Michal Hamo

From Observation to Transcription and Back: Theory, Practice, and Interpretation in the Analysis of Children's Naturally Occurring Discourse

In this article, we address issues of methodology in the study of peer talk in child discourse and argue for the need to develop an interdisciplinary approach to child discourse at large. The peer talk under study is part of a larger project following the development of childrens discursive skills, in method relying on ethnographic fieldwork, and conversation analysis methods of transcription and microanalysis. We use a case study to demonstrate the theoretical justification, benefits, and drawbacks of such integration. In the analysis, we demonstrate how microanalysis of detailed transcripts can serve to ground, provide warrants, and complexify the initial observation and its interpretation and how contextual knowledge can serve to enrich and complement the detailed analysis of the talk and the degree to which it is crucial for reaching a holistic understanding.

Caught between freedom and control: ‘ordinary’ people’s discursive positioning on an Israeli prime-time talk show

The article discusses the democratizing potential of the talk show genre by exploring the discursive positioning of anonymous lay participants in the Israeli prime-time talk show Live. Quantitative analyses of three measures of participation reveal that anonymous guests take fewer turns, intervene less and self-select less than famous and semi-famous guests on the show. Qualitative analyses reveal a dialectical response by the host to anonymous guests’ initiative behavior. Such behavior is encouraged and supported when it conforms to a prototypical view of the anonymous guest as communicatively inferior, but is perceived as challenging and sanctioned when guests go beyond this prototypical view and exhibit high degrees of communicative competence. This dialectic is discussed as evidence of the embeddedness of conversational patterns of self-selection within an institutional framework of asymmetric control, meriting a multi-layered approach to semi-institutional discourse. The article concludes with a cultural and institutional contextualization of the findings.

Explanations in naturally occurring peer talk: Conversational emergence and function, thematic scope, and contribution to the development of discursive skills

This study examines explanations in children’s natural peer talk, as they emerge in collaborative interaction among children, in two cohorts: preschoolers (aged 4—5) and preadolescents (aged 9—10). The study examined 322 explanations for the diversity of their content-components, their modes of emergence, and social functions. Quantitative analysis revealed a wide range of explanation topics in both cohorts, with a shift with age from the immediate to the more distant. Discourse analysis of explanatory sequences demonstrated a high sensitivity to conversational notions of expectedness and an effective use of explanations for a rich array of pragmatic and social functions, as well as the affordances of peer talk explanations as a potential site for learning and developing the discursive skills of decontextualized discourse.

The (inter)play of nationality, religiosity and gender: textual mechanisms for the rich representation of Israeli identity on a reality race gamedoc

Reality television is a significant cultural forum for the exploration of personal, social and national identities. While its characteristic representation of ethnic and sociocultural diversity may promote democratization and pluralism, previous research indicates that this positive potential is significantly limited by reliance on conservative schemes and stereotypes. The present study aims at examining the full potential of reality television to promote pluralism, as well as its immanent constraints and limitations. To this end, it focuses on an extreme case study — an Israeli show intentionally and explicitly dedicated to promoting tolerance and secular-religious dialogue within JewishIsraeli society. This case study also allows for documenting the unique resources and affordances of a reality television format that has so far received relatively limited scholarly attention — the race gamedoc (e.g., The Amazing Race).

“The Nation's Living Room”: Negotiating solidarity on an Israeli talk show in the 1990s

The article explores the changing meaning and salience of the ethos of solidarity in Israeli discourse in the 1990s, as reflected on the popular talk show Live, Hosted by Dan Shilon (1991–2000). Examination of the shows format and genre, textual analysis of its cast and topical agendas, and a quantitative analysis of micro-discursive patterns attest to the globalization, individualization, and commercialization of Israeli society and media and to the erosion of the traditionally central ethos of solidarity. Live somewhat resisted this erosion by constructing idealized images of solidarity, demonstrating popular televisions role as a site for cultural negotiation.

