Discourse Studies current issue

Arguing within an institutional hierarchy: how argumentative talk and interlocutors' embodied practices preserve a superior--subordinate relationship

Argaman, E. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT

This article studies an argument that took place in an institutional setting and specifies six functions of talk and embodied practices employed in an argument between a superior and her subordinate. The article shows how certain argumentative conducts and their subsequent responses preserve the institutional hierarchical relationship. The article’s final section considers three resultant issues: 1) argumentative practices and their relation to various institutional hierarchies; 2) argumentative practices between people holding different versus similar hierarchical positions; and 3) the extent to which verbal defiance accompanied by embodied practices can be maintained.

Explaining the unexplained: warranting disbelief in the paranormal

Lamont, P., Coelho, C., Mckinlay, A. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT

Psychologists have studied paranormal belief for over a century, but have been concerned with belief in the paranormal rather than disbelief. However, disbelief in the paranormal is a position in its own right and, for many, by no means a self-evident position. An avowal of disbelief is, therefore, a social phenomenon that may involve some interesting discursive work. This article examines the discourse of self-ascribed ‘sceptics’, and analyses how they warrant their expressed position when faced with an ostensibly paranormal event for which they cannot provide a ‘normal’ explanation. We show how, for example, through the use of ‘definitely/something’ constructions, they appeal to an explanation that exists in principle, though the details are not available to them. Such devices can be seen as social and discursive forms of belief maintenance, in that they are designed to maintain a social position established through an avowal of (dis)belief.

One-sided laughter in academic presentations: a small-scale investigation

Politi, P. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT

This investigation focuses on analysing one-sided laughter (i.e. laughter initiated by the speaker and not shared with other parties) in academic presentations — a form of ‘institutional talk’ (Drew and Heritage, 1992) defined here as goal-oriented talk about and for the business (in the broadest sense) at hand, and given at structural settings of certain formality as the lecture theatre in this case. The analytical tool employed is a partial adoption of Partington’s (2006) laughter classification/categorization drawing on the theories of ‘Politeness’ (Brown and Levinson, 1978, 1987) and ‘Face’ (Goffman, 1967, 1981). This is a rather new approach which, nonetheless, contributes positively to the field of laughter analysis since these theories are ‘much less examined in relationship to institutional settings’ (Harris, 2001: 452). The data analysed for this purpose is David Nunan’s (2006) presentation entitled ‘Action Research and Professional Growth’, given at the JALT First Joint Conference in Japan. The findings suggest that one-sided laughter is a communication strategy of mainly rhetorical nature capable of revealing the underlying meaning of the interaction: its hidden ideology, purpose and goal.

An approach to corpus-based discourse analysis: The move analysis as example

Upton, T. A., Cohen, M. A. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT

This article presents a seven-step corpus-based approach to discourse analysis that starts with a detailed analysis of each individual text in a corpus that can then be generalized across all texts of a corpus, providing a description of typical patterns of discourse organization that hold for the entire corpus. This approach is applied specifically to a methodology that is used to analyze texts in terms of the functional/communicative structures that typically make up texts in a genre: move analysis. The resulting corpus-based approach for conducting a move analysis significantly enhances the value of this often used (and misused) methodology, while at the same time providing badly needed guidelines for a methodology that lacks them. A corpus of ‘birthmother letters’ is used to illustrate the approach.

'A bit of common ground': personalisation and the use of shared knowledge in interactions between people with learning disabilities and their personal assistants

Williams, V., Ponting, L., Ford, K., Rudge, P. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT

Personalisation is the new mantra in social care; this article focuses on how personalisation can be achieved in practice, by presenting an analysis of data from people with learning disabilities and their personal assistants (PAs), where traditional care relationships have often been shown to be disempowering (Antaki et al., 2007b). The focus here is on the ways in which both parties use references to shared knowledge, joint experiences or personal-life information. These strategies can be used for various social goals, and instances are given where shared references are used during non task-related talk. Both parties are seen on occasion to attempt to refer to shared information, and dense layers of inference can result, which move the interaction onto an ordinary, more symmetrical and friendly footing. The article concludes that shared knowledge referencing creates a way to shift between the personal and the professional, to blur the boundaries, and to create a new and more personalised relationship.

Book review: MARIA DE LOS ANGELES GOMEZ GONZALEZ, J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE and ELSA M. GONZALEZ ALVAREZ (eds), Languages and Cultures in Contrast and Comparison. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008, xxii + 364 pp., ISBN 978 90 272 54191

Timofeeva, E. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT

Book review: DAVID MACHIN and THEO VAN LEEUWEN, Global Media Discourse: A Critical Introduction . London and New York: Routledge, 2007, viii + 188 pp

Hou, S. — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:20:59 PDT