nonformal institutional interaction in a conversation club: conversation partners’ questions

jal (print) issn 1479–7887jal (online) issn 1743–1743

jal vol 5.3 2008 273–294©2012, equinox publishing

doi : 10.1558/japl.v5i2.273

Article

Nonformal institutional interaction in a conversation club:

Conversation partners’ questions

Eric Hauser

Abstract

The data analyzed in this paper come from audio-recorded interaction among first and second language speakers of English at a conversation club sponsored by an English language school. As the analysis shows, the interaction in the conversation club can be understood as a type of nonformal institutional interaction. The analysis focuses on the questions asked by the first language speakers, or conversation partners. In particular, it focuses on the questioning styles of serial-questioning and pivoting. In addition, the conversation partners tend to assume a discourse identity as primary participant within the participation framework, a discourse identity that they work to maintain and, when necessary, reestablish. As nonformal institutional interac-tion, it does not involve turn pre-allocation or restrictions on the type of turn that participants may take. It is, though, oriented toward the fulfillment of institutionally-relevant goals.

Keywords: conversation analysis; nonformal institutional interaction; conversation club; serial-questioning; pivoting

Affiliation

Eric Hauser: University of Electro-Communications, Japan, University of Hawai’i, USA.

email: [email protected]

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

274 conversation partners’ questions

1 Introduction

This paper presents analyses of interaction among first and second language speakers of English at a conversation club sponsored by an English language school in Honolulu. More specifically, the interaction involves students at the school, who attend the club voluntarily, and conversation partners, as they are labeled by the school. The conversation partners have been hired as first language speakers to talk to the students, that is, to engage them in discussion in English. The primary focus is on the questions the conversation partners ask and the sequences of which these questions are a part. It will be shown through the analysis that the interaction among the conversation partners and students can be understood as goal-directed institutional interaction. Institutional interaction can range from more formal interaction to informal, quasi-conversational, or simply nonformal interaction (Drew and Heritage 1992; Hutchby 1996, 2007; Arminen 2005). Interaction which is more formal involves the use of certain turn types (e.g., questions, answers) by incumbents of certain institutionally-relevant identities, a degree of turn pre-allocation, and possibly a relatively stable overall structure (Drew and Heritage 1992; Heritage and Clayman 2010). One example of formal institutional interaction is the 911 emergency call, which has an overall structure consisting of five phases, includ-ing an interrogative series in which the call-taker asks questions and the caller answers them (Zimmerman 1992; Heritage and Clayman 2010). A second example is trial (cross-)examination, during which attorneys ask questions and witnesses answer them (Atkinson and Drew 1979; Drew 1992; Heritage and Clayman 2010). Trial examinations also include another common element of more formal institutional interaction, which is that it is talk produced for the benefit of an overhearing audience, in this case, the judge and jury (Heritage and Clayman 2010). Other types of more formal interaction in which the overhear-ing audience is important are certain types of classroom interaction, involving the teacher’s use of known-information questions (McHoul 1978; Mehan 1979; Arminen 2005; Rampton 2006) and in which other students form the over-hearing audience, and news interviews, in which interviewers ask questions and interviewees answer them for the benefit of the broadcast audience (Heri-tage and Greatbatch 1991; Clayman and Heritage 2002). However, even in very formal institutional interaction, such as during trial (cross-examination), the organization of the interaction is an accomplishment of the participants as they deal with the contingencies of the unfolding talk. Attorneys and witnesses need to produce their turns so that they are recognizable as, respectively, questions and answers, and find ways to package, e.g., accusations as questions and, e.g., refutations as answers (Atkinson and Drew 1979). Participants may also resist or manipulate the constraints of formal institutional interaction, such as when students resist the common three-part classroom sequence launched through

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 275

a known-information question (Rampton 2006) or use their knowledge of this structure to steal turns from others (Erickson 2004). Nonformal institutional interaction (Drew and Heritage 1992; Hutchby 1996, 2007), which has also been described as informal (Arminen 2005) and quasi-conversational (Drew and Heritage 1992), on the other hand, while it involves the use of certain resources (e.g., questions) in the pursuit of institutionally-relevant goals, does not involve the restriction of turn types to particular participants or the pre-allocation of turns. Other possible fea-tures of more formal institutional interaction, such as overall structure or the importance of an overhearing audience, may be less salient or non-existent. The analysis below will show that the interaction in the conversation club is more nonformal, as the conversation partners use interactional resources in pursuit of the general institutionally-relevant goal of engaging the students in discussion in English. In particular, the analysis will focus on how the conver-sation partners use questions to introduce and develop topics for discussion and to distribute turns-at-talk among students. However, neither the asking of questions nor turn-allocation is the exclusive entitlement of conversation partners. In addition, as they work to engage the students in discussion, the conversation partners tend to assume a discourse identity (Zimmerman 1998) as primary participant (Goffman 1981). That is, at any given point in the inter-action, including but not limited to when they ask questions, the conversation partners tend to either be addressing talk to another participant or having talk addressed to them. When necessary, the conversation partners work to maintain and/or re-establish this discourse identity. Asking questions pro-vides one, though not the sole, resource through which such maintenance and reestablishment can be accomplished. Below, after briefly describing the data and data collection, I will illustrate a common questioning style of conversation partners that I will call serial-questioning and how this is used to introduce and develop topics for discus-sion. Next, I will illustrate a second questioning style that I will call pivoting and how this is used to distribute turns of talk among students. As both serial-questioning and pivoting involve asking questions, the answers to which are addressed to the conversation partner, these questioning styles also involve the conversation partner being a primary participant. Finally, I will analyze how one conversation partner uses a question to re-establish a discourse iden-tity as primary participant.

