Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

 
 
Session Overview
Date: Monday, 06/Nov/2023
9:30am - 10:00amRegistration & Coffee
10:00am - 10:20amConference opening
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Including welcoming words by Rudolf Mahrer, Professor of French Linguistics and Vice-dean “quality, communication and innovation”, Faculty of Arts, UNIL
10:20am - 11:20amKeynote Talk 1 (cannot be streamed)
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Jérôme Jacquin
 

The emergence of common ground over interactional histories – the case of psychotherapy

Arnulf Deppermann

Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany

In studies of social interaction, displays, negotiation and transmission of knowledge and the emergence of common ground usually are researched on the level of sequences of interaction, e.g., question-answer, instruction-compliance, etc. However, it is evident that common ground between participants emerges over extended series of interactions as well. In addition to sequences, cross-sequential and cross-event relationships of adding to, updating of, and revising common ground play an important role for the emergence of shared knowledge, social relationships, and the accomplishment of joint action. However, interactional histories that span over series of interactions have only very rarely been studied yet, and they pose very specific requirements on data-sampling.

In my talk, I will report on a study of the emergence and change of common ground over the course of psychotherapy sessions. I will track how therapist and patient, starting with divergent understandings of the sources of patient’s problems, come to develop a shared view over iterated topicalizations of the same conceptual domains pertaining to the patient’s problems. I will show that the development of common ground not only has a prospective, emerging dimension, but also a retrospective dimension: Participants presuppose and refer back to concepts, positions, and agreements that have been established on prior occasions by various explicit and indexical means. In this way they make use of their shared interactional history as a resource of economical and partner-specific recipient design that rests on shared meanings, which at times can be intransparent to an overhearer who does not know their history. Data come from psychodynamic psychotherapy in German.

 
11:20am - 11:30amShort break
11:30am - 12:30pmParallel Session 01-A
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Evelyne Berger
 
11:30am - 12:00pm

«ja eben» – «eben». 'eben' as a marker of epistemic authority in Swiss German

Martin Luginbühl, Daniel Müller-Feldmeth, Oliver Spiess, Tamara Koch

University of Basel, Switzerland

eben can be used in Standard German as adjective (meaning ‘flat’), as time adverb (‘just’), as intensifier, as answer particle, or modal particle (Felder 2017). As answer or modal particle, it can also be relevant for evidentiality, as it can express that a proposition is common knowledge or that it can be inferred from what has already been said (Brausse 1986, Karagjosova 2003). In these cases, eben links an utterance to its context on the level of evidentiality.

In our talk, we focus on interactional uses of eben relevant to the negotiation of evidentiality. We suggest a way to combine context-sensitive quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis on the microlevel of conversations within the context of oral school tasks. In our corpus of 180 videorecorded discussions (873 minutes in total) of Swiss German elementary school children (aged 7–12), eben occurs 900 times, of which 473 are turn-initial or constitute a single-word turn. We annotated the entirely transcribed corpus with context-sensitive codes for argumentative actions (e.g., oppositional/validating justification or (dis-)agreement in relation to a previous statement, etc.), 38 conversations have been annotated additionally with regard to different devices used for positionings or justifications.

Analyzing our data, we draw on the GLOBE-framework (“globality and locality in the organization of jointly constructed units“, Quasthoff/Heller/Morek 2017) for describing oral argumentation competence (Heller 2012). In this understanding, eben can be seen as a ‘linguistic form’ within different ‘pragmatic devices’ (like ‘giving a statement’ or ‘supporting the own positioning with a justification’, etc.) to process interactional jobs like ‘positioning’ or ‘justifying’. At the same time, eben can be related to negotiations of epistemicity, as it is often used at the beginning of turns to upgrade one’s epistemic authority by supporting a claim or making a conclusion explicit while affiliating with the previous speaker; a dual function of agreeing with the previous turn and at the same time pointing to an already displayed or postpositioned position (cf. Betz/Deppermann 2018).

In our talk, we will ask which correlations of turn-initial eben with our codings can be observed, how these observations can be related to different interactional uses of eben, and how their sequential embedding relates to that of the information they are intended to update.



12:00pm - 12:30pm

Adding a temporal dimension to evidentiality: incremental categorization of sources of knowledge in spoken Italian

Elena Battaglia

Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland

Evidentiality refers to the grammatical, lexical, textual resources (for Italian, e.g. Pietrandrea 2007, Rocci 2012, Miecznikowski 2016) whereby the speaker categorizes his/her sources of knowledge for a proposition P in assertive utterances and, from an interactional perspective, manages his/her epistemic positioning in various sequential contexts (recently, Cornillie/Gras 2020).

In this paper, we take a step further towards an interactional account of evidentiality. Following recent proposals on the temporality of grammar (Mushin/Pekarek-Doehler 2021) and on categorization as an incremental and collaborative activity (Mauri et al. 2021), our goal is to investigate how the production of evidential resources in spoken discourse unfolds in time to achieve source categorization.

We use conversational data from the TIGR corpus (6h) and the Kiparla corpus (16h) of spoken Italian, and combine systematic annotation of evidential resources with sequential analysis of selected phenomena.

In this contribution, adopting the methods of Interactional Linguistics and Conversation Analysis, we scrutinize a subset of evidential resources (around 30% of the total dataset) which are produced within increments or self-repairs. These practices allow the speaker to modulate the degree of explicitness and specificity of P’s sources and to negotiate epistemic positioning, targeting and preventing possible troubles in the epistemic affiliation with the interlocutor.

Our findings overall suggest that the production of evidential resources is finely tuned to the sequential and epistemic organization of talk and interplays with practices in the incremental construction of the turn and the sequence.

Example

BO046: ma, maurizio quando parte?
when is maurizio leaving?
BO021: il venticinque[P].
on the twenty-fifth.
BO046: ah,
oh,
BO021: dovrebbe[E], se ho ben capito[E], perche' dovrebbe avere tipo un esame il ventotto o una cosa del genere[E]
he should, if I understood well, because he should have like an exam on the twenty-eighth or something
BO046: e giada resta?
and is Giada staying here?
BO021: penso[E] di si’[P]. (-) cioe' io da come l'ho capita[E], si’[P].
I think so. (-) I mean, as far as I understood, yes.

References

Mauri, C., Fiorentini, I. Goria, E. (2021). Building Categories in Interaction. Linguistic resources at work. John Benjamins.

Miecznikowski, J. (2016). An experience that apparently differs a lot from mine”. Evidentials in discourse: the case of gastronomic discussions. In S. Greco/M. Danesi (Eds.), Case studies in Discourse Analysis. Lincom Europa, 270-298.

Mushin I., Pekarek-Doehler S., (2021), Linguistic structures in social interaction: Moving temporality to the forefront of a science of language, Interactional Linguistics, 101(1), 2–32.

Rocci, A. (2012). Modality and argumentative discourse relations: A study of the Italian necessity modal dovere. Journal of Pragmatics 44(15), 2129-2149.

Pietrandrea, P. (2007). The grammatical nature of some epistemic-evidential adverbs in spoken Italian. Italian Journal of Linguistics 19, 39-64

Squartini, M. (2008). Lexical vs. grammatical evidentiality in French and Italian, 46(5), 917-947.

