School of Communication 452: Interaction and Gender
Wayne A. Beach
Professor, School of Communication
ST 201A; 594-4948
Office Hours: (10-11:30/W, and by appointment)
wbeach@mail.sdsu.edu
Adjunct Professor, Department of Surgery
Member, Moores Cancer Center
University of California, San Diego
http://www.rohan.sdsu.edu/~wbeach/index.htm
http://advancement.sdsu.edu/marcomm/features/2008/cancer.html
http://psfa.sdsu.edu/faculty.php
School of Communication Website: http://communication.sdsu.edu/
Course Description
This class will examine contemporary research and theory on communication,
interaction, and gender. Traditional conceptions, stereotypes, and myths will be
contrasted with close examinations of gender as socially constructed and interactionally
achieved.
The primary purposes of this class are:
1) To introduce students to audio and video recordings, and transcriptions, of women
and men (females and males, boys and girls) engaged in interactional conduct and the
organization of joint activities. Numerous opportunities will be provided for observing,
describing, and explaining how gender is explicitly referenced and implicitly influences
the organization of everyday communication.
2) To address gender similarities and differences – especially how men and women are
assumed to be more different than similar, even though research on interaction may or
may not support that position.
3) To raise implications about how key social activities – such as storytelling, gossip,
invitations, laughing, referencing and categorizing persons, and the pursuit of intimacy
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– are primary events in which gender gets raised, displayed, and interactionally
negotiated.
Learning Objectives
1. To identify and provide written analyses of how ‘gender’, as a ‘social
construction’, is accomplished in and through human interaction.
2. To integrate key literature supporting these empirical findings.
3. To work within research groups focusing on selected patterns of communication
and gender across multiple sources of recorded and transcribed data.
4. To develop creative stances and presentations increasing awareness of social
actions comprising gender, a reflexive stance toward taken-for-granted (and
potentially problematic) behaviors, and implications for enhancing quality of
living and relationships in contemporary society.
Blackboard & Text(s)
The syllabus, assignments, written and digitized audio/video clips, data handouts, and
related materials are available on SDSU’s Blackboard.
Downloaded PDF’s of my research are available from Blackboard, and the website
addresses listed at the beginning of this syllabus.
I may also forward additional PDF’s to class participants as the semester progresses.
Availability of additional readings will be discussed in class.
Students not attending the first or second classes of the semester will have 25 points (for
each day) deducted from their final/total score for the semester.
Grading & Evaluation:
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Midterm Exam
Group Project #1
Group Project #2
Group Project #3
Exercise Points
100 points
100 points
100 points
100 points
100 points
---------500 points total
(90% = 450; 80% = 400; 70 % = 350; 60% =300)
Midterm Exam
The Midterm Exam (100 points) will be comprised of a series of multiple choice items
drawn from readings, lectures, and excerpts of human interaction (recorded and
transcribed). A variety of exam items will be based on analysis of provided
data/transcriptions, analyzed in class and/or readings. Students will be required to read,
inspect, and respond to questions about these data excerpts. Exams in this class will not
be returned. However, you are welcome to make an appointment to see and review
your exam. All exams will be destroyed at the end of the following semester.
Analytic Papers & Presentations
While class activities will involve lectures and discussions on extant literature, primary
attention will be given to “informal data/listening sessions” – repeated, rigorous, and
grounded attempts to identify and substantiate patterns of human conduct-ininteraction. Analysis of naturally occurring recordings, through repeated listenings and
in unison with transcriptions, yields a rich understanding of the primary interactional
patterns employed by men and women as they interactionally construct social realities.
Emphasis will be given to close examinations of single instances as well as analysis of
"collections" of interactional phenomena.
More detailed handouts for Group Project Papers will appear on Blackboard
(Assignments) when announced. The general format for these papers is as follows:
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Take-home exercises (2-4 weeks) designed to teach students how to work in
research teams, closely analyze and write about interactional materials, integrate
key quotes, references, and relevant information from readings and course
lectures/discussions/data sessions.
Papers should follow appropriate APA formatting.
All papers should include title pages, organized sections with tailored
headings/sub-headings, and listing of references.
In summary: Key literature and quotes will be integrated, practices and patterns
of conversational interaction will be identified, conclusions will be drawn about
the data analyzed, future implications for research will be identified, and
possibilities for enacting meaningful change in society will be envisioned.
