Framing in interactive academic talk: A conversation-analytic perspective
Abstract
Framing involves how language users conceptualize what is happening in interaction for situated interpretation of roles, purposes, expectations, and sequences of action, thus show significant conceptual relevance to the analysis of routinized institutional communication. Having established a working definition of framing based on an intensive review of previous research, this study investigates university students’ and tutors’ framing behaviors in interactive small group talk. Two types of framing-in-interaction, -alternate framing of a single situation and co-framing within/beyond speaker role boundary-, are identified, examined, and characterized from a conversation-analytic perspective. The findings suggest that alternate framings co-occur with traceable interactional devices for sequential organization when the single situation at talk takes on divergent meaning potentials to be accessed. Co-framings happen when at least one (group) of participants is highly goal-oriented, showing conditional relevance to the prior courses of action and more explicit negotiation of epistemic stances. Framing, therefore, can be arguably taken as a global organization resource to characterize contextualization in institutional communication.
Keywords:
Publication history
1.Introduction
Socio-interactional research in recent decades has been passionately devoted to mechanisms of verbal communication in
institutional exchanges. Researchers in Conversation Analysis (CA) have found that the infrastructure which is universally applicable
to informal, ordinary conversations do not always hold in specific institutional contexts (Kendrick et al. 2020Kendrick, Kobin
H., Penelope Brown, Mark Dingemanse, Simeon Floyd, Sonja Gipper, Kaoru Hayano, Elliott Hoey, Gertie Hoymann, Elizabeth Manrique, Giovanni Rossi, and Stephen
C. Levinson 2020 “Sequence
Organization: A Universal Infrastructure for Social Action.” Journal of
Pragmatics 168: 119–138. 
). When the institutional framework is invoked by professionals (Nielsen et al. 2012Nielsen, Mie
Femø, Søren
Beck Nielsen, Gitte Gravengaard, and Brian Due 2012 “Interactional
Functions of Invoking Procedure in Institutional Settings.” Journal of
Pragmatics 44: 1457–1473. ), a global dimension for discursive organization applies beyond the immediate turns and sequences.
With meaning constructed (Heritage 2005 2005 “Conversation
Analysis and Institutional Talk.” In Handbook of Language and Social
Interaction, eds. by Kristine
L. Fitch, and Robert
E. Sanders, 103–147. New
York: Routledge.) based upon mutual expectations, procedural limits,
and situated expertise (Dall and Sarangi 2018Dall, Tanja, and Srikant Sarangi 2018 “Ways
of ‘Appealing to the Institution’ in Interprofessional Rehabilitation Team
Decision-Making.” Journal of
Pragmatics 129: 102–119. ), the evidence of interactive framing shows
(O’Malley 2009O’Malley, Mary-Pat 2009 “Falling
between Frames: Institutional Discourse and Disability in Radio.” Journal of
Pragmatics 41: 346–356. ).
Framing captures “what people think they are doing when they talk to each other” (Tannen
1993aTannen, Deborah 1993a “Introduction.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3–13. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 6) and has been conceptualized at the interface between human cognition and interaction (Goffman 1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. ; Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. , 2009 2009 Making
Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction. New
York: Oxford University Press. , 2015 2015 “Framing
and Positioning.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 324–345. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.; Ribeiro and Hoyle 2009Ribeiro, Branca, and Susan Hoyle 2009 “Frame
Analysis.” In Grammar, Meaning and
Pragmatics, eds. by Frank Brisard, Jan-Ola Ostman, and Jef Verschueren, 74–90. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. ;
Stubbs 2001Stubbs, Michael 2001 “On
Inference Theories and Code Theories: Corpus Evidence for Semantic
Schemas.” Text 21(3): 437–456.; Tannen 1993aTannen, Deborah 1993a “Introduction.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3–13. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 1993b 1993b “What’s
in a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 14–56. New
York: Oxford University Press.; Tannen and Wallat 1993 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.; Kern and Selting
2013Kern, Friederike and Selting, Margret 2013 “Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics.” The Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics. 1-5.). Framing for professional meaning negotiation is particularly manifest in institutional exchanges (e.g. classroom talk) where
epistemic asymmetry is either maintained or challenged (Jacknick 2011Jacknick, Christine
M. 2011 “Breaking in is Hard to Do: How
Students Negotiate Classroom Activity Shifts.” Classroom
Discourse 2(1): 20–38. ; van Dijk 2012van
Dijk, Teun 2012 “The
Field of Epistemic Discourse Analysis.” Discourse
Studies 15(5): 479–499.) and social relationships are jointly accomplished (Tannen 2005 2005 Conversational
Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends. New York: Oxford
University Press.; Stivers et al. 2011Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig 2011 “Knowledge,
Morality and Affiliation in Social Interaction.” In The Morality of
Knowledge in Conversation, eds. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 3–26. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ). Epistemic state and status
navigate ways of approaching topics and situations (Heritage 2012 2012 “Epistemics
in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 45(1): 1–29. , 2013 2013 “Action
Formation and Its Epistemic (and Other) Backgrounds.” Discourse
Studies 15(5): 551–578. ; Heritage and Clayman 2010Heritage, John, and Steven Clayman 2010 Talk
in Action: Interactions, Identities and
Institutions. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. ) and relationships define roles
and responsibilities (Dörnyei and Murphey 2003Dörnyei, Zoltán, and Tim Murphey 2003 Group
Dynamics in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ; Stivers
et al. 2011Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig 2011 “Knowledge,
Morality and Affiliation in Social Interaction.” In The Morality of
Knowledge in Conversation, eds. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 3–26. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ) in the “context-bound process” of conversational inferences (Gumperz
1982Gumperz, John.
