Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies, 2006
This analysis brings together Go¤man's concept of alignment, Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, a... more This analysis brings together Go¤man's concept of alignment, Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, and A. L. Becker's idea that interaction consists of 'reshaping' old texts into present contexts to consider how one mother reshapes her own and her child's previous discourse across three conversations to construct di¤erent alignments with her co-interlocutors and di¤erent identities for herself. The mother, Janet, who works part-time but spends most of her time caring for her three-year-old daughter, Natalie, tape-recorded nearly all of her interactions for one week. The conversations I examine involve (i) Janet 'being Mommy' as she deals with a misbehaving Natalie while also trying to talk on the telephone; (ii) Janet and Natalie reversing roles and playfully re-enacting this incident two days later; and (iii) Janet recounting the re-enactment to three friends the next evening during a dinner party and evaluating it in a way that distances her from the identity of a 'full-time stay-at-home mom'. The analysis shows how specific bits of prior text are reshaped to create play, build rapport, and construct alignments that put forth particular identities at particular interactional moments. It thus illustrates how 'the same' prior text serves as a resource for creating multiple alignments and identities in discourse.
This study examines the role of metaphor in the organization and expression of narrative in the l... more This study examines the role of metaphor in the organization and expression of narrative in the life story. Data are drawn from an open-ended life story interview with a young adult female. She makes use of the metaphor of being put on trial as a vehicle that directs individual story content and structure while realizing her dominant life story theme of victimization. She does this by manipulating character introduction, character animation, and introduction of information. Because the narrator tells a compelling story whose content does not match its outcome (her side "loses" the trial), the metaphor works to realize the victimization theme. This analysis illustrates how metaphor creates both a coherent individual narrative and fits this narrative into the overall life story theme, examining both the story's internal structure and its intertextual connections with other portions of the life story.
In-office conversations about hepatitis C can impact patients' pe... more In-office conversations about hepatitis C can impact patients' perceptions of outcomes, as well as medication adherence. This study analyzed interactions between physicians, nonphysician healthcare providers (including nurses), and patients with hepatitis C virus infection in order to examine differences based on number and type of providers participating. Gastroenterologists, nonphysician healthcare providers, and patients with hepatitis C virus infection were video- and audio-recorded during regularly scheduled visits. Recordings were transcribed and analyzed using validated sociolinguistic techniques. Thirty-four visits took place with a physician only, 4 with a nonphysician healthcare provider only, and 25 with both providers (9 concurrent and 16 consecutive). Differences among the participant schema included visit length, patient "talk-time," and motivation provided. When providers saw patients consecutively, differing information was sometimes provided. In visits where providers saw the patient concurrently, competing authority between providers and exclusion of the patient through use of medical jargon were obstacles to ideal communication. Differences in hepatitis C-related interactions based on the number and type of participants suggest opportunities for improved communication. In visits with multiple providers, physicians and nurses should attempt to ensure that they (a) avoid supplying differing information, (b) present a "unified front" to avoid competing authority, and (c) minimize the use of medical jargon, which excludes patients from participating in their own healthcare.
EDITOR'S NOTE I am grateful for the support during the past year of the Department o... more EDITOR'S NOTE I am grateful for the support during the past year of the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University. I am also very grateful to Editorial Assistant Mark Thompson, copyeditor Audra Starcheus, and Morrell Gillette, Pooja Jain, and Laura Etheredge at Cambridge University Press. I consult regularly with the journal's associate editors and members of the editorial board, and I value their thoughtfulness and willingness to help. I am also pleased to acknowledge the contribution of the following scholars who reviewed manuscripts during 2010, when ...
suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one ... more suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one another and by sharing turns at talk or speaking on behalf of the team. In this article, I explore more closely how participants "do" team talk by analyzing excerpts from two audiotaped stepfamily mealtime interactions. In the analysis, I identify three forms of participation that teams enact in these data. Team members (a) share turns, (b) alternate turns parallel in function, and (c) situate their conversational contributions within a shared "knowledge schema" . In this article, I add to work on teams in interaction by illustrating how teams form and function moment by moment, by identifying previously unidentified forms of team participation, and by demonstrating in what ways extrainteractional characteristics of interlocutors can serve as a basis for creating particular alignments at particular moments in conversation. In the analysis, I also identify stepfamilies as an ideal site for examining shifting alignments in conversation and discuss how teams relate to negotiating relationships in this context.