Students are encouraged to read carefully and critically, and (as best possible) offer
constructive, thoughtful, and detailed comments throughout class lectures, discussions,
and activities.
Exercise Points
In order to understand how to analyze data excerpts of human interaction, regular and
prompt attendance to classes is necessary. Prior students will attest to the fact that this is
not a typical lecture course, where students can simply gain “lecture notes” from others
and read materials independently before taking exams – especially when there are few
exams for this class!
Classes will be devoted to a) data sessions directly related to the analytic papers, and b)
discussions of relevant literature/studies. Thus, you are strongly encouraged to come to
class expecting that each day will facilitate your independent analytic and writing efforts,
skills which you will need as a contributing research member of your teams.
To encourage regular attendance and participation, on a random basis students will be
asked to form into groups and engage in various exercises (which will vary, including
critical examinations of literature, detailed analyses of data, responses to watching videos,
etc.). If you are in attendance that day, and participate in the exercise that is assigned, you
will be assigned a full 10 points for your engagement and commitment to class. There will
be 10 Exercises throughout the semester – allowing each student, with perfect attendance,
to receive 100 total Exercise Points to enhance their final grade. Thus, 1 Exercise absence =
90 points, 2 absences = 80 points, etc.
A Note of Warning
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Certain data, class discussions, and/or readings may contain terms, topics, and/or
concepts that may be offensive (e.g., regarding race, sex, gender, homophobia). Students
should not be compelled to admit, or discuss, possible sources of discomfort during
class. However, students are encouraged to meet with instructor about any related
concerns.
Keep in mind, however, that these terms, topics, and/or concerns may be important
resources for speakers organizing ordinary interactions. In just the ways speakers use
language and action to construct their social worlds, they are made available for
researchers studying communication and interaction. A commitment to studying
naturally occurring interactions includes the possibility that not all research materials
will be aligned with researchers’ personal beliefs or moral preferences.
Classroom Comportment
The School of Communication, as a representative of SDSU and higher education,
expects students to engage in behaviors enhancing classroom learning environments.
The Instructor is responsible for optimizing learning not only for individual students,
but for all students comprising a class. Behaviors disruptive to the classroom instruction
are thus not tolerated. Among the actions that are considered disruptive to the learning
environment are:

The use of cell phones, and/or computers/laptops/tablets, not directly related to
the course and its instructional objectives, materials, or contents (e.g., using
social media or Facebook for conversation, correspondence, emailing, texting,
tweeting, or other activities).

Conversations with other students, during class lectures and related activities,
that are distracting to shared attention and collaborative learning.

Reading, sleeping, harassing, bullying, or related activities exhibiting disrespect
to the instructor or fellow students.

Consistently entering late, leaving early, or leaving often from class.

Activities that are grossly inappropriate, threatening or dangerous.
When students’ actions distract from learning objectives, instructors may be required to
intervene to minimize disruptive conduct. For example, if a student is observed texting
in class, Instructor may request that the cell phone be turned in for the remainder of
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class. Or if a student is using a laptop to access Facebook or e-mail, Instructor may ask
the student to close the technology until the end of class. Each Instructor will clearly
describe and enforce these inappropriate behaviors.
Should repeat offenses occur, with fair warning, each Instructor will determine fair and
appropriate consequences for these disruptive behaviors. Should an emergency occur or
require monitoring, or if students observe violations of these policies distracting to their
learning, they are encouraged to inform the instructor as soon as possible.
Certain other activities may be acceptable, but only with permission or by direction of
the Instructor. Such activities include:
 Filming, taping, or otherwise recording the class;
 Accessing the Internet to elaborate or clarify class content;
 Requesting that computers/laptops/tablets may be permitted. If a student is
found to be surfing the net unrelated to classes, for example, they will be asked
to be seated in the front row(s) of the classroom when using their laptop.
Plagiarism & Academic Dishonesty Policy

Plagiarism is theft of intellectual property. It is one of the highest forms of
academic offense because in academe, it is a scholar’s words, ideas, and creative
products that are the primary measures of identity and achievement. Whether by
ignorance, accident, or intent, theft is still theft, and misrepresentation is still
misrepresentation. Therefore, the offense is still serious, and is treated as such.