J. 1982 Discourse
Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. , 153). Following is an example.
1 <$ 1> It ((the temperature)) ↓will(.) become too ↓high 2 <$ 2> ↓Yep 3 <$ 1> Right 4 <$ 2> Eventually 5 <$ 1> =So do we almost have to O:VER-(1.6) °what’s the ↑word° 6 <$ 2> Overcom- 7 <$ 1> ↑ YEAH(.)Overcompen↑ sate
In Excerpt 1, two participants jointly attend to the concept of “overcompensate” at a
student project meeting. The shared knowledge provides the cognitive basis upon which the interaction proceeds. $ 1 initiates a
clarification from $ 2 after failing to come up with the full term. $ 1’s verbal prosody -a stretched sound and an increased volume of
the incomplete utterance of “overcompensate” (Line 5)- indicates a trouble source by claiming his insufficient knowledge (Sert and Walsh 2012Sert, Olcay, and Steve Walsh 2012 “The
Interactional Management of Claims of Insufficient Knowledge in English Language
Classrooms.” Language and
Education 27(6): 542–565. ). The knowledge of the concept, however, is supposed to be equally
accessible to both of them, revealed from the lower volume of $ 1’s question (Line 5). The second component part of “overcompensate”
uttered by $ 2 (Line 6), although unfinished, performs an effective repair that triggers $ 1’s confirmative response and the latter’s
articulation of the full term (Line 7).
The example demonstrates that a cognitive workload and an awareness of situated interpretation are essential for
interlocutors to be engaged in meaningful interaction. The sequential organization is not only motivated by particular knowledge
structures associated with specific disciplinary concepts but also attributed to how interlocutors’ state of knowing can be
accordingly aligned and adjusted (Heritage 2012 2012 “Epistemics
in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 45(1): 1–29. ). Such alignment and adjustment constitute
framing in the courses of action at talk. Therefore, an exclusive focus on the locally managed turns and sequences, as shown in
numerous existing CA studies, might not be conceptually and methodologically sufficient to address the complexity in institutional
exchanges. Although analysts following the tradition of CA have undoubtedly “developed a truly linguistic understanding of framing”
(Gordon 2001Gordon, Cynthia 2001 “Framing
and Positioning.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 324–345. Oxford: Wiley
Blackwell., 327), the analysis of talk-in-interaction needs to make the connection
between structural linguistic elements (e.g. “contextualization cues” conceptualized by Gumperz
1982Gumperz, John.
J. 1982 Discourse
Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ) and framing more manifest and interpretable at the operational level of analysis, while the research field is still
in need of expansion.
Utilizing a CA approach, this study is aimed to build on the ongoing research by investigating framing in university small
group talk. The focus is on the relationship between framing and institutional routines, in particular, how framing operates to
integrate the cognitive relations (Goffman 1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. ) and contextual inferences (Gumperz 1982Gumperz, John.
J. 1982 Discourse
Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ) between participants for collaborative meaning construction and negotiation.
Having established a working definition of framing based on an intensive review of previous research, this study
identifies, examines, and characterizes two types of framing: alternate framing of a single situation and
co-framing within/beyond speaker role boundary. The analyses demonstrate that patterns of framing and
goal-oriented courses of action shape each other at different stages of talk. The findings suggest that framing can be arguably taken
as a global organization resource to interpret interlocutors’ specific linguistic choices in institutional verbal communication.
2.Frame and framing in social interaction
Frame is one of the key concepts in social interaction research. The notion of frame was
introduced into the field of ethnography and ecological studies of society in the 1970s. Tracing back to anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1987)Bateson, Gregory 1987 Steps
to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and
Epistemology. New York: Ballantine
Books., frames as psychological sense-making behaviors are re-interpreted for
an approach towards contextual discourse analysis of human social interaction and experience (Tannen 1993aTannen, Deborah 1993a “Introduction.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3–13. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 1993b 1993b “What’s
in a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 14–56. New
York: Oxford University Press.). Goffman (1974) 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books.
proposed the concept of frame based on the earlier work on the ethnography of communication (see Hymes 1968Hymes, Dell 1968 “The
Ethnography of Speaking.” In Readings in the Sociology of
Language, ed. by Joshua
A. Fishman, 99–138. The
Hague: Mouton. ) to analyze the organization of human experience in moment-to-moment interaction.
Frames are conceptualized by Goffman (1974) 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books. as consisting of “principles of organizations
which govern events – at least social ones – and our subjective involvement in them” (p. 10). When speakers create or apply frames in
their talk, they construct alignments between one another as well as what is said (Gordon
2015 2015 “Framing
and Positioning.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 324–345. Malden,
MA: Blackwell., 326). Frames are “reflexive and fluctuating” so that interlocutors can manage any change “from one frame to another”
(Drew and Heritage 1992Drew, Paul, and John Heritage 1992 “Analyzing
Talk at Work: An Introduction.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in
Institutional Settings, eds. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press., 8).