 
11:30am - 12:30pmParallel Session 01-B
Location: Amphimax Building, room 414
Streaming
Session Chair: Anne Grobet
 
11:30am - 12:00pm

La mise en circulation de savoirs sur l’interaction : le cas des signaux d’écoute et autres régulateurs verbaux dans les data sessions en formation professionnelle continue

Laurent Filliettaz, Cecilia Mornata, Claudio Loureiro Pinto

Université de Genève, Switzerland

Depuis une dizaine d’années environ, se sont développées, dans le champ de la formation des adultes, des démarches de formation professionnelle, inspirées des principes de l’analyse de la parole-en-interaction, et qui placent au centre de l’attention le travail en tant qu’accomplissement collectif (Filliettaz et al., 2021). Exploitant la pratique analytique de la « data session » (Stevanovic & Weiste, 2017), ces méthodes permettent de développer chez les professionnels en formation une posture analytique descriptive, non jugeante, à même de cerner les composantes collectives et intersubjectives liées à l’accomplissement du travail.

L’objectif de cette communication est d’étudier comment la mise en œuvre de ce dispositif est susceptible de développer chez les participants des savoirs portant sur l’organisation de l’interaction et par quelles « méthodes », elles-mêmes accomplies au sein de la parole-en-interaction, ces savoirs sont susceptibles d’être mis en circulation.

Pour mener à bien cet objectif, nous nous proposons d’examiner comment ce dispositif de formation par l’analyse des interactions a été mis en œuvre dans un contexte particulier, celui de la formation continue d’éducateurs spécialisés actifs dans le champ du handicap. A partir d’une démarche inspirée à la fois de la sociologie des sciences (Knorr Cetina, 1999), de la sémiotique multimodale (Kress et al., 2001) et des théories épistémiques en analyse conversationnelle (Heritage, 2012), notre communication se propose d’exploiter un corpus d’enregistrements audio-vidéo de data-sessions en formation professionnelle, dans lequel des éducateurs spécialisés actifs dans le domaine de l’autisme apprennent à observer et analyser leur travail d’accompagnement.

A partir d’une analyse des traces enregistrées de séquences de co-analyse, nous nous appliquerons à montrer comment le dispositif de l’analyse collective des interactions permet aux participants de s’orienter vers la part interactionnelle de leur travail d’accompagnement. En particulier, nous nous centrerons sur le repérage par les participants d’une compétence interactionnelle spécifique consistant à endosser dans les entretiens d’accompagnement une posture active d’écoute. A partir du repérage des « mhmm » ou des « ouais » qui ponctuent régulièrement le discours des accompagnants, le groupe s’oriente progressivement vers la description de ces « petits mots qui valident », et s’engage collectivement dans un processus dynamique d’enquête portant sur les formats et les fonctions des régulateurs verbaux (Laforest, 1993). Ce phénomène local illustre, de manière plus générale, la capacité des participants à des data-sessions en formation professionnelle à élargir le répertoire de savoirs mobilisés dans la conduite des activités de travail.



12:00pm - 12:30pm

Enjeux épistémiques dans l’usage de la transcription comme outil de formation : le cas des data-sessions avec des éducatrices de la petite enfance

Anna Claudia Ticca, Laurent Filliettaz, Marianne Zogmal

Université de Genève, Switzerland

Depuis une dizaine d’années environ, se sont développées dans le champ de la formation des adultes des démarches de formation professionnelle, inspirées des principes de l’analyse de la parole-en-interaction, et qui placent au centre de l’attention le travail en tant qu’accomplissement collectif (Filliettaz et al., 2021). Exploitant la pratique analytique de la « data session » (Stevanovic & Weiste, 2017), ces méthodes permettent de développer chez les professionnels en formation une posture analytique descriptive, non jugeante, à même de cerner les composantes collectives et intersubjectives liées à l’accomplissement du travail.

L’objectif de cette communication est de porter une attention particulière à la manière dont la transcription des données analysées par les groupes en situation de co-analyse est utilisée par les participant-es. En tant que production épistémique et multimodale, la transcription est susceptible de jouer un rôle déterminant dans la mise en visibilité des savoirs convoqués dans la situation d’analyse (Goodwin, 2000). Observer la transcription en tant qu’objet sémiotique et épistémique représente ainsi un moyen inédit d’accéder aux différents types de savoirs qui se développent et s’imbriquent lors des séances de formation (ten Have, 2002).

A partir de ce postulat, les questions posées sont les suivantes. Comment les participants en formation s’orientent-ils vers l’objet transcription dans les sessions d’analyse de données audio-vidéo ? En quoi la nature multimodale de la transcription en tant que production sémiotique agit-elle comme une ressource dans la pratique analytique du groupe ? Et quelles actions elles-mêmes multimodales permettent aux participants de faire usage des transcriptions dans les pratiques épistémiques en cours d’accomplissement dans les data- sessions en formation ?

A partir d’une démarche inspirée à la fois de la sociologie des sciences (Knorr Cetina, 1999), de la sémiotique multimodale (Kress et al., 2001) et des théories épistémiques en analyse conversationnelle (Heritage, 2012), notre communication se propose d’exploiter un corpus d’enregistrements audio-vidéo de data-sessions en formation professionnelle, dans lequel des éducatrices de la petite enfance apprennent à animer des séances d’analyse de leur travail en groupes. A partir du repérage des actions typiquement accomplies par les participantes au moment où elles font référence à la transcription (ex. (contre)argumenter un point de vue, réorienter l’analyse, promouvoir une transition topicale, etc.), il s’agira de mieux comprendre comment les usages épistémiques de la transcription agissent à la fois sur les rôles interactionnels endossés par les participants et sur les domaines de connaissances qu’ils convoquent dans la démarche d’analyse collective.

 
12:30pm - 2:00pmLunch
2:00pm - 3:30pmParallel Session 02-A
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Martin Luginbühl
 
2:00pm - 2:30pm

Questions and epistemic stance in academic writing tutorials

Eva Ogiermann

King's College London, United Kingdom



2:30pm - 3:00pm

Who's the expert? Epistemic displays and professional expertise in a nursing class

Anne-Sylvie Horlacher1,2, Evelyne Berger1

1Institut et Haute Ecole de la Santé La Source, Switzerland; 2University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland



3:00pm - 3:30pm

The negotiation of knowledge in shop and service interactions

Moa Hagafors

Laboratoire ICAR, France

 
2:00pm - 3:30pmParallel Session 02-B
Location: Amphimax Building, room 414
Streaming
Session Chair: Laurent Filliettaz
 
2:00pm - 2:30pm

Turbulences dans le cadre épistémique des interactions en classe

Anne Grobet

Université de Genève, Switzerland



2:30pm - 3:00pm

« But I know » : la manifestation de l’épistémicité en situation de travail-formation exolingue, une analyse interactionnelle de la dyade maître-apprentie dans une perspective multimodale et longitudinale

Clotilde George

ATILF, Université de Lorraine



3:00pm - 3:30pm

(A)symétries épistémiques et insertion socio-professionnelle d’adultes vivant avec des troubles psychiques : le cas de l’évaluation comme accomplissement interactionnel

Ayla Bimonte

Université de Genève, Switzerland

 
3:30pm - 4:00pmCoffee break
4:00pm - 5:00pmParallel Session 03-A
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Eva Ogiermann
 
4:00pm - 4:30pm

Knowledge and sensoriality in scientific work: how vision and touch complete text and expertise in requests for a second opinion

Lorenza Mondada

Université de Bâle, Switzerland



4:30pm - 5:00pm

Teaching digital skills with "You can do X"

Helena Konstanze Budde

Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany

 
4:00pm - 5:00pmParallel Session 03-B
Location: Amphimax Building, room 414
Streaming
Session Chair: Anne-Sylvie Horlacher
 
4:00pm - 4:30pm

Assentiment et priorité épistémique: je ne te le fais pas dire et son évolution en français

Amalia Rodriguez-Somolinos

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain



4:30pm - 5:00pm

Marqueurs de non-savoir dans l'interaction : une étude comparative du français, de l'espagnol, de l'italien et du portugais

Gerda Haßler

Universität Potsdam, Germany

 
5:00pm - 6:00pmRoundtable
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Jérôme Jacquin
 

Roundtable with members of the project "Data-sharing skills in corpus-based research on talk-in-interaction"

Johanna Miecznikowski, Jérôme Jacquin, Martin Luginbühl, Lorenza Mondada, Simona Pekarek Doehler

In this program slot, the organizers propose a roundtable with members of the Swissuniversities-funded project "Data-sharing skills in corpus-based research on talk-in-interaction" (https://www.chord-talk-in-interaction.usi.ch/) about the management and reusability of primary and secondary spoken language data, a topic that promises to be relevant for many KNOWINT 2023 authors working on talk-in-interaction.

