also works as the underpinning for all Chinese religion.
Second, the Tao Te Ching is brief, encompassing about 5,000 words. Along this line, scholars readily admit that commentaries on the Tao Te Ching (including this one) are usually
more lengthy than the Tao Te Ching itself. Third, and most important to this chapter is its
deceptive simplicity (Mair, 1990).
Even so, the relationship of the Tao Te Ching to religion and meaning remains a mystery
(Bell, 1993). Its deceptive simplicity houses a complex set of adages with seemingly
Quotations by the older man and heading come from the Tao Te Ching (Mitchell, 1988). This
quotation can be found in Chapter 24.
2
Selections from Robert Hopper, the younger man, come from my class notes (19791982). Yes, I
still have them.
1

contradictory morals that result in an ambiguity that leads to limitless interpretations (Wu,
1993). Thus, the Tao Te Ching should never be considered scriptural in the Western sense;
centuries of interpretations make it impossible to judge the Tao Te Ching as the book of
knowledge (Sivin, 1978). Indeed, the Tao Te was not considered a ching, or sacred text,
until well after it was written (Chen, 1989).
One way to examine the Tao would be through a narrative lens. Richard Harvey Brown
(1994) contended that the use of a narrative examination provides rich new ways for individuals to think about and experience fields such as literature, philosophy, and even astronomy. This approach has been echoed by many other scholars interested in pursuing the
truth, (Boje, 1995; Borneman, 1996; Lewin, 1994; Phillips, 1995; Richardson, 1990;
Schiffrin, 1996; Templeton & Groce, 1990) and, thus, narrative seems an appropriate way
to approach the Tao.
For example, Templeton and Groce (1990) argued that such an approach respects the
complicated processes through which people understand the world and illuminates the
ways in which mistaking interpretation for final, whole truth has real and often detrimental
effects (p. 41). Along these lines, Czarniawska (1997) pointed out that:the notion of
narrative knowledge comes close to the metaphor of the world-as-text; it alerts us to the
ways in which the stories that rule our lives and our societies are constructed (p. 5). Moreover, Brown (1987; 1989) indicated that narratives provide a way for individuals to create
and interpret the worlds around them and that these narratives help provide individuals
with the power to define these worlds. Thus, taking a narrative approach provides a powerful base from which to launch an analysis of cryptic source material (Borneman, 1996). So,
this chapter argues that the characteristics of the Tao Te Ching with its morals imbedded in
a structured framework make it akin to modern narratives in its ability to transmit meaning
to a variety of people despite its many contradictions and uncertainties.
For example, even the authorship of the Tao Te Ching is in question. The Tao Te Ching
is generally credited to Lao Tzu, a librarian who may have lived about the same time as
Confucius (Mitchell, 1988). However, some scholars belie
ve that it was written by
Laoists who were inspired by Lao Tzus ideas (Chung, 1997). Other scholars believe that
the Tao Te Ching is comprised of familiar sayings that were collected in this slim volume
(LaFargue, 1994; Waley, 1958).
The Tao Te Ching continues to fascinate humankind despite the complexities associated
with understanding it. It has been examined in hundreds of ways beyond the scope of this
essay. Some of these areas would include Taoism as a religion versus a philosophy, mysticism and the Tao Te Ching, exercise regimens originating in studies of the Tao Te Ching,
Taoism as a comparative religion, the political and leadership implications housed in the
Tao Te Ching, and so on.
Instead, this chapter uses narrative to look at the Tao Te Ching by focusing on but
a few of the characteristics shared by the Tao Te Ching and narrative. The chapter also
examines how these two simple, yet complex forms help us move toward understanding
of the human experience. To do this, the chapter explores how knowledge of the narrative
characteristics of the Tao Te Ching can focus a reading of the text by: (a) considering both
as deriving from the oral tradition to provide a gateway to understanding; (b) discussing
the inadequacy of words to completely capture meaning and the inherent ambiguity and
The tao and narrative 435

the possibility of multiple interpretations that may arise from this inadequacy; (c) exploring the use of these limited forms to provide guidelines for living that are encapsulated in
these sources; and (d) defining wu wei as a lifestyle that is comparable to the concept of
homo narrans, so that the natural course of humans is as storytellers; therefore, narrators
and their narratives begin to merge.
THE GATEWAY TO ALL UNDERSTANDING
Many narratives are originally transmitted orally and through time (Layoun, 1996). Similarly, despite questions about its authorship, the Tao Te Ching is considered to spring from
an oral tradition (Mair, 1990). Its origins have even become a part of this tradition. One
story about the Tao Te Chings origin notes that after many years, Lao Tzu decided to leave
his homeland. At the frontiers border, he encountered a guard who recognized Lao Tzu as
the Old Master. The guard asked Lao Tzu for guidance before he left the country. Lao
Tzu then wrote the Tao Te Ching as a guidebook for living and presented it to the guard.
No hard evidence exists to prove this story, yet it and the Tao Te Ching exist. In the
same way, narrative exists as the proof that something happened. Narratives are useful as
evidence because they appear in a form that makes the truth of the narrative to be apparent
(Martin, 1982). In the course of day-to-day conversation, we present narratives (stories) as
our evidence that our interpretations are correct and as our means to help others understand
whatever phenomenon or event we are attempting to describe (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, &
Sitkin, 1983).
Zhang Longxi (1985) pointed out that the Chinese character for Tao has several meanings. The most often cited meaning for the term Tao is way or gateway. However, two
other meanings for Tao may possibly be at work herethinking and speaking. Thus,
Longxi argued, Lao Tzu may be using these meanings interchangeably and as puns, so
that the way becomes speaking, speaking becomes thinking, thinking becomes the way,
or some other combination. Extending this notion, then, to narrative, we may find that the
event becomes the interpretation, the interpretation becomes the story, the story becomes
the event, and so on. This pattern could be continued to the point where: The world
that appears in a fictional narrative is therefore not really fictional at all (Phillips, 1995,
p. 634).
On a related theme, Catherine Bell (1993) contended that Lao Tzu was attempting to
present us with the truer reality within the real (p. 185). She posited that this may be a
universal quest and that we are continually attempting to create knowledge in our social
interactions. Lao Tzu used framing to help guide us on this quest (LaFargue, 1994). His
framing devices form the structure through which seemingly contradictory notions are
blended and brought together harmoniously (Waley, 1958). This capability, again, is not
unlike that of narrative for, as Schiffrin (1996) posited, our use of narrative has consequences for the way we construct our social relationships within those worlds (p. 196).
The Tao Te Ching consists of brief chapters of sayings that are seen as spiritual truths
(Waley, 1958). Lao Tzu used framing to work them into a pattern that is consistent, familiar, and recognizable even when the ideas themselves seem disparate. Some of the framing
devices noted by LaFargue (1994) include mirroring passages at the beginning and end of
a chapter, repeating material in a thematic fashion to tie elements together, rhyming, and

making self-contained points in a succinct and striking fashion. In short, Waley and LaFargue both pointed out that the Tao Te Ching would lose much of its ability to reach people
if these framing devices were not present. The relevance of the Tao Te Ching to humanity
through the centuries might, therefore, be lessened.
Similarly, the form a story or narrative takes plays an important role in how well it
transmits meaning. Fisher (1985a) pointed to narrative probability as an important element
in whether a story is received and how well it is interpreted. At least a part of a narratives
probability rests in its structural framing (Weick, 1995). We expect that a story will present
a sequence of events in a familiar, at least somewhat, predictable form (Jefferson, 1978). A
well-told story generally is framed by a preface that tells us why we should pay attention to
the story and a conclusion that generally gives us a moral or some statement about why the
story is relevant (Goodwin, 1984). In between, comes a recounting that presents the details
of the event (McLaughlin, 1984). Without proper telling, a narrative loses much of its
power to facilitate understanding (Ellis & Bochner, 1992; Weick & Browning, 1986).
Thus, it may be best to look at the Tao and narratives as a means to understanding rather
than to focus on them and the endpoint. Both may be best understood as conduits with
multiple outcomes. In this way, we focus on the appropriateness of the interpretation, for
an individual, as pathway rather than paths end.
FOR LACK OF A BETTER NAME, I CALL IT THE TAO3
Even when presented in the most familiar of forms, true understanding of both the Tao Te
Ching and narratives is restricted by the limitations of language. As Spiegelberg (1993)
noted, Lao Tzu created a book that focuses on expressing how inexpressible the Tao is. In
other words, Spiegelberg wrote, Lao Tzu was showing what Tao could be called if one
wished to explain it, though it is better not to do so (p. 203). Fung Yu-Lan (1969) agreed
that Lao Tzu was trying to describe the indescribable. He continued Spiegelbergs point by
explaining that Lao Tzu had to designate the concept Tao because writing about it required
a name. Thus, the Tao had to have a name even though the name is completely inadequate
to capture real meaning.
This theme, that language is incapable of transmitting the deeper reality of life, is carried throughout the Tao Te Ching. For example, Lao Tzu wrote in chapter 56, Those who
know dont talk. Those who talk dont know.
In the same way, stories are limited by language. Karl Weick (1995) observed that:
When people put their lives into narrative form, the resulting stories do not duplicate the
experience. The experience is filtered. Stories are inventions rather than discoveries (p.
128). Weick was pointing out that it is impossible for stories to simply re-create an event or
experience. The event or experience is filtered through the way narrators edit their tales
and through the language they choose. Paraphrasing Lao Tzu as Yu-Lan did might result in
the following: As long as Im telling this story, I might as well tell it this way.
In this chapter, Tao Te Ching refers to the book; Tao and Te refer to the concepts.

The limitations of language lead to ambiguity in interpretations of both the Tao Te Ching
and narratives. This ambiguity raises the possibility of multiple interpretations (Eisenberg,
Murphy, & Andrews, 1998; Meyer, 1995; 1997). For example, the Tao Te Ching has been
viewed as many things, including a simple guidebook for living, a mystical force, a set of
fables, and a political manifesto to name a few. In the same way, a story about a meeting
to restructure an organization might be interpreted as a promise of better times to come,
bureaucratic finagling, a threat to employment, or a host of other possibilities (Gabiel,
1995; Ledwell-Brown & Bias, 1994).
Even when the language used is as specific as possible, it is limited by its very nature.
The responses to a story of Well, you had to be there, or It was funny at the time,
highlight the inadequacy of language to completely capture an event. In fact, Waley (1958)
explained that attempts to understand the Tao Te Ching as objective or absolute resource
result from a lack of imagination. As such, it might be argued that the very nature of the
Tao Te Ching and, perhaps narrative, rests in ambiguity, giving us a variety of ways to reach
understanding.
THE MORE YOU KNOW, THE LESS YOU UNDERSTAND
Even though, because of the limitations of language, the Tao Te Ching and narrative cannot express reality directly, they both act to provide us with guidelines for living. Win-Tsit
Chan (1963) noted that about 80% of the Tao Te Ching is devoted to how the Tao works in
the world and as a source book on the proper way to live. In fact, some of Lao Tzus followers, most notably Chuang Tzu, use the communicative form of specific stories to transmit
the principles of the Tao Te Ching more clearly (LaFargue, 1994). The Chuang-Tzu consists
of approximately 30 chapters (depending on the translation) that present a blend of stories
and fables that illustrate Lao Tzus major principles (Hendricks, 1989). As such, much of
the information found in the Tao Te Ching can serve as morals for a variety of stories. These
morals, then, are at the same time guidelines and narrative building blocks.
Chen Ku-ying (1977) remarked that the principles housed in the Tao Te Ching are obvious and applicable even in the modern world. In fact, the Te in Tao Te Ching can be generally defined as virtues or desirable ways to behave in line with the Tao. In other words, Te
relates to the way in which the Tao should be made manifest in the physical world. Therefore, the Tao and Te can be considered to be a set of self-contained principles for living
that provides a pattern through which humans can model their behavior. The Tao Te Ching
takes a holistic approach to these principles, asking us not only to place its observations
into apparent situations, but also to observe how context affects the apparent.
For example, many of the principles in the Tao Te Ching reflect Lao Tzus interest in
circularity. A modern way to express this notion might be a combination of what goes
around, comes around and its always darkest before the dawn. In many cases, Lao
Tzu pointed out that a bad situation, for instance, contains the potential for good, whereas
a fortunate situation may be but a prelude to disaster. Many contemporary stories reflect
the principle of circularity. Examples might include rags to riches stories or fall from
grace stories.
Thus, in current times, stories and their morals continue to serve as guidelines for living
For example, when individuals face a new situation, they try to remember stories about

similar circumstances that might provide guidelines for how they should behave (Fine,
1984; Meyer, 1997). Similarly, stories can provide models of behavior that tell a great deal
about how individuals believe experiences reflect their values (Rappaport, 1993; Shaw,
1997; Tommerup, 1990). Consider the following story as an example of the value given to
a hopeless situation turned positive:
When he first came here, he was in a wheelchair and could barely take care of himself. Nobody thought hed last very long. And he was so blue. Hed just about give
out. But, some of us decided that he was too sweet to just sit there all day, so we
began to work with him. And, now hes gotten some nutrition in him and some better
care, you know. And he began to perk up and now hes everybodys favorite. He gets
up every morning and helps deliver the mail and hes always visiting the others. Hes
just full of energy. It just shows what can happen.
This contemporary story illustrates Lao Tzus principle of circularity by showing the
potential for good to emerge out of what seemed to be a hopeless situation.
Even so, both the Tao Te Ching and stories would be of little value if they were not
judged to be relevant. Fisher (1984; 1985b) called this narrative fidelity, the extent to which
the story rings true. Norrick (1977) agreed, pointing out that a story is tellable if the
narrator can defend it as relevant (p. 217). In terms of the Tao Te Ching, Chen Ku-ying
(1977) claimed that it would be little more than an intellectual abstraction if it could not
be placed in context. For instance, if we can understand the principle of circularity as outlined by Lao Tzu, we should be able to realize the potential for good in what seems to be a
bleak context and perhaps avoid or at least lessen the potential for disaster that lurks within
even the most prosperous of times.
SEE THE WORLD AS YOURSELF
Lao Tzu believed that a key to being at one with the Tao is to practice wu-wei (Link,
1969). Wu-wei can be translated in a variety of ways; however, the most common translations are that wu-wei is a state of having no activity (Yu-Lan, 1969), doing not-doing
(Mitchell, 1988), or nonaction (Ku-ying, 1977). Even so, these and other scholars are
quick to point out that Lao Tzus insistence that wu-wei is critical to successful living does
not mean that Lao Tzu believed the secret to life is to sit passively and do nothing.
Instead, Lao Tzu was saying that it is most important to let events follow their own way
naturally (Mair, 1990). As Ku-ying (1977) contended, wuwei: means waiting patiently
for the course of natural development to bring the problem and the solution to light without
initiating elaborate measures to deal with a non-existent difficulty (p. 29). When individuals do act, they should do so naturally and spontaneously. Arbitrary, artificial, or forced
behaviors have no place in Lao Tzus conception of the Tao (Yu-Lan, 1969).
For humans, few things are more natural than telling stories. Indeed, Fisher (1984)
defined humans as homo narrans, natural storytellers. We tell stories from a very young
age and tell them readily throughout our lives. Stories are our most natural way to order
our experiences and to make sense of them (Lewin, 1994; Weick, 1995). Storytelling, then,

is not an activity that is forced, artificial, or arbitrary. When it is, the stories dont work.
Instead, they work best when they reflect the spirit of wu-wei and are spontaneous and
natural. Thus, without overt effort, storytelling performs many functions that guide our
day-to-day living, tell us what to value, and lead us to our Te.
This idea relates back to the Tao Te Ching. Another element related to wu-wei is that,
in a natural state, an observer becomes one with the phenomena under observation (Fu,
1992). Hence, all things are interlocked, interdependent, and equal. This approach implies
that a narrator is one with the narrative being told. In fact, the traditional title of the Tao Te
Ching is the Lao Tzu (Chen, 1989). The interchangeable nature of the author and the book
exemplifies the notion that in Chinese philosophy the author is the authoritative text
(Longxi, 1985). Thus, Lao Tzu, the writer, becomes Lao Tzu, the text. Extending this idea
we might find that humans as homo narrans will merge with the narratives they tell.
Earlier it was noted that an event may become an interpretation, the interpretation may
become the story, and the story may become the event. Carrying out this point through the
philosophy of wu-wei adds the narrator to the mix. In this way, viewing narrative through
the Tao Te Ching would lead to the conclusion that narrators, events, interpretations, and
narratives are interlocked naturally in a way so that while one exists, all exist.
IF YOU WANT TO BE IN ACCORD WITH THE TAO, JUST DO YOUR
JOB, THEN LET GO
The similarities between the Tao and narrative lead us to, for the purposes of this essay, a
brief research agenda. First, future research might focus on the role of the Tao/narrative
as a pathway to understanding. In this way, research might focus on elements that make
a particular pathway clear or cluttered, attractive or unattractive. Also, along these lines,
research could examine the characteristics that make appropriate interpretations possible.
The key here rests in the notion that interpretations are appropriate on an individual basis
rather than on a global right or wrong.
A second line of research might explore the role of ambiguity in the Tao/narrative. In
this way, research might examine whether individuals find ambiguity to be helpful or not
helpful as they develop their interpretations. Similarly, research might determine that the
nature of ambiguity is entirely contextual. That is, what is ambiguous in one situation to
one individual may be perfectly clear to another person in another situation. Determining
how different persons work with ambiguity might also prove promising.
A third general area of research would focus on the naturalness of these pathways.
Research, for example, could look at the blending of narrator and narrative to see how a
particular story affects its narrator and to see how a narrator affects a particular story. Here,
too, research might focus on the effort required to tell a good story. The Tao would seem
to indicate that the best stories are those that are spontaneous rather than forced, natural
rather than artificial. Therefore, the notion of wu-wei might provide further insight into the
telling of a tale.
In short, the Tao and narrative offer a wide variety of possible interpretations and possibilities. It may be time now to let go of this analysis and move on to examining them.

EXPRESS YOURSELF COMPLETELY, THEN KEEP QUIET
... I listened to the two great teachers for quite a while. Finally, I interject, I dont
think I understand. I guess you had to be there.
Precisely, they say in unison.
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32
Conversational Enslavement in The Truman Show
Kent G.Drummond
University of Wyoming
Processing the TFG is like examining a mosaic. Imagine yourself standing in the
ruins of Pompeii, examining an ancient wall that has many tiles fastened to it.
There are many colors of tile, and there seem to be patterns of color. There are also,
presumably due to the great age of the work, many tiles missing.
Robert Hopper (1981a, p. 229)
In an award-winning article written over 25 years ago, this is how Robert Hopper (198 la)
described the process of trying to illuminate taken-for-granteds (TFGs). Together with its
companion piece (Hopper, 1981b), these articles make the discomforting observationto
the communication researcher, at leastthat much of face to face interaction is finally
incomplete, ambiguous and unknowable.
Interlocutors derive a great deal of necessary play from such ambiguity, but the
researcher is thrown into a quandary. To return to the earlier metaphor, when so many tiles
are missing, what can be said, conclusively, about the mosaic? Small wonder, then, that
Hopper ended his article with a very different metaphor: a can of worms.
Yet, as Hopper concluded, a can of worms works quite nicely as bait. In the spirit of that
sentiment, the present essay applies several properties of the TFG to a contemporary Hollywood film, in order to explain that films dramatic pull over the audience. Specifically, The
Truman Show is described as the interplay of two radically different taken-for-granteds,
whose collision fuels the films narrative trajectory, thus maintaining dramatic interest.
BACKGROUND
The Truman Show is a 1998 feature film directed by Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock;
Dead Poets Society) and starring Jim Carrey (Dumb and Dumber; Liar, Liar). Carrey plays
Truman Burbank, the benighted star of a 24hour-a-day documentary soap opera called The
Truman Show. Every moment of Trumans life is broadcast to a worldwide audience of
millions, although Truman himself is unaware that anyone is watching.
The island community on which Truman livesSeahavenis, in the reality of the film,
an elaborate, made-for-television set populated with thousands of hidden cameras. The
ocean surrounding Seahaven is actually a huge tank containing 650 million gallons of synthetic salt water. The sky is a cyclorama made of a polymer fabric where the sun rises and
sets on cue. So elaborate is the set and so complicated its camera system that the control
room is situated 221 stories above Seahaven, in what passes for the moon.
Even more startling than the scale of the set is the conspiracy maintained by a cast of
hundreds. For everyone on the set is a paid actor, including Trumans wife, his mother,
and his best friend, and anyone else he might have occasion to encounter during his tightly
Conversational enslavement in the truman show 445

controlled day. Under the watchful eye of Christof, the shows creator and director, cast
members follow stage directions and story lines so seamlessly that Truman has never
guessed his world is anything but real. On the two occasions when prominent actors did
threaten to reveal the shows conspiracy to Trumanthe unexpected return of his drowned
father (posing as an extra), and the spontaneous outburst of an attractive young woman
named Sylviaan omnipresent security force intervened, leaving Truman momentarily
confused, but still ignorant.
Also in the film are certain audience members, shown watching the show from their
locales around the world. In Germany, two older sisters sit on a sofa clutching a Truman
pillow, transfixed by the show. In New York, a Cheersstyle bar plays Truman nonstop, as
customers provide running commentary. And in Taiwan, a family gathers to eat dinner
while watching the show.
Because The Truman Show runs 24 hours a day, there is no time for commercial breaks.
The solution, then, is to incorporate product ads into the show itself through a series of
product placements, usually engineered by Trumans wife. By prominently displaying
brand-name housewares, appliances, food items, and clothing during her conversations
with Truman, she generates enough advertising revenue to offset the shows astronomical
expenses. In addition, she tries desperately to seduce Truman so that the birth of their first
child will coincide with Sweeps Week 9 months later.
HOW TFGs WORK IN THE TRUMAN SHOW
The Truman Show is an extremely clever film, chock-full of implications for communicators acting and watching in a postmodern world. Blurred distinctions between real and
fake, between scripted and spontaneous, between actors and audienceall would prove
rich fodder for the communication analyst. Yet a discussion of these distinctions by themselves proves incomplete in explaining the vast audience appeal of either the television
show or the movie.
An examination of the central TFGs in the film may yield exactly that, however. As
Hopper (198 la) noted, Knowing the prepositional content of one TFG tells us little about
the process of taking for granted, but it may help us to understand a particular situation
(p. 230).
Indeed, the first thing that strikes the viewer about TFGs in The Truman Show is that
they exist on two levels: the micro and the macro. At the micro level are the thousands of
everyday interactions one performs with another, such as this exchange Truman has with
his neighbor every morning:
Spencer:
Truman:
Morning, Truman.
Morning, Spencer. And in case I dont see you, good afternoon,
good evening and good night.
Here, Truman and his neighbor exchange a greeting that some conversation analysts would
term an adjacency pair. Truman takes the exchange a step further by offering the first portions of three more adjacency pairs: one for the afternoon, one for the evening, and one for
the night. In so doing, he effectively closes down the day before it has begun.