Sociolinguistic research has subsequently seen the definition of frame refined as “structures of
expectations”, “organized knowledge in form of expectations (Tannen 1993b 1993b “What’s
in a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 14–56. New
York: Oxford University Press., 16–21), and “a
sense of what activity is being engaged in, how speakers mean what they say” which is “constituted by verbal and non-verbal
interaction” (Tannen and Wallat 1993 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 60). Discourse analysts typically take frames as to
what incorporate behaviors and processes of how interlocutors establish “definitions of situation” (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 10) and how they correspondingly make sense of social experience. The analysis of frames in
social interaction, according to Ribeiro and Hoyle (2009)Ribeiro, Branca, and Susan Hoyle 2009 “Frame
Analysis.” In Grammar, Meaning and
Pragmatics, eds. by Frank Brisard, Jan-Ola Ostman, and Jef Verschueren, 74–90. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. , is “a way of studying the
organization of experience”, “an approach to cognition and interaction that focuses on the construction, conveying and interpretation
of meanings” (p. 74). Frames are believed to be “not innate but acquired through socialization as constructed out of experience”, thus
are highly “culturally dependent” (Bednarek 2005Bednarek, Monika 2005 “Frames
Revisited – the Coherence-inducing Function of Frames.” Journal of
Pragmatics 37(5): 685–705. , 690; also see Tannen 1993aTannen, Deborah 1993a “Introduction.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3–13. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 1993b 1993b “What’s
in a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 14–56. New
York: Oxford University Press.), and cultural dependency contributes to
establishing norms of socialization (Tannen 1993b 1993b “What’s
in a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying Expectations.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 14–56. New
York: Oxford University Press.). Frames are, therefore, expected to be
“conventionalized and capture the prototypical features of a situation” (Bednarek 2005Bednarek, Monika 2005 “Frames
Revisited – the Coherence-inducing Function of Frames.” Journal of
Pragmatics 37(5): 685–705. ,
690) in social interaction.
Typical characteristics of frames identified from the socio-interactional perspective help researchers divide them into
categories, some of which see overlaps with what is portrayed by linguists following a cognitive path.11.There is no unified frame theory and a terminological confusion is sometimes inevitable (Bednarek 2005Bednarek, Monika 2005 “Frames
Revisited – the Coherence-inducing Function of Frames.” Journal of
Pragmatics 37(5): 685–705. , 688). Scholars following distinct research traditions may be reluctant to accept an
unmarked use of frame to refer to different (though related) phenomena in a single research project, for example,
a “mental knowledge structure” from a cognitive perspective (see Minsky 1974Minsky, Marvin 1974 “A
Framework for Representing Knowledge.” Artificial
Intelligence 306: 1–82.; Barsalou 1992Barsalou, Lawrence
W. 1992 “Frames, Concepts and Conceptual
Fields.” In Frames, Fields, and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantic and
Lexical Organizations, eds. by Adrienne Lehrer, and Kittay
Eva Feder, 21–74. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.; Fillmore 1982Fillmore, Charles.
J. 1982 “Frame
Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning
Calm, ed. by In-Seok Yang, 111–137. Soeul: Hanshin.) or a “sense of
activity system” from a socio-interactional perspective (see Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. ; Tannen and Wallat 1993 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.). This study
shares the theoretical and methodological concerns of Conversation Analysis (Sacks et al.
1974Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel
A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson 1974 “A
Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for
Conversation.” Language 50(4): 696–735. ) to examine framing in interaction. This preference, however, does not mean that the cognitive
dimension of framing is irrelevant or peripheral to the data analysis. Scholars following the socio-interactional path have never
failed to highlight the significance of interactants’ “cognitive relation” (Goffman
1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. , 4) and mental connection between present things and past experience (Tannen
1993aTannen, Deborah 1993a “Introduction.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3–13. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 15) in their analysis of social interaction. For example, (Fillmore 2006 2006 “Frame
Semantics.” In Cognitive Linguistics: Basic
Readings, ed. by Geeraerts Dirk, 373–400. Berlin: Monton
de Gruyter. ) uses interactional frames to
describe how people conceptualize what is going on in actual communicative contexts, concerning interlocutors’ expectations to define
the roles, purposes, and conventionalized sequences of language-in-action associated with certain knowledge. Tannen and Wallat (1993) 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. portray interactive frames of interpretation, referring to “a sense
of what activity being engaged in, how speakers mean what they say” in interaction (Tannen and
Wallat 1993 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 59–60). Based upon the categorization, Tannen and Wallat (1993) 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
demonstrate how concepts are interconnected (for example, through switching and adjusting different frames), extending Goffman’s
observation that “social life is layered as experience is recast and transformed” through language use (Gordon 2015 2015 “Framing
and Positioning.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 324–345. Malden,
MA: Blackwell., 327).
Framing, from diverse but related epistemic perspectives, is understood as a speaker’s applying a
(collection of) knowledge structure(s) to a communicative situation for specific purposes, involving “contextualizing or situating
events in the broadest sense possible” concerning established patterns of linguistically constructed knowledge (Fillmore 1982Fillmore, Charles.
J. 1982 “Frame
Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning
Calm, ed. by In-Seok Yang, 111–137. Soeul: Hanshin.: 391). Framing is a “collaborative, multiparty” communicative process (Kendon 1992Kendon, Adam 1992 “The
Negotiation of Context in Face-to-Face Interaction.” In Rethinking
Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, eds. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 323–334. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press., 324) and “a filtering process through which societal-level values and principles of conduct are
transformed and refocused so as to apply to the situation at hand” (Gumperz 2003Gumperz, John
J. 2003 “Interactional Sociolinguistics:
A Personal Perspective.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 215–228. Malden,
MA: Blackwell., 3).
