conversation and activity

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University of Salerno, Italy ______________________________________________________ Annalisa Sannino

Annalisa SanninoUniversity of Salerno, Italy

16º InPLA - Intercâmbio de Pesquisas em Lingüística AplicadaMinicourse 2nd-5th of May 2007, São Paulo

Experiencing conversations:

Bridging the gap between discourse and activity

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Conversation and activity

not yet satisfactorily treated as a shared object of study within discourse analysis and within theories of activity

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What are the gaps that discourse analysts and activity theorists have to face in order to find a common ground for shared analyses?

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Interlocutionary logic (IL) and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)

as complementary frameworks which allow to identify these gaps and take step toward integrated analyses of discourse and activity

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IL and CHAT as instrumental for illuminating a particular phenomenon at the core of the relation between discourse and activity:

the experience of a conversation by the interlocutors which affect their view and actions with regard to the given ongoing activity

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Empirical examples of occurrences of the interlocutor’s experiences as reported in autobiographical accounts by pre-service teachers

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Gaps in analyses of discourse and activity

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An issue of debate

between different approaches in discourse studies:

the relation between conversation and the broader context of the activity where a conversation takes place.

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Ethnomethodologists and conversation analystsThe dynamic of conversation itself is considered enough to allow “accountability” (Garfinkel, 1967)

EthnographersUnconventional mundane exchanges, are far from self-sufficient data through which any competent analyst could have access to human action in the course of activities

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Cicourel (1992, p. 295)

<<The methodological strategy of using local talk as the source of information in the narrow sense of the context can be self-serving by the way the researcher not only ignores prior and current organizational or institutional experiences of participants, but by the kind of data that are presented for analysis. For many students of language and social interaction, therefore, the notion of context need not include references to the participants´and researcher´s personal, kin, and organizational relationships and other aspects of complex or institutionalized settings. Casual, fleeting speech events, however, are often constrained and guided by normative institutionalized features that we associate with encounters in public places (…). These brief exchanges can also carry considerable cultural and interpersonal “baggage” for participants because of long-term social relationships unknown to or unattended by the investigator>>

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Absences in discourse and consequences on ongoing activities

Conley and O’Barr (1990): litigants aren’t satisfied and don’t trust legal systems and professionals because they feel the demands they bring to court are disregarded.

Wodak (1996): patients often don’t even ask for the meaning of medical jargon they don’t understand, and doctors reach the diagnosis too rapidly, ignoring patients’ attempts to speak about their lives and to question the implications of their diseases.

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Discursive discontinuities

observable in situations in which strong constraints and traditions weigh on the interlocutors and also when power relationships are dominant

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CHAT and analysis of discourse

Davydov (1999) characterized the relationship between interpersonal communication and object-related activities as an acute unresolved problem for all humanities

CHAT, in spite of the large amount of discursive data they use, doesn’t dispose of a solid theoretical and methodological apparatus to analyze talk

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What are the fundamental dynamics of the use of language within object-related activities?

How to describe and analyze those dynamics?

Together with the systemic structure of activity made visible by scholars from cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, 1987), can we also bring to surface the communication processes through which the activity takes shape?

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The way talk is experienced as the crucial point where conversation and

activity connect

point when talk starts gaining consequences of a material nature and have an impact on the

activity

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IL and the analysts’ limits when they face a conversation transcript

the concept of ‘default’ with which IL claims the impossibility to affirm that interlocutors have reached intersubjectivity, unless they clearly explicate their mutual understanding

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IL as an empirical theory centred on how talk is receivedintersubjectivity can be found in the third speaking turn, that is when the first speaker has a chance to reply after the other has responded

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Autobiographical accounts of critical life episodes as new type of data

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Excerpt 1

the subject makes explicit the way he experienced the talk of the teachers

tactless, despotic and arrogant, and as humbling the student’s effort in the assignment

Consequence : “great sorrow”, feeling of having been victim of an injustice and mistrust, so much frustration that all the other disciplines underwent a repercussion.

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Reported speech reconstructed after many years

Is there would be no room for this kind of data in mainstream approaches for analyzing conversations?

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Excerpt 2

The subject refers to the teacher´s behaviour as discouraging the use of the most common learning tools like the student´s notes, the textbook and clarification questions.

Also he considered the teacher’s opinion of part of the class as negatively predetermined and unchangeable.

Sad description of the subject´s present attitude to chemistry, seen as frustrating, as a lost opportunity, and as a discipline whose hidden logic remained for him a mystery

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the interactions between these students and the teachers generated connections and chains that led to deleterious consequences in terms of the student´s learning

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Expected and justified skeptical reactions in both CHAT and IL fields on this kind of data

neither ethnographic field notes of a professional researcher or transcripts of recorded conversations

personal accounts meant to report a one sided individual perspective as a strength

access to the subjective experience and possibilities for studying activities and conversation from a new angle

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Two accounts of critical conversations in educational setting

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Data collected in 2004 during a class of Psychology of Education I was teaching

Participants: pre-service teachers in the process to become fully qualified teachers (already experienced teachers, having done temporary replacements for years)

Focus of the class: theoretical and empirical analysis of the participants’ own experiences in school settings as students. The analyses aimed at promoting reflection and developing personal approaches to teaching practice

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The assignmentThe participants were asked to report

personal negative experiences that they think shouldn´t occur in any

educational setting anymore

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Instructions :

1. The account must be a detailed description of an episode and of your own experience of it.

2. Pay particular attention to describing what you can recall of the interactions in their verbal and non verbal forms. In particular pay attention to conversations and, when it is possible, try to reconstruct them.

3. After you report a conversation, make explicit your own experience as an interlocutor in the course of the conversation. What did you think, and what brought you to react in a certain way?

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Analysis

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Durability

The subjects explicitely point out that they remember vividly the episodes they are writing about. In the text of the assignment I didn’t ask to evaluate the quality of the memory of these events. Spontaneusly the subjects have considered relevant to point out how well they remember the episode. This seems to indicate that these events actually correspond to durable personal milestones for those who write.

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Premises

The subjects establish as premisses of the account the motivation and expectation on which their actions are based. These are private contents that very seldom are accessible in the course of ordinary analysis of conversations.

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Conflicts

These accounts condense very elaborate processes of experiencing verbal conflicts. They bring to light the genesis of contents which forge human personality and actions.

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Consequences

These data allow to observe effects of discourse in classrooms on the activities of teaching, studying and schooling. The analyst has to focus on the contradictions between the premisses and the conflicts in the accounts and has to consider these premisses and conflicts in the light of the consequences to which they led and that are reported in the accounts as well.

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Inner speech

This writing gives a voice to inner speech. That is a discourse which puts light on conflicts and corresponds to points of view that can´t be publically expressed in the circumstances when the inner speech generates.

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Conclusive remarkWhen we talk, especially in working or educational situations, we tend to hide and constrain our thought in coherent and uniform packages of routinized, predictable and safe utterances.

Instead, “autobiography (…) doesn’t make us guilty for the multiple voices that inhabit ourselves (…). It is time for putting together loose pieces (…)” (Demetrio 1996: 33). In this sense, autobiographical practices bring us to face also disruptions and contradictions of our individual experience in public activities.

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For contacts:Annalisa Sannino

University of Salerno Department of EducationVia Ponte Don Melillo

84084 Fisciano (SA) ItalyE-mail: [email protected]

conversation and activity

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