Yet it is precisely this type of hyper-ritualistic, telescopic behavior on Trumans part that
gives great comfort to the shows director, leading actors, and advertisers: it means that
Truman is theirs for yet another day, and that the game is still on.
And the game is the fact that there are two TFGs at the macro, ontological level. One
is the TFG on the part of everyone on The Truman Show but Truman that This is fiction. And the other is the TFG on the part of Truman himself that This is real life. As
the movie begins, these two mutually exclusive TFGs coexist peacefully, but only because
Truman is unaware of that a TFG other than his own exists. However, as the film progresses, Trumanan explorer by naturebecomes increasingly aware that maybe Im
being set up for something. The movie The Truman Show, then, is not so much the story of
his attempted escape from Seahaven (as touted by the movies trailers and shooting script)
as it is Trumans dawning awareness that he and the rest of the world are operating on the
basis of two radically different ontological assumptions. How these two TFGs get revealed
and reconciled is the force behind the films narrative trajectory. More than anything else, it
explains why the audience keeps watching the show and the movie: Quite simply, we want
to see when the game is up.
THE THREE-PHASE PROCESS
Of course, the game is not up all at once, nor is it up very soon; that would make for a
short and uninteresting film. Rather, the game takes its time to unravel. But by tracking the
alignment of micro TFGs at various points in the film, it is possible to determine the state
of alignment of the two macro TFGs. This analysis suggests three phases of interaction at
the micro level. The first is interactional enslavement, followed by incipient awareness,
and concluding with liberation.
Phase I: Interactional Enslavement
Early on in the film, cameras follow Truman through an ordinary daywhich turns out to
be the same, day after day. Typical is this exchange between Truman and Tyrone, the owner
of an Italian deli.
Tyrone:
Truman:
Tyrone:
Truman:
Tyrone:
Truman:
Hows it going, Truman?

Not bad. I just won the State Lottery.
Good. Good.
Tyrone, what if I said I didnt want meatball today?
Id ask for identification. ((hands Truman a meatball sandwich)) See you
tomorrow, Truman.
You can count on it.
Here, Truman participates in a typical service encounter, one that he engages in daily.
But there may be attempts at play. In response to Hows it going, Truman delivers in a
deadpan voice Not bad. I just won the State Lottery. But this marked response gets no
uptake. Rather, Tyrone answers with Good. Good, which is fitted neither to Trumans
extraordinary news (if it were true) nor his attempt at play (it is not).

Then Truman asks a question: What if I said I didnt want meatball today? The question is really a metacommunication, a commentary on the daily ritual of always ordering
and eating the same thing. Tyrones response, Id ask for identification, suggests that
Truman wouldnt be Truman if he deviated from this pattern, and that someone would be
monitoring his behavior if he did. The encounter ends with a fairly typical closing, although
Trumans You can count on it, performed ironically, suggests a self-consciousness about
the endlessly repetitive nature of such encounters.
Like the exchange of greetings with his neighbor every morning, this interaction is
highly routine but somewhat marked. Truman takes the right turn in the right slot, but his
speech is restless, pushing at the borders. In a schoolroom flashback, we are shown that
Truman wanted to be an explorer, only to be rebuffed by a teacher who told him Theres
nothing left to explore. But in conversation, Truman can explore at the micro level: What
would happen if?
At this point, all of Trumans interlocutors are engaged in interactional enslavement. It
behooves them to discourage Trumans exploration, even at the micro level, for too much
is riding on a real discovery: the loss of advertising revenue, the loss of their jobs, the
end of the show. Each has an array of interactional devices at hand to encourage glossing
and discourage examination. Spencer, the next-door neighbor who lives alone, empties a
large barrel of garbage every morning, even though it is highly unlikely that a single person could generate that much garbage in a single day. Similarly, the deli manager artfully
brushes off Trumans commentary on the banality of their daily interaction. His let-it-pass
is rewarded, as Truman assures him that he can count on seeing him tomorrow. A pair of
elderly twins always bump into Truman on his way to work. And at the insurance agency
where Truman works, coworkers continually stop by to warn him of the dangers of travel,
particularly over water.
Phase II: Incipient Awareness
Due to a series of technical and interactional glitches, Truman becomes increasingly restless, impatientand suspicious. A light falls from the cyclorama sky, and Trumans best
friend must convince him that it fell off a jetliner flying overhead. Scanning his radio while
driving to work, Truman happens upon the frequency that tracks his movements: He overhears two male voices announcing his exact location. Too many things dont fit; Trumans
dawning awareness that Im being set up for something is displayed in increasingly tense
scenes with his wife, Meryl, a surgical nurse. Note this scene from the screenplay:
Truman:
Meryl:
Truman:
Meryl:
Truman:
How did it go today?

A man tripped and fell on a chainsaw.
We got three of his fingers back on. ((Disappointed at seeing his golf
clubs)) I was hoping we could have a special evening!
I wont be late.
Did something happen today?
What COULD happen?

In this exchange, Truman shows increasing awareness that the world is set up in such a
way as to thwart any attempts he makes at freedom. Meryls brief description of her day
at work, which one might expect would provoke a response of sympathy or horror, gets
nothing. Instead, Truman looks forward to hitting golf balls. When Meryl asks if something
happened, Trumans answerWhat COULD happen?shows that he feels increasingly
fenced in, even at a micro level. In a sense, the interactional enslavement has been too well
performed.
Other incidents take place to heighten Trumans discomfort. Glancing through his wedding album, he discovers that Meryl has her fingers crossed in one picture. Agitated at what
this might signify, he follows her to a surgery at the hospitalonly to find that the patient
on the table, awaiting an amputation, isnt anesthetized.
In a climactic scene for this phase, Truman confronts Meryl about the core assumptions
of their relationship.
Truman:
Meryl:
Truman:
Meryl:
Truman:
Why do you want to have a child with me? You cant stand me.
Thats not true. Why dont I make you some of this new Mococoa Drink? All
natural. Cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial
sweeteners
What the hell are you talking about?!
Ive tasted other cocoas. This is the best.
What the hell has that got to do with anything? Tell me whats happening?!
Meryl frantically tries a product pitch in the middle of Trumans breakdown. But as Truman becomes more agitated, she picks up a potato peeler to protect herself. Truman turns
it against her. She shouts, Do something! But who is she shouting to?
This is a seminal moment for Truman, for Meryl breaks the fourth wall where the
television audience is watching. Fearing for her life, she calls out to the crew on the set, but
they are too far away to help. Trumans best friend suddenly rings the doorbell and enters.
Truman is finally calmed, but not convinced. Something has indeed happened.
At this point, Trumans awareness of a competing TFG has moved from distraction to
preoccupation to obsession. There are too many holes in the scenery to continue life as
it has been, but what lies behind them is still unknowable. It is at this point that he must
overcome his greatest fearwaterin order to discover a larger Truth.
Phase III: Liberation
As the film nears its climax, Truman discovers that his world is filled with hidden cameras.
He has been watched all of his life, but by whom? He decides he must escape from Seahaven, but no buses or airplanes are leaving town, and the causeway is flooded out; the only
alternative is to sail away in a small boat.
Christof, the shows creator, director, and (repressed) father-figure to Truman, orders an
intense storm in a last-ditch attempt to prevent Trumans escape. But to no avail: Truman
sails on, until the bow of his boat punches a hole in the painted backdrop of the sky. Near
the hole is a staircase leading to a door. At this moment, Christof chooses to speak to his
creation for the first time in 30 years.

Christof:
Truman:
Truman, Ive watched you your whole life. I saw you take your first step,
your first word, your first kiss. I know you better than you know yourself.
Youre not going to walk out that door
--You never had a camera in my head.
Here, Truman takes umbrage at Christof s presumption that he could know everything
about him. The cameras recorded everything except the interior of Trumans mind, where
the assumptions about communicative acts reside.
Seconds later, the movies final exchange is this one, between Christof and Truman.
Christof:
Truman:
Say something, damn it! Youre still on camera, live to the world!
In case I dont see yougood afternoon, good evening and good night.
((steps through the open door))
Trumans parting shot is, of course, highly mimetic of Trumans daily interaction with
Spencer. Yet, spoken in the context of imminent escape, his words are at once peremptoryTruman leaves Christof no time to refute the escalated leave takingand conclusionaryas if there is nothing more to say or do in this cloistered world. So Truman walks out
the door, and the film ends.
CONCLUSION
Near the close of one article (198 la), Hopper observed that if a proposition will draw
refutation, assert it; if a proposition will escape refutation, take it for granted (p. 233).
The Truman Show is a film about propositions of a most basic nature, which initially go
unchallenged by the protagonist. This state of ignorance enables all other characters to let
it pass, knowing that their interactions with Truman should keep him in a tightly ordered,
self-contained world.
As Trumans awareness grows, so must everyone elses attempts at interactional enslavement. But now, such attempts take the shape of bald assertions designed to turn back
Trumans posing, Why that there?
On-the-spot rebuffs are more easily accomplished through words than actions. One can
more easily fabricate an account (That light fell from a jetliner) than produce a willing
amputee. It is for this reason that those actors closest to Truman got the highest hazard pay:
they were most privy to his challenges, and they had to ad lib at a moments notice.
It could be argued that all good drama is a story of conflicting TFGs. From Oedipus
Rex to Six Characters in Search of an Author to Waiting for Godot, characters inhabit different perceptual worldseither from each other, or from the audienceand their story is
a journey toward discovering that difference. Their sense of incompleteness is overcome
by first their own insights, and then their own actions. To use Hoppers metaphors cited at
the outset of this article, they use their cans of worms as bait, and their efforts in doing so
prompt us to call them heroes. The extent to which their authors allow them to succeed is
often the difference between comedy and tragedy.
Hoppers startling contribution to our knowledge of the details of everyday life is that
on the interactional surface, things will look pretty much the same even after the most

profound revelations have been discovered. At the micro level, people of Galileos time
interacted the same after they heard the earth was no longer the center of the solar system
as they did before. Similarly, Truman will find that people still greet each other when they
take out the garbage, and that obtaining a meatball sandwich requires virtually the same
interactional steps outside Seahaven as it did within it. Whether on stage or off, the overwhelming majority of our Trumans interactional moments will remain taken for granted.
As Hopper illustrated, so will ours.
REFERENCES
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper and Row.
Hopper, R. (1981a). How to do things without words: The taken-for-granted as speech action. Communication Quarterly, 29, 228-236.
Hopper, R. (1981b). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195-211.
33
On ESP Puns
Emanuel A.Schegloff
University of California, Los Angeles
I eventually provide an analytic map locating the topic of this discussion within the larger
domain of phenomena and practices of talk-in-interaction. But let me begin with an anecdotal account of the initial glimpse of the phenomenon. This is not only a convenient
way into the matter, but turns out to be peculiarly apt to the topic, and, in a curious way,
methodologically inescapable in explicating it.
In the late 1970s, Gail Jefferson and I were doing some work together in my office at
UCLA. She was making occasional notes about the discussion and so sat with a pencil at
the ready in her right hand. In her left, she held the cigarette she was smoking. At one juncture, in launching a move to take another drag on the cigarette, she brought to her mouth
the hand holding the pencil rather than the one holding the cigarette. Seeing that move
triggered in me the following recollection.
While a graduate student at Berkeley in the late 1950s, I once served as a reader for
a course in political sociology taught by the distinguished political sociologist, Seymour
Martin Lipset. One day, while lecturing, he was fiddling with a piece of chalk when he
apparently experienced an itch in his ear. To relieve the itch he brought the piece of chalk
to his ear and inserted it, but then removed his hand while leaving the chalk sticking out of
his ear! There is a clear relationship between my noticing my colleagues physical movement in my office and this recollection that it triggereda clear basis for the triggering: A
writing implement (pencil/chalk) brought to a bodily orifice (mouth/ear) for which it was
inappropriate.
The recollection of the Lipset incident apparently brought a smile to my face, a smile
that Jefferson noticed and understood to be responsive to her miscue in bringing the pencil rather than the cigarette to her mouth. Displaying her grasp of my smiles source, she
remarked, Oh, thats an earmark of mine.
I registered at once the pun like character of her remark, the interest in vernacular poetics
being one shared by the two of us and our then-recently-departed colleague, Harvey Sacks
(see, e.g., Sacks, 1973, and Jefferson, 1996).1 I was especially sensitive to puns in ordinary
conversation, which are overwhelmingly unintended and unheard, and I had developed an
annoying habit of taking overt notice of such otherwise-unheard puns when they occurred
in conversations in which I was a participant. I was about to comment on the one I had
just heard from Jefferson when I realized that the comment Oh, thats an earmark of
mine constituted a pun on something that had not been said but had only been thought
or recollected or flashed. It was, in that sense, an ESP pun,2 however absurd that
appeared to be to someone who did not believe in parapsychological phenomena.
With considerable animation (and puzzlement) I pointed out what had just happened to
Gail. The next day, she reported the following incident, the account of which I reproduce
here from the note that she sent me.
On ESP puns 453

Specimen #2:
Telepathic pun Jefferson, March 9, 1978
Im at the bank with my mother, who is doing a transaction. Im leaning against the
counter, right next to her, idly gazing at the teller who is working on the transaction
with her. I look at the next teller, and it turns out that both tellers are wearing identical earrings, little gold dots. Im thinking it seems to be a fad, theyre both wearing
button earrings. At which point, the teller working on my mothers stuff says to her,
Right on the button!.
Aside from providing a second case, the importance of this incident is that it partially
addresses an inescapable feature of this phenomenon, one that makes it virtually impossible to engage while respecting the usual methodological constraints of conversation analytic work. That feature is the key role played in the phenomenon of something that was
not said or physically done but only thought. It is that feature that makes the anecdotal
character of the present report inescapable (as suggested in its first paragraph), for there is
no other way of bringing what is punned-on (or the pun-source) into the account than to
have the one who thought it recount it.3
But another consequence of this feature is the unchallengable authority claimed by the
noticer of an occurrence of the phenomenon; no one else can lay claim to access to what
they were thinking, or can claim to describe it differently, or to correct it, or otherwise
take exception to it. Accordingly, it is especially important to collect specimens for which
the author of this chapter, and the principal investigator of its candidate phenomenon, is
not the key informant. And Jeffersons anecdote speaks to that issue. It is she, not I, who
tells what she was thinking or about to say when another said something for which it
served as pun-source or punned-upon.
Of the 20 candidate instances that I have collected, I am the authoritative rapporteur for
11 of them. I wish the distribution were skewed the other way, but conditions make that
difficult. Only persons who have been alerted to the possibility of such a phenomenon are
in a position to register that a something may have happened when all the ingredients
are present, and are in a position to recognize features of the moment as ingredients-of-apossible-ESPpun. Only some of them will find it worthy of writing down and collecting.
In a sense, the contribution by others of 9 candidate instances is remarkably high given
its unusual and (for academics) counter intuitive premises, given the very small number
of people who have had it called to their attention as a possibility, and given the fact that
virtually all reports from such persons have been contributed within a day or two of their
exposure to the possibility of this phenomenon, after which its relevance to them fades, and
Accounts of my own long-standing interests in puns, sound phenomena, gist-preserving errors,
context-sensitive whistles, and the like have until now been restricted to the classroom, except for
one conference presentation, (Schegloff, 1997).
2
For those unfamiliar with the usage, ESP is an acronym for extra sensory perception.
3
Indeed, there is no one else who can know that a possible event of this sort has occurred, although
speakers of the pun-containing utterance may subsequently report having registered something
noticeable about their utterance, without knowing quite what or why, as reported in some of the
exemplars recounted later.
1

with it the likelihood of their recognizing a possible instance or registering its occurrence.
I suppose that this more than offsets the well-known propensity of persons to cooperate
with science by being forthcoming with what they believe an investigator wants to hear
(Rosenthal, 1966).4
Before recounting a number of additional instances of candidate ESP puns, I want to
simply note several features of the candidate phenomenon, using the first one described
earlierOh, thats an earmark of mineas a case in point where possible. These features often reappear in other specimens, although in some instances it has not been possible
to establish their presence or absence.
First, the utterance that contains the punand the pun itself in particularmay involve
a slight error, and one germaneeven criticalto constituting the pun. For example, in
the first case, earmark is not quite right; the common expression is that something is a
hallmark of some person or place or institution. Earmark is thus a slight error, one
apparently prompted by the very pun-source that the pun is locating (thinking about putting chalk in ear), the locating relationship being constituted by the distortion in the
original expression (from hallmark to earmark).
Second, the ESP pun is not a customary or stereotypical usage by the speaker. In collecting puns of all sorts, it is important to avoid ones that could be the product of random
permutation and combination. For example, some speakers have as a distinctive stylistic
practice a frequent use of apparently to begin utterances. On occasion, an utterance that has
begun in that way will have as its topical content something about children, yielding the
apparent pun combination of apPARENTly and child. But in such a case, the underlying phenomenon that makes puns of interestnamely, the coselection of words composing
an utterance by reference to features of sound, semantics, metaphor, and so on, and the
sequential organization implicated in thatis not in fact instantiated by the event, which
is simply the product of a repetitive use of apparently across utterances of diverse topical
content. This consideration applies to all puns, and requires the exclusion of candidate
instances that can have been produced by this kind of juxtaposition. It holds as well for
candidate ESP puns. In the first instance reported previously, then, it needs to be said that
Thats a hallmark (or earmark) of mine is not a recurrent usage by its speaker.5
Third, the punning utterance is often slightly unidiomatic or inappropriate in context.
This feature has been noted about other wordselectional phenomena or aspects of vernacular poetics as well. For example, Jefferson (1996) remarked regarding a particular
sound-row usage:
4
Let me here express my appreciation to the following personscolleagues, friends, graduate
students, and undergraduate students (categories that are not mutually exclusive)who have
taken the trouble to write down the episodes they noticed and contribute them to the collection,
but whose contribution may or may not be reproduced here. In addition to Gail Jefferson, I want
to thank (in alphabetical order) Kelly Glover, Chuck Goodwin, Celia Kitzinger, Amy Snyder Ohta,
Lisa Pizzurro, Mel Pollner, Jonathan Stewart, and Myrna Gwen Turner.
5
In what follows, I often decline to employ candidate ESP puns reported by others because the pun
could plausibly be figured to be the product of such a permutation and combination with a recurrent usage, and no steps were taken by the rapporteur to establish that the usage was not a recurrent
one for the speaker.
On ESP puns 455

(3. a. 1) [GJ:FN]
Martha:
I called Terry and told her to come over around nine
thirty.
Jan: Mar- Its nine thirty now. Well then shell be here momentha:
tarily.
Theres something in this instance that weve noticed now and then. Sometimes a
word occurs that seems a bit special, maybe out of character, maybe not register fitted
to the surrounding talk. In this case, momentarily is such a word. And it may have
been selected from alternatives such as any minute now by the sound relationship
between the word Terry and the last bit of momentarily. A sound-row. What
were learning to do is to track back into the talk and see if we can find a possible
source for some striking word.
This feature of inappropriateness or ill-fittedness does not seem to characterize the two
candidate ESP puns so far introduced, but it may be exemplified in the following one from
the collection.
Specimen #3:
My wife and I are visiting our daughter at college. Sitting at lunch, I ask my daughter
what shell be working at after lunch. She says, recycling (this being a volunteer
activity previously described to us as involving picking up recyclable trash left by
residents of the area) . I think to myself, my daughter the garbage collector, and my
daughter then says/continues, hence my garb.
I take it that garb is a term ill-fitted (or only ironically fitted) to the topic and the register
otherwise in effect for the talk then in progress.
These three featuresnonhabitual usage, slightly-in-error construction, and slightly illfitted to the contextall suggest a virtual reaching out to talk in the fashion of the ESP
punning utterance. Far from happenstance, these utterances have the feel of effortfulness
about them, of being specially designedand obtrusively soto capture, and be affected
by, what prompts them.
Here, then, are some more.
Specimen #4:
I encounter in the hallway of my departments offices a colleague who I know is
being courted by a number of other highly regarded universities. As we approach
one another, I greet him conventionally with Howyadoin, while reflecting that he
is #1 on a prominent schools recruitment list, and preparing to follow up my initial
inquiry with Are you staying or leaving? Before I ask that, however, he answers my
initial inquiry, Neither here nor there. In this case, I took the occasion to recount
to my colleague what had just happened. His response: Thats pretty good. Note,
by the way, the slight inappropriateness of the response; it is of the genre comme ci,
comme a, or so so; but neither here nor there?

Specimen #5:
I am discussing with a colleagues wife the child-rearing practices of a family of
mutual acquaintance, and, in particular, the inattention paid to cultivation of the body
and physical activity. I am thinking, and gestating as a next utterance, something
like Why dont they just ride bikes together?! when my interlocutor says, Physicalness is actually derided.
Here again I undertake to describe to my coparticipant the phenomenon we had just brought
off, and she remarks on having registered as odd and somewhat antique her use of the verb
derided as she said it, and having attributed it at that moment to her recent reading of a
novel by Dickens.
Specimen #6:
A colleague is recounting what he had heard about a recent conference in which a
number of mutual colleagues had participated. He allows that his account is based
on a biased sample of reports. He continues (and at this point I am wondering
about the reception accorded my colleague Lucy Suchman, who was on the program),
I didnt hear paeans of praise that such and such had given a wonderful paper.
I note only that such and such is not the ordinary form for this kind of unspecified definite person reference; rather the form is so and so. Again, the thought appears to have
invaded and slightly malformed the utterance being produced in a manner reflecting its
own constitution.
Specimen #7:
I am in a coffee shop with seven other people taking a break from a working session,
ordering lunch to take out. After completing some nth order, the clerk says, Eight
total? I hear that as ate Total (Total being the name of an American cold breakfast cereal), and think to myself: I wonder if thats what Chuck (another member of
the party) had for breakfast, (knowing that he had had some cereal for breakfast).
Just then Chuck says to Lucy (our host for this consultation trip), By the way, Ive
been putting all the breakfasts on my bill; I hope thats alright. The incidental, unoccasioned, and even possibly misplaced production of this utterance is marked by the
speakers use of the misplacement marker by the way (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973)
in launching it; it marks that there is no accessible local basis for saying that thing at
that point. Is there then an inaccessible basis for it?
Now for a few in which I do not figure as rapporteur. I quote from the written accounts
provided by those who noted the occurrence.
Specimen #8:
I was at work when a secretary came in looking for her pen. Long discussion ensued
which didnt include or interest me and I began to daydream. The previous night the
rivers in the area had flooded and wed been out at the canoe club moving boats to
higher ground, etc. We saw a picnic table which is usually on the lawn, floating, and
On ESP puns 457

two of us got some rope and were about to set off in a boat to secure it when someone
told us it had already been tied to a tree. Just after my mind turned to this incident
someone told the secretary that she should have the pen tied to her with a string.
Specimen #9:
I was speaking to M.G. [a mutual colleagueEAS] and he mentioned that he had
to pick up his brother at the airport. I said that I looked forward to meeting him and
that I liked to meet sibs generally so that I could see what is genetic about you and
what is you about you. Mike said that I almost made a great pun because his sisters
name is Janet.
Specimen #10:
Over the weekend I was talking with new friends who asked why my husband (who
is Japanese) prefers living in the States rather than in Japan. I responded, Well, he
marches to a different drummer. Hes not into group-think.