Pragmatics is, therefore, fundamental to framing in that speakers not only depend on the shared perception of frames but also strive
towards framing in creative ways to achieve communicative goals (see Nerlich and Clarke 2000Nerlich, Brigitte and Clarke, D. David 2000 “Semantic Fields and Frames: Historical Explorations of the Interface between Language, Action and Cognition.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 125–150. ; Hamawand 2016Hamawand, Zeki 2016 Semantics: A Cognitive Account of Linguistic Meaning. United Kingdom: Equinox Publishing.).
Different functions of framing-in-interaction have been identified, examined, and characterized in a broad variety of social
scenes. Some framings are investigated at a relatively macro level of discourse analysis, such as narrative framing (Goodwin 1984Goodwin, Charles 1984 “Notes
on Story Structure and the Organization of
Participation.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in
Conversation Analysis, eds. by J.
Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 225–246. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.), ironic framing (Clift 1999Clift, Rebecca 1999 “Irony in Conversation.” Language in Society 28(4): 523–553. ), argumentative framing (Goodwin 1996Goodwin, Marjorie
Harness 1996 “Shifting
Frame.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays
in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp, eds. by Dan
Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kryatzis, and Jiansheng Guo, 71–82. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.), negotiating framing (Gordon 2009 2009 Making
Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction. New
York: Oxford University Press. ), quotative
framing (Tannen 2007 2007 “Talking
the Dog: Framing Pets as Interactional Resources in Family
Discourse.” In Family Talk: Discourse and Identity in Four American
Families, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Shari Kendall, and Cynthia Gordon, 49–69. New
York: Oxford University Press. ; Betz 2013Betz, Emma 2013 “Quote-unquote
in One Variety of German: Two Interactional Functions of Pivot Constructions Used as Frames for Quotation in Siebenbürger
Sächsisch.” Journal of
Pragmatics 54: 16–34. ), institutional
framing (Hutchby 1999Hutchby, Ian 1999 “Frame Attunement and Footing in the Organisation of Talk Radio Openings.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(1): 41–63. ), work and play framings (Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. ), and quotidian framing
(Matsumoto 2011Matsumoto, Yoshiko 2011 “Painful to Playful: Quotidian Frames in the Conversational Discourse of Older Japanese Women.” Language in Society 40: 591–616. , 2015 2015 “The Power of the Ordinary: Quotidian Framing as a Narrative Strategy.” Journal of Pragmatics 86: 100–105. ). Some framings seem to be locally emergent and lanimated (Gordon
2015 2015 “Framing
and Positioning.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 324–345. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.) concerning the structuredness of conversational moves, such as framing for repairs (Lerner and Kitzinger 2007Lerner, Gene
H. and Celia Kitzinger 2007 “Extraction
and Aggregation in the Repair of Individual and Collective Self-Reference.” Discourse
Studies, 9: 526–57. ), framing for openings (Hutchby 1999Hutchby, Ian 1999 “Frame Attunement and Footing in the Organisation of Talk Radio Openings.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(1): 41–63. ), overlapped framings (Gordon 2003 2003 “Intertextuality
in Family Discourse: Shared Prior Text as a Resource for
Framing.” Dissertation, Georgetown
University.), embodied framings (Goodwin 1996Goodwin, Marjorie
Harness 1996 “Shifting
Frame.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays
in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp, eds. by Dan
Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kryatzis, and Jiansheng Guo, 71–82. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.), reframing (Tannen 2006 2006 “Intertextuality
in Interaction: Reframing Family Arguments in Public and Private.” Text &
Talk 26(4/5): 597–617. ; Matsumoto 2011Matsumoto, Yoshiko 2011 “Painful to Playful: Quotidian Frames in the Conversational Discourse of Older Japanese Women.” Language in Society 40: 591–616. ), shifted framings (Goodwin
1996Goodwin, Marjorie
Harness 1996 “Shifting
Frame.” In Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language: Essays
in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp, eds. by Dan
Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kryatzis, and Jiansheng Guo, 71–82. Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.), nested framings (Campbell 2003Campbell, J.
Edward 2003 “Always Use a Modem:
Analyzing Frames of Erotic Play, Performance, and Power in Cyberspace.” Electronic Journal of
Communication 13.), embedded framings (Gordon 2002 2002 “I’m
Mommy and You’re Natalie’: Role-Reversal and Embedded Frames in Mother–Child
Discourse.” Language in
Society 31: 679–720. , 2009 2009 Making
Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction. New
York: Oxford University Press. ), and blended framings (Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. , 2009 2009 Making
Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction. New
York: Oxford University Press. ). The latter category is closely related to the
sequential organization and transformation of interaction, demonstrating that framing is “often a complex, multi-layered activity”
(Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. : 343) with a high level of sensitivity to and dependency of context.
In his discussion on the analysis of frames in talk, Goffman (1974) 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books. proposed
three points concerning how language use functions as framing devices in human interaction. First, the role of words can be a source
of both framing and mis-framing in a conversation for their recipient. The speaker can break frames just as he/she can create and
utilize frames through the way he/she manages the production of lexical items.
Second, frames are “institutionalized in various ways” (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 63). Unlike
informal talk at each juncture of which “a whole range of actions seems available to the individual” (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 501), institutional talk usually allows limited choices of language resources and heightened
use of procedures which would narrow the range of available actions. A single context compromises its own interactional order (Goffman 1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. ) in institutional talk and a frame contains its own “logic”, “motives”,
“meanings”, and “activities” (Goffman 1981b 1981b “A
Reply to Denzin and Keller.” Contemporary
Sociology 10 (1): 60–68. , 63) to manifest contextual specifics.
