Call for papers: Social Action Formats, Oulu, Finland 17-19 May 2011

[Elise Kärkkäinen]

(apologies for cross-postings)

CALL FOR PAPERS

International workshop "Social Action Formats: Conversational Patterns in Embodied Face-to-Face Interaction"
University of Oulu, Finland, 17-19 May 2011

Website: <http://www.oulu.fi/hutk/english/SAF/Workshop/index.html>
Email: SAF2011 (at) oulu.fi

Recently, conversation analysis and other related areas of research have begun to pay serious attention to interaction as fully material and embodied (cf. ICCA10 conference theme "Multimodal Interaction"). We welcome presentations to this international workshop that examine language and body behavior together as complementary aspects of talk-in-interaction, examining how speakers deploy the grammatical, lexico-semantic, prosodic, and embodied practices (gestures, head shakes, gaze and the body) in the moment-by-moment construction of situated social actions (cf. M. Goodwin 1980, C. Goodwin 2000). On this view, language is not an autonomous (grammatical) system, but a set of practices and resources within the sequential organization of social interaction. 

The workshop specifically aims to explore the notion of 'social action formats', or conversational patterns for routinely enacting particular activities and actions in interaction (Fox 2000, 2007, Ford et al. 2003, Couper-Kuhlen and Thompson 2005, 2008, Curl 2006). Social action formats can be broadly understood as recurrent conversational patterns or turn-constructional formats which originate in the interactional needs of participants in talk-in-interaction, and in which language and embodiment may be variously present. We invite presentations that explore social action formats within and across languages and cultures, by focusing on the complex relations among grammatical form, sequential organization and embodiment.

Presenters will have either: 

30 minutes for a presentation and 10 minutes for discussion or 40 minutes for a data session: presentation/discussion of research and data

The workshop format allows for in-depth exploration of data by the invited speakers, the presenters, and the audience.

The workshop has two invited speakers: 

Professor Cecilia Ford (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Professor Barbara Fox (University of Colorado)

Their extensive research on language and social interaction provide a foundation for much current work on positionally sensitive linguistic and embodied practices.

The theoretical starting points to naturally occurring interaction in different settings may include conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, multimodal interaction analysis, and related fields of study that use video recordings of social interactions as their data. 

Possible topics for papers include (but are not limited to) the following:
- What are conversational patterns or 'social action formats'? How can we identify and define them? 
- Do we begin with language (and traditional linguistic and grammatical categories) or with social action when searching for conversational patterns in interaction? 
- What are the limits of social action formats and their relationship to units such as intonation units, clauses, or constructions with varying degrees of open and fixed slots?
- How do the different modalities and the material world figure in the construction of social action formats at the level of single and extended turns at talk? 
- Are there formats which are constructed only through embodied action?
- Does embodiment extend over sequences of social actions and how? If it does, what are the implications for the participants and the organization of interaction?

Participation
Proposals for papers or data sessions should be submitted as abstracts of about 500 words, including bibliographic references, diagrams and tables. The proposals should be sent as email attachments to <SAF2011 (at) oulu.fi> by 31 January 2011. Please include the name and affiliation of author(s) and the title of the paper in the abstract. Authors will be notified about acceptance by mid-February 2011.

Important deadlines
31 January 2011 - Deadline for the submission of proposals mid-February 2011 - Information about the decisions of the review process
17-19 May 2011 - International workshop

Venue
Conference center Lasaretti <http://www.lasaretti.com/Front_Page/Conference>

Registration fees
There will be no registration fee for the workshop. 

Organizing committee
Project "Social Action Formats" <http://www.oulu.fi/hutk/english/SAF/index.html>
Elise Kärkkäinen
Tiina Keisanen
Marika Sutinen

For further questions please contact the organizers at SAF2011 (at) oulu.fi

References
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Sandra Thompson 2005. A linguistic practice for retracting overstatements: 'Concessive repair'. In Hakulinen, Auli and Margret Selting (eds.), Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the use of linguistic resources in talk-in-interaction. 257-288. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Sandra Thompson 2008. On assessing situations and events in conversation: 'Extraposition' and its relatives. Discourse Studies 10(4): 443-467.
Curl Traci 2006. Offers of assistance: Constraints on syntactic design. Journal of Pragmatics 38(8), 1257-1280.
Ford, Cecilia, Barbara Fox and Sandra Thompson 2003. Social interaction and grammar. In Tomasello, M. (ed.). The new psychology of language. Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure, 119-144. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. 
Fox, Barbara 2000. Micro-syntax in conversation. Paper presented at the Interactional Linguistics Conference, Spa. 
Fox, Barbara 2007. Principles shaping grammatical practices: an exploration. Discourse Studies 9(3): 299-318.
Goodwin, Charles 2000. Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1489-1522.
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness 1980. Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 303-317.

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Elise Kärkkäinen
PhD, University Lecturer, Docent
English Philology, Faculty of Humanities
Box 1000
FIN-90014 University of Oulu
FINLAND
http://cc.oulu.fi/~elise/
tel. +358-8-553 3283, fax +358-8-553 3275
mobile +358-44-5547 592
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