Overview:
In any case in which a Professor or Instructor identifies evidence for charging a
student with violation of academic conduct standards or plagiarism, the
presumption will be with that instructor’s determination. However, the
faculty/instructor(s) will confer with the director to substantiate the evidence.
Once confirmed, the evidence will be reviewed with the student. If, following the
review with the student, the faculty member and director determine that
academic dishonesty has occurred, the evidence will be submitted to the Office of
Student Rights and Responsibilities. The report “identifies the student who was
found responsible, the general nature of the offense, the action taken, and a
recommendation as to whether or not additional action should be considered by
the campus judicial affairs office .” (CSSR Website[1]).
[1] http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/srr/academics1.html
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Intellectual Property:
The syllabus, lectures and lecture outlines are personal copyrighted intellectual
property of the instructor, which means that any organized recording for
anything other than personal use, duplication, distribution, or profit is a
violation of copyright and fair use laws.
Proper source attribution
Proper attribution occurs by specifying the source of content or ideas. This is
done by (a) providing quotation marks around text, when directly quoted, and
(b) clearly designating the source of the text or information relied upon in an
assignment.
Specific exemplary infractions and consequences:
a. Reproducing a whole paper, paragraph, or large portions of unattributed
materials (whether represented by: (i) multiple sentences, images, or
portions of images; or (ii) by percentage of assignment length) without
proper attribution, will result in assignment of an “F” in the course, and a
report to Student Rights and Responsibilities.
b. Reproducing a sentence or sentence fragment with no quotation marks but
source citation, or subsets of visual images without source attribution,
will minimally result in an “F” on the assignment.
Self-plagiarism
Students often practice some form of ‘double-dipping,’ in which they write on a
given topic across more than one course assignment. In general, there is nothing
wrong with double-dipping topics or sources, but there is a problem with
double-dipping exact and redundant text. It is common for scholars to write on
the same topic across many publication outlets; this is part of developing
expertise and the reputation of being a scholar on a topic. Scholars, however, are
not permitted to repeat exact text across papers or publications except when
noted and attributed, as this wastes precious intellectual space with repetition
and does a disservice to the particular source of original presentation by
‘diluting’ the value of the original presentation. Any time that a writer simply ‘
cuts-and-pastes’ exact text from former papers into a new paper without proper
attribution, it is a form of self-plagiarism. Consequently, a given paper should
never be turned in to multiple classes. Entire paragraphs, or even sentences,
should not be repeated word-for-word across course assignments. Each new
writing assignment is precisely that, a new writing assignment, requiring new
composition on the student’s part.
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Secondary citations
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Secondary citation is not strictly a form of plagiarism, but in blatant forms, it can
present similar ethical challenges. A secondary citation is citing source A, which
in turn cites source B, but it is source B’s ideas or content that provide the basis
for the claims the student intends to make in the assignment. For example,
assume that there is an article by Jones (2006) in the student’s hands, in which
there is a discussion or quotation of an article by Smith (1998). Assume further
that what Smith seems to be saying is very important to the student’s analysis. In
such a situation, the student should always try to locate the original Smith
source. In general, if an idea is important enough to discuss in an assignment, it
is important enough to locate and cite the original source for that idea. There are
several reasons for these policies: (a) Authors sometimes commit citation errors,
which might be replicated without knowing it; (b) Authors sometimes make
interpretation errors, which might be ignorantly reinforced (c) Therefore,
reliability of scholarly activity is made more difficult to assure and enforce; (d)
By relying on only a few sources of review, the learning process is shortcircuited, and the student’s own research competencies are diminished, which
are integral to any liberal education; (e) By masking the actual sources of ideas,
readers must second guess which sources come from which citations, making the
readers’ own research more difficult; (f) By masking the origin of the
information, the actual source of ideas is misrepresented. Some suggestions that
assist with this principle:
When the ideas Jones discusses are clearly attributed to, or unique to,
Smith, then find the Smith source and citation.
When the ideas Jones is discussing are historically associated more with
Smith than with Jones, then find the Smith source and citation.
In contrast, Jones is sometimes merely using Smith to back up what Jones
is saying and believes, and is independently qualified to claim, whether or not
Smith would have also said it; in such a case, citing Jones is sufficient.
