Conversation Analysts in Conversation: Anita Pomerantz

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.

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Intercultural Reflections on Publishing a CA Textbook in Spanish

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.

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Members Forum Newsletter #8 Feb 2022

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.

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Trajectories of Love: Embodied Negotiations over Physical Togetherness in Romantic Relationships

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.

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Orientations to accountability through address forms: the case of Persian V-pronoun addressing an intimate co-interactant

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’.

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Members Forum Newsletter #7 Nov 2021

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.

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III EnACE Conference Report

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.

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H.U.M.A.N. Data Session Report

Hacettepe University Micro Analysis Network (HUMAN) – based in Hacettepe University, Turkey – was founded by Dr. Olcay Sert, Dr. Ufuk Balaman (current director), Dr. Nilüfer Can-Daşkın (current vice director), and Dr. Safinaz Büyükgüzel in 2015. Being the first conversation analytic community in Turkey, The HUMAN Research Centre aims to explore social interactions in various ordinary and institutional settings by (mainly) using conversation analytical framework. In addition to regular events such as the Reading Group and HUMANtalks, HUMAN members also hold weekly CA data sessions (in English or Turkish) every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. for six years.

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“How do the rest of us look at it?” – A Meta-report on Happy Data Session in China

By Enhua Guo

Data sessions are an essential means of doing being a member of the CA community, and more importantly, a means to increase the validity and reliability of the research findings. In China, only a very small number of universities and research institutes conduct in-person CA data sessions on a regular basis, including Shanxi University, Ocean University of China, Shandong University, etc. Unfortunately, the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 brought them all to an abrupt halt. However, the passion and need among Chinese CA scholars for data sessions persisted through Covid-19. It was this unstoppable academic zeal in the time of Covid that catalysed the birth of the CA webinar of Happy Data Session in China (HDS).

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