Recent clic_crossroads items

Front Matter and Editorial

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Front Matter and Editorial

Acknowledgments

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Acknowledgments

The Pitfalls of Democracy and Debate: Authority and Inequality in Classrooms in Southeast Spain

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This article focuses on the role of teachers in shaping spoken interactions in civics education classrooms in southeast Spain. The main mode of instruction in such classes is what I call dialogic debate, a genre requiring agentive exchange among classroom participants and predicated upon the notion that competitive stancetaking yields salutary orientations toward contemporary life. Class discussions were to move youth toward critically reflexive and broadly humanist stances, but the oppositional exchanges that actually took place were at odds with the peaceful dispositions that the lessons were meant to inspire. I introduce the notion of ontological status attribution—a variant of stancetaking resources well documented in the linguistic anthropological literature—to show that, in their quest to socialize youth to civic ideals, teachers fomented face-threatening classroom atmospheres in which developmental and cultural differences constituted key indexes of...

Gestural Resonance: The Negotiation of Differential Form and Function in Embodied Action

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Many scholars have shown that gestures may be used to organize interactive engagement, including such things as turn-taking, participation, and narrative structure (e.g., Goodwin, 1984; Haddington, 2006). More recent work has shown that gestures may also serve as a type of dialogic embodied action (Arnold, 2012), connecting and relating utterances to one another and promoting engagement among speakers. However, within the research tradition that looks at the ways in which gestures resemble each other within interactional sequences, less attention has been given to examining how gestures are not simply reproduced but are actively negotiated as a crucial part of the meaning-making process. In this article, I will examine the ways in which participants negotiate the relationship between sequences of focal and iconic gestures that are formally and/or functionally related to each other. Similar to dialogic resonance in speech (Du Bois, 2007, 2010b), gestural resonance involves the...

The Habit of Meeting Together: Enacting Masculinity in a Men's Bible Study

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In American evangelical culture, men’s Bible studies are a key site for negotiating and reproducing ideologies about ‘godly masculinity.’ Here, the ideal of an evangelical man is modeled, tried on, and held up for inspection. In their gender performances, these young men draw from three different models of masculinity, each with its own superaddressee (Bakhtin, 1981) and gender schedule (Goffman, 1977). The two more widely-used models are associated with a more hegemonic young American masculinity and with an evangelical model of masculinity— models which directly conflict with one another in terms of their prescriptions for masculinity. Through such strategies as competitive but self-deprecating narration, use of military and sexual analogies, and humor rooted in the Bible, the men are able to simultaneously draw from these two conflicting models. In their interactions, these men also creatively navigate between the two by appealing to a highly local third model of masculinity...

Acknowledgments

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Acknowledgments

Editorial

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Editorial

Front Matter

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Front Matter

A Pioneer in the Use of Video for the Study of Human Social Interaction: A Talk with Frederick Erickson

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In the spring of 2011, Dr. Frederick Erickson retired from his position as George F. Kneller Chair of Anthropology of Education and Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this interview, Dr. Erickson recounts his personal interest in the organization of social interaction and those who influenced his work, alongside historical developments in the use of video methods for the close study of human social interaction. He further explains how his use of a quasi-musical transcription method avoids what he considers to be a tendency for logocentrism in empirical studies of face-to-face interaction. The highlight of our conversation with Dr. Erickson is his revelation of an alter identity or “Clark Kent” underneath both his teaching and scholarship. Lastly, we ask the inevitable question, “What intellectual pursuits he will follow upon leaving the Westwood campus” and also seek his advice for future generations of scholars interested in the...

“And the winner is…”: Hierarchies of language competence and fashion sense in Tanzanian beauty pageants

Sat, 1 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This paper discusses how successful Tanzanian beauty contestants mark themselves as educated sophisticates through clusters of semiotic materials. At lower-level and provincial competitions, contestants’ ability to speak ‘pure,’ if non-fluent and non-standard, English helps them achieve victory. This register is coupled with local, often outlandish, interpretations of international fashions and hairstyles. Yet in the capital city, and especially at the national competition, winning contestants speak a standard, fluent variety of English, a super-elite register that is typically only acquired through tertiary education or through membership in an elite urban household. They also adorn themselves in ways that are in keeping with global trends. When provincial contestants advance through the pageant hierarchy, they find their language skills and agrestic style become indexical a lack of knowledge and sophistication. This paper thus explores the variable and hierarchical formulations...

The Coordination of Talk and Typing in Police Interrogations

Sat, 1 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, I examine the conduct and coordination of two activities that are relevant in the Dutch police interrogation: talking and typing. By taking a closer look at these activities, I can see how the police record is mutually constructed by officers and suspects and begin to understand what kind of orientation is required for these dual activities. Additionally, I explore how participants orient to and coordinate talking and typing during interrogations and explicate what this tells us about the ways institutional tasks are carried out in this specific environment. I have found that police officers not only structure talk during interrogations, but that their typing activities function as institutional, controlling actions when talk is transformed to text during the interrogations.

Collaborative Unit Construction in Korean: Pivot Turns

Sat, 1 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This study examines how Korean speakers make pivot turns using particles and predicates as increments while coordinating their action in relation to a recipient's response moment-to-moment. The study discusses the speaker’s organization of syntax and prosody in the design of pivot turns and demonstrates how pivot turns emerge from stance negotiation between participants. The analysis shows how interlocutors take into account multimodal resources, including talk, prosody, and gestures, during their negotiation of stance. Finally, the study suggests that Korean interlocutors construct units collaboratively as speakers turn the trajectory of talk to modify their stance through pivot turns.