Never simply copy a series of citations at the end of a statement by Jones,
and reproduce the reference list without actually going to look up what those
references report—the only guarantee that claims are valid is for a student to
read the original sources of those claims.
Solicitation for ghost writing:
Any student who solicits any third party to write any portion of an assignment
for this class (whether for pay or not) violates the standards of academic honesty
in this course. The penalty for solicitation (regardless of whether it can be
demonstrated the individual solicited wrote any sections of the assignment) is F
in the course.
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TurnItIn.com
The papers in most Communication courses will be submitted electronically in
Word (preferably 2007, .docx) on the due dates assigned, and will require
verification of submission to Turnitin.com.
Specific exemplary infractions and consequences





Course failure: Reproducing a whole paper, paragraph, or large portions
of unattributed materials without proper attribution, whether represented by: (a)
multiple sentences, images, or portions of images; or (b) by percentage of
assignment length, will result in assignment of an “F” in the course in which the
infraction occurred, and a report to the Center for Student Rights and
Responsibilities (CSRR2).
Assignment failure: Reproducing a sentence or sentence fragment with no
quotation marks, but with source citation, or subsets of visual images without
source attribution, will minimally result in an “F” on the assignment, and may
result in greater penalty, including a report to the CSRR, depending factors
noted below. In this instance, an “F” may mean anything between a zero (0) and
50%, depending on the extent of infraction.
Exacerbating conditions--Amount: Evidence of infraction, even if
fragmentary, is increased with a greater: (a) number of infractions; (b)
distribution of infractions across an assignment; or (c) proportion of the
assignment consisting of infractions.
Exacerbating conditions--Intent: Evidence of foreknowledge and intent to
deceive magnifies the seriousness of the offense and the grounds for official
response. Plagiarism, whether ‘by accident’ or ‘by ignorance,’ still qualifies as
plagiarism—it is all students’ responsibility to make sure their assignments are
not committing the offense.
Exceptions: Any exceptions to these policies will be considered on a caseby-case basis, and only under exceptional circumstances.
HOWEVER, THERE ARE NO EXCUSES ALLOWED BASED ON
IGNORANCE OF WHAT CONSTITUTES PLAGIARISM, OR OF WHAT
THIS POLICY IS
Additional descriptions and resources include the following:
I.
SDSU Resources
SDSU Plagiarism: The crime of intellectual property by SDSU librarian Pamela Jackson
9
http://infotutor.sdsu.edu/plagiarism/index.cfm
Avoiding plagiarism at SDSU - guides for faculty to include in their Blacboard course
http://infodome.sdsu.edu/infolit/learningpackets.shtml
Academic Senate - University Academic Policies on Cheating and Plagiarism
http://senate.sdsu.edu/policy/pfacademics.html
Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities - Reporting a case of suspected
plagiarism to Judicial Procedures Office
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/srr/complaint1.html
II.
External Resources
Plagiarism: How to avoid it
http://www.aresearchguide.com/6plagiar.html
Cyberplagiarism: Detection and Prevention from Penn State. Wholesale Copying, Cut &
Paste, Inappropriate Paraphrase, Citation Guidelines, Practice Exercise
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cyberplag/cyberplagexamples.html
Detecting and Preventing Classroom Cheating: Promoting Integrity in Assessment by
Gregory J. Cizek
http://tinyurl.com/CizekPromotingIntegrity
Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers by Robert Harris.
http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm
Video Primers in an Online Repository for e-Teaching & Learning from Indiana
University (See Reducing Plagiarism and Online Writing Activities)
http://www.indiana.edu/~icy/media/de_series.html
NOTES
10
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
C.S. Lewis, 1947
Beach/COM 452: Interaction & Gender
(Preliminary Topics/Readings)
I.
SEX, GENDER, AND THE COMMUNICATION OF SOCIAL IDENTITY
A.
Overview & Introduction: Contrasting Orientations to Sex and Gender
Wood, J.T. (2009). Gender. In W.F. Eadie (Ed.) 21st Century Communication: A
Reference Handbook. (371-379). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kessler, S.J. & McKenna, W. (1985). Preface & Introduction: The primacy of gender
attribution (pp. xii-19). Gender: An ethnomethodological approach. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
West, C. & Zimmerman, D. Doing gender. In Fenstermaker, S. & West, C. (2002). Doing
gender, doing difference: Inequality, power and institutional change (pp.3-16). New York:
Routledge.