Institutional exchanges involve “a single, pre-established agenda with elaborate differentiation of parts to be played” (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 498). A close observation of such goal-orientedness may contribute to revealing
how interlocutors, with “idiosyncratic motives and interpretations”, “gear” each other into “what is available by way of standard
doings and standard reasons for doing these things” (Goffman 1981b 1981b “A
Reply to Denzin and Keller.” Contemporary
Sociology 10 (1): 60–68. , 63).
Third, ways of framing can be idiosyncratic concerning how interlocutors choose to “replay” a scene to each other (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 504). This involves the speaker’s evaluation of the moment-to-moment
interaction as well as his/her intention to conceptualize the talk to his/her listener(s) so that the latter can “empathetically
insert themselves into” the talk (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 504). This concerns a higher level of
shared intentionality in interaction and more complex forms of cooperation, through which interlocutors represent and
coordinate their agendas according to the overall goal of the communication.
While the theories of framing are far from being unified, it has been widely accepted that framing is closely related to
what language users know and the way of knowing (Heritage 2012 2012 “Epistemics
in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 45(1): 1–29. ). To investigate the
sequential transformation (Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. ) of framing in interaction, the concept of
contextualization cues (Gumperz 1992a 1992a “Contextualization and
Understanding.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive
Phenomenon, eds. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.) is of particular relevance and
usefulness. Contextualization cues are linguistic and para-linguistic devices that “when processed in co-occurrence with other cues
and grammatical and lexical signs, construct the contextual ground for situated interpretation and thereby affect how particular
messages are understood” (Gumperz 2003Gumperz, John
J. 2003 “Interactional Sociolinguistics:
A Personal Perspective.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 215–228. Malden,
MA: Blackwell., 220). They are used by interlocutors to signal and
interpret talk-in-interaction (Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. , 322), including but not limited to intonation,
rhythm, loudness, pitch, lexical, phonetic and syntactic choices (Tovares 2016Tovares, Alla
V. 2016 “Going Off-Script and Reframing
the Frame: The Dialogic Intertwining of the Centripetal and Centrifugal Voices in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Hearings.” Discourse &
Society 27(5): 554–573. , 557). There
is “a significant convergence between the linguistic concept of contextualization cues and the sociological concept
of frame” (Drew and Heritage 1992Drew, Paul, and John Heritage 1992 “Analyzing
Talk at Work: An Introduction.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in
Institutional Settings, eds. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press., 8). Framing is, therefore,
characterized as a global level of contextualization that signals interlocutors’ expectations, interpretations, and negotiations
through “cues and markers” (Goffman 1981a 1981a Forms
of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press., 157). Contextualization22.
Gumperz (1992a) 1992a “Contextualization and
Understanding.” In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive
Phenomenon, eds. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. uses contextualization to refer to
“speakers and listeners’ use of verbal and nonverbal signs to relate what is said at any one time and in any one place to
knowledge acquired through past experience” (p. 230). at this level contributes to making predictions about what is in focus (e.g. topics and viewpoints) and the
subsequent sequential organization (e.g. identification of legitimate speaker change).
In this study, a working definition of framing is established: framing-in-interaction is the process of how interlocutors apply particular knowledge structures to interaction and how they negotiate meanings through the use of contextualization cues to enclose each other’s alignments and expectations. The following sections introduce the data and methods used in this study, followed by a detailed analysis and subsequent discussion. The conclusion and implication of the findings are also provided.
3.The study: Data and methods
This study focuses on interlocutors’ framing behaviors in a particular kind of social communication – university small group talk. The aim of data analysis is to determine if, and how the participants’ management of turns and sequences at talk would have any impact upon ways of framing-in-interaction for meaning negotiation following specific institutional routines. University small group talk is selected to be examined not only due to a lack of prior research on framing patterns in interactive small group talk at the higher educational level, but aimed to explain the structural uniqueness of the talk genre from a fresh, more global perspective of contextualization. University small group talk does not resemble mundane conversations in that it shows a heightened use of procedures. On the other hand, it differentiates itself from traditional classroom interaction in that it features a relatively equal participation and more emergent turn-taking patterns with pedagogical orientations less relevant or salient. The shifting participatory mode, nevertheless, does not override the asymmetrical power distribution across different speaker roles. Epistemic divergences between interlocutors are, therefore, found to be more strategically deployed to take advantage of communicative resources bound by rights and obligations.
The main data set used in this study is a specialized corpus of spoken academic English (NUCASE, Walsh 2014Walsh, Steve 2014 Newcastle
University Corpus of Academic Spoken English (NUCASE). Cambridge University
Press.). The corpus comprises 47 small group talk sessions (roughly 63 hours) which were audio-and
video-recorded at a UK university from 2010 to 2016. The data cover a broad range of speech events, including seminars, tutorials,
Ph.D. supervision meetings, staff-student consultations, and students’ project meetings. Students at both undergraduate and
postgraduate levels are involved. The number of participants for each session ranges from 4 to 12 (Walsh and Knight 2016Walsh, Steve, and Dawn Knight 2016 “Analyzing
Spoken Discourse in University Small Group Teaching.” In Creating and
Digitizing Language Corpora, eds. by Karen
P. Corrigan, and Adam Mearns, 291–319. London: Palgrave. ), and the time duration of a single session ranges from 15 minutes to 5 hours. All participants
included in data analysis are native speakers of English.
