Schegloff, “Formulating Place”
Grammaticality – structural well formedness
Felicity – Appropriateness to context
Location Analysis – co presence, commonsense geography to where we are in location
Membership Analysis – only using names that you expect that person to know, not by “kayli’s
house” but by this street name
Activity Analysis – the purpose of the talk to determine if certain terms are appropriate
Observation Analysis – location of participants, membership, conversation goals
Adjacency Pairs (say or do something, a response is required)
Question – answer
Someone asks a question; the person gives some sort of answer. Not just silence
Vocative (address by name) Calls someone out, the person responds or makes a sign (eye-contact)
Greeting Saying hi back or giving a sign of recognition
Conversational Universals
● 200 millisecond turn switches (the response time in a normal conversation)
● Yes/No Questions
Conversation machine
Cooperative activity – joint action
Social cognition – attunement to what others think, feel, mean, trying to do
Moral commitment to the “with” we are in (making things smooth, preserving participants face
● Not saying goodbye makes you feel bad, as not holding up end of bargain
Assumption of relevance ● Why this now?
● Relevance of delay (willing/ less willing)
○ Traffic Signals (um, uh, cough, pause, breath, throat clearing, silence)
○ Reggeized Use – all understand the delays as a delayer that brings focus to
what comes next
○ Continuers – coordination among participants that continues the
conversation but is hidden from view. ex. Mhm hm (not transcribed, but it’s
there in speech)
○ Participant Observation – person is the probe (listening with different ears)
Cross-Cultural Miscommunication
● Relationship between ethnicity and conversation style because ways of speaking are
learned from those around us as we grow up
● Style is added on
● Interational Dynamics - (one type is schismogenesis –creation of differences
between one another))
○ People have ways to get along with each other based on their similarities
○ Looking at miscommunication as a process
○ Complementary: divergent responses maintain asymmetry (space between
people) ex. Park bench scooting to maintain space/asymmetry until falls off
ex. Mansplaining, reiterating the same thing over
○ Symmetrical: create intensification ex. Tannen’s co-stylistic interchange (arms
war or two people continuing to talk over each other) adding on, not
maintain
● New York Jewish Conversational Style – gives info on how to get the floor on
introducing and being persistent on topics, stories as a genre and emotional, pacing
as avoiding pauses and turn-taking, and expressive paralinguistics as pitch and
amplitude shifts.
○ Latching – leaving as little of space as possible between speech
● Conversation as a moral enterprise
○ Emotional/aesthetic experience to create a smooth and successful
conversation based on their own preferences and person that they are
○ Linguistic Stereotyping to linguistic insecurity
■ Getting judged for own type of speech to trying to “fix” speech to fit
in
■ Caution about change – what type of speech is the “right one”