Speer, S. & Stokoe, E. (2011). An introduction to conversation and gender. In S. Speer &
11
E. Stokoe (Eds.), Gender and conversation (1-28). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hopper, R. (2002). The arrangement between the sexes (Ch2/pp.11-30); Making women
look bad. In Gendering talk (Ch.8/pp.145-176). E. Lansing: Michigan State
University Press.
Sacks, H. (1984). On doing-being ordinary. In J. M. Atkinson, & J. Heritage (Eds.),
Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (347-369). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
B.
Preliminary Studies: Inviting & Responding to ‘Gender’
Beach, W.A. (2000). Inviting collaborations in stories about a woman. Language in
Society, 29, 379-407.
Beach, W.A. & Glenn, P. (2011). Bids and responses to intimacy as “gendered”
enactments. In S. Speer & E. Stokoe (Eds.), Gender and conversation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, G., Sacks, H. & Schegloff, E.A. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of
intimacy. In G. Button and J.R.E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization
(152-205). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Stokoe, E. (2010). ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership
categorization, and men’s denials of violence toward women. Discourse & Society,
21, 59-82.
Glenn, P. (2003a). On sexism in conversational joking. Media & Culture, 6
(<http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/1-glenn-feature-sexism.html>.)
C.
Additional Empirical Evidence for ‘Gender-in-Interaction’
Hopper, R., & LeBaron , C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language
and Social Interaction, 31, 59-74.
Kitzinger, C. (2005). “Speaking as a heterosexual”: (How) does sexuality matter
for talk-in-interaction? Research on Language and Social Interaction, 38,
221-265.
D.
Laughter, Joking, and Gender
Jefferson, G. (2004a). A note on laughter in ‘male-female’ interaction. Discourse
Studies, 6, 117-133.
Glenn, P. (2003). Laughing along, resisting: Constituting relationship and identity.
(Ch.6/pp.122-161) Laughter in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University
12
Press.
II.
An Exercise on ‘Intersex’: Are Males & Females Exclusive Categories?
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an
intersexed person. In Studies in ethnomethodology (pp.116-185). Prentice-Hall.
Maynard, D. W. (1991). Goffman, Garfinkel, and games. Sociological Theory, 9, 277-279.
Armitage, L.K. (2001). Truth, falsity, and schemas of presentation: A textual analysis
of Harold Garfinkel’s story of Agnes. Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality,
4, April 29. (http://www.ejhs.org/volume4/agnes.htm)
Johnson, C.J. (2010). Intersex: Disorders of sex development (DSD). Manuscript.
(View Video on Blackboard)
Selected & Related Books:
Beach, W.A. (1996). Conversations about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey.
Beach, W.A. (2009). A natural history of family cancer: Interactional resources for managing cancer.
Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.
Bergman, J. (1993) Discreet indiscretions: The social organization of gossip. Aldine.
Bergman, J. & Linnell, P. (Eds.). (1998). Morality in discourse. Special issue of Research on
Language and Social Interaction, 31:3/4.
Fenstermaker, S. & West, C. (2002). Doing gender, doing difference: Inequality, power
and institutional change. New York: Routledge.
Glenn, P. (2003). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, R. (2002). Gendering talk. E. Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
Kessler, S.J. & McKenna, W. (1985). Gender: An ethnomethodological approach. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Sacks, H., 1992. Lectures on conversation: Volumes I & II. (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Blackwell, Oxford.
13
Appendix A: Transcription Symbols
In data headings,“SDCL” stands for “San Diego Conversation Library”, a collection of recordings and
transcriptions of naturally occurring interactions; “Malignancy #1” represents the title and number of call in
the data corpus(see Data and Method section); page numbers from which data excerpts are drawn are also
included, and line numbers represent ordering in the original transcriptions. The transcription notation system
employed for data segments is an adaptation of Gail Jefferson's work (see Atkinson & Heritage (Eds.), 1984,
pp.ix-xvi; Beach (Ed.), 1989, pp.89-90). The symbols may be described as follows:
:
(.)