Returning home, my husband asked over dinner about my weekend, and I told
him about this question I was asked as to why he prefers living in the U.S. Before
I could say what my answer was, my husband began to drum his plate with his
chopsticks.
Specimen #11:
The event in question occurred in Fall, 1991, around two oclock in the afternoon on
a weekend. My fianc and I were driving around doing errands, and were on our way
home from the grocery store. We were stopped at a red light near our apartment. We
were both lost in thought, not speaking or listening to the car radio. I noticed a poster
in a shop window that was advertising something. The colors were purples and pinks
all swirled together encircling a person with wild and messy hair. I thought to myself,
That looks like something youd see if you were on LSD. Just then, my fianc
started drumming on his steering wheel the opening rhythm to the song Go -Ask
Alice, a nightmarish song depicting an episode from Alice in Wonderland through
the eyes of a drugged-out protagonist. Startled, I told him what I had just been thinking, and he claimed he hadnt see the poster. (Handwritten postscript: When I initially shared this story with our class, I mistakenly recalled the song in question as
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.)
Specimen #12:
Characters: Beth #1 and Myrna are former classmates from CSU, and Myrna and
Beth #2 are former classmates from UCLA. Beth #1 and Beth #2 had not met each
other before this day. Beth #1 and Myrna had already sat down at the table in the
Caf; our meals had been given to us in proper bowls and plates. Beth #2 sat down
and I noticed that her meal was in a take-away box. Then:

Beth #2:
Myrna:
Beth #1:
I dont know why she [the server] gave me my meal in

this.
(thought to herself: cause you eat like a bird and youll]
probably need to take home half of your meal anyway.)
she [the server] probably thought you looked like you
were going to fly.
Specimen #13:
I was visiting my best friend at his parents house. His sister was digging in the
freezer; he was in an adjacent room unable to see her, me, and the rest of his family.
My friend said, Dad? Dad? as he tried to get his fathers attention. (He, as
I mentioned above, was in a different room.) Just as the sister extracted a popsicle
from the freezer, my friend said, Pop? to call his dad. I mentioned this to him and
his sister, and they both thought it was odd that hed use that word, since none of us
could remember him having used it before.
Specimen #14:
(Telling about a vacation trip to Thailand). New Years Eve, not yet midnight, Sue
has just changed her blouse and is talking about the days snorkeling, and I am not
giving her my full attention, but thinking instead (and thinking it preparatory to saying it, once she has finished talking) youve got a label sticking out at your neck. I
dont get to say it because she doesnt give me timea split second after Ive formed
the thought neck, she rushes straight from the end of what she is saying about snorkeling into the question, How soon do you think we can open our nectar?, meaning the champagne, which isnt really champagne as thats ludicrously expensive in
Thailand, but some sort of bubbly wine, and NEVER, EVER before has she referred
to such a drink (or ANY drink) as nectar. Spooky!
Finally, two more from my own experience.
Specimen #15:
I am visiting with friends in England, talking about the behavior of fans at sporting events. He is comparing cricket and football (soccer) in England. I am thinking
of telling, when the turn is mine, about the soccer game my wife and I attended in
Campinas, Brazil, after which the fans set fire to newspapers in the stands. My friend
is telling me that families go together to cricket matches but not to football, and says,
Theyve burnt off families going. Subsequently he says that he flashed on the
phrase burnt off a few moments before using it, which would be just as I was forming up my next tellable. And, it turns out, this is not an ordinary usage of his, and is
unidiomatic in context.
On ESP puns 459

Specimen #16:
I am chatting (at my home in a southern California canyon) with a British friend who
is an academic. She is telling me about visiting Australia, and, in particular, about
an encounter with aboriginal people in Alice Springs. Hearing that, I am reminded
ofand am preparing to tellmy Alice Springs story, about the power outage
that hit while we were there, and that rendered the nighttime Southern hemisphere
sky luminous and wonderful to behold. Then she, having just been talking about the
Aborigines, sharply changes course, and asks whether from our house it is possible
to see the then-close-toearth Hale-Boggs comet. I am struck by her disjunctive shift
to the astronomical observation question, that is, about looking at the skies, at just the
moment when I am about to tell just such a story.6 This is not, of course, a pun. But
is it part of the same phenomenon?
The domain within which ESP punsif they are realare situated is that of word selection.
Word selection is concerned with the practices that directly (by word selectional practices)
or indirectly (by practices such as sound patterning, pun organization, or item carryover,
which have word selection as a consequence) issue in the words that compose the units out
of which are constructed the sequences of which are constituted the conversations that are
one of our major research mandates. This is a very large domain and still a largely mysterious one, so mysterious that we must be prepared to entertain such apparently fringe possibilities as ESP puns. But it is worth pondering the import of the use of fringe here. It is the
initial take on something unsuspected and far out. As more and more cases are displayed,
the fringe may turn out to be as robust a part of the fabric as any othercomposed of the
same warp and weft. It is only that we did not know how to look before. That is my rationale for filling this contribution largely with candidate instances, at the expense of other
things to be said about them. If there is a real phenomenon here, and if the exemplars are
apt and well chosen, it is their cumulative effect that will render the phenomenon visible,
and by no means unthinkable.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This chapter was prepared for a volume dedicated to Robert Hopper, who will best understand the basis for its selection. It was drafted while I was the grateful beneficiary of a
Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship in Residence at the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, under support provided to the Center by The
National Science Foundation through Grant # SBR-9022192.
One colleague has suggested as a possible alternative account that I glanced up at the sky in
unthinking anticipation of the tale I was about to tell. Alternative accounts may suggest themselves
for other of the specimens reported above as well, prompted by the implausibility of what seems
otherwise to be being proposed, and they may well be the more cogent accounts. This must be
weighed against their grounding in the readers imagination rather than the participant-observers
report, and the probability of each such conjecture turning out to have been correct (were such a
checking even possible). For the present specimen, the fact that the conversation was being held
indoors and not outside should be weighed in assessing the cogency of a glance upward, or of its
being registered as at the sky.
6

REFERENCES
Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16(1), 1-61.
Rosenthal, R. (1966). Experimenter effects in behavioral research. New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts.
Sacks, H. (1973). On some puns with some intimations. In R.W.Shuy (Ed.), Report of the TwentyThird Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies (pp. 135-144). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (2002, this volume). The surfacing of the suppressed Studies in language and
social interaction: In honor of Robert Hopper (pp. 241262). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schegloff, E.A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289327.
V
Robert Hopper: Teacher
and Scholar
Robert Hopper was an accomplished scholar, teacher, and friend whose wideranging interests allowed him to forge connections with a great many people. This was evident at a
session held in his memory at the November 1999 National Communication Association
meeting. Speakers included departmental colleagues, former students, and colleagues and
friends from the discipline. Some of the speakers had had only tangential contact with him,
but he made such an impact on them that they felt moved to participate in his memorial.
This testimony to his extraordinary character as a colleague and friend is further borne
out in the chapters in this final section of the Festschrift. They pay homage to some of
the remarkable personal qualities that made Hopper a truly exceptional scholar and much
loved and appreciated person.
The personal reflections on Robert Hoppers contributions begin with Jenny Mandelbauiris account of his intellectual history. It shows how much of his work took up the enterprise of excavating the taken-for-granted. By addressing the moral character of his work,
Sandra Ragan shows how the detailed study of language, and a quest to understand how
speech works, can be driven by a moral imperative to make the world a better place through
the scribblings of academics. Leslie Jarmons chapter addresses the original and inspiring
character of Hoppers teaching. This chapter summarizes the innovations that made him a
captivating and puzzling teacher, whose classes challenged and energized his students, and
worked like time-release capsules. Wayne Beachs piece merges reflections on personal
friendship with scholarly collaboration in recounting how he and Hopper shared moments
of discovery. Jim Bradacs poem speaks eloquently for itself, and reminds us of Hoppers
rich poetic inclinations. The final piece, placed so in the spirit of giving Robert Hopper
the last word, is the text of a brief address he wrote that his daughter Christine read at an
event honoring him during the 1998 National Communication Association Convention. In
it, playfully drawing on a software metaphor, he challenges those studying communication
to help upgrade humans from person 1.2 to person 2.0. This section provides testimony
to the fact that Robert Hopper, in addition to being a rigorous scholar with broad intellectual interests, a strong mission to understand how communication works, and concern with
making it work better, pursued his research and teaching agendas in highly innovative and
inspirational ways.
34
Robert Hopper: An Intellectual History
Jenny Mandelbaum
Rutgers University
Robert Hoppers intellectual history illustrates the interplay of scholarly and secular life.
With his ear tuned to the poetic frequencies of language, coming of age during the 1960s
and 1970s, with an interest in language development that may have been born with his children, Hopper was ideally positioned to find rigorous ways to bring social sciences Linguistic Turn (Rorty, 1967/1992) to the (Speech) Communication field. In his scholarly career
he worked in, or made important scholarly contributions to, many of the major currents of
work to be found in Language and Social Interaction. His early work focused on speech
effects. He then became interested in speech act theory and discourse analysis, focusing
particularly on alignment talk. Next he became intrigued with conversation analysis (CA).
In the process of becoming a conversation analyst, he worked through many issues regarding the possible intersections between conversation analysis and such bordering territories
as ethnography of communication, social psychology, and performance studies. In his later
work, he used conversation analysis to address some of the communication fields traditional questions and issues, and also explored what conversation analysis can offer to the
medical field. He did all of this with his special brand of creativity and originality, inspiring
his colleagues, undergraduates, and graduate students.
In an award-winning essay, Hopper (1981) reexamined work on takenfor-granteds,
the implicit, functional and principled incompleteness in language use. His focus in this
piece was that which is in some way left unsaid, and may or may not be left unquestioned.
This essay contains some important clues to understanding what drove Hoppers work.
We see the ability to first notice and then question taken-for-granteds as a common
thread that runs through Hoppers work. This can perhaps be traced to a kind of liminality
that may be a prerequisite for scholarly achievement. For as a conversation analyst whose
scholarly upbringing was rigorously quantitative, and whose early work examined speech
effects, Hopper had a particular vantage point on both CA and the communication field
(cf. chap. 2, this volume). This place to look from enabled him both to see communication
from a CA point of view and CA from a communication point of view, putting him in the
position to have original insights with regard to each. Whatever he was studying, Hopper
had the ability to uncover the taken-for-granted, and the skill to see it in new ways. This is
evident throughout his scholarly career.
Hoppers career was driven by his persistent search for a rigorous science of speech.
This led him to participate in innovations that have transformed segments of the communication field. In the early 1980s, he was part of a group of scholars who met at small
conferences exploring different approaches to the study of language. He was one of the
initial proponents of discourse analysis in general, and a primary instigator in the bringing
of CA to the communication field.
In his early work, Hopper was interested in how children learn to talk. With Rita Naremore, he published a book on childrens language development that has become a classic
Robert hopper: an intellectual history 463

text in the field, and was reprinted in a third edition in 1990. Hopper was keenly attuned to
the language of what he sometimes called the underdogswomen, children, and other
minorities who are sometimes discriminated against by the favorites, those who do the
discriminating. His work on speech effects examined language attitudeshow people
perceive and react to the speech of others. This work suggested that we tend to take for
granted the transparency of others talk. Hopper raised the possibility that we should take
into account how shades of skin color, gender, age, and so on may influence how speech is
interpreted in addition, or in contrast, to how it is produced. Much of this work indicates
how perceptions of speech are influenced not so much by the speech itself, but by how
recipients interpret it, based on social stereotypes. His work on language effects made an
important contribution toward questioning the fields established speaker effectiveness
paradigm (cf. Bradac, Wiemann, & Hopper, 1989, for a summary of this work). Even more
important, this work makes the case that what Hopper often called a science of speech
involves understanding it as an interaction.
Communication studies origins in rhetoric and public speaking may contribute to the
tendency of work in the field to use a one-way sendermessagereceiver model, with
a strong focus on the sender and the packaging of the message. Hoppers early work
made the case for understanding the role of interpretation in the communication process.
In this way, he added new dimensions to our understanding of the conventional relationship
between underdogs and favorites, as he called the powerless and the powerful, and
people of different races and genders (Hopper, 1986).
Speech Act Theorys emphasis on the active character of speech as action (Austin, 1962;
Searle, 1969), Wittgensteins (1958) theory of language games, the work of de Saussure
(1966) and the French structuralists, and the work of Bateson (1972) and his colleagues
all influenced Hoppers thinking at this time. His focus shifted from how people react
to features of language to how people enact them. This work can be characterized as a
form of discourse analysis. For instance, a series of publications and dissertations examined the nature of alignment talk (Morris & Hopper, 1980). This concept, derived from
Stokes and Hewitt (1976), examined conversations to see how communicators negotiated
understandings. The variety of data sources Hopper used, and encouraged his students to
use, for this work is testimony to the entrepreneurial spirit with which he approached the
study of language and social interaction. For instance, Ragan (1980) looked at audiotaped
employment interviews, Scott (1983) looked at audiotaped conversations between married
couples, and Sims (1983) looked at audiotaped parent-child interaction. The practical and
ethical difficulties of examining interpersonal communication at the beginning or ending of
relationships presented challenges that led to new approaches. Ragan and Hopper(1984)
looked at the discourse of couples in the terminating stages of relationships by drawing
the conversations from works of literature. Mandelbaum (1983) used novels and plays as a
data source to examine the beginning stages of relationships.
In the Spring of 1983, Hopper took a sabbatical in Oxford where he attended data sessions at Wolfson Colleges Center for Socio-Legal Studies with (among others) Max Atkinson, Anita Pomerantz, Paul Drew, and John Heritage. This began his apprenticeship in
CA, which offered solutions to the problem of working in a rigorous fashion with real
data. While at Oxford, he read the manuscript of CAs coming-of-age volume, Structures
of Social Action, edited by Max Atkinson and John Heritage. Upon his return to Texas in

June 1983, Hopper embarked on a multipronged effort to develop his own and his students
understanding of CA and to bring the work to the communication field. This involved such
steps as establishing the University of Texas Conversation Library, an archive of hundreds
of hours of audio- and video-recorded, transcribed, naturally occurring conversations from
casual and professional settings; conducting weekly listening sessions or data analysis
workshops; encouraging his students and colleagues in the field to listen carefully to the
patterns and nuances of everyday talk; and in various ways bringing the Communication
fields attention to the contributions CA can make to an understanding of communication.
In addition to organizing a wide variety of conference panels and events, and bringing CA
scholars to our conferences, in various ways through his published work Hopper was a
strong instigator in opening up debate with regard to CA.
Hoppers conversation analytic work began with a thorough reexamination of a takenfor-granted medium, the telephone. Whereas previous conversation analytic work took the
phone to be simply another place to examine everyday or institutional conversation, Hopper took the phone to be a medium the study of which promised particular riches for the
communication field. He suggested,
Telephony undergirds our theories about communication. Telephone speech splits
sound from the rest of the senses, splits the dyad from the rest of society, and splits
communication from other activity. Telephone conversation is pure dialogic speech
communication. Hence, descriptions of telephone conversation are central to theories of language, conversation, and interaction. (Hopper, 1992, p. 41)
In this way, he showed how a focus on telephone talk promotes the rediscovery of speaking, helping us to explore in greater depth aspects of communication that often have been
either glossed or simply taken for granted. Next his study of telephone talk took him into an
institutional setting, the Cancer Information Service of the American Cancer Society. Hopper took the role of teacher seriously. This included outreach. In the millennium issue of
Research on Language and Social Interaction, Hopper (1999) advocated finding tangible
pay-offs of a science of speech.
In his final book manuscript, Gendering Talk (in press), Hopper brought together a number of his interests and approaches. The book consists of conversation analytic, discourse
analytic, and poetic approaches to understanding gender. Hopper asked, can genderlects
be described in terms of linguistic features? What is the effect of addressee sex on language? How does the language of love connect to other forms of gendered language?
Using data from casual conversation, movies and TV shows, novels, poems, and songs,
Hopper integrated his interests in the organization of interaction, and its moral dimension,
questioning one of social lifes most taken for granted concepts, gender.
Shifts in Hoppers work have paralleled shifts in the study of language and social interaction in the communication field. Hopper played an active role in the Speech Communication Association (now National Communication Association) Speech and Language
Sciences Division, serving in leadership roles in the Division from 19781981. He was
active in the name shift from Speech and Language Sciences Division to Language and
Social Interaction Division. In 1989 he started the Language and Social Interaction Interest
Group at the International Communication Association (ICA). This group gained enough

members to shift to Division status faster than any interest group in ICA history. Hopper
led the Division for its first 2 years, and in 1996 was honored with its Scholarly Publication
Award for his article on the taken-for-granted (Hopper, 1981).
With CA in hand, and having established the University of Texas Conversation Library,
Hopper made some strikingly original forays into the taken-for-granted. His work actively
participated in making the field aware of the possibilities CA offered for a rigorous study
of communication phenomena. I take three different examples to show where Hoppers
work in bringing CA to the communication field bears out E.M.Forsters (1910) adage in
Howards End, Only connect.
First, Hopper did something that conversation analysts are particularly well equipped
to do: He took some speech communication fundamentals, and reexamined them from a
conversation analytic perspective. Second, he explored the possibilities and limitations of
the intersection between CAa new approach to communication for the fieldand other
approaches. In particular he investigated in public fora the intersections between CA and
social psychology, which has driven much of traditional research in the field, and also ethnography, which has often been the first alternative to standard quantitative approaches in
communication. Third, he successfully took the risk of exploring the intersection between
art and scholarship, both in his writing and in his part in the Everyday Life Performance
(ELP) project. I explore each of these contributions in more detail.
COMMUNICATION FUNDAMENTALS REEXAMINED
As Hoppers insight that telephony brings to prominence some fundamental characteristics of the communication process indicates, CA has enabled researchers to reexamine
some concepts and processes previously taken for granted. For example, in work with Kent
Drummond, Hopper took on from a CA perspective some fundamental notions in speech
communication. For instance, Hopper and Drummond (1992) showed how relationships
can be seen to be displayed and accomplished in and through interaction. This contrasts
with the received view in the communication field that relationships are free-standing social
categories that can be treated as independent variables, and that their preexisting character
influences how interaction proceeds. In studies of this kind, we see part of the pay-off of
CA for the communication field. This work shows us how relationships are inherently
communication phenomenahuman social activities that are accomplished in and through
the cooperation, the working together, of interactants. Thus the ethnomethodological
insight that relationships are something we DO rather than something we HAVE can be
spelled out, with CA providing the resources to examine such prime sites of connection as
telephone openings.
This then is a way that Hoppers work provides a connection between CA and the communication field, where CA provides a new perspective on some taken-for-granted aspects
of how human social activities work.
In the spirit of seeing what is ordinarily taken-for-granted, coming from communication
to CA put Hopper in a good position to explore the border territory between CA and social
psychological approaches, and between CA and ethnography.

THE INTERSECTION OF CA AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; THE
INTERSECTION OF CA AND ETHNOGRAPHY
In the process of exploring these possible intersections, Hopper instigated debate that
brought conversation analytic work to the attention of communication scholars.
In Speech for Instance. The Exemplar in Studies of Conversation, Hopper (1988)
showed how different research traditionsChomskian linguistics, speech act theory, CA
each use examples in their research. He then moved on to a contrast between the use of the
exemplar, and the use of the experiment. He asked, How do we establish paths by which
experimentalists and exemplists (for instance, conversation analysts) may speak to each
other without undisciplined eclecticism or unbridled paradigm-bickering? In this piece,
Hopper seemed optimistic about the possibilities for and desirability of bringing together
CA and experimental approaches. In particular he cited how, working with Sam Lawrence
and Nathan Stucky, the matched guise technique (where, e.g., the same speaker says the
same things using different accents, and researchers measure listeners evaluations of various ways of speaking) was adapted using conversation analytic transcription techniques in
order to examine perceptions of male and female speech (Lawrence, Stucky, & Hopper,
1990). Traditionally this research could only be done by having subjects read transcripts,
because it was not plausible for the same person to be both male and female. With the
detailed level of transcription afforded by CA, they showed how actors can be trained, so
that a males speech can be reenacted by a female or vice versa, very closely approximating the character of the other sexs speech. For studies of speech evaluation, this creative
use of CA transcription provides the phlogiston that permits an experimental distinction
between speech features that were generated in real life by biological males/females, and
those delivered in female/male pitch and vocal patterning (Hopper, 1988). The difficulties
associated with research of this kind are familiar. However the application of CA transcription methods, and the innovation of training actors in this level of detail, allows the study
of language attitudes toward gender differences to base itself in a data source much closer
to real life than having subjects read transcripts.
Despite the optimism reflected in Speech for Instance regarding border treaties between
CA and traditional approaches to studying speech communication, in a piece published a
year later in Roger and Bulls (1989) collection exploring possibilities for the melding of
CA and social psychology (or SP), Hopper clearly delineated the two, and emphasized the
disjunctures between them. He noted that work that has attempted to combine them tends
to offer operational definitions and coding procedures, and the cross-tabulation of occurrence of defined items with psychological variables, and thereby overlooks phenomena
of interest to conversation analysts. His conclusions, then, were more pessimistic regarding the possibilities of combining CA and social psychological approaches. He proposed
that we respect CA and SP as left and right branches of the description of interpersonal
communication (Hopper, 1989, p. 63).
Doctoral dissertations provided a forum for Hopper to oversee work that tests the intersections between CA and other ways of working, and at the same time bring CA work
and its contributions to a science of speech to the attention of speech communication scholars. This is notable, for example, in Kent Drummonds work revisiting back

channels. As the instigating part of a colloquy in ROLSI, Drummond and Hopper (1993),
along with Wieder (1993), Zimmerman (1993), and Tracy (1993) explored the intersection
of quantification and CA. In two papers in this collection, Drummond and Hopper first took
Jeffersons (1984) suggestion that a yeah from a story recipient is more likely to precede
the recipient taking the floor than a uh huh or an mm hm. They combined conventional
cross-tabulations of the occurrence of these acknowledgment tokens and the probability of
further speech by the speaker of the token with analysis of the fragments. They used the
analysis to lead them to refine their findings. Thus rather than stop at the cross-tabulation,
Drummond and Hopper examined the interactions that constitute their data in what could
simply have been unexplicated examples.
In attempting to combine CA methods with quantification, Drummond and Hopper
(1993) pointed out the difficulties associated with treating all socalled back channels
as doing the same job. The three respondents then thrashed out the issues with respect
to attempts to combine CA with traditional social psychological approaches. In this way
the back channel, a term frequently used unreflexively in a wide range of research, was
thoroughly taken to task. In the process of showing the interactive work that it does, larger
issues were addressed.
A similar approach was taken in examining the relationship between CA and ethnography. Michael Moermans (1988) book, Talking Culture, prompted a good deal of debate
regarding the relative merits of CA and ethnography, and the possibility and desirability of
combining them. In a special edition of ROLSI Hopper brought together a wide variety of
perspectives in a format in which the debate could be played out.
In each case, he provided a forum for a constructive encounter between conversation
analytic perspectives and traditional, often unquestioned approaches in communication.
Addressing connection and difference is crucial as CA becomes more widely practiced
in the communication field. CA developed initially under the auspices of the sociology
discipline. Therefore articulation of CA itself, and of its relationship with other approaches
in the communication field is vital if we are to appreciate and realize fully the potential
contributions of CA to the study of communication phenomena, or as Hopper often put it,
to a cumulative science of speech. Through conference presentations and special issues
of journals in addition to his own publications, Hopper played a key role in providing
fora for the communication field to explore the opportunities CA afforded for studying
communication.
EXPLORATION OF THE POETIC
A third arena in which we see Hoppers work making a unique contribution, and a mindstretching set of connections, is in his pursuit of the poetic. Robert was a poet and songwriter, and generously shared his creativity. His scholarly writing is poetic too. He used
words in such a way as to stretch the established categories, the given ways of thinking.
This affinity for the poetic shows itself in various other ways. He used to ask sometimes
for class assignments to be written in poetry rather than prose. Hopper is one of few in
communication to count among his refereed publications a poem (published in Communication Theory, Hopper, 1991). Again we see his eagerness to engage beyond the established
boundaries, to gently rough up the smooth surfaces of the intellectual taken-for-granted.

