By Rosario Neyra & Minttu Vänttinen
(With collaboration by Yumei Gan, Marina Cantarutti, Taiane Malabarba, and Cynthia Hicban)
Welcome back to our Day 2 roundup of the International Conference on Conversation Analysis, which has been just as exciting as the beginning of the week! Thanks to our reporters at the conference, those of us who cannot participate on site have been able to enjoy at least a part of the excitement from afar. So, welcome to our daily report of ICCA 2023!
The Zoom call
Kickstarting the day while most attendees were probably downing their morning brew, at 8 am in Brisbane, ISCA held a Zoom meetup for members not attending the conference physically. A virtual face-to-face that gave them a chance to get up to speed on Day 1’s happenings and ask any burning questions. It’s the next best thing to being there… almost.
Figure 1. (Photo by Yumei Gan)
The plenary
The official conference day began with a plenary by Xiaoting Li titled “The Social Organization of Touch”. In this talk, described as “awesome” by Zehui Weng and as demonstrating “the beauty of CA and the beauty of Chinese language” by Li Chen, Xiaoting Li showcased the kinesic features and spatial-orientational organisation of touch in Mandarin interaction. Specifically, the functions of brief touch in requesting engagement in intercepting sequences and indexing intimacy were discussed. See this thread by Verein für Gesprächsforschung, for example, to read more about the plenary.
Figure 2. Xiaoting Li giving the plenary speech. (Photo by Yumei Gan.)
Day 2 panel sessions
With 11 panel sessions, 8 general sessions, and over 100 presentations, Day 2 was packed with exciting content. We could surely write a whole book (or several!) about today, but here are some of the highlights from our on-the-ground reporters.
Today’s sessions brought a diverse range of topics, ranging from interactional histories (panel by Deppermann & Haddington), to manual know-how in interaction (panel by Lilja & Piirainen-Marsh), to the institutional realities of Latin America (panel by Gonzalez-Temer, Vázquez Carranza & Olguin). Our FOMO was definitely not alleviated by the impressive list of fascinating panel topics (and the presentations in them): sensoriality (Mondada), conversations about death (Ekberg & Pino), health in interaction (Huma & Sneijder), innovative institutional contexts (Hauser & Rue). And if that did not make you dizzy enough, here’s more: preference organisation (Haugh & Pillet-Shore), repetitions as responsive actions (Sorjonen & Bolden), disfluency (Takagi & Morita), and school children’s argumentation (Luginbühl)! I guess we who stayed at home were lucky for not having to choose from all the amazing options!
The breadth of topics shows just how big a field conversation analysis has become. We have been overwhelmed by all the tweets coming in from the site and by seeing glimpses of all the intriguing presentations. It has also been heart-warming to witness all the efforts by so many on-site participants who have generously shared their experiences with the EMCA community.
Snapshots of Day 2:
Figure 3. Photo himako Iwasaki presented in the panel Sensoriality in Social Interaction. (Photo by Cynthia Hicban.)
Figure 4. Pentti Haddington presented about longitudinal CA in the panel Interactional Histories and Conversation Analysis. (Original photo by Taiane Malabarba.)
Figure 5. Elwys de Stefani presented on other-repetitions in the panel Repetitions as/in responsive actions across different languages. (Original photo by Marina Cantarutti.)
Lunch and meeting the Profs
The lunch hour buzzed with excitement as delegates were not only able to enjoy a delicious meal, but also had an opportunity to interact and learn during a “Meet the Prof” session, which included Jonathan Potter, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Hansum Waring, Simone-Pekarek-Doehler and Ann Weatherall.
Cocktails at GOMA
To round the day off, delegates headed to the cocktail party at the Gallery of Modern Art. Ilana Mushin shared on Twitter this photo of the busy room with everyone looking very swanky. According to Søren Sandager Sørensen, there has also been some Cha-cha-chaing going on. How we wish we could be there!
We hope they all had a wonderful time and can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!