Phillip Glenn

Initiating shared laughter in multi‐party conversations

This study examines the conversational organization of shared laughter. Previous studies have shown that participants routinely create shared laughter through a sequence of first laugh invitation and second laugh response. The present study reports that, while in two‐party interactions such a sequence routinely occurs with current speaker providing the first laugh, in multi‐party interactions someone other than current speaker generally provides the first laugh. The distribution of “who Iaughs first” is influenced in part by conversational activities in which shared laughter gets embedded, such as teasing or story and joke‐telling. By letting someone else laugh first, current speakers in multi‐party interactions may orient to a bias against laughing at ones own laughables. By this distributional feature, multi‐party shared laughter comes closer in its organization to one‐to‐many communicative events, such as stand‐up comedy. Thus laughter may be most fully realized in its small group manifestations rathe...

Oral communication across the curriculum in higher education: The state of the art

This article reviews published assessments of oral communication across the curriculum programs in higher education and reports activities and results from a faculty and student development program at a mid‐sized comprehensive state university. Preliminary results from both self‐report and quasi‐experimental studies suggest that this approach holds significant promise for curricular development and improvement of student communication skills. Potential problems associated with oral communication across the curriculum programs and implications of such programs for the Speech Communication discipline are discussed.

Theory presentation and assessment in a problem‐based learning group

In this study, we apply the procedures and assumptions of ethnomethodological conversation analysis to analyze a segment of interaction in a problem‐based learning (PBL) meeting. In the segment, one member of the group presents a theory pertaining to the case under study. Before it is accepted or rejected, the same speaker presents a second theory to which other group members react with objections and disaffiliative laughter. The presenter consequently rejects the second theory and uses this rejection as a basis for returning to and implicitly accepting the first. Theory presentation and assessment are an integral part of the PBL group process of moving discursively from case history and symptoms to diagnosis and treatment. We observe that the presentation of a theory makes relevant a variety of sequential activities through which participants in instructional activities of this sort come to accept or discard the theory. Implications for teaching and tutorial practice are presented.

The interactive framing of play in adult conversations

Drawing upon the theory (developed by Bateson and by Goffman) of play as a metacommunicative frame created interactively, this study examined how adults frame play through their messages and behaviors. Interactants signalled play through such messages as overt invitations, nonverbal cues, abrupt topic changes, and outrageous or put‐on utterances. The nature of these messages led to different types of episodes labelled as play with a partner, play for a partner, and play at a partner. Often the signalling of play is incomplete, or “taken‐for‐granted” by participants. Implications for future research on play, metacommunication, and interpersonal interactions are discussed.

Epistemic authority in employment interviews: Glancing, pointing, touching

Interviewers routinely orient to applicant files as they produce first pair parts (e.g. questions) that forward the business of the interview. As they do so, they make clear what they know, whether they already know it or are discovering it in the moment, whether it comes from the file in hand, and whether the applicant holds primary rights to confirm or amend that information. In these moments, participants work out issues of epistemic authority through an orchestration of multimodal behaviors, including talk, gesture, gaze, and touch. Our analysis focuses specifically on two discourse slots: when interviewers confirm specific information in side sequences; and when they gloss and assess general information while calling for an account. In the former, interviewers display minimal knowledge and secondary (deferred) epistemic authority; in the latter, they show strong knowledge and assert primary epistemic authority. This article demonstrates how epistemic authority, negotiated through embodied talk-in-interaction, contributes to how interviews unfold.