2 Data and data collection

As mentioned above, the data were collected at a conversation club sponsored by an English language school. The ostensible purpose of the conversation club

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


was to provide students with opportunities to practice using spoken English. The interaction took place in groups consisting of between two and four stu-dents and one, or occasionally two, conversation partners. The groups met for one hour, with some students joining late, in the school lounge. With the permission of the school and the participants in each recorded group (i.e., the students and conversation partners), I audio-recorded several hours of interac-tion in the conversation club. While for the purpose of empirical research on interaction, video-recordings may be considered superior to audio-recordings, as they can capture non-verbal aspects of the interaction, audio-recording was chosen for the data collection in order to minimize interference in the conver-sation club itself. (See Butler (2008) for discussion of this issue.) A mini disk recorder with a small microphone was placed on a table used by one of the conversation club groups a few minutes prior to the start of the conversation club and retrieved by the researcher after the club had finished. The recorded interaction was transcribed following CA conventions (Jefferson 2004). All names of participants that appear in the transcripts have been replaced with pseudonyms. Interaction in similar settings has been analyzed in, for example, Kasper (2004) and Mori (2003).

3 Serial-questioning

A common occurrence in the conversation club is for a conversation partner to serially-question a student, that is, to ask a series of related questions, often about personal matters, as can be seen in extract (1).

Extract 1

→01 T: do you live alone?02 (0.8)03 F: no04 (1.3)→05 T: host family?06 F: no I- I have (.) roommate07 T: oh you have roommates08 F: [right→09 T: [an’ you- (.) know them from (0.4)→10 Japan?11 (1.8)12 F: my roommate?13 T: mm hm14 F: she’s local girl (0.4) she’s Chinese15 though.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 277

16 (2.0)17 F: [and→18 T: [so how’d you know her19 (2.8)20 F: uh:: (.) no- (.) we’re we are not21 friend.22 (0.9)23 P: [just a roommate=24 T: [oh:25 F: =we’re [not (.) just roommate26 T: [oh just27 T: just roommates

In this extract, T is a conversation partner and F and P are students. T asks F a series of questions about her living arrangements. He asks a total of four questions, at lines 01, 05, 09–10, and 18, though only two of them (in lines 01 and 18) are constructed syntactically as questions. These questions are not merely a list of topically-related questions, but are linked into what emerges as a series. The first question (line 01) offers a candidate answer (Pomerantz 1988; Arminen 2005), which F rejects in line 03. The second question (line 05) consists of only a different candidate answer. This candidate answer serves as a replacement for the rejected candidate answer in the first question, creating a link between these two questions. Both candidate answers also show sensitiv-ity to recipient design, as T does not ask whether F lives with her parents, a situation that is unlikely for an international student. The third question (lines 09–10) is linked to the second through the shared person reference with F’s answer to the second question (line 06) and T’s response to this answer (line 07). That is, ‘them’ in the third question refers to the roommate(s) referenced by F and T. Finally, the fourth question is linked to the third also through shared reference, with ‘her’ in the question referring to the same person that F references in line 14. In addition, T’s questions are genuine questions, rather than known-infor-mation questions, and in fact, the questions asked by conversation partners are never, at least for all the questions I have found, known-information ques-tions. This can be shown by an analysis of how conversation partners respond to students’ answers. For example, in extract (1), T twice uses responses (lines 07 and 26–27) consisting of a change-of-state token ‘oh’ (Heritage 1984) plus a modified repetition of part of F’s answer, while in line 24, he responds with a freestanding change-of-state token. Such responses, described by Jeffer-son (1981: 77) as ‘markedly “responsive”’, constitute claims that the answer has been understood (Sacks 1995, Winter 1969, Lecture 9) and that it also contains new information, resulting in a change of knowledge indexed by