Here is the abstract of the project:

=========

Audio-video recorded and transcribed corpora of spoken language in interaction are collected by a diversity of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. They are particularly complex and offer several challenges when it comes to practices that generate open research data (ORD). The project aims at identifying the conditions that must be fulfilled in order to prepare and treat audio-video corpora of spoken language in interaction as ORD in a meaningful way. The applicants describe, analyse and assess existing ORD practices related to audio-video interactional data, on the basis of experiences and expertise in the fields of interactional linguistics, conversation analysis and dialogue-oriented argumentation studies. They explore possibilities of improvement, with a particular focus on researchers’ data-sharing skills related to corpora of spoken language in interaction and on the Swiss situation. The applicants engage in a theoretical reflection on the challenges that these data raise in terms of ORD and on what this example reveals more generally about ORD practices as socio-technological practices in the scientific domain. They engage with the concerned disciplines and communities and evaluate procedures to disseminate relevant knowledge in these communities.

=========

The roundtable will be an occasion to present the aims and (past and further) activities of the project and to discuss the different topics addressed by the project with the participants to KNOWINT 2023, such as to encourage the sharing of best practices as well as reflexive thinking about the various challenges raised by ORD constraints and opportunities in the study of talk-in-interaction.

The workshops organized by the CHORD-Talk-in-interaction project address the following topics:

  • Workshop 1 (28 April 2023, Lugano): presentation and discussion of the KIParla corpus of spoken Italian, with special attention to the management of personal data when studying talk-in-interaction, in a context where there is a tension between the promotion of ORD and the evolution of regulations about data protection.
  • Workshop 2 (7-8 December 2023, Basel): aggregation of interactional corpora in larger data banks which can be (re)used for research in Conversation Analysis (CA) and Interactional Linguistics (IL).
  • Workshop 3 (15–16 January 2024, Neuchâtel): design of annotation schemes (more or less standardized and adaptable to users’ needs) for long-term research in CA and IL.
 
6:00pm - 9:00pmEvening reception

Date: Tuesday, 07/Nov/2023
9:00am - 10:00amKeynote Talk 2
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Ana Claudia Keck
 

I don’t know at the grammar-body interface: a cross-linguistic analysis

Simona Pekarek Doehler

Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

When people say ‘I don’t know’ they may get a range on interactional jobs accomplished other than claiming lack of knowledge. For instance, they may resist a line of questioning or stir away from a topic (Beach & Metzger 1997; Hutchby 2002). They may also use the expression with reduced semanticism as an interaction-organizational marker (for an overview see Lindström, Maschler & Pekarek Doehler 2016). In this talk, I examine the use of expressions of the type ‘I don’t know’ as markers for projecting dispreferred responses, i.e., responses that disagree or disalign with the terms set up by the prior speaker’s action.

Based on data from naturally occurring conversations in five languages from distinct language (sub)families (Czech, French, Hebrew, Mandarin, Romanian), I document a multimodal practice that speakers deploy recurrently when providing a dispreferred response. The practice involves the verbal delivery of a turn-initial expression corresponding to ‘I don’t know’ and its variants (‘dunno’) coupled with gaze aversion from the prior speaker; this practice differs from speakers’ ‘literal’ use of ‘I don’t know’, which tends to be delivered with gaze on recipient – at least in ordinary conversation. Through the said practice, respondents preface a dispreferred response, alerting co-participants to incipient resistance to the constraints set out or to the stance conveyed by the prior action. The ‘multimodal assembly’ is found in dispreferred responses to questions, assessments, proposals and informings. This provides one piece of evidence for how participants’ multimodal conduct maps onto one of the basic organizational principles of social interaction: preference organization – and how it does so in a similar manner across different languages.

The findings deepen our knowledge of the type of turn-initial particles pertaining to preference organization, and shed further light on how verbal and bodily conduct interface in social interaction. They amplify prior observations according to which gaze aversion is found with dispreferred responses (Kendrick & Holler 2017, Robinson 2020) by showing that this association is valid across a range of sequence and action types, and across genetically different languages. Such evidence opens a window onto cross-linguistic, cross-modal, and cross-cultural consistencies in human interactional conduct. Yet, it also begs the question ‘why’: Why would an epistemic expression like ‘I don’t know’ lend itself to the purpose of prefacing dispreferred responses? I address this question in the conclusion of this talk.

This presentation has grown out of a collaboration with H. Polak-Yitzhaki, X. Li, I. Stoenica, M. Havlík, and L. Keevallik.

 
10:00am - 10:30amCoffee break
10:30am - 12:00pmParallel Session 04-A
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Vivien Heller
 
10:30am - 11:00am

Prosodic and embodied features of ‘newsmarks’: remarkability and epistemic stance

Michal Marmorstein1, Beatrice Barbara Szczepek Reed2

1The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 2King's College London, United Kingdom

In conversation-analytic literature, the term ‘newsmarks’ has been applied to freestanding epistemic markers such as English really or did she. Newsmarks have been claimed to treat prior talk as new (Jefferson, 1981), request confirmation (Stivers & Enfield, 2010), elicit sequence expansion (Maynard, 1997), and display ‘ritualized disbelief’ (Heritage, 1984), doubt, or an intermediate position between K+ and K- (Thompson, Fox & Couper-Kuhlen, 2015). However, recent studies have shown that newsmarks do not necessarily index a divergent epistemic stance per se; rather, doubt and disbelief emerge as possible epiphenomena of newsmarks in only certain contexts. At a more basic level, newsmarks can be shown to treat prior talk as non-trivial and unexpected, hence as tellable (Gubina & Betz, 2021) and remarkable (Marmorstein & Szczepek Reed, forthc.). In epistemically divergent and disaffiliative contexts, the treatment of prior talk as remarkable can be found to show doubt and thus result in challenge; in affiliative sequences, it can be treated as a display of interest and involvement.

The present paper asks what the role of prosodic and embodied resources is for newsmarking sequences, specifically in relation to the expression of divergent or convergent epistemic stances. It does so by investigating English really and Hebrew be’emet (lit. ‘in truth’) in video-recordings of ordinary conversations among students in each language. The paper explores the prosodic features and the bodily-visual resources that accompany these tokens, including their temporal coordination within the sequence. We observe marked and unmarked design patterns. Marked or ‘rich’ multimodal designs may involve facial movements, specifically eyebrow raising and holding (Dix & Groß 2021), which may precede and/ or continue after the verbal newsmark delivery; lip movements and degrees of opening the mouth; and sustained eye gaze. Typically, a marked design also involves pitch jumps or other types of strongly accented delivery. The paper explores how different multimodal design patterns contribute to the contextualization of the specific interactional role of the newsmark and how they correlate with sequential positioning and the subsequent treatment of newsmarks. The cross-linguistic element of the research will allow the presenters to formulate comparative claims regarding the two tokens with a focus on the prosodic and embodied negotiation of epistemic stance in the two languages.