All participant speech is broadly transcribed and speaker-coded. Multiple listenings of the recordings contribute to
identifying target talk sequences which are further transcribed following the conventions developed by Jefferson (2004) 2004 “Glossary
of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation
Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene
H. Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam,
Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing. . Transcribing at this stage ensures that all excerpts genuinely represent naturally
occurring talk which is not produced following any external instructions or recording scripts (Schegloff 1987 1987 “Analyzing Single Episodes of
Interaction: An Exercise in Conversation Analysis.” Social Psychology
Quarterly 50(2): 101–114. , 102). Labels33.Labeling of interactive frames in this study largely depends on the identification of and judgment on the principles
and organizations that govern the small group talk events, or how the participants establish “definitions of a situation” (Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 10). The labeling approach proves to serve the research purpose well, while
scholars favoring a cognitive approach to framing may prefer a more technically rigorous way of labeling frames based on the
identification and categorization of specific lexical concepts in pre-established semantic domains (see Ruppenhofer et al. 2006Ruppenhofer, Josef, Michael Ellsworth, Miriam
R. L. Petruck, Christopher
R. Johnson, and Jan Scheffczyk 2006 “FrameNet
II: Extended Theory and Practice.” International Computer Science
Institute, Berkeley, California.; Rayson 2008Rayson, Paul 2008 “From
Key Words to Key Semantic Domains.” International Journal of Corpus
Linguistics 13(4): 519–549. ). in capitalized italics are assigned to different frames
which are activated in the sequential organization of the participants’ talk. A conversation-analytic approach (Sacks et al. 1974Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel
A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson 1974 “A
Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for
Conversation.” Language 50(4): 696–735. ) is adopted to examine how the corresponding framing patterns are fitted to specific
turn-taking structures and communicative needs (Betz 2013Betz, Emma 2013 “Quote-unquote
in One Variety of German: Two Interactional Functions of Pivot Constructions Used as Frames for Quotation in Siebenbürger
Sächsisch.” Journal of
Pragmatics 54: 16–34. ). The following section reports
the main research findings and subsequently provides a focused discussion.
4.Findings and discussion
4.1Alternate framings of a single situation
This section focuses on the talk sequences which involve alternate framings of a single situation.
The formulation is based on empirical observations which show that the same ‘fact’ can be presented within different framings thus
are made out as different ‘facts’ (Fillmore 2006 2006 “Frame
Semantics.” In Cognitive Linguistics: Basic
Readings, ed. by Geeraerts Dirk, 373–400. Berlin: Monton
de Gruyter. , 386). Alternate framings show how
deviant people’s experiential schematizations can be when they are encountered with the same situation. The single situation can
make different people invoke different expectations and subsequent actions (as alternatives) for meaning construction and
negotiation.
In Excerpt 2 alternate framings are invoked by a single speaker rather than proposed by the interlocutors. In this excerpt, a tutor ($ 1) and two student-teachers ($ 5 and $ 7) are talking about student-teachers in the workplace.
1 <$ 1> So e= I ↑gues (.) in a way(0.5)for a= for a= se:nior 2 teacher to come into your lesson >as you say first of all 3 you think< “oh my word↓ that’s (0.6) you know (.) bit 4 [↑worrying”] 5 <$ 7> [Yeah ] 6 <$ 1> (.)but then ↑actually >the fact that< he gave: you: the 7 ↑respect to say [“well ] 8 <$ 5> [Mm (.) Yeah] 9 <$ 1> what= what <do you:: want me to [do?”]> 10 <$ 5> [Yeah] 11 <$ 7> [Mhm ] 12 <$ 1> =given that we’ve (.)There’s obviously >an incident< 13 going on here =There’s ↑always gonna be incidents(1.0) 14 but rather than just saying “oh you ↑°silly° 15 [student teacher] 16 <$ 5> [Yeah ] 17 <$ 7> [Yeah ] 18 <$ 1> =and >you know< I’ll sort ↑this out for you”
The talk is based on a shared acknowledgment that there is a tension between student-teachers at work and other
institutional actors (e.g. senior teachers) concerning how the former is viewed and treated by the latter. The single situation is
“a student-teacher’s lesson is under the observation of a senior teacher”. AnINSPECT frame underlying
student-teachers’ worrying sentiments against senior teachers is invoked by the tutor and confirmed by $ 7 (yeah,
Line 5). $ 1, however, immediately proposes the other way of interpreting the situation by invoking an ASSISTANCE
frame to show that “being observed by a senior teacher” can be something positive since the student-teachers are in fact helped
rather than criticized. The word silly stages an external voice that has been pragmatically revised with a rising
intonation but in a lower volume (Line 14). It performs as a counterfactual marker, indicating that the situation being discussed
is strategically contrasted. Traceable prosodic features in $ 1’s turn at Line 14–15 (e.g. intonation, volume, stress) contribute
to signaling a meaning shift and contrast as “constitutive of the interactional characteristics of the encounter” (Gumperz 1992b 1992b “Contextualization
Revisited.” In The Contextualization of
Language, eds. by Peter Auer, and Aldo
Di Luzio, 39–53. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. , 43), thus manage to highlight the ASSISTANCE frame as
what is to be expected by student teachers in the workplace.
Excerpt 3 shows how alternate framings are applied by different speakers who share a particular identity that is institutionally defined. Two tutors ($ 1 and $ 2) and a student-teacher ($ 4) are reflecting upon a scenario recalled by the student-teacher from her prior teaching experience. An orientation of $ 4 can be identified to building up her professional identity of being a teacher based upon students’ emotional feedback.
