Experiencing conversations:
Bridging the gap between discourse and activity
Annalisa Sannino
University of Salerno, Italy
16º InPLA - Intercâmbio de Pesquisas em Lingüística Aplicada
Minicourse 2nd-5th of May 2007, São Paulo
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Conversation and activity
not yet satisfactorily treated as a shared object of
study within discourse analysis and within theories
of activity
2
What are the gaps that discourse analysts
and activity theorists have to face in
order to find a common ground for
shared analyses?
3
Interlocutionary logic (IL) and culturalhistorical activity theory (CHAT)
as complementary frameworks which allow to identify
these gaps and take step toward integrated analyses of
discourse and activity
4
IL and CHAT as instrumental for illuminating a particular
phenomenon at the core of the relation between discourse
and activity:
the experience of a conversation by the interlocutors which
affect their view and actions with regard to the given
ongoing activity
5
Empirical examples of occurrences of
the interlocutor’s experiences as
reported in autobiographical accounts
by pre-service teachers
6
Gaps
in analyses of discourse and activity
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An issue of debate
between different approaches in discourse studies:
the relation between conversation and the broader
context of the activity where a conversation takes place.
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Ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts
The dynamic of conversation itself is considered enough to allow
“accountability” (Garfinkel, 1967)
Ethnographers
Unconventional mundane exchanges, are far from self-sufficient
data through which any competent analyst could have access to
human action in the course of activities
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Cicourel (1992, p. 295)
<<The methodological strategy of using local talk as the source of information
in the narrow sense of the context can be self-serving by the way the researcher
not only ignores prior and current organizational or institutional experiences of
participants, but by the kind of data that are presented for analysis. For many
students of language and social interaction, therefore, the notion of context
need not include references to the participants´and researcher´s personal, kin,
and organizational relationships and other aspects of complex or
institutionalized settings. Casual, fleeting speech events, however, are often
constrained and guided by normative institutionalized features that we associate
with encounters in public places (…). These brief exchanges can also carry
considerable cultural and interpersonal “baggage” for participants because of
long-term social relationships unknown to or unattended by the investigator>>
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Absences in discourse and consequences on
ongoing activities
Conley and O’Barr (1990): litigants aren’t satisfied and
don’t trust legal systems and professionals because they
feel the demands they bring to court are disregarded.
Wodak (1996): patients often don’t even ask for the
meaning of medical jargon they don’t understand, and
doctors reach the diagnosis too rapidly, ignoring patients’
attempts to speak about their lives and to question the
implications of their diseases.
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Discursive discontinuities
observable in situations in which strong constraints
and traditions weigh on the interlocutors and also
when power relationships are dominant
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CHAT and analysis of discourse
Davydov (1999) characterized the relationship between
interpersonal communication and object-related activities
as an acute unresolved problem for all humanities
CHAT, in spite of the large amount of discursive data
they use, doesn’t dispose of a solid theoretical and
methodological apparatus to analyze talk
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What are the fundamental dynamics of the use of
language within object-related activities?
How to describe and analyze those dynamics?
Together with the systemic structure of activity made
visible by scholars from cultural-historical activity
theory (Engeström, 1987), can we also bring to surface
the communication processes through which the activity
takes shape?
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The way talk is experienced as the
crucial point where conversation and
activity connect
point when talk starts gaining consequences of a
material nature and have an impact on the
activity
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IL and the analysts’ limits when they face a
conversation transcript
the concept of ‘default’ with which IL claims the
impossibility to affirm that interlocutors have reached
intersubjectivity, unless they clearly explicate their
mutual understanding
16
IL as an empirical theory centred on how talk
is received
intersubjectivity can be found in the third speaking
turn, that is when the first speaker has a chance to reply
after the other has responded
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Autobiographical accounts of critical life
episodes as new type of data
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Excerpt 1
the subject makes explicit the way he experienced the talk of the
teachers
tactless, despotic and arrogant, and as humbling the student’s effort in
the assignment
Consequence : “great sorrow”, feeling of having been victim of an
injustice and mistrust, so much frustration that all the other
disciplines underwent a repercussion.