11:00am - 11:30am

Epistemics and embodiment: On functions of one-sided vs. two-sided shoulder lifts in managing knowledge in talk-in-interaction

Alexandra Gubina1, Emma Betz2

1Leibniz Institute for the German Language, Germany; 2University of Waterloo, Canada

Interaction research has demonstrated how different bodily resources can be deployed for managing knowledge in social interaction. We investigate one specific body movement in German interaction that is related to the domain of epistemicity: shoulder lift, both one-sided and two-sided. Using multimodal Conversation Analysis (Sidnell and Stivers 2013; Mondada 2018), we trace its use in a range of interaction types and sequences.

In existing research, shoulder lifts (commonly with both shoulders) have been described as one core component of 'shrugs' (Debras 2017; Givens 1977; Morris 1994; Streeck 2009), i.e., complex ensembles including such elements as head tilts, shoulder lifts, or certain mouth configurations. It has been suggested that the 'shrug' has a more general unified meaning (disengagement, Streeck 2009: 189-91; cf. Debras and Cienki 2012), but that individual elements (e.g., mouth movement) may be associated with specific contextualized meanings (e.g., ignorance; Debras 2017).

The present study heeds the call for more research on the body movements commonly associated with 'shrugs' in a broader range of interactions and languages. It approaches one-sided and two-sided shoulder lifts as distinct interactional phenomena in their own right and asks (a) where/how speakers use each of them systematically in unelicited, real-time interaction, (b) what specific function(s) they can serve, and (c) what are the differences between one-sided and two-sided shoulder lifts. We analyze a collection of n=259 cases of shoulder lifts, which consists of

  • n=119/259 cases of one-sided shoulder lifts,
  • n=109/259 cases of two-sided shoulder lifts, and
  • n=31/259 unclear/in-between cases.

The data come from more than 80 hours of video recordings of naturally occurring face-to-face interaction in everyday and institutional contexts and in stationary as well as mobile configurations (for a description of the German FOLK-corpus, see Schmidt 2016).

The conversation-analytic methodology allows us to relate shoulder lifts to the precise turn and sequential positions in which they occur. In our data, we find them in different positions (e.g., preceding a verbal response; completing an unfinished verbal turn), in coordination with talk but also as a completely embodied action (e.g., responding with only a one-sided shoulder lift). We will demonstrate how the functions accomplished with such shoulder lifts are connected not only to downgrading the speaker’s agency or negotiating deontic rights, but also – and primarily – to managing rights to know as well as building epistemic stances and practices. Thus, our work expands our understanding of the context-specific use of the body for action in interaction.



11:30am - 12:00pm

Embodied epistemics: Protruding one's lips for negotiating and validating knowledge

Alexandra Groß1, Carolin Dix2

1University of Bayreuth, Germany; 2University of Innsbruck, Austria

In our paper, we aim at shedding light on the knowledge-related functions of non-articulatory lip protrusion in f2f interaction and at describing it as a facial epistemic marker, i.e. for negotiating knowledge and expressing one’s own stance in talk-in-interaction.

While the frowning of the forehead and the raising of the eyebrows have already been described in terms of knowledge management in interaction (e.g. Goodwin & Goodwin 1986, Heller 2018, Dix & Groß i.p.), the analysis of the conversational use of lip protrusion (=LP) is still underrepresented within multimodal interaction analysis. So far, research on spoken language already described LP as articulatory movement or as part of second articulation / coarticulation processes in spoken language (Noiray et al. 2011), and sign language research shed light on its use as a grammatical marker, a recipient signal and marker of knowledge growth (Mohr 2014). In multimodal CA studies the LP has been described as part of a facial configuration called the thinking face (Goodwin & Goodwin 1986, Heller 2021) for displaying inner cognitive processes (of retrieving a word) as well as an embodied resource involved in multimodal practices of noticing extra-conversational occasions and initiating repair (Kääntä 2014).

Taking up this line of research, this contribution asks for the interactive functions of protruding lips as facial gesture in its own right focusing on two manifestations of LP as epistemic markers: the open exolabial LP and the closed endolabial LP (Catford 1988).

Based on the analysis of video-recorded German interactions (a dyadic car-ride interaction, a multiparty dinner-event and a games evening), we specifically analyze the use of LP as responsive stand-alone or pre-beginning element in terms of how they contribute to local knowledge management.

We will show that the two manifestations of LP operate differently in displaying or modulating the producer’s epistemic stance: The endolabial LP displays validating processes relating to new pieces of knowledge brought up to the surface of talk while sometimes projecting non-straightforward responses. In contrast, the exolabial LP operates as (part of) an embodied newsmark practice and therefore emphasizes the newsworthiness of information.

Taking up the growing multimodal CA research on facial movements as specific facial gestures in talk-in-interaktion, this paper could be linked to the conference topic 2 “Epistemicity and Multimodality”.

 
10:30am - 12:00pmParallel Session 04-B
Location: Amphimax Building, room 414
Streaming
Session Chair: Marianne Zogmal
 
10:30am - 11:00am

Trajectoire acquisitionnelle de tu sais par des apprenants de français L2

Tiziana Kowalczuk, Melissa Juillet

Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

L’utilisation de la particule tu sais en tant que marqueur discursif a largement été documentée en L1 (Andersen, 1997 ; Détrie, 2012), attestant de son emploi interactionnel, sans complément. Dans ce papier, l’objectif est d’observer si ce processus de pragmaticalisation apparaît également dans l’acquisition du français langue seconde (L2).

Grâce à un corpus longitudinal d’interactions d’apprenant-e-s du français L2, notre objectif est de ‘tracker’ l’émergence et le développement de cette particule au fil du temps, en utilisant principalement l’analyse conversationnelle longitudinale (Deppermann & Pekarek Doehler, 2021). Kowalczuk (2022) a proposé une recherche préliminaire sur un groupe d’apprenants du français L2 avancés (B2) : elle a mis en lumière l’utilisation de ‘tu sais’ en tant que marqueur discursif, fonctionnant comme signal d’ouverture, appui à l’introduction d’un nouveau topic de discussion, ou encore permettant une recherche d’approbation discursive entre interlocuteurs. Cependant, ce corpus d’apprenant-e-s avancé-e-s n’a pas permis de proposer des résultats longitudinaux significatifs. Notre but est de mettre en évidence le développement des emplois par des apprenant-e-s moins avancés (A2) afin de mieux comprendre les trajectoires d’acquisition d’une langue seconde et illustrer la nature polyfonctionnelle du marqueur épistémique.

L’aspect original de cette recherche est de combiner l’analyse conversationnelle à des outils quantitatifs, en proposant des résultats chiffrés permettant de soutenir la thèse d’une évolution longitudinale de la compétence des apprenant-e-s. Des analyses préliminaires offrent des perspectives encourageantes quant à l’évolution fonctionnelle et séquentielle de ‘tu sais’. Au début du processus d’acquisition, le logiciel indique que la construction est exclusivement employée avec un complément, puis au fil du temps on remarque que ‘tu sais’ est utilisé sans complément, en début ou en fin de tour, indiquant probablement un usage discursif. De cette manière, la valeur épistémique contenu dans la construction varie drastiquement selon le contexte énonciatif.