(1.2)
(( ))
( )
.
?

° °
=
[ ]
[[
Colon(s): Extended or stretched sound, syllable, or word.
Underlining: Vocalic emphasis.
Micropause: Brief pause of less than (0.2).
Timed Pause: Intervals occuring within and between same or
different speaker's utterance.
Double Parentheses: Scenic details.
Single Parentheses: Transcriptionist doubt.
Period: Falling vocal pitch.
Question Marks: Rising vocal pitch.
Arrows: Pitch resets; marked rising and falling shifts
in intonation.
Degree Signs: A passage of talk noticeably softer than
surrounding talk.
Equal Signs: Latching of contiguous utterances, with
no interval or overlap.
Brackets: Speech overlap.
Double Brackets: Simultaneous speech orientations to
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prior turn.
Exclamation Points: Animated speech tone.
Hyphens: Halting, abrupt cut off of sound or word.
Less Than/Greater Than Signs: Portions of an
utterance delivered at a pace noticeably quicker
than surrounding talk.
OKAY CAPS: Extreme loudness compared with surrounding talk.
hhh .hhh H’s: Audible outbreaths, possibly laughter. The more h’s,
the longer the aspiration. Aspirations with periods indicate audible inbreaths (e.g.,
.hhh). H’s within (e.g., ye(hh)s)
parentheses mark within-speech aspirations, possible laughter
pt
Lip Smack: Often preceding an inbreath.
hah Laugh Syllable: Relative closed or open position of laughter
heh
hoh
!
> <
$
Smile Voice: Laughing/chuckling voice while talking
Appendix B
Adjacency Pairs & Sequential Organization
The ‘adjacency pair’ is the fundamental building block of all
human, social understanding
(Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation)
Overview
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Focus is on how speakers construct, place, and participate within sequences of
practical action
Participants orient to the turn-within-sequence character of utterances-in-context –
the very basis of social understanding
Every utterance occurs within some structurally defined place in talk-in-interaction
Generally, a speaker’s turn-at-talk will be heard as directed to a prior speaker’s turnat-talk
Producers of turns will be heard as displaying an analysis of what prior speaker
was heard and understood to be doing – treating as meaningful not just any, but
particular understandings of achieved social actions
Speaking proposes a here-and-now definition of the situation, to which subsequent
talk will be oriented to
15
Sequential Organization of Turns
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
A current turn projects a relevant next action, or range of actions, to be
accomplished by another speaker in next turn
Sequential Implicativeness: Projection of a relevant next action may be accomplished
by the production of the first pair-part of an adjacency pair structure:
1st Pair Part
2nd Pair Part
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Some current “first” action projects some appropriate “second/next” action
Next speaker’s response displays Conditional Relevance: Not just any, but particular
actions were projected by speaker’s prior turn-at-talk – i.e., a second action is “due”
Recipient’s uptake displays their hearings and understandings of what prior speaker
made available and relevant – and in response, can produce actions such as
agreeing, disagreeing, avoiding/evading, withholding, etc.