The poetic is manifested in two ways in particular in his scholarship: in his work on the
poetics of talk, and in his part in the ELP project.
Hyde and Sargent in their article in Hoppers (1993) special edition of Text and Performance Quarterly on Performance and Conversation noted that typically Communication
approaches play as a strategy for managing and manipulating interactive episodes. They
pointed out that Hoppers work on the poetic has, as they put it, turned this around a
bit. Building on Sacks and Jeffersons work on poetics, Hopper brought to the attention
of the communication field the play of poetics and the poetics of play. This was most
notable in his 1992 article in Text and Performance Quarterly on Speech Errors and the
Poetics of Conversation, in which he laid out various arenas in which we can learn from
the poetic character of speech errors. In his book on Telephone Conversation, Hopper
(1992) suggested that playful interaction may be the natural state of conversational
speaking. He put it like this: Play episodes lift up a corner of the universe to reveal the
great Poem, speaking us (p. 190). This work along with that of some of his students, most
notably Phillip Glenn (Hopper & Glenn, 1994) helps us to begin to understand the work of
play in everyday interaction, grounding that understanding in the details of everyday talk.
In addition, Hoppers persistence brought about the publication in Text and Performance
Quarterly of a magnificent piece by Gail Jefferson on the poetics of ordinary talk, that was
developed from a talk she originally gave in 1977 (Jefferson, 1996).
Attention to the details of everyday talk brought about the Everyday Life Performance
project. It began in the early 1980s when Nathan Stucky worked with Hopper to put on
a performance of reenacted naturally occurring conversations. Stucky trained actors to
re-produce conversations, studying them with tapes and conversation analytic transcripts,
until they could, as it were, sing along flawlessly. The results were striking. Hopper
used the ELP learning method in classes to bring students close to the details of conversation. Some of the results are documented in the special edition of Text and Performance
Quarterly that Hopper (1993) edited. Again, an original twist on the contributions of CA
transcription conventions is made accessible, and a new aspect of their importance to the
field is displayed.
In these three major arenas then, Hopper was an innovator and a groundbreaker. His
work challenges both researchers and interactants takenfor-granteds. He was a primary
instigator in bringing CA to the Communication field, in his search for a cumulative science of speech. This involved taking on and reexamining some concepts that are often
taken for granted in the Communication field. It also involved experimenting with CA to
solve some of the communication fields highly resistant research conundrums. In the process of doing this, he provided various fora for addressing issues that are fundamental to
the research enterprise in this field. All of this has been done with an ear tuned to the poetic
frequencies of language-that which is seen but unnoticed.
All the while, Hopper was teacher, friend, and mentor to more than 30 doctoral students
and 10 masters students. In his teaching also, he was never afraid to risk being interesting,
to challenge the taken-for-granted, and to spin enticing connections.
Hopper was a remarkable role model as a teacher and scholar. His tenaciousness in
wrestling issues to the ground, the extent to which he lived his work, his persistence in
leaving no stone unturned, and his intellectual generosity toward and moral support for his
graduate students were all extraordinary. No one who was in his classes, or saw him present

at conferences, will forget his originality in these settings. In 1990 he received the University of Texas Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching. In 1994 he received ICAs
B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award for service to students and communication research.
In 1998 he was the inaugural recipient of NCAs Mentoring Award. He also won ICAs
Outstanding Scholar Award from the Language and Social Interaction Division in 1996, as
well as winning NCAs Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award in 1996. All of this was
done with humility, with the selfprofessed stance of a bricoleur, and with a keen ear for
wordplay and puns. In a recent report of research productivity in communication studies
(Communication Monographs, June, 1999) Hopper was ranked was ranked 16th in the
country. His intellectual legacy speaks for itself. His impact on his students, both graduate
and undergraduate, and on his colleagues and friends in the field and beyond, guarantees
his immortality.
REFERENCES
Austin, J.L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon.
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bradac, J., Wiemann, J., & Hopper, R. (1989). The study of message effects: Retrospect and prospect. In J.J.Bradac & J.M.Wiemann, (Eds.), Message effects in communication science
(pp. 294318). Los Angeles: Sage.
Drummond, K. & Hopper, R. (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 157178.
Forster, E.M. (1910). Howards end. New York: Putnam.
Hopper, R. (in press). Gendering talk. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Hopper, R. (1999). Going public about social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 7784.
Hopper, R. (1993). Special edition. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13.
Hopper, R. (1992). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation, Text and Performance Quarterly,
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Hopper, R. (1991). Observer: Steps to an ecology of mind. Communication Theory, I, 267268.
Hopper, R. (1989). Conversation analysis and social psychology as descriptions of interpersonal
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Hopper, R. (1986). Speech evaluation of intergroup dialect differences: The shibboleth schema, in
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Hopper, R. & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: Telephone openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 3, 185200.
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Jefferson, G. (1984). Notes on a systematic deployment of the acknowledgement tokens yeah and
mm hm. Papers in Linguistics, 17, 197206.
Lawrence, S., Stucky, N., & Hopper, R. (1990). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes on
speech evaluations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 209224.

Mandelbaum, J. (1983). Speaking of love. Unpublished masters thesis, University of Texas, Austin.
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codes, and social interaction (pp. 319327). New York: Simon and Schuster. (Reprinted from
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University of Texas, Austin.
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APPENDIX
THE OEUVRE OF ROBERT HOPPER
Refereed Publications
Bell, R., Zahn, C.J., & Hopper, R. (1984). Disclaimers. Communication Quarterly, 32, 2840.
Browning, L.D., Whitehead, J.L., & Hopper, R. (1976). Organizations as systems of influence.
Group and Organizational Dynamics, 1, 355369.
Coleman, L.G. Daly, G.A., & Hopper, R. (1980). Expletives and androgyny, Anthropological Linguistics, 22, 131137.
de la Zerda, N., & Hopper, R. (1979). Employment interviewers reactions to Mexican-American
Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1993). Acknowledgement tokens in a series. Communication
Reports, 6, 4653.
Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 157178.
Fitch, K., & Hopper, R. (1983). If you speak Spanish, theyll think youre a German. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 4, 115127.
Flores, N., & Hopper, R. (1975). Mexican-Americans evaluations of spoken Spanish and English,
Speech Monographs, 42, 9198.

Gundersen, D.F., & Hopper, R. (1976). Relationships between speech delivery and speech effectiveness. Communication Monographs, 43, 158165.
Hopper, R. (1995). Episode trajectory in conversational play. In P. ten Have & G. Psathas (Eds.),
Situated order: Studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities (5771). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Hopper, R. (1993). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 181183.
Hopper, R. (1992). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly,
12, 113124.
Hopper, R. (1991). Hold the phone. In D. Zimmerman & D. Boden (Eds.), Talk and social structure
(pp. 217231). Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Hopper, R. (1991). Observer: Steps to an ecology of mind [poem]. Communication Theory, 1,
267268.
Hopper, R. (1989). Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings: What are you doin. Communication Monographs, 56, 240252.
Hopper, R. (1981). How to do things without words: The taken-for-granted as speech-action. Communication Quarterly, 29, 228236.
(Received SCA award from Language & Social Interaction Division, 1996.)
Hopper, R. (1977). Language attitudes in the job interview. Communication Monographs, 44,
346351.
Hopper, R. (1973). Is deprivation linguistic? Kansas Journal of Sociology, 9, 209216.
Hopper, R. (1973). Remarks on teaching grammar. The Southern Speech Communication Journal,
38, 279284.
Hopper, R. (1972). Overgeneralization as a learning strategy in communicative development. Western Speech, 4752.
Hopper, R. (1971). Communicative development and childrens responses to questions. Speech

Monographs, 38, 19.
Hopper, R. (1971). Expanding the notion of competence. The Speech Teacher, 20, 2935.
Hopper, R. Speech in telephone openings: Emergent interaction v. routines. In S.J. Sigman (Ed.),
Introduction to Human Communication: Behavior, Codes and Social Interaction (pp. 118127).
New York: Simon & Schuster. (Reprinted from Western Journal of Speech Communication,
53, 178194.)
Hopper, R., & Bell, R. (1984). Broadening the deception construct. Quarterly Journal of Speech,
70, 288302.
Hopper, R., Bosma, J.H., & Ward, J.A. (1992). Dialogic teaching of medical terminology at the
Cancer Information Service. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 11, 6374,
Hopper, R., & Chen, C. (1996). Language, culture, relationship: Telephone openings in Taiwan.
three languages. International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 13, 148170.
Hopper, R., Doany, N., Drummond, K., & Johnson, M. (1991). Conversational universals in telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 367385.
Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1988). Language use and media: A microanalytic perspective, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 5, 163166.
Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1990). Emergent goals at a relational turning point: The case of
Gordon and Denise. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 3965.
Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: Telephone openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 3, 185200.

Hopper, R., & Fitch, K. (1981). The informing function in second language instruction, The Journal
of the Communication Association of the Pacific, 10, 5158.
Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Perspectives on repetition, Vol. 2. (pp. 2940). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Hopper, R., Knapp, M.L., & Scott, L. (1981). Couples personal idioms: Exploring intimate talk.
Journal of Communication, 31, 2334.
Hopper, R., & Miller, L M. (1972). Childrens dependence upon visual context in sentence comprehension. Speech Monographs, 39, 140143.
Hopper, R., Thomason, W.R., & Ward, J.A. (1993). Demographic questions in telephone calls to the
Cancer Information Service. Southern Journal of Communication, 58, 115127.
Hopper, R., & Williams, F. (1973). Speech characteristics and employability. Speech Monographs,
40, 29630
Hopper, R., & Wrather, N. (1978). Teaching functional communication skills in the secondary
classroom. Communication Education, 37, 316321.
Knapp, M.L., Hopper, R., & Bell, R. (1984). Compliments: A descriptive taxonomy, Journal of
Communication, 34(4), 1231. (A revised version was published in Psychology Today, 19, 1985,
2429.)
Lawrence, S.G., Stucky, N.P., & Hopper, R. (1990). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes
on speech evaluations, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9,209224.
Modaff, J.V., & Hopper, R. (1984). Why speech is basic?. Communication Education, 33, 3742.
Morris, G.H., & Hopper, R. (1993). Remediation and legislation in everyday talk: How communicators achieve consensus. In S.J.Sigman (Ed.), Introduction to human communication: Behavior,
codes and social interaction (pp. 319327). New York: Simon & Schuster. (Reprinted from
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 266276).
Morris, G.H., Hopper, R., Zahn, C.J., & Bell, R. (1985). Measuring language attitudes: The Speech
Evaluation Instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 4, 113123.
Ragan, S.L., & Hopper, R. (1984). Ways to leave your lover. Communication Quarterly, 32,
310317.
Stringer, J., & Hopper, R. (1998). Generic he in Conversation? Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84, 2,
209221.
Thomason, W.R., & Hopper, R. Pauses and transition relevance. Human Communication Research,
18, 429444. Invited Essays & Portions of Books, etc.
Bradac, J.J., Wiemann, J.M., & Hopper, R. (1989). The study of message effects: Retrospect and
prospect. In J.J.Bradac & J.M.Wiemann (Eds.), Message effects in communication science
(pp. 294318). Los Angeles: Sage.
Doany, N.K., & Hopper, R. (1994). Saussure at play: From linguistics to poetics. In R. Conville
(Ed.), Philosophical approaches to language and communication (pp. 1122). Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1991). Misunderstanding and its remedies: Telephone miscommunication. In N. Coupland, J.Wiemann, & H. Giles (Eds.), Handbook of miscommunication and
problematic talk (pp. 301315). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Hopper, R. (1998). Flirtation: Conversation analyses in life and fiction. In S. Banks & A. Banks
(Eds.), Fact/Fiction. Alta Vista Publishers.
Hopper, R. (1990). Describing speech phenomena. In J.Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook
13 (pp. 245254). Beverly Hills: Sage.

Hopper, R. (1990). The telephone and the re-discovery of conversation. In M. Medhurst (Ed.),
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Pullman.
Hopper, R. (1989). Conversation analysis and social psychology as descriptions of interpersonal
communication. In D.Roger & P.Bull (Eds.), Conversation (pp. 4866). Clevedon, England:
Hopper, R. (1986). Speech evaluation of intergroup dialect differences: The shibboleth schema. In
W.B. Gudykunst (Ed.,), Intergroup communication (pp. 127136). London: Edward Arnold.
Hopper, R. (1986). Switching partners in conversation. Belfast Working Papers in Language and
Linguistics, pp. 221242.
Hopper, R. (1983). Interpretation as coherence production. In R.T.Craig & K. Tracy (Eds.), Conversational coherence (pp. 8199). Beverly Hills: Sage.
Hopper, R. (1982). Powerful is as powerful speaks: Linguistic sex differences reconsidered. In
L.Larmer & M.B.Badami (Eds.), Communication, language and gender (pp. 162170). Madison: University of Wisconsin Extension Press.
Hopper, R. (1977). The verbal symbol system. In R.E.Bassett & M.J.Smythe, Communication in
instruction. New York: Harper & Row.
Hopper, R. (1976). Development of Language Codes. In R.R.Allen and K. Brown (Eds.), The
development of communicative competence. Chicago: National Textbook Co.
Hopper, R. (in press). What we know about telephone conversation. In H. Sawhney, (Ed.), Telephonic Communication.
Hopper, R., Koch, S., & Mandelbaum, J. (1986). Conversation analysis methods. In D.G. Ellis &
W.A.Donohue (Eds.), Contemporary issues in language and discourse processes (pp. 169186).
Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Hopper, R., & Street, R.L. (1982). A model of speech style evaluation, in E. Ryan & H. Giles
(Eds.), Attitudes toward language variation (pp. 175188). London: Edward Arnold.
Hopper, R., Thomason, R., Sias, P.M., & Ward, J.A. (1995). Disclaimers in telephone calls to the
Cancer Information Service. In G.H.Morris & R.Chernail (Eds.), Talk of the Clinic
(pp. 171184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Williams, F. et al (including R.Hopper). (1976). Explorations in the Linguistic Attitudes of Teachers. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Wood, B.S. et al. (including R.Hopper). (1977). Development of functional communication competencies, pre-K-grade 6. ERIC.
DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS AND MASTERS THESES DIRECTED

BY ROBERT HOPPER
Dissertations
Black, D.R. (1987). The not said: Advantages of not being explicit.
Brown, M.H. (1982). That reminds me of a story: Speech action in organizational socialization.
Damhorst, M.L. (1981). The impact of formality and similarity of attire on observers descriptions
of interpersonal events.
de la Zerda, N. (1977). Employment interviewers reactions to Mexican American Speech.
Doany, N.K. (1992). Donner la parole a Saussure.
Drummond, K. (1990). Back-channels revisited.
Glenn, P. (1987). Laugh and the world laughs with you: Shared laughter episodes in conversation.
Gundersen, D.F. (1974). Speech delivery and effectiveness.

Jarmon, L. (1996). Embodied actions and turn-taking in conversation.
Johnson, M. (1995). Tejano Speaking.
Jones, C. (1993). Supportiveness in physician-patient interviews: The case of the missing assessments.
Lawrence, S.G. (1988). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes on speech evaluation.
LeBaron, C.D. (1998). Building Communication: Architectural gestures and the embodiment of
new ideas.
Mandelbaum, J. (1987). Recipient-driven storytelling in conversation.
Modaff, D. (1995). Openings in doctor-patient interviews.
Morris, G.H. (1980). A cybernetic model of alignment.
Ragan, S.L. (1982). Alignment talk in the employment interview.
Scott, L. (1983). Formulations in married couples conversations.
Sims, A.L. (1984). The compliment sequence.
Soukup, P., S.J. (1985). The term medium in United States communication research, 19201940.
Street, R.L. (1980). Evaluation of noncontent speech accommodation.
Stringer, J.L. (1997). The performance of bilingual interaction in a Latino community.
Tilghman, P.P. (1976). Influence of visual cues on childrens comprehension strategies.
Thomason, W.R. (1992). The non-transition-relevant turn.
Watkins, C.E. (1974). White teachers evaluations of black childrens speech.
Williams, L. (1991). Ethnic dialects and the employ ability question.
Wrather, N.D. (1997). Side sequences and coherence in childrens discourse.
Wrobbel, E.D. (1994). Interactive processes in family therapy.
Zahn, C. (1986). The bases for differing evaluations of male and female speech. Theses
Bosma, J.H. (1991). Dialogic teaching of medical terminology at the Cancer Information Service.
Chen, C. (1993). Telephone openings in Taiwan.
de la Zerda, N. (1974). Mexican Americans evaluations of spoken Spanish and English.
Fitch, K. (1982). A frame analysis of language switching.
Koenig, C. (1998). Ah in Spanish Conversation to Mark the Receipt of New Information.
Mandelbaum, J. (1983). Speaking of love.
Modaff, J.V. (1982). Why speech is basic.
Morris, G.H. (1978). The remedial interchange.
Sims, A.L. (1980). Childrens responses to assertions of adults and peers.
Warfel, K. (Hawkins). (1982). Evaluation of Male and Female Speech.
Wrather, N.D. (1976). The informative function in the first grade classroom.
35
The Scientist as Humanist: Moral Values in the Opus
of Robert Hopper
Sandra L.Ragan
University of Oklahoma
No one would argue Robert Hoppers consummate social scientism. Whether in his early
scholarship as a social psychologist of language and interaction or in his conversation analytic work over the last two decades, Roberts work has exhibited a rigorous empiricism.
Yet there is a quality in his writing that sets it apart from much scholarship in the social
sciences and that elevates it to a status beyond that attained by Roberts considerable contributions to communication theory in language, social interaction, and gender. Throughout his work runs, unabashedly it would appear, a values orientation that extols Roberts
beliefs in the essential goodness of the human condition, while also gently prodding his
readers toward bettering their own and others humanity. Three themeseliminating social
injustice, educating the students of speech communication, and advancing the notion of
dialogue in human interactioninform the moral component of Hoppers work. Although
they are present even in Roberts earliest studies of linguistic underdogs, they enjoy fruition in his later works (e.g., Telephone Conversation (1992) and, particularly, in his latest
manuscript Gendering Talk (in press)).
Although all of Hoppers work is devoted to eliminating the discrimination wrought by
privileged communication and privileged communicators, or in leveling the communication playing field, he was ever the speech teacher. A major component of his teaching was
the primacy of human dialogue; through dialogue is our salvationwhether it be in the
sounds of children or in the informational discourse of a cancer patient and an information
hotline staffer. Never is the premium on dialogue as high as it is in Telephone Conversation
and Gendering Talk, however.
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
An advanced primer in the conversation analysis of telephone openings, closings, turns,
and trajectories, Telephone Conversation (Hopper, 1992) also offers practical aid for the
telephobic as well: Telephone speaking skills, a mundane taken-for-granted, are not
taught, Hopper bemoaned: We lack a pedagogy for this speech environment because we
have not explored it (p. 5). Hoppers promise is to help readers achieve an increased
critical awareness of your own speaking patterns (p. 5). He delivered. In a practitioners
epilogue at the books end, Robert advised in a list of 11 dicta how speakers can increase
their contentment, insight, and effectiveness in telephone conversations, ending with Walt
Whitmans advice to listen to our own poetic voices.
A commitment to educating his reader can also be traced through his work. Roberts
research manifests throughout his career his dedication to learningwhether that learning be in childrens acquisition of competent communication patterns, in cancer patients
needs to know of current treatment options, in womens and mens understanding of com-

munication and courtship behaviors that create and reify gender stereotypes. More importantly, Roberts work grounds learning in dialogue. He queried in Telephone Conversation
(Hopper, 1992): How do we educate members of society to be effective communicators
when communicative tasks are not best described as work done by individual speakers?
(p. 67). That is, how do we as communication educators teach dialogic skills, achieved
over sequential turns of talk, rather than educate students in the traditional mode of being
effective encoders and decoders? Moreover, specific to telephone talk but perhaps to other
speech genres as well, how can we educate students in the difficult to specify pas de deux
that are the dances of good persons conversing well (p. 67) but that do not, necessarily,
embody traditional speech imperatives to be clear, precise, and vivid in speaking? Roberts answer: We must seek ways to tailor speech instruction to students as community
membersas dialogue partners. We also must learn the uses of dialogic muddling through
as a complement to precise message encoding (p. 67).
The art of good speaking, good listening and, apparently, of good living is the art of
becoming a competent dialogue partner, although Robert would scarcely define competent in some of the prescriptive ways employed by the discipline. Rather his notion of
competent, gleaned from his most recent work, but also hearkening back to his earliest
scholarship, is of communicative artistry. This notion finds fruition in Roberts most recent
manuscript, Gendering Talk.
GENDERING TALK
The culmination of almost 25 years of teaching and researching in gender and communication, this book is a brilliant and innovative treatise on a topic that has almost become
hackneyed in our disciplineand yet is one that myriad volumes before Roberts have only
partially illuminated. Roberts theme is that ordinary speech practices and performances
between women and menin flirting, courtship, lovemaking, and decouplingproduce
the very gender differences that our culture has come to see as natural, fixed features of
communication between the sexes. Robert does not see women and men hailing from different planets, a prevailing view in the popular literature, nor does he believe that intercultural communication differences account for the relational and communication difficulties
between men and women. Instead:
We are co-makers of performed gender upon the social planet we all inhabit. The
human conversation, to which our lives are a brief visit, carries our performances of
gendering talk. Human languages are poems that speak us, gender identity and all,
into being. Let us listen carefully to each other, with that special rapt attention we
might bring to poetry being read aloud, (p. 7)
Early in the text of Gendering Talk, Robert reiterated his predisposition to dialogue over
monologue, associating monologue, with its emphasis on accuracy and dominance, with
the masculine gender (a view in which gender troubles are -the consequences of differences), and dialogue, with its features of interaction and community building, with the
feminine gender (a view in which men and women share the same problems and work collaboratively to resolve these). Dialogue thus permits us to engage optimistically in the
The scientist as humanist 477