Andersen, H. L. (1997). Les propositions parenthétiques en français parlé. Thèse non publiée. Université de Copenhague.

Deppermann, A., & Pekarek Doehler, S. (2021). Longitudinal conversation analysis - Introduction to the special issue. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 54(2), 127–141. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2021.1899707

Détrie, C. (2012). Le rôle de la spectacularisation du savoir dans l’interlocution : Les contours interpersonnels et les types d’intersubjectivité engagés par la particule tu sais / vous savez. In C. Douay & D. Roulland (eds.), L’interlocution comme paramètre (pp. 111-128).

Kowalczuk, T. (2022). Étude longitudinale sur l’emploi de la particule tu sais en français L2 Mémoire de master (non publié), Université de Neuchâtel



11:00am - 11:30am

La négociation des savoirs hétéro- et orthodoxes: Marquage épistémique des rumeurs dans le discours sur Covid-19 au Cameroun

Martina Drescher

Universität Bayreuth, Germany

Ma communication vise à explorer la négociation des savoirs hétéro- et orthodoxes dans le discours sur Covid-19 en se basant sur des interviews conduites en 2020 avec une centaine de Camerounais.es qui racontent leur expérience de la pandémie. Des rumeurs, c'est-à-dire des savoirs contestés ou hétérodoxes, relatifs à l'origine du coronavirus y jouent un rôle primordial (Drescher 2023). Partant de l'hypothèse que les rumeurs constituent une catégorie de forme spécifique du savoir social (Anton 2011), je présume que les interactants signalent leur statut particulier. En contrastant rumeur et commérage, Fine (1985, 230s.) avait déjà noté que les deux sont souvent introduits par un cadrage textuel qui atténue leur crédibilité et permet au locuteur de s'en distancier. Dans les extraits d'interviews analysés ici, les interactants rapportent des rumeurs en les balisant à l'aide de marqueurs évidentiels qui indiquent leur origine et mode de transmission par ouï-dire (Dendale/Tasmowski 2001; Haßler 2015). S'inspirant de la pragmatique variationnelle et de l'analyse interactionnelle, cette étude prend comme point de départ le marquage évidentiel grâce auquel les interactants catégorisent un savoir comme rumeur (on dit, les gens ont dit, certains/beaucoup de gens disent, on a entendu, il y a les gens qui disent, on parle que, les rumeurs ont couru, il paraît que, soi-disant, ce qu'on est en train de dire partout là, la rumeur qui court sur le net, etc.). L'évocation d'une rumeur est régulièrement suivie d'une évaluation de sa crédibilité à l'aide de différentes pratiques épistémiques, notamment des positionnements aléthiques, qui seront également examinées ici. En accordant une attention particulière à la variation diatopique de l'évidentialité, encore peu étudiée, la présente étude contribue notamment à l'axe de recherche 3 "Épistémicité et variation".

Anton, A. (2011): Unwirkliche Wirklichkeiten. Zur Wissenssoziologie von Verschwörungstheorien. Berlin.

Dendale, P. / Tasmowski, L. (2001): Introduction: Evidentiality and related notions. Journal of Pragmatics 33, 339-348.

Drescher, M. (2023): Covid-19 related rumors and conspiracy theories. A case study from Cameroon. In: Butter, M. / Knight, P. (eds) Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective. London, 99-113.

Fine, G. A. (1985): Rumors and Gossiping. In: van Dijk, T. A. (ed.) Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Vol. 3 Discourse and Dialogue. London, 223-237.

Haßler, G. (2015): Evidentiality and the expression of speaker’s stance in Romance languages and German. Discourse Studies 17/2, 182–209.

 
12:00pm - 1:30pmLunch
1:30pm - 3:00pmParallel Session 05-A
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Beatrice Barbara Szczepek Reed
 
1:30pm - 2:00pm

Embodied displays of ‘doing thinking’ as a resource for shaping epistemic ecologies in classroom discourse

Vivien Heller

University of Wuppertal, Germany

The paper examines teachers’ “thinking faces” (Goodwin & Goodwin 1986) as an embodied resource for shaping epistemic ecologies in classroom discussions. From the perspective of conversation analysis and multimodal interaction research, such stylized facial displays are understood as a sedimented and socially shared interactional resource that can be used to index particular epistemic stances. In argumentative negotiations among peers, for example, they are used to indicate the speaker’s still uncertain epistemic stance and to invite the co-participants to jointly examine a proposal (Heller 2021).

Video recordings of classroom discussions indicate that thinking faces are also a regularly used resource by teachers. Given that teachers are typically assumed to be more knowledgeable than students (van der Meij et al. 2022), the question arises as to which functions this display fulfils for the construction of knowledge in classroom discourse. Addressing this question, I examine video-recorded whole-class discussions with teachers of different subjects. The analysis focuses on the ways in which teachers temporally align thinking displays with other bodily and verbal resources or silence and traces how these multimodal gestalts shape the subsequent course of interaction.

The analysis demonstrates that teachers’ embodied displays of ‘doing thinking’ have specific multimodal gestalts. Depending on the type of question or prompt they are used with and whether they are held over one or more student turns, they contribute to the shaping of particular epistemic ecologies in classroom discussions. The findings thus offer novel insights into the role of embodied resources for epistemic stance-taking in classroom interaction.

References

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness; Goodwin, Charles (1986): Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word. Semiotica 1/2 (62), 51–75.

van der Meij, Sofie; Gosen, Myrte; Willemsen, Annerose (2022): ‘Yes? I have no idea’: teacher turns containing epistemic disclaimers in upper primary school whole-class discussions. Classroom Discourse, 1–23.

Heller, Vivien (2021): Embodied Displays of ‘Doing Thinking’. Epistemic and Interactive Functions of Thinking Faces in Children's Argumentative Activities. Frontiers in Psychology 12, 636671.



2:00pm - 2:30pm

Mobilising and providing peer assistance in adult education settings

Florence Oloff

Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Germany

This presentation investigates the mobilisation of peer assistance in smartphone trainings for adults. More specifically, it focuses on course participants’ embodied displays of trouble (Kendrick/Drew 2016) to which one of their co-participants then responds by offering assistance. Within a set of video recordings of basic smartphone trainings for adults in different adult education centres in Germany, instances of spontaneous peer teaching are frequent. These reveal how the participants position themselves as more or less knowledgeable with respect to handling a smartphone, and capable of providing, or, on the contrary, in need of assistance in order to implement the course leader’s instructions.

Within conversation analytic and interactional research, peer tutoring among adult participants has been mainly described as an institutionally framed form of relationship (e.g., Waring 2005, 2012, Wyatt/Dikilitas 2017), with a focus on how peers interact within collaborative tasks (e.g., Evnitskaya 2021, Jakonen/Morton 2015), and how they use shared tools and resources (Mlynář 2022, Nishino/Atkinson 2015). Spontaneous peer interaction and teaching (e.g., Gort 2008), especially related to digital skills or devices (e.g., Scriven 2017) and to how peers position themselves as experts (e.g., Back 2016, Melander 2012), has however not yet been investigated outside of compulsory school or foreign language education and in older adults.