This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a yo... more This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a young child (age 2 years 11 months) and her mother, wherein the participants reverse roles from real life and reenact shared prior experiences. Data consist of two tape-recorded naturally occurring pretendplay episodes and the real-life interactions on which they are based, all of which took place at home. Analysis of the role-play episodes illustrates how framing occurs from moment to moment in interaction in this context, showing that the participants use both play and non-play utterances collaboratively to evoke, maintain, and embed multiple play frames with increasingly specific, and at times blended, metamessages. By linking the role-play interactions back to their real-life counterparts, I explore the relationship between framing and "prior text." This analysis adds to our understanding of framing by showing how frames are layered in discourse. Additionally, it links frames theory to the notion of intertextuality by illustrating how prior text can be used as a resource for framing. (Discourse analysis, framing, intertextuality, role-play, mother-child discourse)*
This article examines email exchanges between eight Master's-level school counseling student... more This article examines email exchanges between eight Master's-level school counseling student interns and their internship supervisor to investigate how politeness strategies contribute to professional identity development in supervisory discourse. Our analysis demonstrates how identity development occurs via collaborative facework accomplished through multiple strategies: reported speech or “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007), first person plural pronouns, the discourse marker “that being said,”
Researchers also identified a derivative of re-authorship that was termed as pre-authorship, taki... more Researchers also identified a derivative of re-authorship that was termed as pre-authorship, taking place through advice giving. Findings are contextualized within the supervision, narrative, and discourse literatures, with implications for training, practice, and future research discussed.
This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school ... more This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school counseling interns and their e-mail supervisor over a 16-week semester. Course-required e-mail supervision was provided as an adjunct to traditional face-to-face individual and group supervision. School counselor supervisees and supervisor enacted 3 discursive strategies (repetition, labeling, and plural pronoun usage), which were observed to contribute to supervisee professional identity development. Findings are discussed in light of both the counselor education and discourse analysis literatures. Implications for practice and future research are provided.
Text & Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies, 2006
This analysis brings together Go¤man's concept of alignment, Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, a... more This analysis brings together Go¤man's concept of alignment, Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, and A. L. Becker's idea that interaction consists of 'reshaping' old texts into present contexts to consider how one mother reshapes her own and her child's previous discourse across three conversations to construct di¤erent alignments with her co-interlocutors and di¤erent identities for herself. The mother, Janet, who works part-time but spends most of her time caring for her three-year-old daughter, Natalie, tape-recorded nearly all of her interactions for one week. The conversations I examine involve (i) Janet 'being Mommy' as she deals with a misbehaving Natalie while also trying to talk on the telephone; (ii) Janet and Natalie reversing roles and playfully re-enacting this incident two days later; and (iii) Janet recounting the re-enactment to three friends the next evening during a dinner party and evaluating it in a way that distances her from the identity of a 'full-time stay-at-home mom'. The analysis shows how specific bits of prior text are reshaped to create play, build rapport, and construct alignments that put forth particular identities at particular interactional moments. It thus illustrates how 'the same' prior text serves as a resource for creating multiple alignments and identities in discourse.
This study examines the role of metaphor in the organization and expression of narrative in the l... more This study examines the role of metaphor in the organization and expression of narrative in the life story. Data are drawn from an open-ended life story interview with a young adult female. She makes use of the metaphor of being put on trial as a vehicle that directs individual story content and structure while realizing her dominant life story theme of victimization. She does this by manipulating character introduction, character animation, and introduction of information. Because the narrator tells a compelling story whose content does not match its outcome (her side "loses" the trial), the metaphor works to realize the victimization theme. This analysis illustrates how metaphor creates both a coherent individual narrative and fits this narrative into the overall life story theme, examining both the story's internal structure and its intertextual connections with other portions of the life story.
