Matthew Butler
Last year marked my second time attending the Language and Social Interaction Conference (LANSI), held in New York on the 9th and 10th October 2025. I enjoyed my first time attending the conference in 2023, and was eager to visit once more. The 2025 conference did not disappoint.
LANSI is an intimate conference. It is not crowded or overwhelming. You see many of the same faces each day, which makes it easy to settle into conversations, revisit ideas, and form genuine connections (even friendships). There are no parallel sessions so everyone is in the same room together. The two day length of the conference feels just right. LANSI also attracts a range of people from PhD students, Early Career Researchers, to senior researchers. This makes it a reflexive environment and a real learning opportunity for both speakers and attendees.
One of LANSI’s defining features is its distinctive 10-minute presentation + 10-minute discussion format. It is unorthodox and somewhat challenging; presenters must introduce a phenomenon, show a small number of data extracts, and convey the core argument within ten minutes. Yet this is precisely what makes the format valuable. It centres the discussion as the most productive part of the session, where puzzles are explored collaboratively with the audience in an ‘analytic playground’. This pedagogical element is especially valuable for students and Early Career Researchers.
The breadth of papers (n=27) presented at LANSI truly reflects the diverse approaches to studying language and social interaction. A number of papers stood out to me. Lukow et al., delivered the first paper of the conference, reporting on the interactional mechanisms involved in cringe comedy. They examined a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Their analysis reflected on the notion of “cringe” and how it is accomplished through extended sequences involving social breaches, and what these look like interactionally. The ensuing discussion reflected on what is meant by ‘cringe’ as a situated practice, and its relationship to humour and laughter. Another compelling paper to me came from Brian Due’s study of grieving men in cemetery settings. Due explored how emotional transitions emerge from interactions among people, materials, and place. His video-ethnographic data vividly illustrated how emotion is co-produced within spatial and material arrangements rather than residing solely within individuals.
The first keynote of the conference was delivered by Professor Galina Bolden, who presented on Other-correction sequences. Drawing on her extensive research on repair and alignment, Bolden offered a richly detailed examination of how speakers initiate and manage correcting others, and how these practices shape the trajectory of talk. The extracts came from a range of settings, including everyday talk and broadcast media. The analysis was meticulous, and it was an excellent insight into the significance of repair sequences. The discussion reflected the interests of the audience, including questions about repair sequences more generally and what the phenomenon reveals about power in societies.
The second keynote, delivered by Professor Susan Ehrlich, addressed intertextual discursive practices and social inequalities in the legal system. Through the lens of courtroom interaction, Ehrlich showed how intertextual links—such as past statements, legal categories, and prior narratives—circulate through legal proceedings in ways that can reinforce structural inequality. The talk was intellectually stimulating and grounded in a strong commitment to understanding how language practices shape institutional outcomes.
Overall, LANSI 2025 was an engaging, community-focused, and analytically rich event. It continues to offer a welcoming environment for scholars at all stages to examine data together, build connections, and push forward the study of language and social interaction. I look forward to returning again.