In the digital skills courses under investigation, the course leader usually instructs the participants to individually handle their own smartphones. Given the course participants’ heterogeneous previous experience with mobile devices, these individual tasks are not always or immediately successfully accomplished. While requests for assistance or trouble reports are mainly handled by the course instructor, participants also seek for assistance among their peers, usually among the ones sitting next to them. This physical proximity allows for minimal and embodied-only displays of trouble, such as looking (Drew/Kendrick 2018) toward the other’s smartphone. Based on a sequential and multimodal approach to social interaction, the analyses illustrate how course participants recognize or even anticipate (Kendrick/Drew 2016) their peers’ subtle displays of trouble by then providing explanations, reformulating course tasks, or using their own phone for illustrative purposes. Moreover, as the recorded courses last several hours or even sessions, it is possible to observe how some of these peer relations emerge, and how even previously unacquainted participants can form expert/non-expert dyads over time.

 
1:30pm - 3:00pmParallel Session 05-B
Location: Amphimax Building, room 414
Streaming
Session Chair: Martina Drescher
 
1:30pm - 2:00pm

Les marqueurs épistémiques et évidentiels du français-en-interaction : considérations théoriques et méthodologiques exemplifiées par une étude de cas consacrée aux verbes et adverbes d’apparence

Jérôme Jacquin

University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Le but principal de cette contribution est de présenter les choix théoriques et méthodologiques d’un projet de recherche de 4 ans, arrivant prochainement à son terme et dont l’objectif est l’étude des marqueurs épistémiques et évidentiels du français tels qu’ils émergent d’un corpus de 28h de données interactionnelles vidéo-enregistrées documentant des débats publics, des débats télévisés et des réunions d’entreprise. En adoptant une perspective sémasiologique et une combinaison de méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives inspirées par la pragmatique de corpus (e.g. Aijmer 2018; Aijmer and Rühlemann 2014), 4000 tokens ont été annotés aux niveaux morphosyntaxique, interactionnel et multimodal. La robustesse de l’annotation repose sur un guide d’annotation de 50 pages en libre accès (https://zenodo.org/record/7266737), qui explique et exemplifie la procédure et qui a subi différents tests d’accord interannotateurs de manière à atteindre progressivement des scores d’accord allant de « substantiel » à « presque parfait » pour l’ensemble des variables (Cohen 1960; Landis and Koch 1977).

La contribution compte aborder 4 questions spécifiques : (i) l’articulation, au sein du projet de recherche, entre l’épistémique et l’évidentiel dans le domaine sémantique de l’épistémicité (Boye 2012; Stivers et al. 2011) ; (ii) l’élaboration de la liste des lemmes épistémiques et évidentiels retenus ; (iii) l’annotation de facteurs interactionnels tels que la position du marqueur au sein de l’unité de construction du tour, du tour de parole et de la séquence d’actions ; (iv) l’annotation de la multimodalité, en particulier la direction du regard et les gestes cooccurrents.

Chaque question sera exemplifiée au travers d’une étude de cas consacrée à une collection de verbes (et adverbes dans une moindre mesure) d’apparence. Si ces unités ont été largement étudiées en linguistique française, cela a surtout été le cas dans une perspective morphosyntaxique, sémantique ou énonciative et en mobilisant pour l’essentiel des exemples inventés ou fortement décontextualisés (e.g. Bourdin 1986; Nølke 1994; Popârlan 2000; Thuillier 2004; Willems 2011). Ces travaux n’adoptent pas d’approche(s) basée(s) sur corpus et n’abordent pas ces unités en tant que ressources situées (à l’exception, dans une certaine mesure, des travaux de Willems and Blanche-Benveniste 2008, 2014 consacrés aux verbes à rection faible et à leur potentielle fonction de “mitigation”; Caffi 1999).

La présente contribution est complétée par les deux autres conférences qui suivent au sein de la session 05-B et qui sont prises en charge par les deux doctorantes travaillant dans le cadre du projet de recherche collectif. Tandis qu’une thèse se consacre au volet de l’évidentialité (Robin, en préparation), l’autre traite de la modalité épistémique (Keck, en préparation).



2:00pm - 2:30pm

Une étude systématique de la modalité épistémique en français-en-interaction. Quels modes d’expression pour quelle certitude ?

Ana Claudia Keck

Université de Lausanne, Switzerland

« on s` verra (.) probablement pas », « j` suis pas sûr que ce soit le vrai problème », « ah je sais pas avec quoi ils ont commercialisé » présentent des marqueurs considérés comme épistémiques et qui marquent avant tout un certain degré de certitude du locuteur ou de la locutrice vis-à-vis d’un contenu propositionnel. Les exemples cités ont été tirés d’un corpus composé de 28h de débats politiques et de réunions professionnelles vidéo-enregistrées pour un projet de recherche en cours qui propose une étude systématique des marqueurs épistémiques et évidentiels du français dans une approche énonciative, interactionnelle et multimodale. La présente contribution a pour objectif de présenter les résultats généraux de ma recherche doctorale sur les marqueurs épistémiques du français et cherche ainsi (i) à proposer un modèle d’analyse pour la modalité épistémique en français-en-interaction, (ii) à présenter une vue d’ensemble des marqueurs épistémiques tels qu’ils émergent dans le corpus d’interactions spontanées et (iii) à combiner les résultats quantitatifs avec l’analyse qualitative du positionnement épistémique (Heritage 2012) des locuteurs et des locutrices.

Si la modalité épistémique a été amplement étudiée sous de multiples aspects formels (Gosselin 2010), elle a été toutefois peu exploitée sur des données d’interactions spontanées. En effet, les études sur les marqueurs de la modalité épistémique en français se concentrent seulement sur quelques expressions particulières (Pekarek 2016, 2019, 2022 ; Willems & Blanche-Benveniste 2008, Jacquin 2017, Jacquin et al. 2022). Une analyse sur l’ensemble de ces expressions dans un corpus d’interactions orales s’avère donc judicieuse pour comprendre quels sont les marqueurs épistémiques du français et de quelle manière le degré de certitude est mobilisé par le locuteur ou la locutrice dans l’interaction. Cette étude propose ainsi un panorama d’un échantillon composé d’environ 2'000 tokens sur les 5'000 marqueurs épistémiques présents dans notre corpus de données naturelles. Cet échantillon comprend environ 51% de verbes épistémiques (je sais, je crois, j’imagine, etc.), 33% de adverbes épistémiques (probablement, certainement, peut-être, etc.) et 15% relèvent de constructions verbales avec un nom ou un adjectif épistémique (je suis sûr, il est possible, il est clair, etc.). La contribution se concentrera sur deux aspects en particulier, à savoir, le traitement du degré de certitude sur des données massives et les aspects généraux de trois degrés de certitude (le savoir, le doute et le non-savoir).



2:30pm - 3:00pm

« Ouais c'est ce qu'il a dit hier » : distribution et fonctions des marqueurs évidentiels en français-en-interaction

Clotilde Marie Robin

Université de Lausanne

La présente communication se concentre sur les formes, les fonctions et la distribution d’environ 2000 marqueurs évidentiels (i.e. relatifs au marquage de la source du savoir) du français, tels qu’ils émergent dans un corpus de 28h de données naturelles suisses romandes vidéo-enregistrées, documentant deux genres « institutionnels » (Drew & Heritage, 1992) : (i) des débats publics et télévisés (14h ; 2007-2013) abordant divers sujets politiques ; et (ii) des réunions de travail (14h ; 2017-2018).