Examples of Adjacency Pairs:
1st PP Greeting
2nd PP Reciprocal Greeting (or Withholding)
1st PP Question
2nd PP Answer (or Second Question)
1st PP Invitation
2nd PP Acceptance/Rejection
Conclusions
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Both first and second/next speakers deal in systematically organized ways with
whatever actions are co-produced
Utterances cannot be understood in isolation of surrounding actions, or through
“literal meanings” – i.e., as “stripped” from its local context
“Context” is built in and through utterances and actions – not separated apart from
sequential organization
Communicative action is doubly contextual:
Context Renewing
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Context Shaping

Thus, three fundamental assumptions:
1) Interaction is structurally organized
2) Contributions to interaction are contextually oriented
3) No order of detail can be dismissed, a priori, as
disorderly, accidental, or irrelevant
Appendix C
Preliminary Table of Contents for
Speer & Stokoe (Eds.), Conversation and Gender
Contents
Chapter
1. An introduction to conversation and gender
Susan A. Speer and Elizabeth Stoke
Section 1: Gender, person reference and categorization practices
2. The gendered ‘I’
Clare Jackson
3. Categories in talk-in-interaction: Gendering speaker and recipient
Victoria Land and Celia Kitzinger
17
Page
4. Doing gender categorization: Non-recognitional person reference and the
omnirelevance of gender
Noa Logan Klein
5. “Girl – woman – sorry!”: On the repair and non-repair of consecutive gender
categories
Elizabeth Stoke
6. Engendering children’s play: Person reference in children’s conflictual
interaction
Marjorie Harness Goodwin
7. Gender as a practical concern in children’s management of play participation
Jakob Cromdal
8. Accomplishing a cross-gender identity: A case of passing in children’s talkin-interaction
Carly Butler and Ann Weatherall
Section 2: [tba]
9. Gender, routinization and recipient design
Sue Wilkinson
10. Recipients designed: Tag questions and gender
Alexa Hepburn and Jonathan Potter
11. On the role of reported, third party compliments in passing as a ‘real
woman’
Susan A. Speer
12. “D’you understand that honey”: Gender and participation in conversation
Jack Sidnell
13. Bids and responses to intimacy as “gendered” enactments
Wayne A. Beach and Phillip Glenn
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14. Being there for the children: The collaborative construction of gender
inequality in divorce mediation
Angela Cora Garcia and Lisa Fisher
List of Contributors
Wayne A. Beach is Professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State
University, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Surgery, and a Member of the
Moores Cancer Center, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on the
interactional organization of everyday conversation, as well as how family members,
providers, physicians, oncologists, and patients communicate about a wide variety of
illness dilemmas. He is currently Principal Investigator (PI) of two grants funded by the
National Cancer Institute. The first examines how cancer patients and oncologists orient
to hopes, fears, and uncertainties about cancer; the second is a theatrical adaption of his
book A Natural History of Family Cancer, which won the Outstanding Book Award
(Health Communication) and Outstanding Scholarship Award (Language and Social
Interaction) from the National Communication Association. He is also editor of the first
Handbook of Patient-Provider Interactions: Raising and Responding to Concerns about Life,
Illness, and Disease.
Carly W. Butler is a researcher at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane,
Australia. Her research interests include ethnomethodology, conversation analysis,
children’s interaction and play, and helpline interactions. She is author of Talk and Social
Interaction in the Playground (2008) published by Ashgate in the Directions in
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis book series.
Jakob Cromdal is Reader in Child Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. His
research focuses on talk and social interaction among children and youth in a variety of
mundane and institutional settings, including classrooms, detention homes and calls to
the emergency services.
Lisa M. Fisher is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University
of Cincinnati. Her research interests center on social psychology and work-family
issues.
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Angela Cora Garcia is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bentley College. Her
conversation analytic research includes studies of mediation hearings, emergency
phone calls to the police, computer-mediated communication, and gender in talk.
Phillip Glenn is Professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College, Boston. He is
the author of Laughter in Interaction (Cambridge University Press, 2003) which received
the Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award from the Language and Social Interaction
Division of the National Communication Association. He was co-editor of Studies in
Language and Social Interaction (Erlbaum, 2003) and serves on the editorial board of
Research on Language and Social Interaction. Besides continuing studies of laughter, his
research interests include interaction in mediation/negotiation settings and in
employment interviews. He has held Fulbright appointments in the Czech Republic
and Republic of Moldova, and he was a Visiting Scholar at the Program on Negotiation
at Harvard Law School.
Marjorie Harness Goodwin is Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. Her work focuses
on how people build their cognitive and social worlds through the use of language in
interaction in a range of natural settings. An extended ethnographic study of an African
American peer group formed the basis of her book He-Said-She-Said: Talk as Social
Organization Among Black Children. She has also investigated interaction in the
workplace (as part of the Xerox PARC Workplace Project.), daily life in families (as a
core faculty member of the UCLA Center for Everyday Lives of Families), interaction in
the home of a man with severe aphasia, and is continuing to look in detail at the lives of
preadolescent girls. Her more recent book is The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance,
Status, and Exclusion (2006, Blackwell).
Alexa Hepburn is a Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology in the Social Sciences
Department at Loughborough University. She has studied school bullying, issues of
gender, and violence against children, and interaction on child protection helplines, as
well as writing about the relations of the philosophy of Derrida to the theory and
practice of social psychology. Currently she is applying conversation analysis to core
topics in interaction. She has two recent books: An Introduction to Critical Social
Psychology and Discursive Research in Practice as well as co-edited a special issue of
Discourse & Society on developments in discursive psychology.
