Registration link: https://forms.office.com/e/5pw7d9g4TS?origin=lprLinkLink opens in a new window

10am-1pm, 5 June, OC1.04Link opens in a new window Oculus / Online

Mini-lecture

Establishing and Demonstrating Similarity Between Excerpts from Conversation

Analysts of conversation and other forms of discourse often present examples to illustrate the points they are trying to make. One challenge for researchers is demonstrating how those cases relate (a) to one another, and (b) to the larger sample. In this talk, I show how similarity and difference between cases in a sample can be established by using case selection via matching (CSvM). CSvMis applied to two conversational phenomena: ‘so’ separated off from preceding and following talk by silence (stand-alone ‘so’), and ‘oh’ produced with rising-falling pitch (rising-falling ‘oh’). The numerically-driven evidence provided by CSvM means that readers do not have to only take the researchers’ word as to those similarities and differences. Data are from recordings of American English telephone conversations.

Roundtable discussion

Excerpts from the Callhome corpus of American English telephone conversations between friends and family members

(CANCELLED & RESCHEDULE)

Due to unforeseen circumstances, this session will be rescheduled with the speaker in October. 

2-5pm, 11 June, OC0.05Link opens in a new window Oculus / Online

Mini-lecture

Technology Enhanced Reflection and Teacher Development: A Case Study

In this brief presentation, I consider how corpus linguistics (CL) and conversation analysis (CA) can be used together to provide ‘thick descriptions’ of spoken interaction in the context of higher education small group teaching. Beginning with CL and focusing largely on words and combinations of words, CA is then used to highlight pertinent interactional features. This methodology follows an iterative process: from CL to CA, back to CL and so on. This approach to analysis provides powerful insights into the ways in which interactants establish understandings in educational settings, highlighting the inter-dependency of words, utterances and text in the co-construction of meaning. Using CLCA, I suggest, gives a more ‘up-close’ description of spoken interactions in an educational setting than that offered by using either one on its own.

Roundtable discussion

Student teachers’ interactions while teaching and their dialogic reflections based on observations of their lesson recordings

2-5pm, 17 June, OC0.05Link opens in a new window Oculus / Online

Mini-lecture

Human Spoken Interaction as a Complex Adaptive System

Most people believe that spoken interaction is all about language. However, I argue that language is only one of the two complex adaptive systems (of equal importance) which we all use in combination during human spoken interaction. The other system —which Levinson (2006) calls ‘the interaction engine’- is the universal, foundational system which we all learn as infants as a pre-requisite before we learn languages. It is the system described by Conversation Analysis and is the ‘natural ecological niche for language’ (Schegloff 2006). Language is a separate complex adaptive system described elsewhere (e.g., Ellis and Larsen-Freeman 2009b). The interaction engine provides the infrastructure for speakers to mirror their communicative intentions to each other multimodally in talk and to resolve trouble. I explain how the interaction engine uses the same basic procedures as other life-related complex systems in the world; these are described in the substantial literature on Complex Systems. I present a combined CA-Complex Systems approach to spoken interaction, providing examples of how to analyse spoken interaction on both the micro and macro levels simultaneously.

Roundtable discussion

ELF data which reveals 2 separate levels of proficiency in 1 speaker, who makes expert, inventive use of the universal interaction engine whilst being an inexpert user of L2

Professor Steven BlochLink opens in a new window, University College London

2-5pm, 20 June, OC0.05Link opens in a new window Oculus / Online

Mini-lecture

Understanding Telephone Helpline Interactions Through an Applied Conversation Analytical Perspective

This lecture will focus on the practical experience of using the conversation analysis (CA) to identify and analyse patterns of talk-in-interaction. Drawing on the experience of work with a telephone helpline conversation data corpus, we will consider how two very specific practices, used by the participants themselves to manage real-life issues, were originally identified and developed prior to a more formal and rigorous analysis. We will consider how they emerged as objects of interest and why such an approach matters. The aim is to show how underlying principles of CA, such as ‘unmotivated looking’ and the use of data sessions, inform a highly practical data led approach in understanding how we organise the world around us.

Roundtable discussion

Telephone helpline call recording data in which a caller and a healthcare professional interact

Wits and Treats:

WIT End-of-year Gathering

Funded by Doctoral CollegeLink opens in a new window, WIT held the first annual gathering event at A1.11, Social Sciences Building during 13:00-16:00 on 8 December 2023. It was an in-person networking event gathering 26 PhD students from Applied Linguistics, Psychology, Computer Science, Life Sciences, and School of Modern Languages and Cultures.