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- Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2023
Interactional Linguistics - Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2023
Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2023
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Meaning in interaction
Author(s): Arnulf Deppermann and Elwys De Stefanipp.: 1–12 (12)More LessAbstractThis editorial to the Special Issue on “Meaning in Interaction” introduces to the approach of Interactional Semantics, which has been developed over the last years within the framework of Interactional Linguistics. It discusses how “meaning” is understood and approached in this framework and lays out that Interactional Semantics is interested in how participants clarify and negotiate the meanings of the expressions that they are using in social interaction. Commonalities and differences of this approach with other approaches to meaning are flagged, and the intellectual origins and precursors of Interactional Semantics are introduced. The contributions to the Special Issue are located in the larger field of research.
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Meta-semantic practices in social interaction
Author(s): Arnulf Deppermannpp.: 13–39 (27)More LessAbstractIn social interaction, different kinds of word-meaning can become problematic for participants. This study analyzes two meta-semantic practices, definitions and specifications, which are used in response to clarification requests in German implemented by the format Was heißt X (‘What does X mean?’). In the data studied, definitions are used to convey generalizable lexical meanings of mostly technical terms. These terms are either unknown to requesters, or, in pedagogical contexts, requesters ask in order to check the addressee’s knowledge. Specifications, in contrast, clarify aspects of local speaker meanings of ordinary expressions (e.g., reference, participants in an event, standards applied to scalar expressions). Both definitions and specifications are recipient-designed with respect to the (presumed) knowledge of the addressee and tailored to the topical and practical relevancies of the current interaction. Both practices attest to the flexibility and situatedness of speakers’ semantic understandings and to the systematicity of using meta-semantic practices differentially for different kinds of semantic problems. Data are come from mundane and institutional interaction in German from the public corpus FOLK.
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Displaying a negative stance by questioning meaning
Author(s): Elwys De Stefanipp.: 40–66 (27)More LessAbstractSpeakers of Italian have at their disposal a variety of phrasal and clausal resources for questioning meaning, among which is the format che cosa vuol dire X? (‘what does X mean?’). Likewise, recent studies on English and German about similar resources have shown that speakers use them to identify a meaning problem. This contribution takes a step further, by showing that the ‘what does X mean?’ format allows speakers to accomplish a variety of actions. These may be related to (a) the negotiation of understanding, and (b) the display of a negative stance. In many occurrences, the interactants display clear orientation to either a problem of understanding or a commonly shared negative stance. However, in sensitive environments (such as conflictual discussions), the resource allows speakers to (c) frame their negative stance as a problem of understanding, thereby resisting escalation of the conflict. The ‘what does X mean?’ format may or may not be produced with concomitant embodied behaviour. When the format is used to problematise understanding, no specific embodied conduct is observed. Yet, when it is used to display a negative stance, speakers may be seen to perform the grappolo gesture.
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Ad-hoc-compounds in spoken German
Author(s): Henrike Helmerpp.: 67–92 (26)More LessAbstractOccasionalisms, i.e., non-lexicalized ad-hoc-expressions that are coined for a specific occasion, are a recurrent phenomenon in verbal interactions. Even though recipients have not heard those novel word formations before, they can still understand them. This paper reports on a study from an Interactional Linguistics perspective which explores ad-hoc-expressions in spoken German, such as streichelmichbärchenpärchen (‘stroke-me-little-bear-couple’) and windeldroge (‘diaper-drug’). It draws on an analysis of 934 ad-hoc-compounds in a corpus of German interaction. These typically do not cause a problem of understanding, because their meaning is inferable due to different resources that help recipients understand unfamiliar expressions: a specific word formation with a high degree of compositionality, cues or anchoring in the prior context or common ground. While a compositional word formation is not always necessary to sufficiently understand meaning in interaction due to other resources, opaque word formation has its limits when it comes to understanding the meaning of an expression especially when recipients cannot rely on other resources to understand the expression.
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The semantics of taste in interaction
Author(s): Lorenza Mondadapp.: 93–131 (39)More LessAbstractTasting sessions constitute a perspicuous setting that reveals how a community of practice uses and shapes specialized lexicons and semantics within a situated and embodied activity. The activity aims at associating words and sensations: Participants engage with material objects (samples to taste), and utter/write down words corresponding to the way they experience them through their senses. This association between words and sensorial qualities constitutes an endogenous semantic task. This task can be seen as a respecification of various semantic problems, addressing within social interaction several semantic issues, such as the embodied grounding of sensory semantics, qualia, sensory lexicons, and specialized terminological repertoires. The paper is based on video recordings of training tasting sessions for professional cheese tasters in Italy and Italian Switzerland. The analyses show how participants engage not only in describing sensorial features, but also in normatively assessing the descriptors used, categorizing them as well as the features described as more or less standard. Moreover, the descriptive task is also guided by the use of several artefacts, such as tasting sheets to fill in and official repertoires of terminology available to read, which further socialize the participants. The analysis shows the reflexive mutual shaping of lexicons and sensations as well as the way participants address the semantics of taste in situ.
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Self-repeat as a multimodal retraction practice
Author(s): Leon Shor and Michal Marmorsteinpp.: 132–166 (35)More LessAbstractThe paper focuses on a particular practice of self-repeat through which participants retract their prior formulations, and explores its multimodal design and use in the dynamic construction of meaning in Hebrew conversation. Drawing on interactional approaches to language and embodied action, we show that the practice of self-repeat is used to retract a formulation judged by its producer as being inadequate and ill-calibrated in the given interactional context. This function is supported by the multimodal configuration in which the lexical repeat is cast, which involves a stable prosodic component and a variable embodied component. Through its prosodic and embodied design, the repeat is contextualized as a noticeable display of accountability for having made an ill-suited choice of words. While the self-repeat alone is sufficient in proposing a problem of calibration, it can also be followed by a lexical replacement, which makes explicit the adjusted or recalibrated term. The self-repeat practice shows how participants engage in semantic work through online and situated revision of their formulations. This exposed process of meaning construction reveals their understanding of the constitutive link between the conceptual and the normative orders as practiced in actual conversation.
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Meaning as referential work
Author(s): Tom Koolepp.: 167–177 (11)More LessAbstractThis epilogue to the Special Issue on Interactional Semantics discusses the contributions to the Special Issue in relation to other research to support three arguments. (i) The choice of Interactional Semantics to take the referential function of language (Jakobson) as its object of research is a welcome choice. (ii) The use of the term ‘meaning’ for this research object is potentially confusing and could be replaced by ‘referential work’. (iii) A research topic which could be included in Interactional Semantics and has not been articulated as such, is the way in which the choice of a referential expression establishes the referent as a particular social reality and is a tacit proposal to the interlocutors to talk about this referent in these terms.
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