Depuis une dizaine d’années, un nombre croissant d’études se sont concentrées sur les fonctions et les effets pragmatiques des marqueurs évidentiels dans l’interaction (e.a. Michael & Nuckolls, 2014 ; Cornillie & Gras, 2020). Au-delà du simple fait d’indiquer explicitement la source de l’information véhiculée dans un énoncé, il a été montré que les marqueurs évidentiels constituent des ressources pour asseoir/moduler la position épistémique des locuteurs (González et al., 2017 ;Grzech et al., 2020). Concernant le français, les marqueurs évidentiels ont été principalement étudiés dans une perspective sémantique et/ou syntaxique, en s’appuyant sur des exemples inventés et/ou décontextualisés. Deux exceptions notables sont les études de Jacquin (2022) sur les marqueurs « tu dis/vous dites » et de Jacquin et al. (2022) sur les verbes d’apparence dans des données naturelles.

Dans le prolongement de ces études, nous proposons une étude quantitative et qualitative de ces marqueurs en contexte. Au total, 1773 tokens évidentiels (correspondant à 114 lemmes) ont été identifiés et annotés (réalisation morphosyntaxique et énonciative, environnement interactionnel/séquentiel et discursif, multimodalité). Les observations quantitatives préliminaires montrent que ces tokens sont plus fréquents dans les débats télévisés (111,4 tokens/heure) que dans les débats publics (55 tokens/heure) et les réunions de travail (51,5 tokens/heure). Dans les trois genres institutionnels, les deux lemmes les plus utilisés sont les verbes « dire » (n=750/1773) et « voir » (n=281/1773). La nette propension à l’emploi du verbe « dire » participe, de manière globale, à un recours massif à la catégorie de l’emprunt pour marquer la source de l’information (64,9%, n=1151/1773), les catégories évidentielles de l’inférence et de la perception relevant d’un usage plus ponctuel.

Sur le plan qualitatif, nous analyserons comment ces marqueurs évidentiels contribuent à la construction interactionnelle de « positions épistémiques » particulières (K+/K-, Heritage & Raymond, 2005 ; Heritage, 2012).

Sur le plan qualitatif, nous analyserons comment ces marqueurs évidentiels contribuent à la construction interactionnelle de « positions épistémiques » particulières (K+/K-, Heritage & Raymond, 2005 ; Heritage, 2012). Ainsi, par l’analyse séquentielle d’une collection d’extraits tirés de notre corpus, nous évaluerons le rôle que peuvent revêtir les marqueurs évidentiels dans l’organisation du savoir-en-interaction.

 
3:00pm - 3:30pmCoffee break
3:30pm - 4:30pmKeynote Talk 3
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Clotilde Robin
 

Evidentiality in talk-in-interaction: much more than information source

Karolina Grzech

Universitat de València, Spain

Evidentiality is most often defined as a linguistic category indicating the ‘source of information’ for what is being said (cf. Aikhenvald 2004). The example from Cuzco Quechua (Quechuan, Peru, Faller 2002: 122) demonstrates how it can work in a language where this category is expressed by dedicated morphemes:

Parashanmi ‘It is raining’ [the speaker sees the rain]

Parashanchá ‘It is raining’ [the speakers conjectures it without observing the rain]

Parashansi ‘It is raining’ [the speaker was told by another person]

As these examples suggest, the use of evidentials does not change the propositional content of the utterance. Rather, it adds an additional layer of meaning (cf. Faller 2002; Boye 2012), the precise nature of which varies between languages and remains an object of study and debate.

Nonetheless, in line with the definition of evidentiality given above, this additional layer is widely assumed to indicate ‘how the speaker knows’ in all languages with evidential markers. However, a growing body of descriptive research shows that evidentials do more than that.

When we analyse interaction rather than isolated sentences, we find that, across the languages where they are attested, evidentials signal not so much the type of evidence, as the basis on which the proposition should be integrated with what is already known. Source of evidence is relevant, but not key for how they are used and interpreted. In interaction, evidentials appear to be structuring knowledge and providing interpretative cues to make communication more effective, encoding meanings related to the distribution of knowledge in interaction, epistemic stance and status, discursive and social roles of the interlocutors, etc.

This talk has three main objectives. Firstly, I will demonstrate how interactional data from under-described languages supports the observation that evidentials vary in terms of their meaning and their interactional functions. Secondly, I will show that, in line with the above, interactional uses of grammatical evidentials attested in under-described languages, and those of ‘evidential strategies’ (cf. Aikhenvald 2004) attested e.g. in standard average Indo-European languages, have much more in common than is acknowledged by the current scholarship. Finally, I will discuss the implications of these observations for comparative research on evidentiality, focusing on the issue related to comparing evidential data across spoken corpora of different languages, especially when these corpora differ in size, levels of annotation, represented genres, or the numbers of represented speakers.

 
7:00pm - 11:00pmGala dinner

Date: Wednesday, 08/Nov/2023
9:00am - 10:00amKeynote Talk 4
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Jérôme Jacquin
 

Specifying information source in interaction: the example of noticings

Johanna Miecznikowski

Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland

The study of evidentiality within interactional linguistics has been influenced by work in CA on epistemics (Pomerantz 1980, Kamio 1994, Heritage/Raymond 2005, Stivers, Mondada, Steensig 2011), which is discussed in evidential typology (cf. e.g. Mushin 2013, Bergqvist/Kittilä 2020, Sandman/Grzech 2022) and applied in descriptive studies of evidential markers (e.g. Jacquin 2022, Miecznikowski/Battaglia/Geddo in press). I sketch a complementary approach that starts out from sequential categories and investigates the associated evidential resources, including grammatical/lexical means, argumentation, embodied conduct and implicit meanings (cf. also Miecznikowski 2020). It offers different opportunities for a dialogue between linguistics and CA, as will be shown here discussing the example of noticings.

Schegloff (2007:219) defines noticings as sequence-openers that speakers present as being an “outcome” of a “source” element in the setting, which typically was not attended to previously and which they retrospectively make relevant and categorize, while projecting further actions. The “outcome” relation appears to be, partly, of an evidential sort, since a verbalized noticing is typically “occasioned by a perceptual/cognitive one” (Schegloff 2007: 87, fn. 17). Multimodal analyses of noticings show that the public display of direct perception plays an important role (Kääntä 2014, Mondada 2014:382-383, Haddington/Kamunen/Rautiainen 2022); examples categorized as noticings further suggest that these actions are possible sites for markers of inference based on perceptual cues (e.g.Kärkkäinen 2007:193-194, Kendrick 2019:258, Mondada 2014:382-383).

I look at a collection of noticings taken from the videorecorded TIGR corpus of spoken Italian (SNSF grant no. 192771), consider the role of information source type and engagement in the formation of this action type, and point out theoretical implications for evidential typology. The analysis shows that noticings are compatible with various direct and indirect information sources, as long as the acquisition of knowledge occurs during the on-going interaction. It thus suggests the emic relevance of a distinction between in situ vs. past sources (cf. also Geddo, in preparation), to be interpreted within the current typological debate about evidentiality and mirativity (Aikhenvald 2021). As to verbal evidential means, a frequent construction is guarda ‘look’ (cf. Ghezzi 2012), a polyfunctional booster and promoter of intersubjective visual access. Other constructions help speakers perform evidential fine-tuning within the inferential domain (cf. Dendale & Miecznikowski in press); they add semantic specificity that distinguishes them from multimodal and deictic means, which attract the participants’ attention to perceptual cues, but cannot index the kinds of reasonings to be performed on the basis of those clues.