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


the change-of-state token. Further, when T’s response to an answer does not include such a change-of-state token, it treats the prior answer as insufficiently informative. In line 05, T responds to F’s answer (line 03) by asking another question, without such a token. T’s action here can be understood by looking at the two prior turns of talk. As mentioned above, T’s question in line 01 contains a candidate answer. As such, it can be seen as a correction invitation device (Sacks 1995, Fall 1964–Spring 1965, Lecture 3, Spring 1966, Lecture 15), in that if the candidate answer is incorrect, not only should it be rejected, its replacement by the correct answer can be expected. That is, if F does not live alone, she can be expected both to answer ‘no’ and to provide the other information, such as that she lives with friends or family. As it happens, F answers only ‘no’, following which a lengthy gap emerges in line 04. That this gap is an untaken opportunity for F to provide more information about her living arrangements becomes clear when T ends the gap with his next question (line 05). By offering a different candidate answer to replace the rejected can-didate, it redoes the first question and invites F to re-analyze how she should answer (Schegloff 1984). F does this in line 06, by both rejecting the second candidate answer and correcting it. It is following this that T responds with his first change-of-state token in this extract. Similarly, T’s question in lines 09–10 contains a candidate answer about how F met her roommate(s), but F’s answer (lines 14–15), following a repair sequence (lines 12–13), while it implies that the candidate answer is incorrect, does not replace it with information about how she met her roommate(s). Again, in the gap that emerges in line 16, F has an opportunity to provide this information, and may be starting to take this opportunity in line 17. T’s next question (line 18) asks for this missing information, this time without a candidate answer. It is only after F overtly rejects the assumption that she knew her roommate previously (lines 20–21) that T marks the information he has received as new information. Finally, it is illuminating to observe the timing of T’s change-of-state tokens in lines 24 and 26. Though it is produced after a fairly long gap in line 22, T’s single ‘oh’ in line 24 claims understanding of what F has said in lines 20–21, that the assumption that she knew her roommate previously is incorrect. The ‘oh just’ in line 26, as it is produced at a point (in overlap with F) where F has not (yet) agreed with P’s formulation, treats P’s formulation (line 23) of the relationship between F and her roommate as correct, and shows recognition that F is in the process of producing this agreement (Jefferson 2004). While T’s questions are genuine, rather than known-information ques-tions, they may also be problematic from F’s perspective. As pointed out by Pomerantz (1988), people who seek information are generally assumed to have some purpose for seeking it and it is on the basis of this assumption that the answerer can decide how to answer. While T does not already know

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 279

the answers to his questions, it may also not be clear to F why he is seeking information about her living arrangements. This may be one reason that F has difficulty answering T’s first and third questions in a manner that T treats as adequate and that F initiates repair on T’s third question. It is also important to note that conversation partners generally (though there are exceptions) do not focus on the linguistic form of students’ talk. This is generally true even when there is a linguistic error, as there is in F’s answer in line 06. (See also Kurhila 2001.) To be linguistically correct, F’s answer should either contain an indefinite article (‘a roommate’) or a plural form (‘roommates’). While this error leads to a temporary misunderstanding on T’s part, as he understands in lines 07 (‘roommates’) and 09 (‘them’) that F has multiple roommates, which is corrected in an embedded fashion (Jefferson 1987) in lines 12 and 14, and while T displays in line 18 that he no longer misunderstands, the linguistic error is not treated by T as something to focus on or topicalize. On the other hand, what they do tend to topicalize is the information that is elicited through serial-questioning. For example, in extract (1), when T learns that F has (a) roommate(s), he uses this information to ask his next question (lines 09–10). Conversation partners not only tend to topicalize such information, they engage in serial-questioning in order to introduce and develop new topics for discussion. In extract (1) above, T’s first question in topically-unrelated to prior talk and subsequent questions in the series help to develop the topic introduced through the first question. Extract (2), a second example of serial-questioning, also shows how this practice is used to introduce and develop a new topic.

Extract 2

01 M: it’s interesting [though yeah?=02 K: [yeah03 M: =(I think it’s) fun04 (1.5)05 M: .n yeah good.06 (0.6)→07 M: .h so do you have any children?08 (0.5)09 E: no: [ha ha10 M: [no children11 E: ha ha ha12 M: °hm::°13 (0.7)→14 M: will you have in the future? or.15 (1.3)16 E: mm::: be- (0.4) before: (0.4) uh:

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


17 (0.7) I don’t want to: ha:ve18 children, [ha ha (.) ha ha ha=19 M: [uhn20 E: =(but) now a little bit.

