Issues in Applied Linguistics

AA meetings are an arena of mutual help for recovering substance abusers. They are characteristically formal interactions in which turns are pre-allocated to parties. Through the analysis of audio-recordings of interactions, I have shown that the formality of interaction is members' collaborative achievement. The opening rituals of a meeting are members' method to mark the boundary between muruiane talk and the specific institutional sphere so that parties may move from conversational turn-taking to formally arranged turn-taking. As a collaborative achievement, the format of meeting interaction is an enabling structure that allows parties to design their turns so that they may talk into being the institution of mutual help. Participants orient to the pre-allocated time-slots as cm aspect of the format of AA meeting interaction that allows them to construct their turns in collaboration with recipients. AA members use the specific format of their meeting interaction to share their experiences and to establish egalitarian relationships with each other.

The present article focuses on the distribution of participation in family interaction involving young children (3-5 years old). Adopting a purely qualitative method of analysis, we show instances of family dinnertime conversations in which children appeared banned from participation, while they are the topic of the ongoing talk. We have called " backstage interaction, " sequences adjacent to those in which the child is involved, and within her/his auditory range, so that the child projected participation role alternates between that of addressee and overhearer. We argue that the "backstage talk" in the child's presence has the main effect of casting the current interaction with the child as a representation, in Goffman's terms (1959). Though, the child is left the opportunity to enter again the conversation: the person involved is interested in layering the selfs/he exposed, offering the child a "fictional self to interact with, thus preserving their face from the incumbent threat of the child's impoliteness or embarrassing "spontaneity".

This paper examines the relationship between micro and macro perspectives on the organization of participation structure, and considers how both perspectives can be useful to the ethnographer of interaction. It suggests that understandings of the organization of participation may be considered forms of tacit knowledge, or cultural schemas, which may differ cross-culturally. Examples are drawn from a study of Navajo preschool, and supported by a substantial body of classroom ethnography in other Native American communities. I argue that participation structure at the macro level of speech event is largely negotiated through and dependent upon cultural schemas for participation structure at the micro level of interaction.

Attention to multi-party' talk has revealed that shifts in participation frameworks can be used to serve social functions in interaction. This paper gives a sequential analysis of a videotaped interaction from an organizational meeting, where participants use a particular interactional exchange to display and even create the personal relationships that exist between them. This is done by using a particular participation framework in what I call a triadic exchange in accomplishing particular social acts that are potentially face-threatening. I argue that this display contributes to how in-group membership is developed in these organizations. The use of triadic exchanges makes public the display of the participants' relationships to each other, making participation more accessible to a general audience and building in-group memberships that can develop over time through interaction.

This article investigates the directives and responses used in a tea ceremony demonstration lesson in Japanese. It moves beyond the talk of the lesson and incorporates explanations of the gestures into the analyses. Among the responses to the directives, there are occasional breakdowns of intersubjectivity. When the teacher chooses to deal with the breakdowns, her spoken turns resemble third position repair from conversation analysis. These repair turns are accompanied by gestures, which become a critical component in the achievement of understanding within this embodied activity.