communicative tasks of mutual understanding, support, intimacy, and politics (p. 11). At
the same time, however, Robert revealed that dialogue by itself does not spell competent
communication, that effective communicators have to be able to operate in both dialogic
and monologic modes. Finally, although he favored the dialogic explanation, his questioning of the gendered associations of monologue and dialogue, his wish to uncouple this
dichotomy of communication forms from oversimplified assignment to gendered categories (p. 11) surmounts any susceptibility to the very gender stereotypes he declaimed.
Gendering Talk purports to show us how everyday, mundane talk, that same talk that
has been the basis for all of Roberts conclusions about the human condition, exhibits and
continues our gendered practices. Yet throughout his discussions of flirting, sexual violence, couple formation, and differences in talk about and talk between women and men
(an encompassing view of gender that sees the darkest forces in the battle of the sexes at
the far end of a continuum that begins with seemingly innocuous courtship rituals), Robert
aimed to educate us, perhaps to indoctrinate us in his empirically grounded belief that if
we learn to understand that range of and variety of gendering talk, we might yet discover
that women and men inhabit a single slowly-improving planet (p. 14).
Toward the end of the book, Robert returned to one of his old themesthat speech
practices can create level playing fields for speakers rather than privileging standard versus
nonstandard speakers, linguistic bulldogs versus linguistic underdogs, telephone junkies
versus telephobics, men versus women. Speaking optimistically, as is always his wont,
Robert implored:
If we wish to change the world to provide a more level playing field for men and
women, we might develop greater awareness of these gendering performances and
seek to bring them into a greater degree of self-control. I am optimistic that this can
and should be done, but believe it to be the work of multiple generations of speakers,
women and menpeoplefrom Earth, (pp. 260261)
At the end of Gendering Talk, a book whose premises and conclusions are more empirically grounded than most on this topic, Robert was ever the speech teacher, still the advocate for considered dialogue, as he warned the reader against easy fixes (e.g., correcting
anothers speech) in leveling the playing field. His parting note is a dictum that we try to
achieve male-female parity with great seriousness and with our most cosmic sense of
humor (p. 291).
Educating, dialoguing, levelingthese artistic performances are the hallmarks of Hoppers communication ethics; these are the moral guidelines transparent in his life work. I
dont recall him telling his graduate students that the highest good of social science research
was at once the celebration of and the improvement of the human condition, yet his scholarship and his teaching consistently manifest that credo. One discovers only rarely in life a
good scientist or a good humanist. In Robert Hopper, we blessedly know both.
REFERENCES
Hopper, R. (in press). Gendering talk. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
36
The Great Poem
Leslie H.Jarmon
University of Texas at Austin
This essay honors the teaching methods practiced by Robert Hopper as experienced by one
of his students. I completed my doctorate in communication under Hoppers supervision
in the summer of 1996.
One of the works favored by Hopper in his courses on social interaction and performance was Platos dialogue, Phaedrus. If a champion of conversation analysis had existed
among the ancients, it surely might have been Socrates, a teacher with an appetite for learning. Just as surely, Hoppers appetite for learning kept his classes vibrating with a dynamic
spirit of face-to-face conversational inquiry, no mean feat in the 1990s of multimedia and
distance-learning.
As Socrates and his student, Phaedrus, explore the relationship between discourse and
love, a double-layered portrayal of teaching emerges. Socrates contrasts written texts
with the embodied dialogue that can take place between two thinkers who are copresent.
Socrates moves through his discourse on discourse while he and Phaedrus simultaneously
move, talk, listen, and rest themselves along the river banks of the Ilissus, immersed in
the orality and physicality of face-to-face interaction. The dialogue models the teaching
practice it describes: While arguing explicitly for the profound advantages of co-present
interaction in the learning process, Socrates also admits that written texts can be for him
like bait for hungry beasts, and he playfully tells/teases Phaedrus, so you brandish
before me words in books and could lead me on a tour of all Attica and anywhere else you
pleased (Plato, 1956, p. 7).
Thus, in word and action, in speech and in performance, we hear and see Socrates teach
about the sacred nature of discourse and the power of the spoken word to sow seeds in
souls. Late in the dialogue, Plato (1956) obliterated any remaining doubt about Socrates
position (p. 70):
Phaedrus:
Do you mean the living, animate discourse of a man who really knows?
Would it be fair to call the written discourse only a kind of ghost?
Socrates:
Precisely
And in this way did Hoppers teaching method entice students with a feast of ghostly
texts, written discourses on human communication and the floating mystery of language.
Carefully selected for their conceptual and philosophical kernels of recorded wisdom,
Hopper brandished before his students the ideas of Plato, Burke, the Batesons (father and
daughter), Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Gadamer, Bakhtin, Foucault, Sacks, and
choice others. At his instruction, we read them and made what sense of them we could.
Weekly, at his instruction, we wrote what he referred to as a fragment, a 1 or 2-page
vertical plunge into a single idea or insight in the text that snagged our attention. And,
The great poem 479

again, at his instruction, in this fragment of writing/thinking we were asked to include a
concrete example of whatever we might be writing about, to include, that is, an instance
from everyday life.
Thus prepared with the reading, some small piece of writing, and a glimpse of connection to our daily lives, we would reenter the classroom and Hopper proceeded to engage
us as participants in his foray into the text. On any given day, this was the essence of the
Hopper performance: He asked. He listened. He widened his eyes, shook his head back and
forth, raised gangly arms, and burst into a river of discourse. Sometimes, with closed eyes,
he almost whispered.
The special element was this: Right there before our own open eyes, Hopper conjured
up the spirit of the ghostly writer and wrestled with him or her over what it is that is so
critically compelling about their idea and why we should care. We were entranced by the
naked vulnerability of this animated scholar who was articulating, of all things, an ethics
within the spirit of inquiry. Not knowledge for the sake of itself; but rather, for the sake of
our very souls.
Hoppers soul was singing and was inviting us to listen carefully to the structures of his
songs, to the themes of the songs of other thinkers. There is method to this madness, quite
a lot of method. In fact, seduced then by the openness of someone who was himself still
learning, we trusted his guidance into a world of rigorous method. Hopper often used the
metaphor of a monastic order to describe what he called our submission to a new path of
study. He had us novitiates enter into a disciplined, empirical routine of the analysis of
the details of human communication.
He would have us do no more than he was willing to do, and, in fact, did do on a daily
basis. Like a dancer at the bar exercising daily, he actually modeled the behaviors we would
come to acquire through practice, practice, and more practice. Repetition was the Order
of the Day in Hoppers universe. But with each new repetition, one covered new territory,
heard and seen as though it had not been there all along. The method Hopper perfected was
built on the simple practices of Harvey Sacks and other conversation analysts.
Those of you familiar with the practice of conversation analysis are intimately familiar
with its rigorous, meticulous, and time-devouring routine. Hopper had his novices follow
this pattern, more or less:
We collected representations (record in various forms) of humans interacting in the
wild.
We watched/listened to these representations and created logs of them.
We pursued those sequences of interaction that captured our attention for any reason at
all, and logged them more carefully in still more detail.
We wrote field notes on those sequences, paying as close attention as we might to
greater and greater levels of detail.
We transcribed those sequences while continuing to write field notes; this cycle involves
innumerable repetitions of hearing-seeing-describing the enriched levels of detail in
the sequences structure and content.
With so much repetition, we were by then on very intimate terms with a particular
instance (in some of his classes, we would even perform the conversations, with
pinpoint accuracy as our goal).

Hopper emphasized that at this stage we were working in a new paradigm wherein the
increasing degree of detail we were becoming aware of (i.e., was coming into being
for us) had a synergistic effect on the kind of field notes we were able to write for that
sequence.
Furthermore, on any given day, with repeated engagement of the data, new phenomena
could emerge that required us to seek out prior research and the findings of other analysts.
Finally, other related instances, similar or contrasting, could begin to occur to us and
thereby could enrich the discovery/recovery process of the patterns of structure underlying the interaction order.
At some point, say, one third of the way into a semester, Hopper would hand out a gentle
instruction sheet that guided ones efforts throughout the remainder of the course. This was
usually a half-page of text, all lower case (a rhetorical move that lessened the intimidating
impact of what was contained therein). Hopper indicated that we were to, simply, compile
collections of instances (transcribed) that seemed to have some relation to one another,
and, as we progressed in our observing-tfanscribing-writing routine, to keep the best example of a given collection on top of each stack. He recommended attaching any field notes
to each instance, and to revisit them on occasion.
As patterns continued to emerge, and he was utterly confident that they would, we
were encouraged to decide whether we had something to write about that was paperlike. Again, what is so special here is that he did not claim to know what we would find.
His method of teaching us was fundamentally true in spirit to the conversation analysis
methodology whose richness lies in the spontaneity and unpredictable nature of its output.
Hopper engendered in us the confidence that we, too, if we truly walked the path of this
discipline, would be catching some of the details of actual occurrences (Sacks, 1984,
p. 25) of human communication.
And, of course, this can work wonders.
And many of us, who later have found ourselves in the position of teaching others,
borrow heavily and confidently from Hoppers method of teaching, from the design of his
assignments, from his reading lists, from his annotations, from our class lecture notes, and
from his archive of recordings and transcriptions of human interaction. His inspiring performance as a teacher/scholar was seen not only in his own classrooms, but is seen today
in the re-performances and echoes of his teaching practices as they are embodied by us, his
former students, in numerous other classrooms around the country.
The poetic and ethical streams of his modeling are ever-present. For example, in Speech
Errors and the Poetics of Conversation, Hopper (1992a) concluded the article with this
observation: We approach embodied interactive phenomena by way of evidence that
speech errors make manifest. This evidence shows figures of speech operating in everyday
interaction, and reveals fragments of the great poem speaking us into being (p. 122). Hopper was a poet-scholar whose own embodied performances invited so many of us to feel
a shared and connected sense of the great poem speaking us into being. At the end of the
Envoi section in his book, Telephone Conversation, (1992b) Hoppers last (but not least)
recommendation, Item 11, to the telephone interlocutor is as follows: Listen and respond
with a poetic ear. Listen for and cherish puns, figures of speech, rhyme, assonance, rhythm,
The great poem 481

allusion, and the like. Follow Walt Whitmans advice: listen to our poetic voices. Put your
ear on the line (pp. 220221). And, always the dialogic teacher inviting one to continue
the conversation, Hoppers last words in the book are: Let me know what you discover
(p. 221). His appetite for learning was never satiated! And we are forever grateful.
REFERENCES
Hopper, R. (1992a). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124.
Hopper, R. (1992b). Telephone conversation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Plato. (1956). Phaedrus. (W.C. Helmbold & W.G. Rabinowitz, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Liberal
Arts Press.
Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J.M. Atkinson & J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social
action (pp. 21-27). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
37
Phone Openings, Gendered Talk, and
Conversations About Illness
Wayne A.Beach
San Diego State University
The interactional exemplars herein offer only a sketch of Robert Hoppers research, a small
sampling of ordinary yet complex interactions we had the opportunity to share curiosity
and concern about: phone openings, men talking about women, and conversations involving cancer. Drawn from larger sets of data, these materials provide seemingly endless analytic puzzles. These puzzles prohibit boredom while injecting regular doses of humility as
the incessant search for patterns goes forward.
HOW ARE YOU TODAY
Regarding the work of How are you today (and variations thereof) in phone openings,
and some of the interactional aftershocks of their utilization, let me provide here yet another
instance for existing collections. As a backdrop, I should note that it is by no means easy
to elaborate on Schegloff s (e.g., 1968, 1979, 1986, 1987) exhaustive work on phone openings; he left few stones unturned in his analyses. Yet Robert offered some useful insights on
matters of how strangers and intimates display and thus accomplish for one another their
relational history (e.g., 1989b, 1989c, 1992b; Hopper & Drummond 1992). As Robert
noted (Hopper, 1992b) in both summarizing Schegloff s original work on phone openings
and making a case for further research on recognition as an exceedingly dense and complex matter, fraught with a seemingly endless array of conversational practices: marked
turns in telephone openings become self-explicating bits of context. On the slippery and
elusive path that meanders toward description of the planet-wide human conversation, the
telephone opening plays an important role (pp. 80, 91).
A brief overview must suffice. During phone openings How are yous typically occur
following greetings, within inquiry/response slots and exchanges, are typically initiated
by the caller, and once completed (if they occur at all) lay grounds for launching of first
topic. Further, How are yous are typically, though not exclusively, utilized by intimates
rather than strangers. In response to How are you, a routine Fine. How are you is
altogether unmarked. In contrast, marked responses may indicate problems and/or special circumstances of some sortsthat is, divergences from routine, apparent sequential
ambiguities revealing that something is up. For example, these features may be marked
by (a) pauses following How are yous, (b) failures to reciprocate greeting/inquiry, and/
or (c) premonitoring and projection of possible problems (e.g., pretty good I guess; see
Jefferson, 1980).

In a nutshell, thats the background. Now, heres the story.1 It has always stood out in my
mind as a classic introduction to conversation analytic possibilities.
In the late 1970s I was working with a collection of pre-sequencing instances (see
Beach & Dunning, 1982). I believe it was in 1980, after reading Schegloff s (1980) particularly provocative pre-pre paper (Robert always liked sound rows; see Beach 1993a;
Hopper 1992a; Jefferson, 1996; Sacks 1992a) that I called him at UCLA to set up an
appointment during an upcoming visit to Los Angeles. It is a reconstructed conversation,
but it is all I have, so take it for what its worth. In any case, I only remember the first few
moments of the call, my version of which goes like this:2
(1)
Reenacted Fieldnotes3
((Ring Ring))
M:
Hello?
W:
Professor Schegloff?
M:
W:
M:
Ye: :S.
Hi.=This is Wayne Beach calling.
>How are you today. <
(1.8)
You must be from the midwest.4
Here, of course, we have two strangers on the phone, the caller (W) initiating a How are
you today. often reserved for intimates, and/or some other special work, and a recipient
(M) who did not (and probably could not!) let such a moment pass: Rather than providing
a reciprocal Fine. How are you., or one of several other typical responses, and rather than
answering the question more or less directly, M offered a declarative and conclusionary
You must be from the midwest.decidedly not a question.
As I recall, at that moment I was both astounded and perplexed: How had he preferred
such a correct guess? Here I was calling from the University of Nebraska, having been
born and raised in Iowa, yet had not volunteered such information. I remember thinking:
What an amazing ability to operate on the materials of the moment like thatto discern enacted background and extrasituational knowledgefrom the scenic details made
available through particular sets of practices and apparent in not just any, but altogether
contingent sequential environments.
During the panel presentation, I noted that I had only shared this exemplar with Manny Schegloff
yesterday, but for Robert this should be a first hearing, qualifying him as an unknowing recipient. This instance, then, provided an appropriate display of relational history for the gathering
we were participating in. Further, it was with some hesitancy that I employed a reconstructed
example, noting that of all the panels this should be the least receptive to reconstructed conversations as data!
2
I also noted, tongue-in-cheek, that this will be historically, I believe, the one and only time where
not only will Manny perform with me a reconstructed conversation, but a conversation that is allegedly 16 years old, in response to which Manny offered Historical CA.
3
Transcription details are generated from the recorded reenactment.
4
At the completion of this reenactment, I turned to Robert and noted: Robert, that performance is
for you. You may never see one like it again.
1
Phone openings, gendered talk, and conversations 485

MEN TALKING ABOUT WOMEN
For nearly a quarter century Robert instructed a course on speech and gender at the University of Texas, Austin, the latter portion of which I began teaching a course on stories
in conversational interaction at San Diego State University. Quite independently, one set of
materials we became interested in (and continually work with students on) were practices
coenacted by some men during talk about women, typically nonpresent, and commonly in
demeaning and derogatory, at times sexist fashion (see Hopper, 2001; Beach, 2000).
Conceptual terms like demeaning, derogatory, sexist, and gender are altogether problematic analytic terms, of course, and debates regarding interactional evidence warranting
these invoked concepts (or not) cannot be reoccasioned here.5 Suffice it to say, however,
and contrary to popular opinion and traditional social scientific folklore, we have both concluded that women and men are more similar than different. Or as Robert put it during a
joint lecture series we were fortunate to collaborate on at my alma matter, the University of
Utah (May 1997),6 Men and women dont really talk different, they just listen the same.
One set of practices we both identified involves men enacting choral performances
when describing womens physical appearance (e.g., breasts). Such activities might be
characterized as follows: voiced, prosodically echoed moments of overlapped and finely
synchronized turn sharings (see Lerner, 1996), often involving extended laughter, reflecting properly simultaneous and informal manifestations of coconstructed intimacy (Beach,
2000). The first instance I recognized is drawn from a video recording vernacularly entitled
Two Guys; a short excerpt is overviewed next, followed by a brief contrast with one of
Roberts extracts:
(2)
SDCL: Two Guysl:514

W:
> I went out with Meli.:ssa las(t) ni:ght. < =
T:
= Tuh hu: [ : h ?]
W:
[W e: w e] nt to: u:h. (0 .2) >
In n Out? <
T:
Uh huh,
W:
pt .hhh An(d) uh > shes all like <
Im uncomfortable in my dre:ss:
leme go ho:me and $cha:[ : n g : e] $ ! ! !

T:
[$Uh HAH HAH]
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH $ ! ! !
One analytic problem, for example, might be stated as follows: Attributions of sexism tend to
reflect negative evaluations rendered by external audiences, overhearers, and/or eavesdroppers,
whereas those speakers accused of producing sexist actions are stereotypically unaware of any
misconduct or wrongdoing.
6
This special occasion involved a colloquium on Interaction, Sexism, and Gender and a special
working session on Communication in Medical Interviews. Appreciation is extended to Robert Avery and colleagues at the University of Utah for their timely and thoughtful hosting of this
eventin retrospect, Roberts last lecture performance.
5

3
4
W:
T:
.ehh(gh)?=Too: much cle:av [a g e ?]

$[Y: (h)es.]
hu: [:(mph) $]
[Mm:?mm: .]
In (1) Ws shes all like previews an intonationally marked and falsetto characterization of Melissas demeanor, a hearably mocking attempt to depict Melissa as whiny
and stereotypically picky about her clothing. At the end of his utterance, Ws final and
laughingly produced word, $cha::ng:e$ !!!, offers an invitation for shared laughter (see
Glenn, 1989; Jefferson, 1979, 1984a, 1985; Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff, 1987). Though
Ts acceptance to laugh (2->) occurs immediately and in overlap, as an upshot of his close
monitoring of the unfolding character of Ws personification of Melissa as inherently laughable, it is also both prolonged and sonorous in its extreme loudness. Designing his response
to Ws prior disparaging performance of Melissa (1->), Ts laughter offers a contribution
in its own right: Not just accepting, but also extending Ws invitation with an invitation
of his own, as Melissas cle:avage? (3) is offered as having shared and recognizebly
special significance. In essence, T works to sexualize the story by providing a sexually
relevant analysis of a potentially non-sexual issue (i.e., Melissas reason for changing her
dress). This coarsely intoned and marked escalation is made available to W as T envisions
what Melissas dress may have been revealing, thereby inviting W to confirm this lewd
orientation.
That Ts laughter and cle:avage? in (3) invited crude reference to Melissa is evident
in (4): As W overlaps with a coarse and resounding $Y:(h)es. hu:[:(mph) $], he displays his momentarily willingness to collaborate as a vulgar coparticipant by demonstrating his understanding of Ts proposed impropriety (see Jefferson, et al., 1987, p. 168).
Finally, and in upgraded fashion, Ts [Mm:?mm:.] (5) offers a flavorful assessment
of the sexual project W and T have now, though momentarily, produced together. And
the story proceeds next as W shifts back to reconstructing his experiences with Melissa
whereas T, as story recipient, continues to pursue increasingly sexual projects and Ws
involvements in them.
A similar example collected by Robert appears in Example 3:
(3)
UTCL:
Jeff:
Dan:
Jeff:
Dan:
Jeff:
Dan:
2
3
4
Jeff:
Dan:
Jeff:
L17.3 (Hopper, 2001)

Leslie Leslie with the bigwhangers.
(0.4)
Yeah.
[A::w.
[Yeh-uh (.) up in two o four? The bi- you
know two o four.
Big girl, bi:g.=
=Were talking big everythings [big on
her=
[Big.
=O:h Lord.=
=huh heh heh huh huh huh
[huh huh huh huh huh

3
5
Dan:
Jeff:
Dan:
[How sweet, how sweet.

Indee:d, indee:d a:h yes: your- your type for
sure.
Yes.
Briefly, following Jeffs initial pronouncement regarding Leslie with the bigwhangers, in
(1 & 2->) Dan and Jeff simultaneously enact, with emphasis, big/Big. This is immediately followed by Dans postenactment assessments (3) of their coorientation in the
midst of Jeffs extensive laughter (4), including Dans savory How sweet, how sweet.
And in (5) Jeff escalates by proposing Dans unequiovocal affinity withLeslie-as-described, a possibility Dan quickly affirms.
Excerpts 2 and 3 above provide a beginning collection of storyable moments where men
collaborate in addressing, envisioning, and even savoring womens cleavage/whangers.
At key moments these coeneactments emerge as voiced and prosodically resonant turn
sharings, that is, choral performances enlivening their disparagements and creating
opportunities for shared intimacy, yet without specifically treating one anothers actions as
inappropriate or (and excuse the pun) tasteless. From examining interactions such as these,
insights into Gendering Talk (Hopper, in press) can begin to be realized by anchoring our
concerns in real time, everyday communication processes.
TALKING ABOUT AND THROUGH CANCER
It has recently been observed that one out of every three families in the Western world
is touched by cancer (Baider, Cooper, & De-Nour, 1996, p. xvii), and that Each year,
over 1.2 million Americans learn they have cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 565,000 Americans die each year from cancer-related causes
(Haylock, 1998, pp. 171172; see also Landis, Murray, & Bolden, 1998).
Each contributor to this volume, and no doubt many readers as well, have spoken with
one another (and perhaps also, at some point in time, with Robert) about his cancer journey (see Kristjanson & Ashcroft, 1994; see also my chap. 10). Clearly, as most persons
have directly known or know about others adversely impacted by a cancer diagnosis, and
fewer though significant numbers of individuals are themselves cancer patients, talking
about and through cancer is seemingly omnipresent and thus omnirelevant in everyday
life. But if by chance any given individual has not been affected in some way by cancer
diagnoses, daily life is replete with talk about other maladies that qualify equally well:
For though cancer is predominant, it is only one of a myriad of passing, chronic, and/or
terminal conditions receiving (at times demanding) our attention.
However, little is known about the distinctive features of illness-related conversations,
occurring predominantly outside of the clinic, though not infrequently about clinical matters (e.g., what the doctors told you, or passing on what someone told you that the doctors
told them, etc.). Research on conversations in the midst of cancer predicaments was under
way prior to Roberts diagnosis,7 a project Robert has been aware of from its inception
The inception of this research project was motivated not by personal experience, but by the
uniqueness and richness of the interactions remaining to be examined. However, since beginning
work on these materials my mother was diagnosed and died from cancer, and including Robert,

because (and perhaps not coincidentally) the phone call materials comprising this corpus
were collected by a student we both mentored. Representing the first natural history of a
family conversing about a loved ones (wife/mother/sister/daughter-in-law, etc.) cancer,
from diagnosis until death, the corpus consists of 57 calls over a 13-month period, between
six family members and over a dozen additional interactional participants.
Analysis is presently focusing on a subcollection of over 100 news delivery sequences
(see Beach, 2001; Maynard, 1997; Maynard, in press), often delicately produced moments
wherein family members initiate, deliver, and assimilate news (see Beach, in press).8 Aside
from determining the interactional organization of these specific moments, attention is also
being given to how news gets updated over time, longitudinally, throughout the course and
progression of cancer, as the family tracks Moms condition. For example, determining
how (or if) the family moves from treating the diagnosis as a highly technical and extraordinary set of events, to an accepted and taken-for-granted feature of their dilemma, is of
particular interest. Similarly, other key activites emerge as an upshot of members preoccupations with them, such as the interactional achievement of lay diagnoses, uncertainty,
social support, hope, and grieving. Taken together, findings revealing the distinct
ways these activities are treated as potentially dreaded issues Perkyl, 1995), including their relevance to acclimatization and prognosis as routine family matters, are only
beginning to emerge.
One brief instance must suffice (but see chap. 10). In the opening moments of the first
phone call in the corpus, and prior to the first delivery and receipt of diagnostic news, Dad
(D) and Son (S) coenact an extended phone opening revealing hesitancy to move directly to
the news, for whom D was the bearer and S the recipient (Jefferson, 1984a, 1984b).
Though clues were provided by D that the as yet unarticulated news was bad, his premonitorings (Jefferson, 1980) of forthcoming trouble did not lead him to announce the news
without Ss assistance. And although S did not outrightly guess what the news might be,
a common feature of conjecturing in the midst of bad news (see Schegloff, 1988), he was
coimplicated (see Maynard, 1992) to ask about it in Line 19 below:
(4)
19
20
21
22
SDCL:Malignancy#1:12
S:
Whats up.
(0.6)
D:
pt(hh) They ca:me ba:ck with the::: hh
needle
biopsy
numerous friends and family members have undergone cancer treatment. This raises a host of
important issues, not the least of which are ways the intersection of personal and research involvements find their ways into scientific inquiry (and/or are noticeably absent from them), including
both positive and potentially negative consequences.
8
The continuation of this research has been made possible through generous support provided by
the American Cancer Society (Grant #ROG-9817201).