This extract comes from interaction involving two conversation partners (M and K) and three students, only one of whom (E) produces talk during this part of the interaction. One of the conversation partners asks E two linked questions, first in line 07 and then in line 14. One way that these two questions can be understood as linked is through ellipses (Halliday and Hassan 1976). The object of the verb ‘have’ in the second question is not articulated, but can be understood as the same as in the first question, ‘any children’. Prior to the first question, one of the conversation partners, M, produces three assessments (lines 01, 03 and 05) of something related to the prior topic, a topic that was not related to children. The other conversation partner agrees with the first assessment in line 02. Not only may these assessments be implica-tive of closing down the prior topic (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), but the second assessment is followed by a 1.5 second gap (line 04) and the third by a 0.6 second gap (line 06). These gaps provide the participants with opportunities to continue developing the prior topic or to introduce a new topic, but until M asks E what comes to be the first question of a two-question series, no one takes this opportunity. M then uses his question in line 07 to introduce a new topic. At this point, while M has used a question to introduce a new topic for dis-cussion, he is not yet engaged in serial-questioning. If E were, for example, to answer ‘yes’ or to state that she did not want children, the topic could develop without M engaging in serial-questioning. What actually happens, though, is that E answers the question (line 09) by rejecting the candidate answer (i.e., that she has children) while also treating the question itself as problematic. This can be seen in her delayed response, with the 0.5 second gap in line 08, and in her treating the question as a laughable (Glenn 2003), with her laugh-ter in lines 09 and 11. She does not, however, contribute to the development of the topic introduced by M’s question. For his part, M appears to ignore E’s treatment of his question as problematic, as he does not join her laughter and as, in overlap with the laughter, he responds (line 10) to the content of E’s answer. Following M’s response and the end of E’s laughter, there is an opportunity for the participants to return to the prior topic, continue develop-ment of the current topic (introduced by M’s question), or to introduce a new topic. However, this opportunity is not immediately taken, resulting in a 0.7 second gap (line 13) before M continues the development of current topic by asking his second, linked question. It is at this point that what M is engaged in can be understood as serial-questioning. What M does in this extract is quite

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 281

common in the data. Basically, a conversation partner introduces a new topic through a question, often a relatively personal question, to a student. When a student’s response does not contribute to the development of this topic, the conversation partner produces a second, linked question to pursue this devel-opment, and thus engages in serial-questioning. Whether the asking of a topic-introducing question develops into serial-questioning can be seen as contingent on how the question is answered and on the actions of other participants, as shown in extract (3).

Extract 3

→01 M: you have any children?02 (1.3)03 C: one?04 M: yeah?05 C: yes06 (0.3)07 Y: one daughter?08 C: daughter09 M: daughter?10 C: [yeah11 R: [°(do you have photo)°

In this extract, there is one conversation partner, M, the same conversation partner who asks the questions in extract (2), and three students, C, Y and R. This extract was recorded on a different day from extract (2) and is not the same group. In line 01, M asks a question of one of the students which is very similar to the question that he asked in extract (2). After a rather long gap, C answers the question, somewhat tentatively, with a number (line 03). Rather than engage in serial-questioning, M seeks confirmation of the answer in line 04, which C gives in line 05. Another student, Y, then prompts elaboration of C’s answer in line 07, which C provides in line 08. Once more, M seeks con-firmation in line 09, which C provides in line 10. In overlap with this, another student, R, develops the topic with another question, which can be heard as a request to see a photo of C’s daughter. In this extract, then, the conversation partner introduces a new topic by asking a student a question, which, as with the questions in the extracts above, contains a candidate answer. The student confirms, rather than rejects, the candidate answer, while the other students work to develop the topic. The conversation partner engages in confirmation work, but does not engage in serial-questioning. While conversation partners ask many questions, students also ask ques-tions. As in extract (4), a student’s question can take a topic in a new direction.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


Extract 4

01 M: so you guys gonna have u:h (0.3)02 Japanese food?03 (0.7)04 M: Korean food?05 G: n(h)ot-uh Japanese food.06 L: mm[:07 G: [beef08 (0.9)09 L: beef °s:tew°10 M: °beef stew°11 (0.9)→12 G: ih- is it (.) America:n13 (1.2)14 M: I think so it’s American food=15 ?: =mm::=16 M: =depends how you make it.17 (0.4)18 L: mm:.19 M: cuz curry: (0.5) then it’s not American.20 ?: mm=21 M: =but maybe it’s a- well (0.5) actually 22 there’s no American food.23 ?: °mm°24 M: because (.) American food comes from (0.4)25 everywhere=26 L: =ah yeah

In line 10, the conversation partner M quietly repeats ‘beef stew’, the answer to his question in lines 01–02 and 04, collaboratively produced by the two stu-dents, G and L. Answering this question has been problematic. The first version (lines 01–02), which contains the candidate answer ‘Japanese food’, is not ini-tially answered, resulting in a gap in line 03. M then offers a second candidate answer, ‘Korean food’, in line 04. G then begins to answer, but by rejecting the first candidate (line 05), then saying ‘beef ’ in line 07. Finally, L completes the answer in line 09 with ‘beef stew’, but displays lack of confidence about her choice of the word ‘stew’, stretching part of the word as well as saying it quietly. M’s response in line 10 shows understanding of the words used in the answer, but, produced quietly and without any indication that he takes the answer as being news, does not claim understanding of how ‘beef stew’ is an answer to his question. A possible problem with ‘beef stew’ is that it does not conform to the pattern of candidate answers (i.e., nationality/ethnicity plus ‘food’) that M has provided. G’s question (line 12), addressed to M, displays such an analysis, by

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 283

asking whether ‘it’ is ‘American’. In her design of this question, G also displays that she takes M as being able to understand that ‘it’ refers to ‘beef stew’. M’s answer (line 14) is not produced unproblematically, as there is a long gap in line 13, but he is able to answer it and the discussion develops into talk about ‘American food’. While conversation partners often serially-question students, students do not, at least in the several hours of data that I have examined, serially-question conversation partners or other students. The nearest example of serial-ques-tioning that I could find is the student P’s questioning of the conversation partner T in extract (5).