 
10:00am - 10:30amCoffee break
10:30am - 12:00pmSession 06
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
Streaming
Session Chair: Florence Oloff
 
10:30am - 11:00am

Evidentiality and pragmatic variation in context in Ladakhi (a Tibetic language of India)

Bettina Zeisler

Universität Tübingen, Germany

Tibetic languages are known for their complex systems of evidentiality with markers for ego­phoric/par­ti­cipatory knowledge, coding highest epistemic authority of the epistemic origo (speaker in statements, addressee in information-seeking questions), setting this apart from mere observation (direct knowledge) of other persons. While there are discussions about whether egophoric knowledge is part of evidentiality, pragmatic variation or the attested high flexibility of the Tibetic systems is not accounted for, nor linked to the discourse function of egophoric marking.

I shall demonstrate that egophoric marking in Ladakhi is closely linked to the origo’s right to present a situation as exclusively personally known or as having greater epistemic authority than the addressee (see, however, Hanks 2014:5, who states “the social warrant for knowing is apparently the least likely to be encoded in particles or paradigms (I know of no cases)”). This right can be forsaken in order to distance oneself from a situation, using markers for mere observation. This right must be forsaken in the case of “mutual knowledge”, particularly for generic facts, when shared observations, and in some inclusive pural contexts:

(1) ŋaʧa-a ʒiŋ ɲis jot.

we.excl-aes field 2 have.egophoric

‘We have two fields.’ (Private)

(2) ŋaʧa-a ʒiŋ ʧikʧig-aŋ mi-ruk.

we.excl-aes field single-foc neg-have.visual

‘We don’t have any field (and it’s a shame)!’ (Distanced)

(3) ladaks-la mi maŋpo-a ʒiŋ jot-einok.

Ladakh-all people many-aes field have-epistemic

‘Many people in Ladakh have fields.’ (Generic)

(4) daŋ oɣo ɲēke alu tōn. / *tōn-pen.

yesterday we.incl both.erg potato extract.observed / *extract-egophoric

‘Yesterday, we both (you and me) took out the potatoes.’ (Inclusive)

Other pragmatic variations have to do, i.a., with the presence in hearing distance of the person talked about (respectful upgrading to egophoric) or with relationships between speaker and addressee, speaker and topic, and addressee and topic, that is, S may present information about P as egophoric to A, iff

S knows P sufficiently well, so that P belongs to S’s “Territory of Information” &

A does not know (much) about P &

the relationship between S and A is not closer than the relationship between S and P;

e.g., when talking to a family member about a neighbour one personally knows well, the
egophoric marker is not used.

methods: elicitation, participatory observation, philology, no particular linguistic theory.

Hanks, W.F. 2014. Foreword. Evidentiality in social interaction. In: J. Nuckolls & L. Michael (eds.), Evidentiality in Interaction. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins:1–12.



11:00am - 11:30am

The art of managing gaps in knowledge

Spencer Hazel, Adam Brandt, Chris Leyland

Newcastle University, United Kingdom

We explore how artists and carer-companions coordinate instruction sequences in arts-oriented activities organised for people living with dementia (PwD). Managing participant engagement in arts activities involves a wide range of interactional competences from the workshop facilitators. These can be topic specific - for example an ability to impart aesthetic appreciation and genre knowledge of the particular art form; but also an ability to organise active participation in the activities - for example in teaching the use of relevant tools and materials, or enabling participants to achieve particular outcomes. One feature of activities such as these is that they are at times instruction heavy, with the workshop leader eliciting particular actions from the workshop participants, while drawing on shared knowledge of what these should entail.

As a condition of dementia progresses, an afflicted person may however experience emerging gaps in what is oriented to as mundane, shared knowledge. The developing fractured knowledge ecology of the PwD presents a particular challenge to them and to the people with whom they interact. For the PwD, they must work to understand what is being required of them, and what knowledge is assumed to be shared. For their interactional partners, these must work to identify what knowledge is still accessible, and therefore what complexity of instruction a person is expected to be able to process.

Although instruction is a social activity with a great deal of complexity built into it, once acquired as a social practice, it can appear straightforward, and unproblematic for all involved. In the settings we study, however, following instruction can be very challenging. It requires of participants that they understand how the action they are being instructed to perform is implicated in the wider activity of the arts workshop, including knowing what target the activity is to achieve, knowing what is the instructed action, and knowledge of the formatting features that make up an instruction, including, for example, separating out what politeness conventions are being used, and what sociolinguistic formats for delivering a directive.

Where trouble occurs, this triggers diagnostic work on the part of the co-participants, who must identify that there is trouble, what the trouble might be, and what remedial work could address this. Our analysis unpacks how such remedial action is produced in a step-wise fashion, monitoring the PwD’s response at each new instruction format, and developing the instruction in response to the kind of response they receive.



11:30am - 12:00pm

Locally established knowledge and competence in medical interaction around AI

Jakub Mlynář1, Adrien Depeursinge1,2, Roger Schaer1, John Prior2, Alexandre Martroye de Joly1, Florian Evéquoz1

1HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Sierre, Switzerland; 2Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland

The growing ubiquity of AI-based devices in everyday life and professional settings induces newly motivated scrutiny and an incentive to “describe how AI features in the world as it is” [3]. AI technology defines radiomics, the new field of medical imaging analysis based on extracting large-scale quantitative features by machine-learning algorithms [6]. One of the challenges in adopting radiomics for medical practice is the limited interpretability of the resulting models, leading to low confidence in the proposed diagnosis and treatment. While there have been notable improvements over the last decade, little is known about the physicians’ and researchers’ conduct while assessing and producing radiomics models. In this context, we focus on the situated use of an online radiomics platform QuantImage v2 [1] in collective trial sessions conducted at Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois (CHUV), where pairs of novice users work with the platform together with a co-present expert. We employ ethnomethodological and conversation analytic (EM/CA) video analysis, which is a long-established approach to study healthcare and hospital settings [2]. We aim to specify the shared epistemic grounds that constitute common knowledge in radiomics’ work, as well as the contingencies of members’ activities [4] while they encounter troubles of substantive (in radiomics more generally) and procedural (in the platform specifically) nature.

Our findings show that knowledge of radiomics as a field and knowledge of the specific platform are deeply intertwined. QuantImage is featured as a representative instance of radiomics and learning how to use the platform is tied to learning about radiomics. Absence of fundamental background knowledge (e.g., of statistical performance measures) can make it impossible for the participants to proceed with the task on their own. Common-sense knowledge (e.g., about meanings of colors) can interfere with the visualization standards established in the professional domain. Participants’ skills in using the platform and their knowledge of radiomics are routinely displayed in assessments of resulting machine-learning models, in monitoring the platform’s pace of operation for possible problems, and in ascribing independent actions to the platform (e.g., to its algorithms). Reformulating confidence in AI as “practical trust” [5] that is at the very basis of social interaction can aid in identifying and explicating features of the socio-technical systems in which epistemic issues of understanding, explaining, and transparency are naturally embedded and situated as members’ matters.

[1] Abler, D. et al. 2023. QuantImage v2. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41747-023-00326-z

[2] Barnes, R. K. 2019. Conversation analysis of communication in medical care. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2019.1631056

[3] Brooker, P. et al. 2019. The new ghosts in the machine. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3459327

[4] Garfinkel, H. 2022. Studies of Work in the Sciences. Routledge.

[5] González-Martínez, E., & Mlynář, J. 2019. Practical trust. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018419890565

[6] Guiot, J. et al. 2022. A review in radiomics. https://doi.org/10.1002/med.21846

 
12:00pm - 12:30pmConference closing
Location: Amphimax Building, room 415
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12:30pm - 2:00pmLunch