Language and Dialogue - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2024

Abstract

In this paper I use a conversation analytic approach to investigate how participants in a meeting held remotely via Zoom use embodied action to solicit selection as next speaker. When hand raising is not immediately successful, participants use embodied actions to withdraw, modify, upgrade, downgrade or reissue gestures in pursuit of selection as next speaker. Due to the technological affordances and limitations of the remote meeting environment, participants’ gestures and hand positions differ from what would typically occur in face-to-face interaction, resulting in frequent gestures near the face that provide for both visibility to the Zoom audience and easy transition to a raised hand position when necessary. I discuss these results in terms of our understanding of how technologically mediated virtual interaction through the internet impacts the use of embodied action, and how participants coordinate their embodied action and responses to it with turn taking and sequence completion.

Abstract

The paper addresses the problem of (im)politeness in light of mismatches between what we/others say and what we/others mean in a multi-dialogic search for meaning where humans integrate all their competence-in-performance and co-construct situated relationships in a more or less sustainable way. We examine how these processes occur by analyzing (im)politeness mismatches in telecinematic satire using dialogic speech act typology and methods of the Mixed Game Model to describe and explain the communicative meta-meaning of (im)politeness. We demonstrate that in satire the dialogic semantics of (im)politeness is polyvalent, interactant-relative, temporally variable, scalar and self-reflexive because it is part of integrational language-in-use engagement with the world through which humans construct multiple relational domains and relationships in them.

Abstract

Politicians often mention their personality traits when communicating with the public that aligns with the concept of impression management (Benoit and McHale 2003). This suggests that politicians can use their personalities to create a favorable image during election campaigns (Van Santen and Van Zoonen 2010). However, previous research has not adequately incorporated personality theories into the study of impression management (Clifford 2018). Addressing this gap, our study examines how presidential candidates presented themselves during the 2016 and 2020 US elections, and explores the personality traits emphasized in campaign communication. Our research combines qualitative and quantitative methods and diverse data sources, including political commercials and speeches. This study contributes to the field by incorporating personality theories into the study of political impression management.

Abstract

This article investigates how dialogic negotiations contribute to the enhancement of pupils’ epistemic authority. The analysis was based on two interactions collected in a primary school and a higher secondary school in Italy, as part of a European research project promoting dialogue-based activities. The aim of the research was to investigate children’s agency and participation in changing their social and cultural conditions of hybrid integration. Their participation was promoted in different ways to facilitate dialogue, which enhanced dialogic negotiations and narrative interlacement. The analysis demonstrates that, through dialogic negotiations, children and adults shape the meanings of children’s personal stories together and create a network of interlaced narratives. Both these conditions impact on children’s participation in knowledge production and identity construction.

Abstract

In this article, we scrutinise how humour, and in particular, indirect mockery contributes to the construction of leader identities in talk about decision-making in an organisation characterized by a distributed leadership context. So rather than focusing on decision-making episodes themselves, we tease out an aspect of the goal achievement side of the leadership influence process. Through multimodal discourse analysis, we focus on episodes in which the implementation side of decisions is discussed and in which the head of the team initiates a humorous sequence, as this turned out to be an integral part of talk about decision-making. We found that the humour was always oriented towards upper management and that it could serve various functions. Overall, we argue that indirect mockery was a crucial means to navigate the tension that emerges from the team head’s position within the complex leadership constellation, thus offering a critical perspective on distributed leadership.

This article reviews Disability in Dialogue978-90-272-1408-9

This article reviews Fiction and Pragmatics978-1-009-09168-8

This article reviews Argumentation in Complex Communication: Managing Disagreement in a Polylogue978-1-009-27437-1