Extract 5

01 T: or if you are planning to go to you eighch ((UH))02 or kay see see ((KCC)) [then: you can use that=03 P: [mm04 T: =as your TOEFL score.→05 P: oh: (.) there be (0.4) take a test in he:re?06 (0.3)→07 P: [in08 T: [oh in09 (0.3)→10 P: campus?11 T: on upper campus yeah=→12 P: =an’ okay an’ cost about seventeen do:llars?13 (0.6)14 T: just g[o: to the office and [they’ll:15 P: [okay:→16 P: [okay so how: (.)→17 h how well how well the score can we go to the→18 college? (.) go to [you eighch ((UH))?19 T: [oh how well?→20 P: how how (0.7) [like six hundred points?21 T: [uh::22 P: six (sef )=23 T: =no I think it’s five hundred points.=24 P: =five hundred yeah=25 T: =yeah26 (2.7)27 P: I never try

In this extract, P, a student, asks the conversation partner T a series of topically-related questions. The topic is an upcoming opportunity to take the institutional TOEFL, a cheaper version of the TOEFL, the scores from which students may use for entrance to the University of Hawai’i, including associated community

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


colleges. This opportunity is something that T and other students have been discussing when P asks what comes to be her first question in the series in line 05. T starts to answer the question in line 08, but stops as P adds to it in lines 07 and 10. T answers the question (line 11) with a confirmation and a reformula-tion of the place references used in P’s question. P’s next turn starts with ‘and’, indexing a connection between the prior talk and what she is going to say next. She then produces an answer receipt (‘okay’) before producing her next ques-tion, prefaced with a second ‘and’ (line 12). After a gap, T avoids answering the question by telling P where she can get the information she is asking for (line 14). In line 16, P again receipts T’s response with ‘okay’ and then uses ‘so’ to index a connection between the prior talk and what she is going to say next. She then produces her next question in lines 16–18, repairs the place reference in line 18, and adds a candidate answer in line 20. The questions that P asks in this extract are topically-related. They are also action-related, in that through each of them P is oriented to obtaining information about the upcoming opportu-nity to take the institutional TOEFL. Unlike serial-questioning engaged in by conversation partners, though, P’s first question does not introduce a new topic and her subsequent questions are not oriented to the pursuit of topic develop-ment. Rather, they are seeking further pieces of information that P perceives as important and takes T as having. There are important differences, then, between what P is doing in asking this series of questions and what conversa-tion partners do when they engage in serial-questioning. Overall, conversation partners often ask questions, which may be relatively personal questions, and it is not unusual for them to engage in serial-question-ing. The questions they ask are genuine questions, as they do not already know the answer. These questions may be treated by participants as problematic. The conversation partners use questions to introduce new topics and use serial-questioning to develop these topics. Whether conversation partners engage in serial-questioning is contingent on students’ actions, including how they answer a first topic-introducing question. Finally, while serial-questioning is common for conversation partners, students do not engage in it, at least in the data that I have examined.

4 Pivoting

A second feature of conversation partners’ questioning style is pivoting. It involves a conversation partner initiating and managing a shift in the partici-pation framework (Goffman 1981) while maintaining his or her own discourse identity (Zimmerman 1998) as a primary participant, that is, someone who is addressing talk to another or is the addressed recipient of another’s talk. This is accomplished through the formulation of a question, topically tied to the prior

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 285

talk but addressed to a student who has been a peripheral participant. Pivot-ing is one practice through which conversation partners are able to distribute turns among students.1 An example of pivoting can be seen in extract (6).

Extract 6

01 M: an’ what’s your name?02 E: my name is Emiko.03 M: Emiko.04 (0.4)05 M: okay06 E: I’m from in Japan,07 M: from Japan08 (0.4)09 M: okay?10 (1.0)→11 M: and?12 S: my name is Setsuko and I’m from13 (Japan)=14 M: =Setsuko15 S: yes:=16 M: =okay

