Conversation Analytic Approaches to the Study of Romance Languages
| Number: | P66 |
| Organizer: | De Stefani, Elwys |
| Co-Organizer: | Anne-Sylvie Horlacher |
| Abstract: | |
| Although Sacks states that Conversation Analysis (CA) does not emerge "from any large interest in language" but as a contribution to sociology, conversation analytic methods have had an increasing influence on researchers interested in describing the resources that specific languages provide for achieving social interaction – under the heading of interactional linguistics. So far, research on the interactional use of language has been carried out extensively on the basis of English corpora, but there is an increased call for extending that scope. Honouring the host country's philological tradition, the panel focuses on the conversation analytic research on Romance languages. In fact, the comparative study of Romance languages (Romanistik) has developed an early interest in spoken language (see Spitzer's 1922 reflections on conversational openings in Italian), as well as in methodological questions (see Jaberg's 1906 insistence on the necessity of studying language in its "natural surroundings"). In recent years, studies carried out on Romance languages, French in particular, have had a pervasive influence on conversation analytic research, most notably in areas such as the analysis of grammar-in-interaction and the study of multimodal practices. Conversely, CA has proven to be an efficient means for studying structural properties and possibilities of language as resources for talk-in-interaction. Contributions to the panel will address one of the following sets of questions: 1) How can research on Romance languages contribute to the ongoing scientific discourse at stake in CA? In what way can comparative studies on genetically close languages produce new insights on the organization of social interaction? 2) How can findings from CA on English be applied to the study of Romance languages? Are "classical" language resources as defined in CA literature (e.g. "yes but" as exhibiting a 'preference for agreement') applicable without further ado to Romance languages? |
|
