Language and Dialogue - Volume 8, Issue 3, 2018

Abstract

There are certain areas where present-day studies of language use can learn from history. Using a dialogue-analytic approach, this study investigates dialogic features and interpersonal management in the early English courtroom. Drawing upon a corpus of 81 opening statements from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey (1759–1799), the quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals that this courtroom action game is highly dialogic and that an active jury was significantly presupposed in this particular historical setting. The lawyers consistently endeavored to solicit solidarity and in-groupness through pronominal choices, and to argumentatively negotiate agreement and secure consent through directives, shared knowledge markers, asides, and questions. The findings testify to the central role of dialogism and interpersonal negotiation in historical courtroom action games.

Abstract

This study builds upon Schegloff’s model as a template to investigate the phenomenon of how Vietnamese people perform their telephone openings. We use a corpus of 50 audio recordings of Vietnamese telephone openings to analyze such a phenomenon through both Conversation Analysis and Ethnography methods in order to capture the data in naturally-occurring settings, and to provide insights into Vietnamese culture that makes Vietnamese telephone openings different from North American ones. The findings demonstrate that Vietnamese telephone openings share some common features with telephone openings in different language communities, especially North American culture. Nevertheless, a number of variations, due to language and cultural differences, still exist. We discuss both theoretical and practical implications.

Abstract

During the National Policy Institute’s national conference in Washington D.C. on Saturday November 19th, 2016, Richard Spencer delivered a speech in praise of the election victory of President Donald Trump. Shortly after the conference, Spencer was an invited guest on the News One Now programme in which he participated in a 32-minute interview with black journalist, host and managing editor Roland Martin. Drawing attention to the ideological aspects of the Martin/Spencer interview performance, we adopt the analytical lens of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Musolff 2014; Reisigl and Wodak 2009; Wodak 2001, 2009) to explore argumentation as a discursive strategy through topoi or argumentative warrants (Reisigl and Wodak 2009; Wodak 2009, 2011, 2015; Wodak and Boukala 2015).

Abstract

The study examines how interactivity is constructed in the course of multi-person interaction in a semi-informal educational context. The audio-recordings of seven meetings of a female discussion club in Belarus and their transcripts serve as interactional data. The club was organized with a goal of providing a platform for females to engage in intellectual discussions in an informal setting. The study takes the communication design approach and uses discourse analysis. The analysis of the audio recordings and the transcripts is guided by the following question: how the participants’ use of linguistic and interactional resources contributes to the construction of a meeting. The particular attention is paid to the facilitator’s communicative actions to shape interaction and their local context.

Abstract

This paper contributes to the growing line of research that takes a multimodal approach in the study of interpreter-mediated dialogues. Drawing on insights from Conversation Analysis and multimodal analysis, we investigate how extended multi-unit turns unfold with interventions of an interpreter and, more specifically, what is the role of gaze in this process. The analysis is based on videos of interpreter-mediated dialogues (Dutch-Russian) recorded with mobile eye-tracking glasses. We argue that the interpreter’s gaze direction contributes both to the local management of turn-taking (next-speaker selection) and to sequence organization. More specifically, we show how interpreter’s gaze orientation bears on the negotiation of possible transition relevance places and how it contributes to the smooth continuation of the projected extended multi-unit turn.

This article reviews Political Discourse as Dialogue. A Latin American Perspective978-1-138-67878-1

This article reviews Dialogic Ethics978-902-720-066-2