LFU:online

This course will enable students to describe language use in social interaction. Students will be aware of how speakers use language-in-interaction for their purposes, how they jointly construct interactions and order actions sequentially. They will know the basic principles of interactions and be able to explain them in concrete data extracts. They will be able to separate description and interpretation in their analysis and use appropriate empirical studies to support their line of argument.

This course introduces students to conversation analysis, i.e. to the systematic description of language-in-interaction. Conversation analysis widens the perspective of traditional linguistics (which mainly focuses on word and sentence levels) and includes the study of the most common form in which language occurs: in spoken interaction. Conversation analysis originated in sociology but in linguistics, it has for many years represented an action-oriented, participant-related approach. It analyses language exclusively in its use and its sequential context.

The course will present basic principles of how social interaction works, focussing on linguistic aspects: turn-taking, sequence organization, repair, preference structures, multimodality of interaction; Traditional linguistic domains such as syntax or (reference) semantics will be studied from the perspective of interaction analysis.

lecture

group discussions

readings and online discussions 

video analysis

transcription exercises

data sessions

Written:

CA transcription of a short stretch of interaction

Course paper: analysis of a linguistic phenomenon in interaction

Compulsory reading:

Gülich, Elisabeth, and Lorenza Mondada. 2008. Konversationsanalyse. Eine Einführung Am Beispiel des Französischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Traverso, Véronique. 2016. Décrire le français parlé en interaction. Paris: Ophrys.