This extract occurs near the start of the interaction in this group. It is the first time that the conversation partner, M, has met these two students, and he is getting their names. Up through at least line 07, and possibly line 09, the primary participants are M and the student E. In line 11, M initiates a shift in the participation framework by addressing an extremely elliptical question to S (‘and?’), a question which S has no problem understanding. She responds in lines 12–13 and neither M nor E treat this answer as in any way problematic. At this point, the primary participants are M and S. However, while S is a peripheral participant prior to M addressing his question to her, she is also at this point a legitimate listener.2 For S to understand what M is asking in line 11, it is necessary for her to understand how ‘and?’ is topically tied to what has come before, to understand that M is asking S for the same information that he has just finished obtaining from E. S has a motivation to listen to the talk being produced by the current primary participants (Sacks 1995, Fall 1967, Lecture 11), since she is a peripheral participant who may, through a shift in the par-ticipation framework initiated through the pivoting action of the conversation partner, become a primary participant. In addition, M, through treating ‘and?’ as adequate for obtaining from S the same sort of information about her that he has just obtained from E, displays that he expects that S has been listening. A second example of pivoting is shown in extract (7)

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


Extract 7

01 T: yeah (0.6) especially like in02 Hawaii it’s really easy to do that.03 T: [cuz there’s a lot of Japanese=04 F: [right05 T: =[[people.06 F: [[°(yeah)°07 (1.0)08 T: how ‘bout you (.) Boram (0.7) you09 speak Korean and stuff? outside?10 (1.0)11 B: (yep) (2.0) uh (0.7) but (0.9)12 (at scone) my classmate. (0.4)13 (is). (.) Japanese (0.3) so I have14 to (0.4) I have to speak English.

At the start of this extract, the conversation partner T is responding to some-thing the student F has said about the importance of trying to use English, rather than her first language, Japanese. The primary participants at this point are T and F. However, following the 1.0 second gap in line 07, T shifts the participation framework by asking a topically-related question to the other participant in this group, the student B. As T, F and B are the only participants in this group, it is clear that the pronoun ‘you’ in the first part of the question (line 08) refers to B, not F, and that the question is addressed to her. That the question is addressed to B is made more overt with the addition of B’s name following this question. Finally, in the latter part of the question in line 09, T asks whether B uses ‘Korean’ ‘outside’, which shows that this question is designed for B, the only Korean member of this group. Through the use of his question in lines 08 and 09, T pivots between the two student participants, shifting the participation framework from F and T as the primary participants to B and T as the primary participants and thus distributing turns-at-talk among the student participants. However, extract (8) shows that pivoting does not always come off so smoothly. This extract also shows that the conversation partner is paying attention to the import of a student’s answer.

Extract 8

→01 M: =how ‘bout in (.) Japanese students?02 R: oh: (0.3) same as (.) Korean but03 (0.4) I thi:nk (0.6) Korean people04 (0.3) much more [drink.05 Y: [mm

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 287

06 Y: mm I think so:07 R: (than Japanese)08 M: more than Japanese.09 R: yeah

In this extract, M is a conversation partner and Y and R, along with another participant, are students. Y and this other participant are both Korean and R is Japanese. Prior to this extract, the participants have been discussing, extendedly and in detail, the heavy drinking habits claimed by Y and the other Korean to be common among students in Korea. This topic was introduced by Y and the primary participants throughout most of the prior discussion have been Y and M. M’s question in line 01 is clearly addressed to R, as it asks about ‘Japanese students’, which R can be presumed to be more knowledgeable about than either of the Korean participants (cf. Lerner 2003). M is using the question to shift the participation framework from himself and Y as primary participants to himself and R as primary participants. However as R finishes her answer, Y responds in lines 05–06, with this response containing a claim of agreement (line 06), while M holds off responding until line 08. One thing to note is that R starts her answer (lines 02–04) with a change-of-state token ‘oh’. Heritage (1998) shows how ‘oh’ prefaced responses to ques-tions may show that there is some trouble with the question, such as that the answer is obvious or that the question is inappropriate. R’s use of ‘oh’ here is not exactly the same as the ‘oh’ prefaced responses analyzed by Heritage, as it is separated from what follows by a pause, but it does appear to index that R finds a change of focus necessary for her to answer. In her answer, after stating that Japanese students are ‘the same’, R shifts the focus back to Koreans by claiming that Koreans drink ‘much more’ than Japanese. This creates a delicate situa-tion for M. Having asked a Japanese a question about ‘Japanese students’, this Japanese has answered by making a claim about Koreans, in the presence of two Koreans, which could be taken as negatively stereotyping Koreans. Were M to either agree with or reject this claim, he would be intruding on epistemic territory claimable by the two Koreans, while an agreement would also be an agreement with a possibly negative stereotype. Were he to respond to it as new information, he would be taking R as having the epistemic authority to make (possibly negative) claims about Koreans, in the presence of Koreans. However, in agreeing with R, first minimally and in overlap in line 05 and then more substantially and in the clear in line 06, Y lends her epistemic authority, as one of the two present Koreans, to what R has said. M then responds (line 08) following R’s addition to her answer (line 07). Here, as a result of how R answers M’s pivoting question, the conversation partner’s move to shift the participation framework from himself and Y as the primary participants to himself and R as the primary participants is not brought off unproblematically.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


Pivoting on the part of the conversation partners is extremely common in the conversation club interaction. Through it, conversation partners can bring students who are not currently primary participants more fully into the interaction, though with the result that it may then push other students to the periphery. Though students could perform actions that rendered them primary participants, as with P’s question in line 05 of extract (5), pivoting was not observed in the talk of students.