Clare Jackson is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of
York. She is using Conversation Analysis to explore gender and person references in
mundane talk-in-interaction for her doctoral research.
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Celia Kitzinger is Professor of Conversation Analysis, Gender and Sexuality and
Director of the Feminist Conversation Analysis Unit at the University of York. She
researches basic structures of talk-in-interaction as well as exploring the reproduction of
culture – including power and oppression – in mundane interaction.
Noa Logan Klein is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of
California Santa Barbara, with a doctoral emphasis in feminist studies. Hir current
teaching and research focuses on genders, sexualities, and the socialization of bodies.
Victoria Land is a research associate in the Digital World Research Centre, University of
Surrey, currently studying patterns of interaction across written, spoken and electronic
media for a cross-media communications project in partnership with British
Telecommunications plc. She is also member of the University of York Feminist
Conversation Analysis Unit. Victoria’s research interests include: conversation analysis;
gender and sexuality research; feminism; mediated communications; and sociological
understandings of the everyday world.
Jonathan Potter is Professor of Discourse Analysis at Loughborough University. He
has studied racism, argumentation, fact construction, and topics in social science theory
and method. His most recent books include: Representing Reality, which attempted to
provide a systematic overview, integration and critique of constructionist research in
social psychology, postmodernism, rhetoric and ethnomethodology and Conversation
and Cognition (with Hedwig te Molder) in which a range of different researchers
consider the implication of studies of interaction for understanding cognition. He is one
of the founders of discursive psychology.
Jack Sidnell is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
His current research focuses on the structures of social interaction with special
emphases on the organization of turn-taking and repair. He has conducted long-term
ethnographic fieldwork in two Caribbean communities (Guyana and Bequia) and is
currently studying repair and understanding in the talk of children between the ages of
4 and 8. His other publications include Talk and practical epistemology: The social life of
knowledge in a small Caribbean community (Benjamins, 2005) and an edited collection,
Conversation Analysis: Comparative Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2009.).
Susan A. Speer is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester, UK.
Her research uses conversation analysis to study a range of substantive topics,
including psychiatrist-patient interaction, and how gender gets ‘done’, ‘displayed’ and
‘oriented to’ in talk and embodied action. She has published on qualitative research
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methods, applying conversation analysis to the study of feminist reflexivity,
participants’ orientations to recording technologies, and the relationship between
‘natural’ and ‘contrived’ data. She was Principal Investigator on an ESRC-funded
project investigating interaction between transsexual patients and psychiatrists in a
Gender Identity Clinic (co-investigator - Richard Green) . She is the author of Gender
Talk: Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis (Routledge, 2005).
Elizabeth Stokoe is Reader in Social Interaction in the Department of Social Sciences at
Loughborough University. Her research interests are in conversation analysis and social
interaction in various ordinary and institutional settings, including neighbour
mediation, police interrogation, speed-dating and talk between friends. She is the
author of Discourse and Identity (with Bethan Benwell, Edinburgh University Press, 2006)
and is currently writing Talking relationships: Analyzing speed-dating interactions for
Cambridge University Press.
Ann Weatherall is a Reader in the School of Psychology at Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand. Her interests include conversation analysis, discursive
psychology, feminist psychology, gender and language, and language and social
psychology. She is the author of Gender, Language and Discourse (2002) and an editor of
Language, Discourse and Social Psychology (2007, with Bernadette Watson and Cindy
Gallois).
Sue Wilkinson is Professor of Feminist and Health Studies in the Social Sciences
Department at Loughborough University, UK. She is the founding editor of the
international journal, Feminism & Psychology and her publications encompass six books including Feminist Social Psychologies, Feminism and Discourse, and Heterosexuality (all
Sage Publications) - and more than eighty articles in the areas of gender/sexuality,
feminism, health and qualitative methods. She has a longstanding academic interest in
the social construction of inequality and is also a campaigner for equal marriage rights
for same-sex couples. She (re)trained in conversation analysis at University of Los
Angeles California in 2001-2002 and her recent work uses CA to study helpline
interaction. She is also particularly interested in technical specifications of repair.
NOTES
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