1 <$ 4> I ↑want to get to the stage where the kids they’re sad(.) that 2 I’m not gonna be teaching them °anymore° ((laughing)) 3 <$ 2> [They >probably< sure they were sad when you. left (.) 4 <$ 1> [I’m sure they al= they al= they [↑ ALREADY WERE ] 5 <$ 4> [↑Yes some of them WERE] 6 (0.5) I was really pleased (0.5) and I was like= “ah yeah(.)my 7 lesson must be quite good (.) if they [think= if they really 8 said that” 9 <$ 2> [Yeah(.) But- 10 <$ 1> [Yeah(.) Well= 11 that’s what Roger and ↑ I ho:pe (.) ↑isn’t it(.) >That at the 12 end of the year< you think– “aw: I’m gonna miss them”
It is right after $ 4’s turn where alternate framings can be identified carried out by the two tutors. The overlapping
talk (Line 3–4) shows their immediate responses to $ 4’s utterance. $ 2 talks about the possibility (probably,
Line 3) of the kids being sad on the kids’ part, while $ 1 emphasizes the certainty (sure, already, Line 4) of
the kids being sad from her perspective. $ 2 invokes the EVALUATE frame to objectively examine the
teacher-student relationship; whereas $ 1 invokes the EMPATHY frame to recall the emotional bond between the
teacher and her students. $ 1’s comment seems more proactive and encouraging, indicated by $ 4’s acknowledgement (Line 5) which
relates the kids’ reaction to positive self-evaluation (Line 6–8). $ 2 orients to maintaining his framing by trying to give a
different comment after a short acknowledgment (yeah, Line 9). The act is projected by the word
but (Line 9) which indicates that $ 2’s following talk may be contrasting with $ 4’s prior talk (Line 5–8).
This move, however, is interrupted by $ 1 when she may have realized that what $ 2 is going to say would probably discourage $ 4.
She then deliberately applies a series of discursive strategies to “save the talk”, such as building solidarity (that’s
what Roger and I hope, Line 11), using a tag question (isn’t it?, Line 11) to invite affiliation
(see Gass et al. 2005Gass, Susan, Alison Mackey and Lauren Ross-Feldman 2005 “Task-Based
Interactions in Classroom and Laboratory Settings.” Language
Learning 55(4): 575–611. ), and directing the talk into a sympathetic realm ( Aw,
I’m gonna miss them, Line 11).
The overlap in Line 9 and 10 shows individual efforts made to maintain their framings which have been constructed in
the prior talk: $ 1 orients to maintaining her framing with $ 4 while $ 2 orients to regaining the focus on his framing but fails
to do so when $ 1 manages to take the floor (Line 11). The overlap happens before $ 4’s turn has come to the end, offering initial
clues as to the action implemented in next turn (Rühlemann 2019 2019 Corpus
Linguistics for Pragmatics: A Guide for
Research. London: Routledge., 142) when $ 1 and $ 2
compete in the transition space for the speakership. The overlap is correlated with the sequential environment of assessment when
$ 4 emphasizes good (Line 7) as a self-evaluation of her lesson and $ 1 and $ 2 agree with her assessment (Pomerantz 1984Pomerantz, Anita 1984 “Agreeing
and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dis-preferred Turn
Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation
Analysis, eds. by J.
Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press., 69; see also Vatanen 2018Vatanen, Anna 2018 “Responding
in Early Overlap: Recognitional Onsets in Assertion Sequences.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 51(2): 107–126. ).
The acknowledgment tokens yeahs at the initial positions of both $ 1’s and $ 2’s turns (Line 9 and 10) are
associated with a display of passive recipiency which exhibits “a preparedness to shift from recipiency to speakership” (Jefferson 1983Jefferson, Gail 1983 “On
a Failed Hypothesis: ‘Conjunctionals’ as Overlap Vulnerable.” Tilburg Papers Lang.
Lit 28: 29–33.). The finding adds to the evidence of structural representation of
cognitive divergence involved in alternate framings (Fillmore 2006 2006 “Frame
Semantics.” In Cognitive Linguistics: Basic
Readings, ed. by Geeraerts Dirk, 373–400. Berlin: Monton
de Gruyter. ). The divergence
shown in the overlap is “intimately connected to the predictive work expended by recipients trying to anticipate the current turn
as a whole” (Rühlemann 2019 2019 Corpus
Linguistics for Pragmatics: A Guide for
Research. London: Routledge., 145; see also Levinson
and Torreira 2015Levinson, Stephen
C., and Francisco Torreira 2015 “Timing
in Turn-Taking and Its Implications for Processing Models of Language.” Frontiers in
Psychology 6: 1–17. , 13).
Excerpt 4 shows that alternate framings of a single situation can be associated with different speakers’ orientations shaped by distinct institutional values. Such orientations show how participants position themselves in relation to the macro (e.g. institutional) and micro (speech event) contexts and how they conceptualize their corresponding rights and obligations in communication. In this excerpt, a student research team ($ 2 and $ 4) and a company delegation ($ 1 and $ 3) are talking about their concerns of a software design.
