Language in interaction
In the past years, an understanding of humans as cooperative and thoroughly social animals has emerged among many fields of research, including sociology, anthropology, and linguistics, lately also among fields such as, e.g., evolutionary biology, psychology, and human neuroscience. Interactional linguistics is an interdisciplinary approach to language. It studies language as a dynamically evolving product of, as well as a means for, human social interaction. Studying language in its natural environment, i.e., naturally occurring interactions, has led interactional linguistics to re-think the nature of syntax and traditional grammatical categories (e.g., ‘clause’), and to re-think linguistic meaning. Moreover, it has led interactional linguists to discover new research objects such as the temporal emergence of grammar, and the relation of body to grammar. Finally, it has led to ask what counts as grammar.
The seminar will provide an introduction to interactional linguistics by coveringa range of themes that have been studied in recent years, for example the emergence of grammatical structure, the linguistic formulation of social actions, and language and the body. The course will also aim at discussing how linguistic theories, e.g., cognitive grammar and construction grammar, relate to an interactional approach to language. More specific themes will be selected together.
The seminar will give you an overview on the current themes in interactional linguistic research. It will give you an understanding of language as an interactional phenomenon, and a chance to discuss your own research topic from an interactional perspective. In addition, the seminar will deepen your understanding on how different approaches to language relate to each other, and, in particular, to interactional linguistics.
The seminar is introductory, and it does not require any previous background in interactional linguistics. It will consist of readings, group discussions, anddata work. The seminar is worth 4 credits, and the completion of the seminar requires reading the selected literature, attending the seminar meetings, and writing a shortpaper (5-7 pages)where you, e.g., focus on aspecific linguistic phenomena in your own data,discuss how your data could be approached from an interactional perspective, or discuss the relation of you methodology and theoretical framework to interactional linguistics.
For now,one date and one theme has been decided: OnNovember 16, Leelo Keevallik from Linköping University will give a one hour talk on language and the body, followed by a two hour workshop where we will workwith actual interactional data.
For the first meeting, read the following two introductions for two books that can be considered as seminal for interactional linguistics:
Schegloff, Emanuel A., Ochs, Elinor & Thompson, Sandra A. (1996) Introduction. In: Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Interaction and grammar, pp. 1-51. Cambridge University Press.
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth & Seltig, Margart (2001) Introducing interactional linguistics. In: Margret Selting & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (eds.) Studies in interactional linguistics, pp. 1-22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.