23
24
25
S:
D:
26
27
28
29
S:
D:
S:
results, or at least in part:.

Mm hm:
.hh The tum:or:: that is the:: uh adrenal
gla:nd
tumor tests positive.=It is: malignant.
O:kay? =
= .hhh a: :hh(m) =
= Thats the one above her kidney?
Much can be said about the differential knowledge S brings to bear on this sensitive news
environment. In Line 19, the emergent and hearably serious tone of Ss Whats up.,
one instance of an itemized news inquiry (Button & Casey, 1995) soliciting information
about specific rather than general news, reveals Ss foreknowledge that indeed something
was up. And it requires another discussion altogether (Beach, in press a, b) to address the
sources of Ss displayed knowledge, namely, the immediately prior phone opening with D
and/or his ongoing monitoring of Moms experience of ongoing health problems including
impending biopsy tests. Similarly, many details inherent to Lines 2024 are extremely
important to address that cannot be adequately raised here, including how D hears Ss
Whats up. as asking for a diagnostic update, and his recognizably biomedical (e.g.,
technical, jargon-filled) orientation to the news delivery. What might be observed, however, is that Ss O:kay? plus Thats the one above her kidney? (Lines 27 & 29) are
frequently commented upon by those inspecting Malignancy #1 for the first time as (more
or less) a somewhat strange, oddly stoic reaction (see Maynard, in press) for a son to having just heard that his mom was diagnosed with a malignant tumor. For whatever reasons,
people have described to me an inherent expectation that an immediate Oh my God! or
Oh no! is normal. And so it would seem, at least until analysis makes clear that Ds
disinclination to move directly to the news achieves other noteworthy actions: displaying
himself as a central character impacted by the news, yet constraining the impulse for stronger reaction (e.g., crying and/or anger; see Jefferson, 1988; Maynard, in press); orienting S
as recipient of the news to the need for tracking the likely and soon-to-be reported trouble,
yet providing for negotiable and collaborative possibilities in determining whether or not
the trouble will even be addressed, and if so, just whose trouble it is and, thus, how it will
be talked about (Jefferson, 1980, p. 166).
By recruiting Oikay? as a resource for momentarily placing Ds elaborated news
delivery on hold (see Beach, 1993b; 1996), Ss move to Thats the one above her kidney?
displays his prior knowledge about Moms condition but also his willingness to clarify his
understandings of the news in relation to Ds delivery of it. Here Ss actions coauthor and
thus shape both how the news gets initially delivered and that he shares knowledge and
concerns, even though he is not the bearer of the updated news.
It is from these kinds of moments that family can (in part) be understood as practical
achievements, especially in the ways news is not simply initiated and delivered, but also
altered in its course as recipients rely on their knowledge of an incident to shape just what
the news eventually amounts to.

FUNDAMENTAL SCHOLARLY COMMITMENTS
What follows is an overview of Robert Hoppers fundamental scholarly commitments
and a characterization of his distinct spirit of inquiry, signatures or fingerprints exceeding
yet complimenting his theoretical and methodological priorities, distinguishing features
through which his work continues to touch and positively influence so many persons lives
and careers.
There are, of course, other distinguishing features of Roberts work extending well
beyond the interactional materials summarized earliervaried and important contributions
Robert made within the communication academy, and beyond, uniquely qualifying him
as a founding member of language and social interaction divisions and as a role model to
emulatescholarship encompassing a diverse range of critical topics from speech errors
and selfrepairs to cultural universals, acknowledgment tokens to possibilities for quantification, hedging disclaimers in Cancer Information Service phone calls to displays of
relationship history (or lack thereof) in telephone openings, ethnography to conversation
analysis, and a pioneering concern with performance studies and poetics (see Beach,
1993 a, Hopper, 1992a; Jefferson, 1996)only one of many instances where Robert sought
connections rather than artificial dichotomies, community rather than pockets of isolated
priorities, deconstructions of scholarly cocoons otherwise preventing the exchange of
ideas and worldviews.
In short, Robert has consistently offered a reasoned voice on debatable and current
issues throughout this critical evolution of the field and emergence of LSI studies, several
clear themes of which appear as follows:
A distinct preoccupation with theory, persistently working with and through the
assumption that theories should be designed to enhance insight, not replace it. These
wideranging discussions were centered around two recurrent themes: (a) a debunking
of theory/method bipolarization, and (b) an avoidance of premature/armchair theorizing promoting underspecification of phenomena.
The inseparability of micro/macro concerns when situating theoretical concerns
within conversation anlaytic priorities, such that any concerns with culture, power,
status, role, or gender, for example, might ultimately be grounded in participants concerted actions indigenous to rather than separated from the occasions in which they
gather (e.g., as with speech act theory).
An early and seemingly constant preoccupation with methods as related to theory,
addressing issues and approaches germane to social psychology, speech act theory, various modes of discourse analysis, and background/extrasituational knowledge as clues in our search for reasonable and empirically warrantable solutionsin
shifting from methods as tools researchers possess to methods as resources participants in interaction use and rely on to systematically and altogether contingently
organize social occasions (see, e.g., Hopper, 1988, 1989a, 1991).
Consider also the following two examples, positions that may be obvious in our current
research practices but, I can assure you, were formidable hurdles to overcome during the
last two decades and remain currently problematic:

Moves away from early and ongoing utilizations of ungrounded coding schemes
replete with a priori, exhaustive categories and indexical decision rulestoward
a reflexivity of coding more closely aligned with recordings, transcriptions, and
unmotivated listening sessions (see, e.g., Beach, 1990; Hopper, 1988, 1989a).
Moves away from individuals as units of analysis, designed to articulate the usefulness yet inevitable limitations of self-reported and exclusively ethnographic field
data. Understanding communication as a pooled collectivity of individual perceptions overlooks coauthored social actions, and there appear to be marked differences
between reporting about versus engaging in real-time, collaborative involvements of
choice and action. The alternatives included a superb collection of audio- and videorecorded interactional materials, and carefully produced transcriptions of these events,
made available to a wide variety of scholars representing diverse interests and backgrounds (e.g., the University of Texas conversation library).
ON SPIRIT OF INQUIRY: AND THE
JOURNEY CONTINUES
Extending well beyond Roberts productivity was a spirit of inquiry he brought to his work
and play, perhaps ethereal and difficult to articulate, but nevertheless an enacted demeanor
through which countless persons continue to be swayed and inspired through his example.
Only a handful of identifying features are summarized as follows:
A poetic interest in all topics, marked by a twinkle-of-the eye, elflike curiosity, supportive and open, that is uniquely and embryonically Roberts own craft and handiwork.
A stubborn and demanding commitment to conversation analytic and ethnomethodological concerns, to the study of everyday life activities and actions on their own merits,
and to the warrantability of claims regarding naturally occurring interactions.
A well-spring of energy, directed not just to self-advancement but unselfishly to the
common good, where work and play not only coexist but often cannot be discerned
one from the other.
A brainstorming partner par excellence: a champion of what might be characterized as
omnipresent and omnirelevant dialectics.
An amazing ability to get things done on time.9
In approximately 300 A.D., it was reported that St. Augustine heard a voice in Latin, and
in the imperative mode, tolle lege, tolle legepick it up and read it, pick it up and read
it. As a recommendation for Roberts work, I can only echo this proclamation.
9
In fact, Ive even wondered whether or not procrastination was ever really a burr in Roberts
side! One project he was not able to complete, however, was a special issue of Text he was asked
to edit on something medical (as his illness progressed he became, not surprisingly, increasingly
interested in the close examination of a variety of medical/health interactions). Two months prior to
his death, Robert asked if I would take on the responsibility of moving the project forward, which
I have, resulting in a special issue (published 2001) focusing on lay diagnosis in both medical
interviewing and family communication contexts.

As this chapter is brought to a close, however, I would be remiss not to mention that
Robert was an individual with whom I shared many mountaintop experiences, all well
worth the climb, where views were expansive and spirits soared. Whether walking through
dense urban terrain, or during hikes and multiple skiing adventures, it is clear that these and
similar occasions were indispensable for giving birth to ideas and creating forums for their
dissemination. All such gatherings transformed work into playful but no less substantive
excursions:
Across conferences throughout the 1970s, the 1981 summer conference at the University of Nebraska, specialty conferences such as those at Temple, Michigan State,
Santa Barbara, and far too many Speech Communication Association (now, National
Communication Association), International Communication Association, and Western
Communication conferences to remember.
Equally important are the literally hundreds of informal data sessions, far more than can
possibly be recounted here, gatherings that have gradually moved from hotel rooms to
events such as the now decade-long Open Data/Listening Sessions (which Robert and
I coorganized from the outset for the Western Communication Association, and which
were celebrated in February of 2000 at the Sacramento conference), and the Conversation Analysis Master Class for the National Communication Association (which Jenny
Mandelbaum organized).
To this day Robert remains a joyful and courageous presence. Even in the midst of his own
suffering he embraced a deep and abiding faith, rooted in a clear-cut recognition that our
crucial business reveals, more often than not, the folly of human wisdom: a constant
and critical reminder not to take ourselves too seriously, to fully utilize the many gifts we
have been blessed with, and to appreciate journeys traveled together as boundless opportunities for fellowship.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This chapter is an edited version of a presentation made during a Language and Social
Interaction (LSI) panel, devoted to honoring Robert Hoppers scholarship and diverse contributions, at the 1996 International Communication Association conference in Chicago.
Additional panel participants included John Heritage, Jenny Mandelbaum, Bud Morris,
and Manny Schegloff.
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Beach, W.A. (1990). Orienting to the phenomenon. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook
13 (pp. 216244). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Beach, W.A. (1993a). The delicacy of preoccupation. Text and Performance Quarterly 13,
299312.
Beach, W.A. (1993b). Transitional regularities for casual Okay usages. Journal of Pragmatics,
19, 325352.

NJ: Erlbaum.
Beach, W.A. (2000). Inviting collaborations in stories about a woman. Language in Society, 29,
379407.
about Moms cancer. Text, 21, 221250.
Beach, W.A. (in press a). Between Dad and Son: Initiating, delivering, and assimilating bad cancer
news. Health Communication.
Button, G., & Casey, N. (1985). Topic nomination and pursuit. Human Studies, 8, 355.
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I71177.
Hopper, R. (1989a). Conversation analysis and social psychology as descriptions of interpersonal
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Hopper, R. (1989c). Speech in telephone openings: Emergent interactions v. routines. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 178194.
Hopper, R. (Ed.) (1991). Ethnography and conversation analysis after Talking culture. Special section in Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25.
Hopper, R. (1992a). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113124.
Hopper, R. (1992b). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hopper, R. (2001). Gendering talk. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: The telephone
openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Communication, 56, 185200.
Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination.
In G.Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 7996). New York:
Irvington.
Jefferson, G. (1980). On trouble-premonitory response to inquiry. Sociological Inquiry, 50,
153185.
Jefferson, G. (1984a). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In J.M.Atkinson &
J.Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 346369).
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Jefferson, G. (1985). An exercise in the transcription and analysis of laughter. In T.A. van Dijk
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Jefferson, G. (1988). On the sequential organization of troubles talk in ordinary conversation.
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Kristjanson, L.J. & Ashcroft, T. (1994). The familys cancer journey: A literature review. Cancer
Nursing, 77(1), 117.
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& J.Heritage (Eds.) Talk at work: Interactions in institutional settings (pp. 331358). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Maynard, D.W. (in press). Good news, bad news: A benign order in conversations, clinics, and
everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Perkyl, A. (1995). AIDS counseling: Institutional interaction and clinical practice. Cambridge,
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Schegloff, E.A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70,
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G.Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language (pp. 2378). New York: Irvington.
Schegloff, E.A. (1980). Preliminaries to preliminaries: Can I ask you a question? Sociological
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Schegloff, E.A. (1988). On an actual virtual servo-mechanism for guessing bad news: A single case
conjecture. Social Problems, 35, 442457.
38
Nothing Promised1
James J.Bradac
Rising again,
I fall again,
and turning to the sun,
I face shadows.
Is there something here?
Or is this the place
where dusty dogs found nothing?
I know there are bees near,
for I hear them swarming
by the desiccated oaks.
Perhaps this is the place that angered angels,
once in a year without lilacs,
again in a year without rain.
Cherry-Blossom Savior, drain what little remains
of my knowledge of things
and my social inclination
and my memory of warm and wet and windy springs.
Im tacked to a board like a butterfly.
Or perhaps I should say: Preserved in amber like a flea.
Or perhaps I should say
what I cannot say
but I cannot say it
because words get stuck in my throat
like blood-clots
or bugs
and my tongue has turned to stone.
No matter, we are both alone;
so, words are essentially crickets in the night,
rasping by porch-light
in reflexive pursuit
of a vanishing chance
of contact.
I retract everything I have said.
Or I retract nothing, which is more or less the same.
1
Robert: I hope you think this interesting or at least laughable. -Jim Bradac
Nothing promised 497

Can we play a game?
Ill start: Tack yourself to a board
And watch for spiders on the floor.
Thats it: theres nothing more forever.
Oh, there may be small battles with juice flows
and small victories of continence,
but little else.
Things will happen to you
and there wont be much that you can do.
But responses are overrated, dont you think?
Its the desire that counts.
Endure in silence
As desire mounts
and remember: You wouldnt say much if you could.
Liquid the greens of the newly fleshed buds,
liquid the scents of gravel and earth,
liquid the molding air,
all melting on dog-sniffing dogs groveling
for fungi by the roots of rainbows.
Mustard and thunder on a checkered cloth on a red bench
echo whiskey shouts and grass-stained thighs,
strangling dolor in a seconds shower.
Small skyballs of ice and sun throw Laughing Larry beneath branches
that sing-ling life-songs for the wind.
Greening drying fronds, wet gusts ring chimes by an open window.
With wine in plastic cups, the bearded boys pose for a picture.
This all this and this all this,
Purple thistles and asparagus,
meet the moon
at noon
in a wine-drenched kiss.
39
The Last Word
Robert Hopper
Editors note: the following text was Robert Hoppers acceptance speech (presented by
his daughter Christine) for the National Communication Association (NCA) mentorship
award, November 1998. Dear Friends and Colleagues at NCA,
I regret that I cannot be there to share the event in person. It is an honor that touches me
to receive such recognition, and to give thanks:
For patriotic services Rod Hart has rendered to NCA in recent years, including the inauguration of this NCA mentors program. I hope and believe that this program opens a
new era in development work for this organization and this profession. Please contact
Rod to learn more about this program and how you can get involved in this program.
For the students whove walked into my office and got me involved in their hopes,
dreams, and research designs.
For the blessings of family, church, and research communities.
All these are mentors too. Look around the room tonight and make eye contact: with the
people who have assisted you, with those who have come to you for assistance, and for
friends who have been around during the gestation of ideas. Speak to those people tonight,
say thanks. Ask others tonight to tell you a tale of mentoring. Gossip, if you will, to identify
those who should be recognized in future events like this one.
Let us continue to observe communication pattern, and to refine those observations into
communication skills: so we all can be mentors for those who never heard of NCAthat
we can upgrade from HumanBeing 1.2, to HumanBeing 2.0. Let us be mentor to the poor,
the needy, the codependent person, the violent person. In HumanBeing 2.0 you may change
contexts gracefully, console others effectively.
Let us be mentors to the world.
Appendix
Transcription Symbols1
1. Temporal and sequential relationships
[
[
A. Overlapping or simultaneous talk is indicated in a variety of ways.

Separate left square brackets, one above the other on two successive lines
with utterances by different speakers, indicates a point of overlap onset,
whether at the start of an utterance or later.
]
Separate right square brackets, one above the other on two successive lines
]
with utterances by different speakers indicates a point at which two overlapping utterances both end, where one ends while the other continues or simultaneous moments in overlaps which continue.
So, in the following, Bees Uh really? overlaps Avas talk starting at aand
ending at the t of tough.
Ava:
Iav [a lotta t]ough
courrses.
Bee:
[Uh really?]
(0.5)
(.)
B. Numbers in parentheses indicate silence, represented in tenths of a second; what is given here in the left margin indicates 5/10 seconds of silence.
Silences may be marked either within an utterance or between utterances.
C. A dot in parentheses indicates a micropause, hearable but not readily
measurable without instrumentation; ordinarily less than 2/10 of a second.
2. Aspects of speech delivery, including aspects of intonation
?
,
A. The punctuation marks are not used grammatically, but to indicate intonation. The period indicates a falling, or final, intonation contour, not
necessarily the end of a sentence. Similarly, a question mark indicates rising intonation, not necessarily a question,
and a comma indicates continuing intonation, not necessarily a clause
boundary.
The inverted question mark () is used to indicate a rise stronger than a
comma but weaker than a question mark.
B. Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the sound just
preceding them. The more colons, the longer the stretching. On the other hand,
graphically stretching a word on the page by inserting blank spaces between the
letters or words does not necessarily indicate how it was pronounced; it is used to
allow alignment with overlapping talk. Thus,
From Ochs, Schegloff, and Thompson (1996). Copyright 1996 by Cambridge University Press.
Adapted by permission.
Appendix transcription smbols 501

Bee:
Avar
Bee:
Ava:
Bee:
Tch! (Mn)/(En) they cant delay much lomcfuh they [jus wannid] uh-.
hhh=
[Oh : .]
=yihknow have anothuh consultation,
Ri::ght.
En then deci::de.
The word ri::ght in Avas second turn, or deci::de in Bees third are more stretched than
oh: in Avas first turn, even though oh: appears to occupy more space. But oh has
only one colon, and the others have two; oh: has been spaced out so that its brackets will
align with the talk in Bees (jus wannid) turn with which it is in overlap.
C. A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or selfinterruption, often done
with a glottal or dental stop.
word
D. Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis,

either by increased loudness or higher pitch. The more underlining, the
greater the emphasis.
word
Therefore, underlining sometimes is placed under the first letter or two
of a word, rather than under the letters that are actually raised in pitch
or volume. Especially loud
WOrd
talk may be indicated by upper case; again, the louder, the more letters
in upper case. And in extreme cases, upper case may be underlined.
><
E. The combination of more than and less than symbols indicates that
the talk between them is compressed or rushed.
<>
Used in the reverse order, they can indicate that a stretch of talk is markedly
slowed or drawn out.
3. Other markings
(())
A. Double parentheses are used to mark transcribers descriptions of events,

