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“It’s pretty hard”: Stance and Dialogicality
Georgetown University, 2020. Linguistics. [Sharing below a short paper from Discourse Analysis: Conversation, applying Du Bois (2007) to my data. My conversation data recording and transcripts are available here.] According to Du Bois’ (2007) definition, “it’s pretty hard” is an expression of stance, and arriving at its meaning and interactional significance can only be achieved through identification of the participants involved, the object discussed, and the utterances that led to this remark. Du Bois writes, “[i]n taking a stance, the stancetaker (1) evaluates an object, (2) positions a subject (usually the self), and (3) aligns with other subjects” (163). This predicates that stance acts include more than one subject…
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Conversation Shaping: The Impact of Questions on Conversational Direction
Georgetown University, 2020. Linguistics. [Sharing below a short paper from Discourse Analysis: Conversation, applying Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) to my data. My conversation data recording and transcripts are available here.] In a pioneering article describing the way conversational turn-taking is structured, Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974; referred to as SSJ throughout) detail fourteen “facts” (700) found to occur in natural conversations, which govern the composition and procurement of speech turns. The focus of this paper concerns certain “turn allocation techniques” (716) employed by a current speaker to select the next speaker (SSJ’s twelfth fact). In particular, I will examine the use of question-answer adjacency pairs, the first part of…
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Biscotti/Highlander Transcription
Georgetown University, 2020. Linguistics. Discourse Analysis: Conversation. [The recording and transcriptions below correspond with several short papers shared on my site. I’ve also provided commentary related to the transcription process itself, as I worked with three ways types of formatting: play script, column, and quasi-musical score.] Conversation Excerpt: Play Script Transcription This was my debut transcribing an excerpt of this length, genre (natural speech), and with myself as a participant. Though I could relate to much of what Bucholtz (2007) and Ochs (1979) described, it was primarily from a conceptual standpoint, rather than that of an active practitioner. I found it both fun and challenging; at times, it was…
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Schegloff (1982) and Listener Backchannels
Georgetown University, 2020. Hi, everyone! Today’s #WeeklyWednesday is a presentation I gave recently for a Linguistics course in Discourse Analysis of Conversation at Georgetown University. I hope you enjoy seeing some of what I’m working on there! Part of this course has included recording and transcribing an excerpt from a conversation that we were a part of (mine is with my fiancé). This assignment is applying a particular course reading to my conversational data. Below are some key points from the reading and a video of my presentation. I hope you enjoy it! READING APPLIED: Schegloff (1982) “Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things…
