37.2852, FYI: Call for Papers: Formulating Times and Places in Interaction: Action, Sequence, and Turn Design

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2852. Tue Sep 08 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2852, FYI: Call for Papers: Formulating Times and Places in Interaction: Action, Sequence, and Turn Design

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Date: 08-Sep-2026
From: Shuangshuang Chen [chen_ss at fudan.edu.cn]
Subject: Call for Papers: Formulating Times and Places in Interaction: Action, Sequence, and Turn Design


Formulating Times and Places in Interaction: Action, Sequence, and
Turn Design
Submission Deadline (Abstracts): 31 October 2026
Theme
Since Sacks’s lectures and Schegloff’s subsequent publications on the
subject, references to persons, times and places have become a topic
of abiding interest in conversation analysis (Sacks 1992; Sacks &
Schegloff 1979; Schegloff 1972, 1996). For Sacks, far from being
merely alternative ways of describing “the same thing”, formulations
of persons, times, places and events are inextricably tied to ongoing
actions and the interactional goals that participants happen to be
pursuing in the moment. In one of Sacks’s memorable data clips, where
the speaker tells a story about her witnessing a “gosh-awful” car
accident, a particular spot on the highway where the accident occurred
was described as “on the way home”. Sacks’s laconic but sharp
observation on this place formulation was: “Which is to say, [the
accident] occurred in the course of [the speaker’s] actions” (Sacks
1992: 770).
Subsequent work by Schegloff and others has investigated person
references in different languages and settings. However, with a few
notable exceptions (e.g., Raymond and White 2022; Buscariolli 2023),
much less attention has been paid to place and time formulations. The
aim of this Special Issue is to fill this gap by focusing on time and
place formulations and the diverse ways in which these are used in
conversational interaction to advance projects and activities.
References to times and places constitute a fundamental resource for
organizing social action in interaction. In conversational
interactions, speakers routinely draw on time and place expressions to
coordinate activities, manage participation, and establish shared
contextual understanding. Rather than serving merely referential
functions, time and place formulations are deeply embedded in the
design of turns and the organization of sequences and are closely tied
to the formation and ascription of social actions.
With this Call for Papers we invite contributions that examine time
and place formulations as interactional practices in different
settings, with particular attention to their role in action formation,
sequence organization, and turn design. The Special Issue will
showcase in-depth investigations of how time and place references are
introduced, oriented to, negotiated, or repaired, and how their design
is shaped by the occasion and its local contingencies.
References
Buscariolli, André (2023)  Place formulations and the incongruity
procedure: On police officers’ practices for assembling appearances of
wrongdoing. Discourse Studies 25.5: 598–617.
Raymond, Chase W. and Anne E.C. White (2022)  On the recognitionality
of references to time in social interaction. Language & Communication
83: 1-15.
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Volumes I & II. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing.
Sacks, H. & E. A. Schegloff (1979) Two preferences in the organization
of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In
Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, George Psathas (ed.),
15-21. New York: Irvington Publishers.
Schegloff, E.A. (1972) Notes on a conversational practice: formulating
place. In Studies in Social Interaction, David N. Sudnow (ed.),
75-119. New York: Free Press.
Schegloff, E.A. (1996) Some practices for referring to persons in
talk-in-interaction: A partial sketch of a systematics. In Studies in
Anaphora, Barbara Fox (ed.), Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Possible topics
We welcome contributions based on naturally occurring data from
different languages, cultures, and interactional settings. Possible
topics include, but are not limited to:
- temporal reference as an interactional resource;
- spatial reference, deixis, and perspective-taking;
- indexicality and the occasionedness of time and place expressions;
- time and palce formulations and recipient design;
- temporal and spatial formulations in institutional interactions;
- embodied practices and multimodal resources in spatial and temporal
reference;
- the grammar of time and place formulations and its grounding in
interaction;
- cross-linguistic and inter-cultural observations in temporal and
spatial formulations.
Information on Submission
This proposed special issue is intended for submission to a leading
international journal in language and social interaction. The special
issue will follow the journal’s standard open call and peer-review
procedures. All submissions will be subject to editorial assessment
and peer review.
Authors interested in contributing are invited to submit an extended
abstract of approximately 1000 words outlining:
- the research question(s) and theoretical motivation;
- the linguistic and interactional data;
- the analytical approach and major findings;
- the paper’s contribution to broader research on the uses of time and
place formulations in interaction.
The abstract should show a sample or two of the data that form the
backbone of the study. Please include:
- author name(s);
- affiliation(s);
- email address(es);
- tentative title of the paper.
Submission deadline: 31 October, 2026
Contact
Prof. K. K. Luke
Nanyang Technological University
Email: kkluke at ntu.edu.sg
Dr. Shuangshuang Chen
Fudan University
Email: chen_ss at fudan.edu.cn

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                     Pragmatics

Subject Language(s): English (eng, stan1293)




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