5 Maintaining and reestablishing discourse identity as

primary participant

As discussed in the introduction, at any given point in the interaction the conversation partners tend to be one of the primary participants (Goffman 1981). This is clearly the case when they are engaged in serial-questioning or pivoting. There are times, though, when a conversation partner’s discourse identity (Zimmerman 1998) as primary participant seems to be insecure. At these times, the conversation partner may do specific work to maintain or re-establish this identity. For example, at the start of extract (9), the conversation partner not only is not a primary participant in the participation framework of the conversation club group, he has moved out of the interaction with the students altogether.

Extract 9

01 R: .hh (wait) do you speak (0.4)02 English in (.) at ho:me?03 (0.7)04 Y: no.05 R: mm06 Y: yeah [my my father and my mother=07 R: [but08 Y: =ha .h never speak Engli(h)sh ha ha09 C: ha ha ha ha ha10 R: but (.) [but (.) your fah (0.3)=→10' M: [yeah (0.4) kay11 R: =father is American:?=12 Y: =yeah is a just-uh (0.6) ha ha ha ha13 ha .hh yeah just get a14 (citilinship) yeah citi [zen what=15 R: [mm16 Y: =is a civilization? .h (0.6) yeah17 just is a American ci- (0.4)18 civilist (0.6) what is it.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 289

19 R: ( )20 (0.6)21 Y: yeah [is a (0.3) can speak English=→21' M: [(yeah alright)22 Y: =is a little (0.4) [just23 R: [mm24 (1.0)25 R: [mm:→26 M: [who you mother?27 Y: yeah→28 M: oh: so your fah but your father can→29 speak (0.3) Korean.30 (0.4)31 Y: yes.32 R: [(mm:)→33 M: [oh so they speak Korean together.34 (2.0)→35 M: how did they meet

Through line 24 of this extract, two students, R and Y, are the primary par-ticipants, while the one conversation partner in this group is talking with a member of the school administration about business unrelated to the conver-sation club. (There is another student participant, C, but his only contribution is laughter at line 09.) In the talk that he produces at 10' and 21', simultane-ously with talk by R and Y in lines 10 and 21, M is responding to what this member of the administration is telling him. For their part, neither R nor Y treat M’s talk as addressed to any of the student participants in this group or as in competition with their talk. In line 26, M uses a question to re-enter the interaction with this group. Rather than re-enter through the periphery, he immediately re-establishes himself as a primary participant, as the one who is addressing talk to Y and who is the addressee of Y’s talk, thus pushing R to the periphery. He does this by asking Y who she is talking about (line 26), taking advantage of the gap in line 24 to place his question. He continues this re-establishment as a primary participant by formulating two upshots of what M believes Y to have told him about her mother (lines 28–29 and 33) and asking a new question about Y's parents (line 35). M’s question at line 26 is an effective tool for re-establishing a discourse identity as primary participant. The conversation partners are not always primary participants, but they do work to maintain and, when necessary, re-establish this identity. Taking on a discourse identity as primary participant, and working to maintain it, the conversation partners fulfill their responsibility to engage the students in discussion in English.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


6 Conclusion

Unlike in more formal institutional contexts, in the conversation club turns are not pre-allocated and participants are not restricted to certain turn types. Students may, for example, ask questions and respond to other students’ answers to a conversation partner’s questions. The interaction is thus similar to mundane conversation. Still, it can be considered institutional interaction, as the conversation partners use the resources of interaction in the pursuit of institutionally-relevant goals. One of these resources is the asking of ques-tions, which the conversation partners use to introduce and develop topics, to distribute turns among students, and when necessary, to reestablish their discourse identity as primary participant. Questions are thus a useful resource for conversation partners to fulfill their institutionally-relevant responsibility to engage the students in discussion in English. The interaction in the conver-sation club can be considered a type of nonformal institutional interaction. It is not as distinct from mundane conversation as are, for example, emergency 911 calls, trial (cross-) examination, certain types of classroom interaction, or news interviews. Much of the talk is goal-directed, but the interaction can also be described as quasi-conversational (Drew and Heritage 1992). In this paper, I have focused not just on questions but, more specifically, on the conversation partners’ use of questions. While the conversation partners are not teachers at the school or part of the school administration, they have been hired by the school to talk with students in the conversation club and are thus representatives of the institution which sponsors the conversation club. If the focus were different, if, for example, the focus were on how students asked questions of the conversation partners and/or other students, the interaction may come to appear less directed toward institutionally-relevant goals and more like mundane conversation. It needs to be recognized that the character-ization of the conversation club interaction as nonformal institutional interac-tion, while not inaccurate, is nevertheless a partial characterization.

