Chase Wesley Raymond

Are Explicit Apologies Proportional to the Offenses They Address

We consider here Goffmans proposal of proportionality between virtual offenses and remedial actions, based on the examination of 102 cases of explicit apologies. To this end, we offer a typology of the primary apology formats within the dataset, together with a broad categorization of the types of virtual offenses to which these apologies are addressed. We find a broad proportionality between apologies and the offenses they remediate when the offenses to be remediated are minor; however, this relationship is not sustained among larger apologies and offenses. In the latter cases, relational and contextual contingencies are important intervening factors influencing apology construction.

Modular Pivots: A Resource for Extending Turns at Talk

This article investigates a type of turn constructional pivot structurally different from and more common than those previously analyzed within the literature. Modular pivots are comprised of items of talk that (a) are linguistic adjuncts and hence syntactically optional, (b) routinely appear in both turn-initial and turn-final positions, and (c) are deployed to forge an overlapping or pivotal transition between otherwise discrete TCUs. In addition to identifying various linguistic candidates for use as modular pivots, this article reports the results of auditory and acoustic analysis of three such candidates (now, I guess, and you know) revealing the intonational and articulatory seamlessness of the pivot’s junctures with prior and subsequent talk. It also furnishes evidence that the pivot itself facilitates the speaker’s suppression of terminal intonation at both junctures and explains this outcome by reference to the pivot’s impact on the speaker’s experience of projected speech delivery. The conclusion addresses various broader implications for pivotal turn construction, the linguistic adjuncts that can serve as pivots, and the turn extensions that they enable. Data are drawn from American and British English language conversation.

Generational divisions: dialect divergence in a Los Angeles-Salvadoran Household

Abstract Parodi (2003; 2004; 2009a; 2009b; 2011) has proposed and evidenced the existence of a Los Angeles, California dialect of Spanish called Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish (LAVS). This ‘rur-urbana koiné’ is argued to be based on rural Mexican Spanish dialects but with its own unique characteristics as well. The author affirms that Latin American immigrants to the region (not only Mexicans but also Salvadorans, Hondurans, etc.) accommodate their speech to LAVS outside of the home, but maintain the use of their original dialect inside, while their children born in the region acquire solely the LAVS dialect. The present ethnographic study seeks to discover how these claims play out in natural, real-time interactions amongst the members of a Salvadoran family living in Los Angeles. Through an in-depth breakdown of both phonological (/s/-aspiration, /n/-velarization, /y/-deletion, and /y/-epenthesis) and morphosyntactic (voseo and tuteo) features of the different family members’ speech, we confirm the presence of three distinct dialects in the home: two Salvadoran (one employed by the mother, another by the father), and one ‘Angelino’, used by the children. The results thereby support Parodi’s theory that Los Angeles possesses its own dialect and speech community which are distinct from those of other varieties of Spanish.

Actions in Practice: On details in collections

Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foundational tenets of conversation-analytic theory and method – including the relationship between position and composition, and the making of collections – as these appear to be primary sources of confusion for many of the contributors to the Lynch et al. Special Issue. We then target some of the specific arguments presented in the Special Issue, including the alleged ‘over-hearer’s’ writing of metrics, the provision of so-called ‘alternative’ analyses and the supposed ‘crafting’ of generalizations in epistemics research. In addition, in light of Lynch’s more general assertion that conversation analysis (CA) has recently been experiencing a ‘rapprochement’ with what he disparagingly refers to as the ‘juggernaut’ of linguistics, we discuss the specific expertise that linguists have to offer in analyzing particular sorts of interactional detail. The article as a whole thus illustrates that, rather than being produced ‘at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail’, conversation-analytic findings – including its work in epistemics – are unambiguously anchored in such detail. We conclude by offering our comments as to the link between CA and linguistics more generally, arguing that this relationship has long proven to be – and indeed continues to be – a mutually beneficial one.

Time Reference in the Service of Social Action

The present study investigates the ways that members of society refer to time. Concrete methods for communicating about points in time and locating events in relation to them make relevant and thereby ground abstract time-reckoning in the lives of interactants. Through a taxonomy of references to time—termed absolute and event-relative, each with subcategories—we describe the intrinsic affordances that different designs provide coparticipants engaging in social interaction. In analyzing talk from both ordinary and institutional contexts, we demonstrate how these affordances can be mobilized in the co-construction and maintenance of intersubjectivity, in managing interpersonal relationships, and in conjunction with a variety of social actions. By describing how sociotemporal ordering is invoked, put into use, and contextually achieved in the immediacy of quotidian conduct, we posit that time-reckoning categories are social not only in their construction but also in their everyday use.

Epistemic Brokering in the Interpreter-Mediated Medical Visit: Negotiating “Patient’s Side” and “Doctor’s Side” Knowledge

A significant dilemma involved in communication in medical care is the interactional negotiation of “doctor’s side” versus “patient’s side” knowledge—two divergent, yet indispensible, understandings of sickness. The present study examines the ways in which language interpreters, as active coparticipants in the clinical encounter, can engage with these emergent territories of knowledge by reformulating how information is presented in the ongoing talk. Although related to the strategies used in language and culture brokering, the practices described here for epistemic brokering are distinct in that they redesign action types and stances, as well as initiate sequences, in the service of aligning with and satisfying the social, communicative, and medical objectives that exist on each side of the mediated interaction. It is argued that epistemic brokering practices are one means through which interpreters can accomplish—on a turn-by-turn basis—their various roles of codiagnostician, gatekeeper, patient advocate, etc., which previous research has identified. Data are in American English and in Central American dialects of Spanish with English translation.

Gender and sexuality in animated television sitcom interaction

The active ‘doing’ of gender and sexuality in and through social interaction has been a topic of academic inquiry for several decades. This study examines the cultural reproduction of that ‘doing’ through the onscreen discourse of the animated television sitcom. A conversation-analytic approach to various excerpts from two popular series reveals the ways in which the situated interactions of these programs make gender and sexuality overtly relevant to viewers through polarization of ‘the norm’ versus deviations from it at the level of talk. In temporarily deviating from their everyday, normative speech practices, characters tap into viewers’ preconceived notions of the behaviors of different gendered and sexual identities in interaction. These non-normative actions are then oriented to as such in the onscreen discourse, thereby making gender, sexuality, and the conduct associated with those identities simultaneously salient for the at-home viewer. It is hypothesized that, while these gender-/sexuality-based associations can be used as a tool through which to offer critiques of the social stereotypes that they parody, they can also serve to re-create those hegemonic divisions at a discursive level through homogenization of the complex range of human identities being represented.

From the field, to the Web, and back again: incorporating Internet methods into language ideology research

Researchers from a variety of academic disciplines have begun to incorporate Web-based methodologies in their research agendas. Nonetheless, many of those interested in language ideologies – i.e. speakers’ beliefs about language, as well as their rationalisation of those beliefs – vehemently stand by site-specific ethnographic approaches. Rather than arguing for a replacement of one method by another, the present methodological analysis explores how Internet methods can be intertwined with more traditional, face-to-face techniques for data collection. Exemplifying this process by way of a three-phase project investigating Spanish-speaker opinions about various dialects of Spanish that exist in the world, we illustrate how online and offline methods can mutually inform one another, together allowing both specificity and generalisability of findings, as well as an overall more profound understanding of a given phenomenon of interest.