rather than representations of them. Thus ((cough)), ((sniff)), ((telephone
rings)), ((footsteps)), ((whispered)), ((pause)), and the like.
(word)
B. When all or part of an utterance is in parentheses, or the speaker identification is, this indicates uncertainty on the transcribers part, but represents a likely possibility. () Empty parentheses indicate that something is
being said, but no hearing (or, in some cases, speaker identification) can
be achieved.
(try I)/
(try 2)
Bee:
C. In some transcript excerpts, two parentheses may be printed, separated by a single oblique or slash; these represent
alternative hearings of the same strip of talk.
(Bu::t.)=/ (GoO:d.)=
Here, the degree marks show that the utterance is very soft. The transcript remains indeterminate between Bu::t. and Goo:d. Each is in parentheses and they are separated by
a slash.
Contributors
Wayne A.Beach (Ph.D., University of Utah) is Professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State University, and an Associate Member of the Cancer Center in the
School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Recent studies focus on
various aspects of medical interviewing, how families talk through cancer diagnosis and
treatment, and genetic counseling. He may be contacted at: School of Communication, San
Diego State University, San Diego, CA, 921824561; (phone) 6195944948; (e-mail)
<wbeach@mail.sdsu.edu>.
James J.Bradac is Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. His major research areas are interpersonal communication, language and social
psychology, and message effects, and his work in these areas has been published in journals in communication, psychology, and linguistics. His e-mail address is <bradac@comm.
ucsb.edu>.
Mary Helen Brown is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Auburn University. Her research interests include: narrative, organizational
socialization, and presbycusis. She can be contacted at: 217 Tichenor Hall, Department of
Communication, Auburn University, AL 36849 or <brownm8@auburn.edu>.
Kurt A.Bruder (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin, 1994, Communication Studies; M.Ed., Texas Tech University, 1998, Counselor Education) is the Graduate Program
Director for Health Communication at Emerson College and Tufts University School of
Medicine in Boston, MA. He is interested in the interrelationship between the specific communicative practices employed in various discourse communities and the psychological
experience of their membersparticularly the formation, maintenance and transformation
of the human sense of self. Dr. Bruder may be contacted at 1 2 0 Boylston Street, Boston,
MA 02116; (617) 8248748, 8248912 (fax); email: <kurt_bruder@emerson.edu>.
Robert T.Craig, a professor of Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a communication theorist whose research has addressed various aspects of communication as a practical discipline. A current line of research is exploring empirical and
conceptual links between communication theory and ordinary metadiscursive vocabularies
used to manage practical interaction, especially in the classroom. He can be reached by
mail (Department of Communication, University of Colorado, 270 UCB, Boulder, CO
80309) or e-mail at <Robert.Craig@Colorado.EDU>.
Susan Corbin (PhD, University of Texas, 1998) is currently the undergraduate Academic Advisor for the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas
at Austin. Her research interests focus on how talk is used by interactants to maintain relationships. She can be contacted at the Department of Communication Studies, University
of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 or at <scorbin@mail.utexas.edu>.
Suzanne Daughton is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale. Her primary research interests are in the close analysis of rhetorical texts from political and popular culture sources; she has published in
the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Womens Studies in Communication, Critical Studies
in Mass Communication and Communication Quarterly. She is the editor in Womens
Contributors 503
Studes in Communication. She may be contacted at the Department of Speech Communication, MC 6605, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 629016605 USA; or by
e-mail: <daughton@siu.edu>.
Paul Drew lectures in Sociology at the University of York, UK. His research in conversation analysis includes ordinary conversation, as well as institutional interactions: he has
published widely in both these areas, including Order in Court, with Max Atkinson (1979)
and Talk at Work, with John Heritage (1992), and a range of papers on such matters as
figurative expressions, teasing, repair and complaints. He can be contacted at the Department of Sociology, University of York, York YO1 5DD, UK <mailto:e-mail:<wpdl@york.
ac.uk>.
Kent Drummond obtained degrees from Stanford and Northwestern and, later, earned
his doctorate degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. His dissertation, Back
Channels Revisited, was written under the supervision of Robert Hopper, with whom he
wrote several articles. His current research interest addresses the intersection of aesthetics
and popular culture. He can be contacted at <drummond@uwyo.edu>.
Kristine Fitch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies
at the University of Iowa. She studies persuasion and personal relationships in cultural
contexts from an ethnographic/discourse analytic perspective, and is currently conducting
a cross-cultural study of friendship and marriage in Colombia, Spain, England, and Texas.
She has published in Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, and Research
on Language and Social Interaction, and is the author of a book on interpersonal communication in Colombia. She can be reached at <mailto:kfitch@blue.weeg.uiwa.edu>.
Richard M.Frankel Ph.D., is Vice President for Program Evaluation at the Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is also Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine
at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Dr. Frankel has conducted research on a
number of face to face contexts including phyisicians and patients, airline crews, and families with developmentally delayed children. He can be contacted via email at <rfrankel@
fetzer.org> or via the Fetzer Institute, 9292 KL Ave, Kalamazoo, MI 49009.
Howard Giles is Professor of Communication and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate
Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests revolve around
many different arenas in intergroup communication, such as the one explored herein. He
can be contacted at <HowieGiles@aol.com>.
Phillip Glenn (Ph. D., University of Texas at Austin, 1987) is Associate Professor and
Chair of Communication at Emerson College. His research includes the study of both
casual and institutional interaction, with particular interests in processes of laughing, playing, theory-building, and arguing. He can be reached via e-mail at <pglaugh@hotmail.
com> or via the Department of Communication, Emerson College, Boston, MA, 02116.
Maria Cristina Gonzalez, Ph.D., D. Min., is Associate Professor of Communication
in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, where
she holds a position as a Southwest Borderlands Scholar. She is also adjunct faculty of the
University of Creation Spirituality. Her work includes long-term immersion ethnographies
of Mexican, Native American and Chicano culture and two Fulbrights in Mexico. She is
presently beginning work on the cultural communication of converse Sephardim. She may
be reached at <amiracg@asu.edu>.
504 Contributors
Charles Goodwin is Professor of Applied Linguistics at UCLA. His research interests include video analysis of talk-in-interaction, grammar in context, gesture, gaze and
embodiment as interactively organized social practices, aphasia in discourse, language
in the workplace and professions, and the ethnography of science. He can be reached
at Applied Linguistics, 3300 Rolfe Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles CA 900951531 or
<cgoodwin@humnet.ucla.edu>.
John Heritage is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. His publications include Garfinkel
and Ethnomethodology, Structure of Social Action (with Max Atkinson), Talk at Work
(with Paul Drew), The News Interview (with Steven Clayman), and Practicing Medicine
(with Douglas Maynard). His research focuses on social interaction in broadcast news and
in a wide range of medical contexts.
Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra is an Associate Professor at the Department of Dutch
Language and Culture, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics. Her research interests include:
CA research on standardized interviews, help desk calls, and telephone conversation in
general. Dr. Houtkoop-Steenstra is the author of Interaction and the Standardized Survey Interview. The Living Questionnaire (2000, Cambridge University Press). She can be
reached at <H.Houtkoop@let.uu.nl>.
Leslie Jarmon is a member of the faculty of the Graduate Studies Intellectual Entrepreneurship Program (GSIEP) at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research centers on
embodied actions in the ecology of face-to-face interaction and on contrastive rhetorical
practices in multicultural academic contexts. Correspondence can be directed to her at the
GSIEP, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 or <ljarmon@mail.utexas.edu>.
Gail Jefferson (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine) is an independent scholar in the
Netherlands. She publishes widely on the organization of naturally occuring conversation.
She can be reached at Juckemawei 29, 9015 KA Rinsumageest, The Netherlands.
Charlotte M. Jones (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Associate Professor at
Carroll College. Research interests include physician-patient interaction, therapist-client
interaction, the communication of social support, and everyday interaction. Send correspondence to Department of Communication Studies, Carroll College, Helena, MT 59625
(e-mail: <cjones@carroll.edu>).
Timothy Koschmann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education at Southern Illinois University. He does research on interaction in settings of collaboration and learning. Much of this work has focused on problem-based learning tutorial
groups in medical education. Koschmann was the editor of CSCL: Theory and Practice of
an Emerging Paradigm (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996) and is co-editor (together
with Naomi Miyake and Rogers Hall) of CSCL2: Carrying forward the conversation
(Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002).
Samuel Lawrence is Assistant Professor in the Nicholson School of Communication
at the University of Central Florida. His interests in conversation analysis include methods for achieving mutual understanding in talk-in-interaction. He has published articles
in Communication Theory and Research on Language and Social Interaction. He can be
reached at <lawrence@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>.
Curtis D.LeBaron is an Assistant Professor in the Marriott School of Management
at Brigham Young University. He studies language and social interaction within business and organizational settings, using micro-analytic methods and digital technologies to
Contributors 505
examine video and audio recordings of naturally occurring behavior. His e-mail address is
<lebaron@byu.edu> or send correspondence to Department of Organizational Leadership
and Strategy, TNRB 590, BYU, Provo, UT 84602.
Gene Lerner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Linguistics at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. Much of his research centers on the place of grammatical
practice in the social-sequential organization of talk-ininteraction. Correspondence should
be directed to the Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
93106 or <lerner@soc.ucsb.edu>.
Jenny Mandelbaum (Ph.D., University of Texas, 1987) is an Associate Professor in
the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. Her research interests include
conversational storytelling, relationships, self and identity, with an emphasis on how each
of these is accomplished in interaction. She can be reached at the Department of Communication, 4 Huntington St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901, or by e-mail at <jennym@scils.
rutgers.edu>.
Doug Maynard is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He
is co-editor (with Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra, Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Hans van der
Zouwen) of Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey
Interview (Wiley, 2002), and co-editor (with John Heritage) of Practicing Medicine: Talk
and Action in Primary Care Encounters (Cambridge University Press, in press). He also has
completed a monograph related to this chapter: Good News, Bad News: A Benign Order
in Everyday Life, Clinics, and Other Social Settings (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). Address: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI 53706.
Email: <maynard@ssc.wisc.edu>.
Daniel P.Modaff is Associate Professor in the School of Interpersonal Communication
at Ohio University. He has published several articles and chapters in language and social
interaction and instructional pedagogy and is the co-author of a textbook on organizational
communication. Correspondence should be directed to; Daniel P. Modaff, Lasher Hall,
Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701; <modaff@ohiou.edu>.
John Vincent Modaff is Professor of Speech Communication at Morehead State University. His research interests include expanding the appreciable object within analytic
criticism of speech communication, advancements in communication pedagogy, and the
creative treatment of heated interpersonal conflict. John can be reached at the Department
of Communication, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY 40351, (606) 7832399, or
<j.modaff@moreheadstate.edu>.
Jennifer L.Molloy is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on stigma in intergroup communication. Email:<Jennifer
Molloy@msn.com>.
G.H. (Bud) Morris (Ph.D., University of Texas, 1980) is Professor and Chair of Communication at California State University San Marcos. He is a student of how problems
are formulated, how accounts and other aligning actions are given, and how problematic
situations can be resolved constructively. Contact him at the College of Arts and Sciences,
California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, CA 920960001.
Anita Pomerantz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at
the University at Albany, SUNY. Using conversation analytic and ethnographic methods,
she has conducted research on information seeking strategies, negotiating responsibility,
506 Contributors
and giving feedback in interpersonal, medical, and legal settings. She may be contacted
at Communication Department, BA 119, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York
12222 or at <apom@albany.edu>.
Sandra L.Ragan (Ph.D. Texas, 1981) is Professor and Graduate Liaison in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. In the last decade, she has focused
her work in language and social interaction in the context of health communication, notably womens health interactions. She did the initial editing for Robert Hoppers last book,
Gendering Talk, to be published by Michigan State University Press later this year.
Robert E.Sanders is Professor of Communication, University at Albany, SUNY. His
research centers on the expressive resources that persons utilize to influence what the ongoing interaction or text includes, and/or how it concludes. Correspondence can be addressed
to Robert E. Sanders, Department of Communication (BA 119), University at Albany,
SUNY, Albany NY 12222; or e-mail can be addressed to <r.sanders@albany.edu>.
Alena L.Sanusi is a doctoral student in Communication at the University of Colorado
at Boulder. She is interested applying linguistic and communication theory and the microethnographic study of interaction to explore the cultural worlds of children. She can be
reached by e-mail at <sanusi@ucsu. Colorado. edu>.
Emanuel A.Schegloff teaches at UCLA in Sociology, Communication Studies and
Applied Linguistics. He has published over 70 papers and chapters on a variety of topics
concerning conversation and other forms of talk-in-interaction as the primordial site of
human sociality. He can be reached at the Department of Sociology, Box 951551, UCLA,
Los Angeles, CA 900951551, or by e-mail at <scheglof@soc.ucla.edu>.
Jrgen Streeck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies
at the University of Texas, Austin. Using a variety of qualitative research methods (e.g.,
microethnography, context analysis, conversation analysis, linguistic and anthropological
field methods) he examines universal and cultural aspects of human interaction, symbolization, and language. His e-mail address is <jstreek@mail.utexas.edu> and written correspondence should be sent to the Department of Communication Studies, The University
of Texas, Austin, TX 787121089.
Nathan Stucky is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale. Among his publications on conversation analysis and performance
studies are articles in The Journal of Pragmatics, Text and Performance Quarterly, Literature in Performance, and Communication Education; he is the former editor of Theatre
Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies. He may be contacted at the Department of
Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 629016605 USA;
or by e-mail: <nstucky@siu.edu>.
E.Duff Wrobbel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. His interests include Conversation Analytic methodology, therapeutic interaction, and social construction. He can be reached at
box 1772, SIUE, Edwardsville, IL 62025 or <EWROBBE@SIUE.edu>.
Don H.Zimmerman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. He works in the area of conversation analysis, with a focus on talk in institutional
settings. His current interest is the emergence of sociality in the interactions of very young
children.
Author Index
A
Abe, I.
speech melody, 461
Adler, J.
phone openings, 278
Albert, Ethel
ethnographic method, 4
Alibali, M.
on gestures, 121
Anderson, Walter
postmodern world, 499
system of value and belief, 495
Anisfeld, M.
message judgments, 46
Antaki, C.
institutional discourse, 18
institutional formation, 13
Arcuri, A.
police image, 333
Arliss, L.
account analysis, 384
commentary analysis, 384
interaction analysis, 384
Arnold, C.C.
history of communication field, 4
Atkinson, J.M.
grammar, 26
institutional interaction, 413
political speech behavior, 13
structures of social action, 545
transcript notation, 312
work with Richard Hopper, 545
Attlee, Clement
BBC interview, 5960, 87
Auer, P.
contextualization of talk, 427
Austin, J.
philosophy of ordinary language, 6
speech as action, 545
B
Barker, L.
Barrows, H.
knowledge display segment, 122f
problem-based learning exercise, 121
Author index 509

Basso, K.
gaps and discontinuations, 316
Bateson, Gregory
communicative frames, 91
influence on Robert Hopper, 545
photographs, 19
on self as concept, 503
Baudrillard, J.
communication ecstasy, 500, 501
postmodern communication, 500
Bavelas, J.
on gestures, 128
grammar, 26
laboratory data, 14
politicians and equivocal statements, 13
therapeutic discourse, 8
Baxter, L.
limitations of transmission model, 7
relationship and interaction, 207, 208
Bayley, D.
crime prevention myth, 329
Beach, Wayne
acknowledgment tokens, 12
on diversity of methods, 11
doctors and patients, 14
ethnomethodological conversation analysis, 6
evidence for conclusions, 15
family interaction, 13
hopefulness, 178179
identity switch, 189
managing optimism, 175192
naturalistic methods, 4
naturally occurring communication, 12
news delivery sequences, 579
pre-sequencing, 574
relational expression, 185
on Robert Hoppers contribution to LSI, 582583
on Robert Hoppers scholarship, 573584
social construction of illness, 9
state-of-readiness, 414
therapy talk, 343
tokens, 12, 115
University of Nebraska conference, 5
valence, 186
Beavin, J.
messages and relationship, 208
Becker, S.
factor analysis of messages, 49
510 Author index

Beckman, H.
meaning negotiation, 353
Bell, Catherine
knowledge through interaction, 510
Tao Te Ching, 508, 510
Bell, R.
disclaimers, 345
Benson, T.
Bitzer, L.
Black, E.
Blenky, M.
gender and knowledge, 503
Blum-Kulka, S.
dinner-table conversation, 92
Bochner, A.
autoethnography, 22
narrative, 511
storytelling, 511
Boff, Leonardo
spirituality, 494, 496497
Bogen, D.
cognition, 120
Iran-Contra hearings, 13
Boggs, C.
social competition, 332
Bohm, David
postmodern science, 501
Bokan, Dragoslav
Paxman interview, 6768
Bolinger, D.
A contour, 467
communication of emotion, 461
hat pattern, 467
speech melody, 459, 460, 461
theme and rheme, 466467
Bowers, J.
Boyd, E.
medical interviews, 62f
Bradac, J.J.
coherence and intentionality, 49
Elaboration Likelihood Model, 49
fundamental attribution error, 48
Nothing Promised, 589590
perceptual contrast effects, 46
Author index 511

power of messages, 5051
speaker effectiveness paradigm, 544
symbolicity of messages, 49
use of preceding research, 20
verbal scales, 45
Brady, R.M.
communication context, 45
Brown, Mary Helen
narrative, 507515
Tao Te Ching, 507516
Brown, P.
indirectness in interviews, 60
modality and facework, 114
power and solidarity, 48
Brown, Richard H.
narrative examination, 508
Bruder, K.
selfing, 377
Bunston, T.
cancer patients, 189190
Burgoon, J.K.
features of messages, 53
stimulation value judgment, 51
Burke, K.
unending conversation metaphor, 10
Burkman, R.
uncertainty and anxiety, 407
Busch, J.
Bush, George
Dan Rather interview, 13, 8485, 86f
Buttny, R.
alignment, 349
blaming and accounting, 349
therapeutic discourse, 8, 365
Button, G.
delicate tellings, 199
employment interview, 22, 22f
itemized news inquiry, 580
making of arrangements, 403
topic initial elicitor, 140, 197
C
Cacioppo, J.
judgments of messengers, 46
persuasive messages, 52
Carbaugh, D.
Donahue television show, 13
social identity, 8
512 Author index

Cargile, A.
Casey, N.
itemized news inquiry, 580
topic initial elicitor, 140, 197
Charmaz, K.
Chen, C.H.
phone openings, 277
relationship states, 207208
Chen, H.
talk-in-interaction, 151, 294
Chenail, R.
Chovil, N.
Church, R.B.
on gestures, 121
Clark, H.H.
assessments and cultural knowledge, 158
Clayman, S.
address terms, 74f
agenda-setting questions, 65, 66, 70
Bush-Rather interview, 86f
interviewer neutrality, 58
news interviews, 57
prefaced questions, 6263, 78
questions renewal, 68
Clift, R.
correction marker, 246f
Clinton, William J.
speech evaluated, 53
Coates, J.
modality and hedging, 107, 114
think talk, 107
Cody, M.J.
alignment, 348, 349
Conlee, M.
conversation analysis, 120
Conquergood, D.
critical ethnography, 18
Corbin, Susan D.
asker expectations, 163173
did you questions, 163173
Corey, G.
Author index 513

Coulter, J.
cognition, 120
Coulthard, M.
coherence and cohesion, 6
Couper-Kuhlen, E.
lexical tokens, 307
Coupland, N.
code-switching, 328329
language differences and evaluation, 47
Courtright, J.A.
Coutu, L.
induction, 20
Craig, Robert T.
continuity markers, 104
critical thinking terminology, 104
discourse markers, 104
on diversity of research methodology, 11
issue co-construction, 104
Temple University conference, 5
Crocker, J.
stigma, 334
Crow, B.
performance using natural interaction, 10
talk shows, 266
Crowder, E.
explaining in the moment, 122
Curley, C.
grammar, 26
Cushman, D.
crystallization, 343
Czarniawska, B.
narrative knowledge, 508
D
Daly, M.
on metaphor, 493, 495
Darman, Richard
interview with Sam Donaldson, 58, 7576
Daughton, Suzanne M.
everyday life performance, 479491
Davies, R.A.
Davis, K.
conversation formulation, 300
De la Zerda, N.
listeners evaluation of speech, 6
514 Author index

Derrida, Jacques
deconstruction, 483
Platos Pharmacy, 485486
Dillard, J.P.
influence messages, 50
Dixson, C.N.
doctors and patients, 14
Doany, N.
communication and daily activities, 6
phone openings, 277, 277f
Dole, Robert
NBC interview, 70, 8384
Donaldson, Sam
Bush interview, 13, 8485, 86f
Darman interview, 58
Donohue, William
Michigan State University conference, 5
Douglas-Klotz, Neil
on prayer, 497
Drew, Paul
asymmetry, 200
context, 21
idioms and complaint sequences, 97, 186f
institutional settings, 293308
inviting, 209
talk-in-interaction, 293308
tease responses, 271272
teases, 198, 215, 216, 217, 449
turns, 198
work with Robert Hopper, 545
Dreyfus, H.L.
equipment, 433
on Heidegger, 432
meaningful social practices, 433
mind-body question, 428
Drummond, Kent G.
back channels, 549
communication and daily activities, 6
conversational enslavement, 521528
interactional enslavement, 15, 521528
phone openings, 277
quantification, 550
relationship construction, 9
taken-for-granted, 523524
The Truman Show, 15, 521528
Author index 515

use of corollary data, 21
work with Robert Hopper, 547548, 549550
Duck, S.
evaluation of speakers and messages, 53
E
Edwards, D.
Ellis, C.
autoethnography, 22
narrative, 511
storytelling, 511
Ellis, Don
discourse analysis, 6
on diversity of research methodology, 11
Michigan State University conference, 5
Emerson, R.M.
ethnographic methodology, 497
Ende, J.
demonstration teaching, 382
interns and patients, 382
Erickson, F.
body movement, 413
transition, 413
F
Fallowfield, L.
Fehr, B.J.
demonstration teaching, 382
relationships and interaction, 208
unmotivated looking, 8
Feltovich, P.
Fillenbaum, S.
Fisher, W.R.
narrative fidelity, 513
narrative probability, 510511
Fitch, Kristine
culture and conduct, 8
culture and interaction, 91101
ethnographic choices, 20
ethnographic evaluation, 1617
intercultural communication, 91101
linguistic anthropology, 6
516 Author index

Fox, M.
on academic work, 505
on learning, 503
Fox, R.
Fox, S.
sociability judgment, 52
Frankel, Richard
indeterminacy, 393408
meaning negotiation, 353
medical communication, 393408
patients and physicians, 406
transitions, 421
Freeman, S.
Friedson, Eliot
professional authority, 406407
Frost, David
Edward Heath interview, 6667
G
Galasinski, D.
display of cooperativeness, 111
modality and hedging, 107, 114
think talk, 107
Gale, J.
therapy talk, 343344, 365
Gardner, R.C.
Garfmkel, H.
on accountable, 121f
breaching, 202
entitlement of intelligibility, 200
ethnomethodology, 21
formulations, 295296
omnirelevance of gender, 265
Geertz, C.
appraisal of behaviors, 15, 16
ethnographic methodology, 497
Gergen, Kenneth
multiphrenia, 499, 501
Gibbons, P.
features of messages, 53
Gibson, J.
affordances, 433
Author index 517

haptic system, 431
visual system, 430
Giles, Howard
code-switching, 328329
communication accommodation theory, 328329, 337
intergroup communication, 327337
language differences and evaluation, 47
law enforcement communication, 327337
status and attractiveness in speakers, 48
Gilman, A.
power and solidarity, 48
Glenn, Phillip J.
communication in everyday activities, 6
everyday life performance, 480f
everyday talk, 6, 551
laughter, 12, 318, 407, 577
laughter and gender, 264265
laughter in interaction, 263272
play, 551
repetition, 269
tokens of laughter, 407
Godard, D.
phone openings, 277
Goffrnan, E.
communicative frames, 91
injury response, 341
relationship and interaction, 208
stigma, 334, 335
tie-signs, 208209, 210, 215
unsolicited account, 346
Goldin-Meadows, S.
on gestures, 121
Goldsmith, D.
limitations of transmission model, 7
relationship and interaction, 207, 208
Gonzalez, Maria C.
epistemological obstacles, 497
epistemology, 495
ethnography, 493505
on spirit, 495496
spiritual practice, 493505
518 Author index

Good, B.
hope work, 408
Good, M.D.
hope work, 408
Goodwin, Charles
assessable names, 151160
assessment-containing talk, 152, 153, 159
assessments and cultural
knowledge, 159160
body movements, 27, 427
contingency of social conditions, 21
eye movements, 26, 427, 430
on gesture, 128, 433
grammar, 26
induction, 20
restarts, 137138
storytelling, 22, 251f, 511
turn beginnings, 146
verbal and nonverbal communication, 9
vocal restarts and hesitations, 12
Goodwin, Marjorie H.
assessment-containing talk, 152, 153, 159
on gesture, 128, 154
grammar, 26
verbal and nonverbal communication, 9
Gouran, D.S.
Gray, J.
gender-speech, 264
performance studies, 10
Greatbatch, D.
neutralistic stance of interviewers, 58
prefaced questions, 62
Greene, J.R.
community-oriented policing, 328
Grice, H.P.
maxim on indirect utterances, 100
maxims of conversation, 473
Grinc, R.M.
community-oriented policing, 330, 331
Guarino-Ghezzi, S.
Gubrium, J.
family query and interaction, 191
Gumperz, J.
prosodic cues, 459
speech melody, 459
theme, 466
Author index 519

Gumperz, J.J.
speech melody, 466
Gundersen, D.F.
audience responses, 5
police/citizen relations, 327
uniforms, 335
Gutting, G.
epistemological obstacle, 494
H
Hadding, K.
melodic intonations, 459460
speech melody, 459460
Harre, R.
Harris, S.
embedded presuppositions, 71
encoded attitudes, 5859
Harwood, J.
Hawes, L.C.
analysis of naturally occurring speech, 4
hermeneutic phenomenology, 4
He, A.
ethnic identity, 21
Heath, C.
diagnostic news, 394
medical consultation, 411
nonvocal activity, 413, 414415
restarts, 137
speech and body movement, 26, 394, 411, 413
transition, 413, 414415
Heath, Edward
David Frost interview, 6667
Heidegger, Martin
on knowledge, 432
Heritage, John
Bush-Rather interview, 86f
context, 21, 135
declined invitations, 342
formulations, 296
institutional settings, 294f
intersubjectivity, 195
interviewer neutrality, 58
laughter, 135
520 Author index

meaningfulness of messages, 22
medical interviews, 62, 399400, 407
news interviews, 5787, 301302
online commentary, 399400
preferred responses, 7475
reformulation, 357
relationships and interaction, 208, 209
second position actions, 65, 74
Structures of Social Action, 545
tokens, 115, 216
transcript notation, 312
Herschel, Abraham
on awe, 504
on ineffability, 493
Heseltine, Michael
BBC interview, 6970, 8182
Hewitt, J.P.
alignment, 341, 545
disclaimers, 345
Hewstone, M.
police-citizen relations, 332
Hodgson, R.
Hoffman, E.
laughter, 264265
Holmes, J.
categorization of think talk, 114
modal and affective meaning, 114
Holstein, J.A.
family query and interaction, 191
Holt, E.J.
death and dying, 176f, 180, 405
idioms and complaint sequences, 97, 186f
Holtgraves, T.
Hopper, Robert
alignment talk, 6, 341, 343, 545
audience responses, 6
awards received, 552
cancer journey, 578
cancer-related talk, 578579
childrens language development, 544
coherence as interactive, 5
conferences, 584
conferences on LSI, 5, 543544, 547, 552
constitutive view of communication, 8
Author index 521

context, 21, 45
conversation analysis, 5, 16, 119, 543550, 569
corollary data use, 21
data sessions, 545, 584
dedication to learning, 564
dialogue and monologue, 565
disclaimers, 345, 346
discourse analysis, 6, 546
dissertations directed, 561562
ethics and inquiry, 568
ethnography, 6, 550
everyday life performance, 10, 480, 481, 491, 547, 551
everyday talk, 6, 546
gender and speech, 270, 565566, 575578, 576, 577
gender as socially relevant, 9
gender differences, 565
gendering talk, 563, 564, 565566
genderlects, 546
graduate students, 552
the Great Poem, 570
history of LSI, 23, 27, 101, 581582
injury response, 341
institutional settings, 293, 294, 372
intellectual history, 543552
interactive emergence, 393, 407
interpretation, 544
language attitudes, 544
laughter, 264265
linguistic turn, 543
linguistic underdogs, 563
managing optimism, 175f, 192
matched guise technique, 548549
message-intrinsic view, 25
moral values of, 563566, 568
National Communication Association, 547
naturalistic discussed, 14
NCA award speech text, 591
at Oxford, 545
perception versus evaluation, 50
and Phaedrus, 567568
phone openings, 277, 277f, 278, 285, 573
and Plato, 567
poetics in communication, 10, 1617, 550552, 569570
proposition and refutation, 528
quantification and conversation analysis, 549550
relational history, 573
522 Author index

relationship states, 207208
repetition, 269
restarts, 138
scholarship of, 543562, 581583
science of speech, 544
social psychology, 549
social roles, 22
social scientism of, 563
speech and social interactions, 423
Speech Communication Association, 547
Speech Evaluation Instrument, 47
speech for instance, 548549
speech-in-interaction, 6, 151
taken-for-granted, 4, 91, 521, 523
Tao Te Ching, 507508
teaching methods of, 567570
telephone conversation, 563564, 570
telephone talk, 546, 563564
theses directed, 561562
underdogs and favorites, 544545, 563
valence, 186
works of, 556560
Horkheimer, M.
fixed distinctions, 502
on knowledge, 503
unconventional thinking, 502
Horn, L.
negative polarity items, 7677
Houtkoop-Steenstra, Hanneke
gender and telephone conversations, 275285
phone openings, 276277, 281
Hughes, E.
crisis versus routine, 395
Hulme, T.
performers, 484485
poetry, 479480
Romanticism and Classicism, 479
Hurst, M.H.
Huspek, M.
markers in working-class speech, 116
study of markers, 116
Author index 523

