UCLA

This dissertation takes an ethnomethodologically-grounded, conversation-analytic approach in investigating the sequential deployment of linguistic resources in Spanish-language talk-in-interaction. Three sets of resources are examined: 2nd-person singular reference forms (tú, vos, usted), indicative/subjunctive verbal mood selection, and Spanish-English intersentential code-switching. In each case, we ask: How is it that these elements of language are mobilized by speakers to accomplish identity in the service of social action in interaction?

With regard to 2nd-person reference forms, we illustrate how the turn-by-turn progression of talk can make relevant shifts in the linguistic means through which speakers refer to their hearers. It is demonstrated that these shifts contribute to the objective of an utterance by mobilizing the pragmatic meaning of a pronominal form to embody a recalibration of who the interactants project they are to one another--not in general, but rather at a particular moment in the ongoing interaction.

In the case of verbal mood selection, we analyze the production of indicative (realis) vs. subjunctive (irrealis) morphology in syntactic constructions that license the use of either mood. It is argued that accounts of verbal mood selection which are based solely on individual-level cognitive realities fall short of explaining the moment-by-moment, dialogic production of morphology in sequences of naturalistic social interaction.

Finally, in examining Spanish-English code-switching practices, we posit a parallel between language discordance and other sorts of nonconforming responsive utterances, arguing that code-switching in second position claims epistemic independence or primacy with regard to the knowledge invoked in the prior turn. Like repetitional responses in monolingual talk-in-interaction, code-switched turns in second position make a structural break with the language terms, constraints, and expectations set up by the first position turn, and thus they agentively resist the design of that previous turn to (re)assert their rights to the knowledge in question.

Through the systematic analysis of this diverse array of interactional resources, it is argued that the deployment of linguistic structure is an integral component of how human identities are (re-)created--in and through social interaction with others. By grounding our inquiry in what Harold Garfinkel referred to as "members' resources" for producing and recognizing action, we are able to reconceptualize identity as a sequentially-conditioned, malleable, and collaborative achievement between co-participants in talk. The dissertation as a whole thus actively problematizes the commonly held sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic views of speaker identities and situated contexts as immutable constructs, and instead argues in favor of more micro-level conceptualizations of these phenomena as emergent features of the moment-by-moment discourse being co-constructed through the deployment of linguistic structure.