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Reported speech reconstructed after many years
Is there would be no room for this kind of data in
mainstream approaches for analyzing
conversations?
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Excerpt 2
The subject refers to the teacher´s behaviour as discouraging the use
of the most common learning tools like the student´s notes, the
textbook and clarification questions.
Also he considered the teacher’s opinion of part of the class as
negatively predetermined and unchangeable.
Sad description of the subject´s present attitude to chemistry, seen as
frustrating, as a lost opportunity, and as a discipline whose hidden
logic remained for him a mystery
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the interactions between these students and
the teachers generated connections and
chains that led to deleterious consequences
in terms of the student´s learning
22
Expected and justified skeptical reactions in both CHAT and
IL fields on this kind of data
neither ethnographic field notes of a professional researcher
or transcripts of recorded conversations
personal accounts meant to report a one sided individual
perspective as a strength
access to the subjective experience and possibilities for
studying activities and conversation from a new angle
23
Two accounts of critical conversations in
educational setting
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Data collected in 2004 during a class of Psychology of
Education I was teaching
Participants: pre-service teachers in the process to become fully
qualified teachers (already experienced teachers, having done
temporary replacements for years)
Focus of the class: theoretical and empirical analysis of the
participants’ own experiences in school settings as students.
The analyses aimed at promoting reflection and developing
personal approaches to teaching practice
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The assignment
The participants were asked to report
personal negative experiences that
they think shouldn´t occur in any
educational setting anymore
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Instructions :
1. The account must be a detailed description of an episode and of
your own experience of it.
2. Pay particular attention to describing what you can recall of the
interactions in their verbal and non verbal forms. In particular pay
attention to conversations and, when it is possible, try to
reconstruct them.
3. After you report a conversation, make explicit your own
experience as an interlocutor in the course of the conversation.
What did you think, and what brought you to react in a certain
way?
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Analysis
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Durability
The subjects explicitely point out that they remember vividly
the episodes they are writing about. In the text of the
assignment I didn’t ask to evaluate the quality of the memory
of these events. Spontaneusly the subjects have considered
relevant to point out how well they remember the episode.
This seems to indicate that these events actually correspond to
durable personal milestones for those who write.
29
Premises
The subjects establish as premisses of the
account the motivation and expectation on
which their actions are based. These are
private contents that very seldom are
accessible in the course of ordinary analysis
of conversations.
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Conflicts
These accounts condense very elaborate processes
of experiencing verbal conflicts. They bring to
light the genesis of contents which forge human
personality and actions.
31
Consequences
These data allow to observe effects of
discourse in classrooms on the activities of
teaching, studying and schooling. The
analyst has to focus on the contradictions
between the premisses and the conflicts in
the accounts and has to consider these
premisses and conflicts in the light of the
consequences to which they led and that are
reported in the accounts as well.
32
Inner speech
This writing gives a voice to inner speech. That
is a discourse which puts light on conflicts and
corresponds to points of view that can´t be
publically expressed in the circumstances when
the inner speech generates.
33
Conclusive remark
When we talk, especially in working or educational
situations, we tend to hide and constrain our thought
in coherent and uniform packages of routinized,
predictable and safe utterances.
Instead, “autobiography (…) doesn’t make us guilty
for the multiple voices that inhabit ourselves (…). It
is time for putting together loose pieces (…)”
(Demetrio 1996: 33). In this sense, autobiographical
practices bring us to face also disruptions and
contradictions of our individual experience in public
activities.
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For contacts:
Annalisa Sannino
University of Salerno
Department of Education
Via Ponte Don Melillo
84084 Fisciano (SA) Italy
E-mail: ansannin@unisa.it
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