In-office conversations about hepatitis C can impact patients' pe... more In-office conversations about hepatitis C can impact patients' perceptions of outcomes, as well as medication adherence. This study analyzed interactions between physicians, nonphysician healthcare providers (including nurses), and patients with hepatitis C virus infection in order to examine differences based on number and type of providers participating. Gastroenterologists, nonphysician healthcare providers, and patients with hepatitis C virus infection were video- and audio-recorded during regularly scheduled visits. Recordings were transcribed and analyzed using validated sociolinguistic techniques. Thirty-four visits took place with a physician only, 4 with a nonphysician healthcare provider only, and 25 with both providers (9 concurrent and 16 consecutive). Differences among the participant schema included visit length, patient "talk-time," and motivation provided. When providers saw patients consecutively, differing information was sometimes provided. In visits where providers saw the patient concurrently, competing authority between providers and exclusion of the patient through use of medical jargon were obstacles to ideal communication. Differences in hepatitis C-related interactions based on the number and type of participants suggest opportunities for improved communication. In visits with multiple providers, physicians and nurses should attempt to ensure that they (a) avoid supplying differing information, (b) present a "unified front" to avoid competing authority, and (c) minimize the use of medical jargon, which excludes patients from participating in their own healthcare.
EDITOR'S NOTE I am grateful for the support during the past year of the Department o... more EDITOR'S NOTE I am grateful for the support during the past year of the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University. I am also very grateful to Editorial Assistant Mark Thompson, copyeditor Audra Starcheus, and Morrell Gillette, Pooja Jain, and Laura Etheredge at Cambridge University Press. I consult regularly with the journal's associate editors and members of the editorial board, and I value their thoughtfulness and willingness to help. I am also pleased to acknowledge the contribution of the following scholars who reviewed manuscripts during 2010, when ...
suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one ... more suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one another and by sharing turns at talk or speaking on behalf of the team. In this article, I explore more closely how participants "do" team talk by analyzing excerpts from two audiotaped stepfamily mealtime interactions. In the analysis, I identify three forms of participation that teams enact in these data. Team members (a) share turns, (b) alternate turns parallel in function, and (c) situate their conversational contributions within a shared "knowledge schema" . In this article, I add to work on teams in interaction by illustrating how teams form and function moment by moment, by identifying previously unidentified forms of team participation, and by demonstrating in what ways extrainteractional characteristics of interlocutors can serve as a basis for creating particular alignments at particular moments in conversation. In the analysis, I also identify stepfamilies as an ideal site for examining shifting alignments in conversation and discuss how teams relate to negotiating relationships in this context.
This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a yo... more This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a young child (age 2 years 11 months) and her mother, wherein the participants reverse roles from real life and reenact shared prior experiences. Data consist of two tape-recorded naturally occurring pretendplay episodes and the real-life interactions on which they are based, all of which took place at home. Analysis of the role-play episodes illustrates how framing occurs from moment to moment in interaction in this context, showing that the participants use both play and non-play utterances collaboratively to evoke, maintain, and embed multiple play frames with increasingly specific, and at times blended, metamessages. By linking the role-play interactions back to their real-life counterparts, I explore the relationship between framing and "prior text." This analysis adds to our understanding of framing by showing how frames are layered in discourse. Additionally, it links frames theory to the notion of intertextuality by illustrating how prior text can be used as a resource for framing. (Discourse analysis, framing, intertextuality, role-play, mother-child discourse)*
This article examines email exchanges between eight Master's-level school counseling student... more This article examines email exchanges between eight Master's-level school counseling student interns and their internship supervisor to investigate how politeness strategies contribute to professional identity development in supervisory discourse. Our analysis demonstrates how identity development occurs via collaborative facework accomplished through multiple strategies: reported speech or “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 2007), first person plural pronouns, the discourse marker “that being said,”
Researchers also identified a derivative of re-authorship that was termed as pre-authorship, taki... more Researchers also identified a derivative of re-authorship that was termed as pre-authorship, taking place through advice giving. Findings are contextualized within the supervision, narrative, and discourse literatures, with implications for training, practice, and future research discussed.
This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school ... more This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school counseling interns and their e-mail supervisor over a 16-week semester. Course-required e-mail supervision was provided as an adjunct to traditional face-to-face individual and group supervision. School counselor supervisees and supervisor enacted 3 discursive strategies (repetition, labeling, and plural pronoun usage), which were observed to contribute to supervisee professional identity development. Findings are discussed in light of both the counselor education and discourse analysis literatures. Implications for practice and future research are provided.
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