Children talking television: The salience and functions of media content in child peer interactions

The study aims at exploring the salience and functions of media and television contents in children’s lives (aged 4–7 years) by focusing on their uses as a discursive resource in naturally occurring peer talk. We observed and recorded Israeli children talk in everyday, natural settings in two separate studies, in 1999–2002 and in 2012–2013. Detailed discourse analysis of television-based interactions from an ethnographic, child-centered perspective reveals the enduring centrality of television as an enjoyable, available, and shared cultural resource with valuable social, cognitive, and discursive affordances: it is frequently mentioned during everyday adult-free interactions; utilized as the basis for drawing and negotiating boundaries and hierarchies within the peer community; and facilitates experiencing a variety of discursive literacy skills, ranging between practicing adherence to original texts and creativity and distancing from them. These findings provide further evidence for the mediatization of everyday life, and may have educational implications, which are discussed.

Shoshana Blum-Kulka (1936–2013)

Shoshana Blum-Kulka was an influential scholar, who contributed to the establishment of discourse studies as an important scholarly field in both humanities and social sciences. Her pioneer contributions to the fields of translation, cross-cultural pragmatics, pragmatic development, interlanguage pragmatics, language education, family discourse, child peer discourse, political discourse and broadcast talk assisted in establishing the methodological and theoretical basis of discourse analysis. Throughout her diverse and productive career, she infused rigorous linguistic and textual analysis with social and ethnographic sensibilities, positioning the study of discourse as an inherently interdisciplinary project. The Discourse Pragmatic approach, developed in her theoretical and empirical studies, promoted an understanding of language use as contextualized social action and a process of joint meaning-making. Born in 1936 in the city of Cluj, Shoshana escaped Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944 on the ‘Golden train’, and later immigrated to Israel. She earned a BA in English Literature and Romance Languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Masters in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, and a PhD in Hebrew Linguistics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prior to pursuing a full-time career as an academic, Shoshana was head of the Intensive Hebrew Language Program for Overseas Students at the Hebrew University, and is credited for transforming the way L2 is being taught to date at university level in Israel. She began her academic career as a lecturer at the Center of Applied Linguistics at the Hebrew University in 1974 and was later invited to join the Department of Communication and Journalism and the School of Education at the same university, where she served as full professor until her retirement in 2004. Shoshana’s impact on discourse studies can be traced in various areas of analysis; we shall underline three trajectories of her work of specific relevance to the readership of this journal: her work in pragmatics, her studies on media and political discourse, and her research on language socialization. At the outset of the 1980s Shoshana headed (along with Gabriele Kasper and Juliane House) the well-known Cross Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), which integrated linguistics, speech act theory and politeness theory. By demonstrating cross-cultural and situational variation in the performance of requests and apologies, the project was one of the first to promote an understanding of the context sensitivity of speech act and politeness phenomena. Among the major contributions related to this project was the finding that different cultures exhibit diverse scales for the perception 499224 DIS15410.1177/1461445613499224Discourse Studies 2013

IAN HUTCHBY , Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting

Ian Hutchby, Media talk: Conversation analysis and the study of broadcasting . Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 185. Hb £60.00, Pb £18.99. Ian Hutchbys Media talk is an introduction to the analysis of talk-in-interaction on television and radio. Since the early 1990s, attention to interactive and discursive patterns in these broadcast media has produced a large, rich, and diversified body of work, targeting a wide range of media genres and issues from a variety of approaches. Gradually, this body of work is combining to form a unique field of study. One possible indication of this gradual consolidation of the field and of its diversity and richness is the recent, almost simultaneous publication of two introductory texts on media talk that share the same title but differ in scope, methodological approach, and generic breadth (the other is Tolson 2006 ). Despite its development, the study of media talk has remained until now on the periphery of media studies, and attention to the details of talk-in-interaction is often missing from the methodological mainstream of the discipline. Ian Hutchbys book aims at addressing this gap by introducing the study of media talk to students of the media. The book can be read as an extended argument for the analysis of talk, demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing macroscopic questions regarding broadcast media as a social institution from a unique perspective grounded in micro-analysis.