Robert E. Sanders

The Existential Center of Small Groups: Member’s Conduct and Interaction

In every society groups rather than individuals are given responsibility for producing results that individuals potentially could produce just as well, but without the benefits of group effort. Once a small discussion group is convened, the members can be counted on to interact, often at length and sometimes contentiously, incontrovertible evidence that their interaction accomplishes something over and above what comes about because of characteristics of the task, cognitive processing, and context. And in order for members to achieve the collaboration and interdependence that make them a group rather than co-present individuals, they must interact. Hence, it is essential for small group researchers to examine behavioral data (by which we mean interactional conduct) if we are to understand what gives small groups the distinct utilities with which they are credited. This position does not mean that individual motivation, cognition and information processing, and other related phenomena should be ignored. It means rather that these matters are secondary to and contingent on interactional conduct and processes.

Speakers' Footing in a Collaborative Writing Task: A Resource for Addressing Disagreement While Avoiding Conflict

It is widely assumed in studies of conflict that either persons address and resolve disagreement by waging conflict or that persons avoid conflict and thereby fail to address disagreements. However, through our analysis of interactions of people engaged in a collaborative writing task, we found a number of instances where steps were taken to avoid waging conflict or to attenuate it when there was disagreement while still addressing the disagreement and seeking to resolve it. This was done by making use of the alternative footings of speakers engaged in collaboration on a writing task to wage conflict indirectly, off the record. Speakers faced with disagreement changed or adopted footings so as to secure or reify accord or avoid further discord. Three functions of adopting or changing footings when disagreements arise are identified.

Grammatical rules and explanations of behavior

Theories in the behavioral sciences are constrained so that stated relationships are empirically testable and explanations have predictive power. These constraints constitute the classical paradigm, and are trivial just when ‘causal relationships’ do not hold. It appears that such relationships do not hold for linguistic, and presumably other, behaviors, thus precluding study within the classical paradigm. This compels study of those behaviors in terms of the non‐traditional approach to testability and explanation developed in Chomskyan linguistics. These constitute the grammatical paradigm. The existence of two paradigms requires that any inquiry begin by determining which paradigm is appropriate.

The Question of a Paradigm for the Study of Speech-Using Behavior.

Speech‐using behavior has not as yet received serious attention. Before it can be effectively studied, it is necessary to consider ways of discovering an appropriate paradigm within which speech‐using behavior can be explained.

The Composition and Sequencing of Communicative Acts to Solve Social Problems: Functionality and Inventiveness in Children's Interactions

A close examination of peer interactions of children between the ages of 5;0 and 7;0 reveal occurrences where children composed and sequenced their communicative acts in intricate ways that were functional as solutions to a suddenly emergent social dilemma. Their acts and act sequences functioned to place constraints on what followed in the interaction, such that they opposed the others unwanted actions by making the others cessation of the unwanted actions relevant, and interpretable in a socially positive way. These same acts and act sequences simultaneously steered the interaction away from conflict by not making a conflictful response relevant. Besides their dual functionality, these communicative acts were so tailored to the immediate context and situational dilemma that they have an inventive aspect. These data raise the theoretical question of what basis the children had for composing and sequencing communicative acts in situ that anticipate their interactional consequences and promote desired ones. A proposal is made in the concluding discussion that the basis for this capability is acquisition of “knowledge” of a set of Principles of Relevance in interactions and discourse.

Style, meaning, and message effects

The way in which messages are styled can amplify, dampen, or entirely cancel the public reactions of respondents to communicated information. Certain options of phrasing and syntax have this impact by constraining what can follow in the unfolding text or transaction with minimal risk of misinterpretation, and without undesired inductions about the character and traits of the respondent. Such stylistic options are a resource for strategic communication when conventions and protocols for structuring discourse do not apply or are rejected.

Speaking for the institution: A fourth production site for group members' influence attempts

Analysis of the transcript of a jury’s deliberations reveals a fourth production site for influence attempts beyond the three identified by Meyers and Brashers. The fourth site involves influence attempts by jurors to uphold the interests of a particular Court and a particular proceeding, and perhaps the interests of the larger judicial system. This gives the Institution a place at the table as an agent of influence, something that arguably generalizes beyond juries to all task groups embedded within organizations. The main part of the analysis identifies three main functions that were served by making the Institution’s presence at the table felt—directives, correctives of others’ positions and arguments, and justifications of positions and arguments. In addition, the analysis identifies two main ways that participants marked shifts in footing from speaking in their own voice to speaking in the Institution’s voice. The first is the use of direct quotations of the Court’s instructions. The second is the use of modal auxiliaries such as “should” and “need to,” that presuppose an external source of rules and obligations.

The Interpretation of nonverbals

There have been substantial gains in the study of nonverbal signs in terms of observational methods, descriptions, and empirical generalizations (Harper et al. 1978: DePaulo 1980). Much has been learned about the roles that nonverbals play in the communicative transactions of individuals, about precisely what roles are played by particular types of nonverbal, about cultural relativity in terms both of what specifically is displayed and the conditions of display, etc. This is in addition to the accretion of detailed examples of visual and auditory images which carry the sort of cultural and psychological freight pointed out by Freud, Jung, and LeviStrauss. However, despite this expansion and improvement in descriptive data, a number of fundamental questions about nonverbals remain unanswered and have been pushed offstage in favor of more fruitful concerns. It remains unclear the extent to which human nonverbals make up a set of discrete signs with fixed and invariant values (within, if not between, cultures), or whether they combine to form a language-like medium of expression in which it is possible to be creative and strategic without a loss of interpretability. It is also unclear what differences, if any, exist between nonverbals in interpersonal transactions; in such mass media as radio, television, and film; and in public rituals and the arts. It is far from clear what the formal interconnection is between the meanings of nonverbals and the meanings of any linguistic signs they accompany. And finally, it is unclear how to draw a line between nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication, These are questions about the communicative properties of a sub-class of signs, not questions about any of its members. As a result, they cannot be answered by descriptions (no matter how detailed or general) of the display, functions, and effects of specific nonverbals. Instead, such questions have to be answered in terms of a theoretical framework sufficiently powerful to derive testable claims about nonverbals consistent with one or another of the answers to such questions as those above.

The interpretation of discourse

Interactants do not typically perceive the high ambiguity of utterances that is collectively predicted by semantic and pragmatic theories. This indicates the existence of a shared procedure for selecting best interpretations from multiple alternatives. This procedure is specified and partially formalized, with indications of its mediating role in the effect of psycho‐social variables on message formation and interpretation.

Core Research Traditions Within Language and Social Interaction

Research undertaken by members of the Language and Social Interaction Division of the ICA addresses diverse topics, often topics of interest to scholars in other divisions as well. But it is not the topics that particular studies address that distinguish and coalesce work in language and social interaction (LSI); it is what these studies contribute directly or indirectly to helping us understand. Work within the core traditions of LSI research gives primary emphasis to the discursive practices through which persons construct or produce the realities of social life (e.g., action, relationship, community, identity, conflict or cooperation, organization, power). And a further, more basic, commonality underlying work in LSI is that it contributes to our understanding of what persons do, on what basis, to produce socially meaningful action and achieve (or fail to achieve) mutual understanding. Following an initial overview of LSI research and its main traditions in these basic terms, this essay gives more detailed attention to the goals, methods, and topics in the two most populous areas of LSI research: the ethnography of speaking and conversation analysis.