Notes1. The term pivot has been used differently in other conversation analytic work

(e.g., Schegloff 1979; Scheutz 2005). This other use refers to a pivot as a sound, word, or phrase which is projected by the turn-so-far and which forms the start of what follows, when what follows the pivot has not been projected by the turn-so-far up to and including the pivot. The following example is from Schegloff (1979: 275): ‘DON’T SAY that I’m exa- just say I’m a liar.’ Here, the ‘j’ sound that is due to follow ‘exa-‘, to form ‘exaggerating’, is the first sound of ‘just’. In addition, Jefferson (1981) labels as a ‘Pivot’ the use of a word (e.g., ‘Right?’) between two more substantial components of a single turn, ‘marking

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 291

that a prior component was point-laden, and prefacing a next component which brings home the point’ (61). Finally, Tanaka (2001) uses the term ‘pivotal device’ as well as ‘pivot’ to describe the use of the Japanese complementizer or quotative particle to for the ‘post-hoc modification of … prior talk’ the effect of which is ‘to mitigate, if not to practically undo, the actions of the original turn’ (89–90). That is, to acts as a pivot around which the action of prior talk can be retroactively modified.

2. In using terms such as ‘peripheral participant’ and ‘legitimate listener’, it is not my intention to connect the analysis with theoretical concepts from situated learning theory such as legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger 1991).

About the authorEric Hauser received his PhD in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Hawai’i and is currently an associate professor at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan, and member of the Affiliate Graduate Faculty of the University of Hawai’i. Address for correspondence: Building E1-614, University of Electro-Communications, Chofu Gaoka, Chofu-shi, Tokyo, Japan, 182-8585. Email: [email protected]

ReferencesArminen, I. (2005). Institutional Interaction: Studies of Talk at Work. Surrey: Ashgate.

Atkinson, J. M. and Drew, P. (1979). Order in Court: The Organisation of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings. London: Macmillan.

Butler, C. W. (2008). Talk and Social Interaction in the Playground. Surrey: Ashgate.

Clayman, S. and Heritage, J. (2002). The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drew, P. (1992). Contested evidence in courtroom cross-examination: The case of a trial for rape. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, 470–520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (1992). Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Erickson, F. (2004). Talk and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Glenn, P. (2003). Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142


Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heritage, J. (1998). Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society 27: 291–334.

Heritage, J. and Clayman, S. (2010). Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Heritage, J. and Greatbatch, D. (1991). On the institutional character of institutional talk: The case of news interviews. In D. Boden and D. H. Zimmerman (eds) Talk and Social Structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, 93–137. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Hutchby, I. (1996). Confrontation Talk: Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power on Talk Radio. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hutchby, I. (2007). The Discourse of Child Counselling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Jefferson, G. (1981). The abominable Ne?: An exploration of post-response pursuit of response. In Jahrbuch 1980 des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache, 53–88. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann.

Jefferson, G. (1987). On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In G. Button and J. R. E. Lee (eds) Talk and Social Organization, 86–100. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Kasper, G. (2004). Participant orientations in conversation-for-learning. Modern Language Journal 88 (4): 551–567.

Kurhila, S. (2001). Correction in talk between native and non-native speakers. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (6): 1083–1110.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lerner, G. H. (2003). Selecting next speaker: The context-sensitive operation of a context-free organization. Language in Society 32 (2): 177–201.

McHoul, A. (1978). The organization of turns at formal talk in the classroom. Language in Society 7 (2): 183–213.

Mehan, H. (1979). Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mori, J. (2003). The construction of interculturality: A study of initial encounters between Japanese and American students. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36 (2): 143–184.

Pomerantz, A. (1988). Offering a candidate answer: An information seeking strategy. Communication Monographs 55: 360–373.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

eric hauser 293

Rampton, B. (2006). Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sacks, H. (1995). Lectures on Conversation, Volumes I and II. Oxford: Blackwell.

Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givon (ed) Syntax and Semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax, 261–286. New York: Academic Press.

Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some questions and ambiguities in conversation. In J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, 28–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schegloff, E. A. and Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica 8 (2): 289–327.

Scheutz, H. (2005). Pivot constructions in spoken German. In A. Hakulinen and M. Selting (eds) Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-Interaction, 103–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Tanaka, H. (2001). The implementation of possible cognitive shifts in Japanese conversation: Complementizers as pivotal devices. In M. Selting and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Studies in Interactional Linguistics, 81–109. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Zimmerman, D. H. (1992). The interactional organization of calls for emergency assistance. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, 418–469. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zimmerman, D. H. (1998). Identity, context and interaction. In C. Antaki and S. Widdicombe (eds) Identities in Talk, 87–106. London: Sage Publications.

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142

nonformal institutional interaction in a conversation club: conversation partners’ questions

Documents