The ISCA members’ forum newsletter is off on a break for a few months, but we wanted to share a few important updates and announcements from the EMCA community. We also want to remind everyone that if you have any news that you think is relevant for the larger community, please send us an email at [email protected] and we will try to include it in the newsletter.
It is a bit of a momentous occasion. We started this newsletter right before much of the world closed down to combat the covid-19 pandemic. After two years though, it seems that lives are returning to something resembling what we could consider normal. Many of us are able to go back to our office, teaching once again takes place in classrooms at the university, and we can once again see our colleagues at conferences. This bodes well for the International Conference on Conversation Analysis, which was delayed because of the pandemic, and will now take place in Brisbane in 2023. Abstract submission is now open, and we look forward to seeing many people next year.
Introduction and transcription by Enhua Guo, edited by Anita Pomerantz
The Rutgers University Conversation Analysis Lab has launched a series of online discussions with key figures in CA. On December 16, 2021, they interviewed Anita Pomerantz, Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the State University of New York at Albany. Anita’s talk, which is insightful and interesting as always, consists of two parts: (1) biography/history of her CA journey, and (2) art and science of CA. Below is only a transcription of the second part.
By Luis Manuel Olguín, Department of Sociology at UCLA
Since its inception in American sociology over half a century ago, Conversation Analysis (CA) has consolidated as a robust interdisciplinary field and research method in the humanities and social sciences. CA research has expanded across the globe, showcasing work on a wide variety of languages and social settings as well as exciting methodological innovations and applications. With practitioners on virtually every continent, CA hubs and networks continue to emerge at institutional, regional and national levels, broadening and strengthening the CA global community.
We hope everyone in the EMCA community was just as excited as we were when the announcement came out for the sixth International Conference on Conversation Analysis, to be held in Brisbane, Australia, in July 2023. Like the Olympic Games, it had to be delayed for a year because of COVID, but we can finally start looking forward to the central conference of our community. The call for panels is currently open with a submission deadline on March 4th.
By Julia Katila, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Tampere University
Human beings are prone to showing affection through touch. For instance, caregivers gently touching their offspring is perhaps the most primordial way, among the human species, to express and experience love and affection. Something similar takes place in adulthood between romantic partners: when close to one another, “lovers cannot help themselves from weaving their bodies together in various forms of intertwinement and embrace”, to use Maclaren’s (2014: 96) words.
By Reihaneh Afshari, PhD student at University of York
In social interaction, the address form has a lot to say about the speaker’s stance or the social action performed through a turn at talk (e.g., Butler, Danby, & Emmison, 2011; Clayman, 2010; Lerner, 2003; Rendle-Short, 2010). Jefferson (1973, p. 48) describes address forms as ‘relation-formulating’. In languages with a pronominal T-V (after tu and vos in Latin) distinction, this relation-building property is treated as so conventionalized that many sociolinguists dichotomize pronouns into “less formal T pronouns versus more formal V pronouns”, as Clyne et al. (2006, p. 284) report. Power, solidarity, and politeness are among factors reported to determine speaker’s selection of T versus V pronouns (Brown & Gilman, 1968; Brown & Levinson, 1987). Some recent studies question the theoretical assumptions underlying such dichotomies (see e.g., Clyne et al, 2006); nevertheless, to fill the gap, many of them still rely on similar macro-social constructs. For example, in her investigation of Persian, Nanbakhsh (2012) acknowledges that, contrary to the long-established belief, shomâ (second-person plural pronoun – V pronoun – in Persian) can be used to address an intimate coparticipant, but her findings are still based on macro constructs such as ‘power’ and ‘formality’.
The ISCA members forum newsletter only comes around once every few months so we thought we would send updates when we have news to share that is time-sensitive, and we are especially pleased to be able to send out news of ICCA 2023!
After more than one and a half years, it seems that in some parts of the world, universities are slowly returning to normal, or at least, a new normal. Particularly for those of us fortunate enough to live in countries where vaccines are easily available, we have the opportunity again to see our students and our colleagues. Classes, colloquia and defenses are often back to in-person. At the same time, virtual is clearly not going anywhere.
This conference report is about the 3rd EnACE (Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Conference) that took place online between 13 – 15th October 2021 in Vitória, a city in the Brazilian State of Espírito Santo. Coordinated by Roberto Perobelli (Professor at Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, UFES), the group named GLIE (Grupo Linguagem Interação e Etnometodologia) was the responsible for the organization of the event.