Hutchby, I.
controversy construction, 300
Hymes, Dell
deduction used, 20
ethnographic method, 4
speech communities, 98
I
Iltis, R.
Isaacs, E.A.
Jackson, D.
Jackson, Sally
natural language and rhetoric, 4
Jacobs, J.
Jacobs, Scott
natural language and rhetoric, 4
Jacoby, S.
data presentation, 17
Jarmon, Leslie
embodied actions, 1718
the Great Poem, 567570
performance and research, 23
on Robert Hopper, 567570
Jefferson, Gail
acknowledgment token, 317, 550
ambiguity, 221240
death and dying, 176f, 178f, 180, 186, 191, 577
error avoidance format, 399
interactional asymmetry, 449
laughter, 12, 199, 264, 272, 318, 407, 577
premonitoring, 574, 580
puns, 531532
reconstruction, 245f
repair, 216, 268, 349
reply turn, 317
524 Author index

reservation, 224f
sound-row, 534, 574
storytelling, 511
suppressed items, 261
suppression-release, 242f
telepathic pun, 532
topic as term, 66
topic transition, stepwise, 147
transcription techniques, 480
troubles talk, 227229, 234
turn beginnings, 138, 147
turn-taking model, 17
understanding, 354
valence, 186
Johnson, M.
conceptual knowing, 433
on language, 439
Jones, Charlotte M.
telephone conversation, 137148
therapy talk, 343
utterance restarts, 137148
Jones, D.
Jones, E.
stigma, 334335
Jurick, D.M.
discourse analysis, 4
K
Katriel, T.
Israeli communication study, 2526
Katz, J.
Keeley-Dyreson, M.P.
stimulation value judgment, 51
Keenan, E.L.
pragmatic presuppositions, 166167, 168
Kellerman, K.
coherence judgments, 51
informativeness judgment, 51
Kelson, A.
Kendon, A.
context analysis, 6, 121
embodied interaction, 19
on gestures, 128, 438
grammar, 26
interactional axes, 427
Author index 525

Kibler, R.J.
Kidd, V.
Kidwell, M.
children, 443
peer encounters, 443
Kinney, T.A.
Klockars, C.B.
police power, 329
Kluger, J.
gender and speech, 264
laughter, 264
Knapp, M.L.
children, 443
on gestures, 427
teasing, 443
and Temple University conference, 5
verbal and nonverbal communication, 9, 26
Koch, S.
conversation analysis, 5, 119
Koschmann, T.
Kubler-Ross, E.
death and dying, 176f
hope and coping, 176
stages of grieving, 191
Ku-Ying, C
wu-wei, 514
L
Ladefoged, P.
speech melody, 461
Lambert, W.E.
Langer, Suzanne
on metaphor, 493494
Lannaman, J.W.
Lasky, B.
Lawrence, S.
performance method, 9
LeBaron, Curtis D.
bodily communication, 433
526 Author index

digitized data, 19
gender speech, 270
gesture and understanding, 119129
grammar, 2627
police interrogation, 22
speech-in-interaction, 6, 151
Leder, Drew
absence, 483
incorporation, 488, 489
mind-body dualism, 490491
phenomenology, 482
Lee, J.R.E.
troubles talk, 227229, 234
Lentz, L.
phone openings, 279280
Lerner, Gene H.
action, 441456
apparent action, 441456
children, 441456
delayed completion, 269
proactive listening, 249
Levinson, S.C.
presuppositions, 166, 167
Liberman, K.
detail in research descriptions, 24
Lim, T.
informativeness judgment, 51
Lindstrom, A.
phone openings, 278, 284
Litton-Hawes, E.M.
ethnomethodology, 4
Longxi, Z.
author as text, 514
Lundell, T.L.
gender-linked language effect, 47
Lurigio, A.J.
Lynch, M.
cognition, 120
Iran-Contra hearings, 13
Author index 527

M
Mackie, A.
Macy, J.
on Bateson, 503
on spirituality, 503
Mair, V.H.
Tao Te Ching, 509, 514
Malmberg, B.
speech melody, 460, 461
Mandelbaum, Jenny
beginning relationships, 545
complaints, 210
message-intrinsic view, 25
novels and plays, 545
relationships and conversation analysis, 208
restarts, 146
Robert Hopper intellectual history, 543552
social identity, 8
storytelling, 22, 210
turns, 210
Martin, J.
narratives, 510
May, W.
evaluation factor, 47
Maynard, Douglas W.
death and dying, 176f, 178f
diagnostic news, 394, 405, 581
disembedded presuppositions, 75f
evidence citing, 399, 404
forecasting, 400
good news exit, 405
hopefulness, 179
indeterminacy, 393408
inferential form, 399
medical communication, 393408
news delivery sequences, 579
non-assertion, 399
patients and physicians, 406, 407
relating tragic news, 180
McCroskey, J.C.
factor analytic research, 47
McElroy, J.
528 Author index

McHoul, A.
classroom communication, 8
McLaughlin, M.L.
alignment, 342, 348, 349
preventatives, 342
storytelling, 511
McNeill, D.
on gestures, 121
Mead, G.
on gestures, 366
photographs, 19
self-identification, 377
Mehrley, R.S.
factor analytic research, 47
Metzger, T.R.
Meyer, J.C.
ambiguity, 512
stories as behavior models, 513
Mings, D.
Miron, M.
Modaff, Daniel
accuracy in research, 23
body movement, 411422
doctor-patient interviews, 411422
Modaff, John Vincent
accuracy in research, 23
Paul Harvey speech melody, 13, 459476
rhetorical style, 459476
Moerman, M.
conversation analysis and ethnography, 550
method blending, 11, 23
verbal and nonverbal behavior, 26
Molloy, Jennifer L.
law enforcement communication, 327337
Morris, G.H.
advisory, 344
alignment, 6, 341, 343, 348, 545
alignment talk, 6, 545
declined invitations, 342
social interaction, 341349
Morrison, J.
tracking questions, 210
Author index 529

Mulac, A.
Speech Dialect attitudinal scale, 47
Muller, H.L.
academic discourse study, 2425
argument construction, 104
discourse analysis methodology, 20
Mullett, J.
N
Naremore, Rita
Naughton, J.
did you questions, 164165, 173
Nevin, B.
quandary questions, 73
Newton, D.A.
stimulation-value judgment, 51
Nisbett, R.E.
Nofsinger, R.E.
Bush-Rather interview, 13
the demand ticket, 4
O
Ochs, E.
data presentation, 17
Ohala, J.
speech melody, 461
OHanlon, W.
ONeill, J.M.
communication as separate discipline, 3
Osgood, C.
Owens, C.
on representations, 500
P
Packo, J.E.
interaction regarding illness, 192
Paxman, Jeremy
Bokan interview, 6768
530 Author index

Pearce, W.B.
naturalistic approach to communication research, 4
Perkyl, A.
death and dying, 176f, 178f
diagnostic news, 394, 399, 400f, 408
dreaded issues, 190, 579
hope and coping, 176, 176f
indeterminacy, 399, 400f
Perlmutter, D.
police/citizen relations, 327, 333
Petty, R.
judgments of messengers, 46
persuasive messages, 52
Philipsen, G.
cultural codes, 91, 92
ethnography, 4, 6
gendered patterns of speech, 4
inductive method use, 20
speaking and fighting, 9
Teamsterville culture, 9
Phillips, N.
fictional narrative, 510
Pike, K.
emic and etic, 24
Piston, W.
half-cadence, 472
speech melody, 472
Plato
Phaedrus, 567
used by Robert Hopper, 567
Pollner, M.
radical reflexivity, 22
understanding, 353
Pomerantz, Anita
alignment, 348
blaming, 209
disagreement, 359
dispreferred seconds, 145
dispreferred shaped response, 164, 167
elicited account, 348
extreme case formulations, 182
modeling and clinical training, 381391
Author index 531

necessity expressed, 184
phone openings, 281282
preferred turn shapes, 108
second assessments, 230
unmotivated looking, 8
Potter, J.
Powesland, P.
Pratt, S.
Osage nation public speaking, 14
Psathas, G.
R
Ragan, Sandra
alignment talk, 6, 341
moral values of Robert Hopper, 563566
Ragan, Sandra L.
Randall, Deleasa
on imperfections in talk, 487
Rappaport, J.
stories as behavior models, 513
Rather, Dan
Bush interview, 13, 8485, 86f
Raymond, G.
topical agenda questions, 66, 67
Reagan, Ronald
speech event interaction, 13
Richardson, L.
Ricoeur, Paul
plurality of culture, 501
Rogers, C.R.
therapy discourse, 365
Rorty, R.
linguistic turn, 543
Rosenbaum, D.P.
Ross, J.I.
police power, 330
Ross, L.
532 Author index

Roth, A.
correctness presupposition, 74
news interview questions, 61
Rush, J.
speech melody, 459
vocule, 463
Rutt, D.
evaluations of speakers and messages, 53
Ryan, E.B.
status and attractiveness in speakers, 48
Ryle, G.
understanding as mental predicate, 120
S
Sacks, Harvey
adjacency pair, 442f
ambiguity, 240
analytic induction, 20
assessments and alternative knowledge, 158
category-bound activities, 270
children, 446
conversation analysis, 16, 19, 275
on gestures, 121
invitation, 198
laughter, 199, 407, 577
multiple turns, 147
mundane communication, 12, 133
nonrecognitional reference, 214
observability of actions, 446
observability of thoughts, 201, 203
proactive listening, 249
relationships and interaction, 210
repair, 216, 268, 349
reply turn, 317
sound-rows, 574
story closure, 184
subjective understanding, 240
talk in everyday life, 133
teasing, 446
timeliness in interviews, 8586
topic as term, 66
troubling matters, 178f, 180
turn beginnings, 138
Author index 533

unmentioned mentionables, 168
unmotivated looking, 8, 1819
valence, 186
Sadd, S.
Sanders, E.
telephone openings, 278f
Sanders, Robert E.
diversity of research methods, 11
induction, 20
interview as research method, 25
laughter, 309325
marine radio, 309325
Sanusi, A.L.
continuity markers, 104
think talk, 103116
transitioning, 104
Saxton, K.L.
modality and hedging, 107
think talk, 107
Schaefer, E.F.
Schegloff, Emanuel
adjacency pair, 442f
answer marking, 244
context, 265
continuers, 354
ESP puns, 531539
grammar, 2627
laughter, 199, 202, 407, 577
misunderstandings, 196, 202
nonrecognitional reference, 214
pre-delicate, 142
puns, 531539
reciprocal pair, 259
repair, 141, 195196, 216, 244, 268, 349
reply turn, 317
restarts, 137138, 147
sequence relationships, 451f
social roles, 20
534 Author index

story closure, 184
storytelling, 251f
summoning in interviews, 74
suppressed items, 261
telephone openings, 275276, 278, 279, 282, 573
topical agenda questions, 65
turn beginnings, 138, 139, 146, 147
unmentioned mentionables, 169
word selection, 539
Schiffrin, D.
absence of marking, 114
I think not discourse marker, 114
meaning making, 114
narrative and relationships, 510
think as meta-talk, 113
Scollon, R.
Scollon, S.B.
Searle, J.
situated language, 26
Sefi, S.
Selting, M.
lexical tokens, 307
Sequeira, D.
terms of address, 23
Shannon, C.
transmission model of communication, 7, 21
Sheldon, A.
gender, 21
Sias, P.M.
embedded disclaimer, 346
Sifianou, M.
telephone openings, 277
Sigman, S.
diversity in research methodology, 11
induction, 20
interview as research method, 25
Sleight, C.
coherence judgments, 51
Smith, E.
Smith, R.
Author index 535

Spiegelberg, F.
Tao Te Ching, 511
Stewart, J.
Stivers, T.
Stokes, R.
alignment talk, 545
Streeck, Jurgen
bodily actions, 433
body and communication, 427439
dualism, 427439
grammar, 2627
police interrogation, 22
symbolic nature of objects, 22
turns-at-talk, 427
verbal and nonverbal communication, 9, 26
Street, R.L.
perception versus evaluation, 50
Strejc, H.
Stringer, J.
everyday life performance, 10
Stucky, Nathan P.
everyday life performance, 479491, 551552
natural performance, 481
performance and naturally occurring interactions, 10
performance of conversation, 480f
performers, 488
rehearsal process, 481, 482
scripts, 482
stage performance, 481
Sudnow, D.
death and dying, 176f
Sykes, R.E.
police intervention, 328
T
Tajfel, H.
high intergroup contact, 332
social identity theory, 327, 332
Tannen, D.
gender and feedback, 263
gender and speech, 264
536 Author index

Taylor, C.
Taylor, R.B.
Templeton, A.
ten Have, P.
inductive method use, 20
phone openings, 276
Thatcher, Margaret
BBC interview, 6970
speech event interaction, 13
Thomason, W.R.
Thompson, G.J.
police/citizen communication, 328
Tracy, Karen
academic discourse study, 2425
context, 21, 265
did you questions, 164165, 173
discourse analysis methodology, 20
diversity of methods, 11
representative and constitutive views, 23
social identity, 8
Temple University conference, 5
Triandis, H.C.
collectivist culture, 98
individualist culture, 98
Turnbull, W.
modality and hedging, 107
think talk, 107
Tusing, K.J.
V
Van Den Bulck, J.
police in mass media, 333
Van Dijk, T.A.
critical discourse analyses, 18
format in discourse analysis, 25
Van Costing, J.
performance studies, 10
Vessey, Gen. John
PBS interview, 6869
Author index 537

W
Waitzkin, H.
Walker, E.
conversation formulations, 303
industrial negotiations, 303
Ward, J.A.
Watson, D.R.
reformulation, 357
Watts, A.
Watzlawick, P.
alignment, 349
invented realities, 499
Weaver, W.
Weick, Karl E.
narrative, 511
stories, 514
West, C.
gender differences in speech, 263
White, C.H.
Whitehead, Alfred N.
personal unity, 438
Wieder, L.
diversity of LSI research methods, 11
Osage nation public speaking, 14
Wiemann, J.M.
Wilber, Ken
on knowledge, 504
Wilkes-Gibbs, D.
Wilson, S.R.
Wittgenstein, L.
family resemblance, 10
language games, 545
philosophy of ordinary language, 6
representation, 432
on understanding, 120
Wodak, R.
gender and communication, 265
538 Author index

Womack, M.M.
police officers and communication, 328
Wood, J.T.
conversational maintenance, 263
gender and listening, 263
Wooffitt, R.
Wrobbel, E.D.
aha moment, 353361
self-revelation, 353361
summary sequence, 359
Y
Yates, D.L.
Yeni-Komshian, G.
Z
Zahn, C.
disclaimers, 345
speech evaluation instrument, 47
Zimmerman, Don H.
action, 441456
apparent action, 441456
children, 441456
Znaniecki, F.
Subject Index
A
address terms, 23
alignment, alignment talk, 6, 209, 244245, 290, 341
ambiguity, 221240
assessments, assessing, assessables, 151160, 229, 230, 269
B
body movement, 413422, 427440, 441456
C
cancer, talk about, 175192, 575576
cognition, thinking, 2, 8, 103116, 119129
coherence, cohesion, 5, 6
context, 20, 168, 173, 265, 272
continuers, 354, 547548
conversation analysis, analysts, 25, 8, 11, 16, 1923, 4142, 91, 119, 120, 208210, 296, 325,
543543, 545
critical discourse analysis, 18
critical ethnography, 18
culture, 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24, 26, 42, 91101, 158160, 279
D
death, dying, 176, 180
delicates, delicate matters, 142148, 250
demand ticket, 4
discourse analysis, analysts, 2, 46, 11, 20, 22, 2425, 4142, 290
discourse markers, 10, 11
E
emic, etic perspectives, 11, 2425
enthymemes, 4, 91
ethnography, ethnographers, ethnographic, 24, 6, 89, 11, 13, 14, 1620, 2225, 4142, 91, 160,
176, 291, 491504
ethnomethodology, 2, 4, 6, 21, 22, 24, 120
ethology, 6
everyday life performance (ELP), 10, 548549
extreme case formulation, 182
eye gaze, 26, 43, 122, 137, 138, 157, 413416, 430
F
formulations, 41, 182, 289, 295307, 347348
footing, 42
540 Subject index

G
gaps, 313317
gender 4, 9, 21, 41, 47, 263272, 275286, 312, 332, 543, 562563, 572575
gesture, 2, 26, 43, 11929, 423424, 427440, 448
grammar, 26, 460
Grices maxims, 100
H
hedging 107, 113, 114
hermeneutic phenomenology, 3, 4
I
identity, 327337
idiomatic expressions, 185
indexicality, 166170
induction, inductive research, 20
institutional interaction, 1214, 289, 293307, 412413
interpersonal communication, 2
interviews, 14, 22, 4142, 5787, 301302, 305307
L
language and social interaction (LSI), 129, 4143, 119, 540
laughter, 12, 263272, 289, 317323, 406, 417
M
matched guise technique, 545546
medical interaction, 1314, 175192, 291, 293, 299300, 305, 381391, 393410, 411422
meta-talk, 113
microethnography, 2, 11, 41, 43, 121, 128
modality, 107, 113, 114
N
names, 151160
narrative, 425, 505506
naturalistic, naturally-occurring interaction, 4, 1215, 208
neutralistic stance (for journalists), 5859, 8687
news delivery, 394410, 576578
news interviews, 293, 301302
newsworthiness, 197
nonverbal, 9, 26, 423, 427
O
openings, telephone conversation, 275286
optimism, 175192
ordinary language philosophy, 6, 120
overlap, 137138
Subject index 541

P
performance, performance studies, 6, 9, 10, 23, 478490
poetics, 910, 1617, 476, 547, 550552
pragmatics, 11, 113, 460
pre-announcements, 180
preference, 7581
presequences, 4
presuppositions, 62, 7175, 86, 166170, 173
problem-based learning (PBL), 121
prosody, 459477
puns, 528538
Q
questions, questioning, 5787, 163173
R
recognition, 151, 158
recycled turn beginnings, 137, 138
relationships, 207217
reluctance, 142148
repair, 197, 207, 213217, 244, 268, 269
representative view of communication, 21 23
restarts
utterance, 12, 26, 127, 137148
conversation, 180
rhetoric, 4, 5, 7, 424, 460, 475476
S
self, identity, 7, 8, 14
sequence, 442445, 454
sociolinguistics, 2, 6, 9, 11, 20, 22, 4142, 424
speech acts, speech act theory, 5, 42, 542, 545
speech evaluation, 9, 41, 4554, 545546
spirituality, 491504
stigma, 334336
stories, storytelling, 22, 251
symbolic interaction, 6
T
taken for granted (TFG), 4, 15, 91101, 425, 519, 520, 540549
teaching, 381391, 564568
tease, 446551
telecommunications, 7
telephone talk, 543, 561, 570572
therapeutic interaction, 290, 291, 299300, 305307, 350362, 363380
thick description, 15, 19, 42
tie signs, 208
tit-for-tat, 207, 210213
topic, topic shift 66, 139142, 146148, 169, 180
542 Subject index

topic initial elicitor, 197
transcription, 10, 15, 17, 23, 589592
troubles talk, 191, 221, 227, 234
U
understanding, 195204, 239, 353379
W
word selection, 536

Glenn - Studies in Language and Social Interaction - 2002

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Glenn - Studies in Language and Social Interaction - 2002

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Studies in Language

and Social Interaction

LEAs COMMUNICATION SERIES

Studies in Language and Social

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

Copyright 2003 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Descriptions are the gifts observers give:

1. An Overview of Language and Social Interaction Research

PART I: ORIENTING TO THE FIELD OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL

2.Extending the Domain of Speech Evaluation: Message Judgments

3.Designing Questions and Setting Agendas in the News Interview

4.Taken-for-Granteds in (an) Intercultural Communication

6.Gesture and the Transparency of Understanding

PART II: TALK IN EVERYDAY LIFE

7. Utterance Restarts in Telephone Conversation: Marking Topic Initiation and

8.Recognizing Assessable Names

9.Interactional Problems With Did You Questions and Responses

11.Rejecting Illegitimate Understandings

12.Interactive Methods for Constructing Relationships

13.A Note on Resolving Ambiguity

15. Sex, Laughter, and Audiotape: On Invoking Features of Context to Explain

16. Gender Differences in Telephone Conversations

PART III: TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS

17. Comparative Analysis of Talk-in-Interaction in Different Institutional

18. Conversational Socializing on Marine VHP Radio: Adapting Laughter and

19. Law Enforcement and Community Policing: An Intergroup Communication

20.Preventatives in Social Interaction

21. The Interactional Construction of Self-Revelation: Creating an Aha

22. A World in a Grain of Sand: Therapeutic Discourse as Making Much of

23.Modeling as a Teaching Strategy in Clinical Training: When Does It Work?

24. Indeterminacy and Uncertainty in the Delivery of Diagnostic News in Internal

Douglas W.Maynard and Richard M.Frankel

26.The Body Taken for Granted: Lingering Dualism in Research on Social

29.The Body Present: Reporting Everyday Life Performance

30. Ethnography as Spiritual Practice: A Change in the Takenf or-Granted (or an

31.The Tao and Narrative

32.Conversational Enslavement in The Truman Show

33.On ESP Puns

PART V: ROBERT HOPPER: TEACHER AND SCHOLAR

34. Robert Hopper: An Intellectual History

35.The Scientist as Humanist: Moral Values in the Opus of Robert Hopper

36.The Great Poem

37.Phone Openings, Gendered Talk, and Conversations About Illness

APPENDIX TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS

2 Studies in language and social interaction

An overview of language and Social interaction research 3

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