1 <$ 1> ↑Well(.) so another requirements gathering meeting (.) Is 2 there anything(.) er(.) you need to know ahead of your (.) 3 submission (.) of the initial(.) design this evening 4 <$ 2> We’re Just looking for clarification on what it was (.) with 5 regards to the documentation that you actually wanted (.) 6 Like- obviously the aims of each(.) er (.) proposal and 7 also(.) which tools we’re going to use ((a female’s 8 coughing)) and why we’re going to use them(.) Is that mainly 9 what you’re ↑after 10 <$ 3> (4.0) Design documentation and er: I guess (1.0) have you 11 looked it up on ↑Google(2.3) The software development life 12 cycle (.) Do you know what design documentation will look 13 like(.) I think do you ↑KNOW(.) Well I hope you do because 14 I’m paying you enough(.) about the software development life 15 cycle(.) You have one at least= one computer scientist on 16 your team 17 <$ 2> Yeah (2.3) Okay- 16 <$ 1> =So there are standards(.) for design documentation (.) [(a 19 male’s coughing))and I think what we’d like to see(.) 20 is (0.5) ↓ documentation that conforms to those standards 21 <$ 2> Okay(4.8) >That was the only question I really came in 22 with<= I ↑mean(.) the re3t of it is just getting on(.) with 23 the work flow= so- 24 <$ 1> Right 25 <$ 4> Yeah(.) it’s pretty much(.) the same(.) as yesterday we 26 found 27 <$ M> Mm-mm 26 <$ 3> So what a= a company would be looking for is some evidence 29 that there is some rationale from(.) because we all put our 30 contracts-
The two parties are found to frame differently a single situation of “a software design is to be presented in documentation”. The research team tends to highlight the contextualized factors (e.g. aims, tools, rationale) which are taken specifically relevant and significant to their design (a BOTTOM-UP frame). By contrast, the company delegation prefers a reference to a standardized model of software development life cycle which will specify and rationalize the order of stages for the software design (a TOP-DOWN frame). Conceptualization of “expertise” is represented from different perspectives concerning what should be the common practice in software design and development.
Evidence can be found that both sides may be reluctant to align with each other’s framing, which is revealed by three
remarkably long gaps. One of them emerges in the transition space (Sacks et al. 1974Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel
A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson 1974 “A
Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for
Conversation.” Language 50(4): 696–735. ;
Jefferson 1996 1996 “A
Case of Transcriptional Stereotyping.” Journal of
Pragmatics 26: 159–170. ; Schegloff 1996a 1996a “Confirming Allusions: Towards
an Empirical Account of Action.” American Journal of
Sociology 104: 161–216. , 1996b 1996b “Turn Organization: One
Intersection of Grammar and Interaction.” In Interaction and
Grammar, eds. by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel
A. Schegloff, and Sandra, A.
Thompson, 52–133. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ) for speaker change (Line 10). The other two emerge within the research team’s
turns (Line 17, 21). The three gaps, however, show different ways the talk is sequentially framed. For the first gap, the company
delegation expands the transition space by not providing talk which has been projected by prior talk (Liddicoat 2007Liddicoat, Anthony
J. 2007 An Introduction to Conversation
Analysis. London: Continuum.). An alternate framing is provided by the company delegation right after the gap. The
second gap after $ 2’s acknowledgment (yeah, Line 17), along with another acknowledgment token
(okay, Line 17), is perceived by $ 1 as a transition relevance place where any participant can legitimately
take the floor. The silence is attributive to $ 2’s not speaking and showing his failure to maintain his original framing. The
company delegation, on the other hand, manages to stay in the frame they have applied to the talk earlier (line 18–20; 28–30). The
third gap which is also after $ 2’s acknowledgment (okay, Line 21) sequentially creates another prolonged
transition space for possible speaker change. The transition space, however, develops into an “intra-turn silence” (Liddicoat 2007Liddicoat, Anthony
J. 2007 An Introduction to Conversation
Analysis. London: Continuum., 81) with $ 2 packing-up his utterance (cut-off so,
Line 23) and tending to abandon his original framing in readiness for a closure of the topic (Hougaard 2008Hougaard, Anders 2008 “Compression
in Interaction.” In Mental Spaces in Discourse and
Interaction, eds. by Todd Oakley, and Anders Hougaard, 179–208. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company. ; see also Beach 1993Beach, Wayne
A. 1993 “Transitional Regularities for
Casual “Okay” Usages.” Journal of
Pragmatics 19: 325–352. ).
Alternate framings are also identified when a single situation simultaneously emerges from talk sequences due to a conceptual mismatch between the prior speaker and the current speaker. The conceptual mismatch can be explained by the prior speaker’s particular lexical choices at the point where speaker change is relevant and imminent. This makes the current speaker think that the following talk is projected into a path for a contrastive interpretation. In Excerpt 5 two students are talking about the consequence of an over-compensated generator.
1 <$ 4> =So do we almost have to O:VER-(1.6) °what’s the ↑word° 2 <$ 2> Overcom= 3 <$ 4> ↑YEAH(.) Qvercompen↑ sate 4 <$ 2> Well the o= the only problem with that is (0.5) um(0.5) 5 obviously at rated torque is the moat efficient (.) You 6 know at the what- the rating of the generator determines 7 the (most) efficient– 8 <$ 4> =Right so you want it working at its pea:k 9 <$ 2> You w= you want it working at its peak(.) but obviously- 10 <$ 4> [You’ve got a heat problem 11 <$ 2> [=you have cooling systems- 12 <$ 4> =Yeah(.) ↑AH ↓RIGHT(.) Okay 13 <$ 2> You ↑know 14 <$ 4> Mm
The talk progresses around a single situation: “the generator is getting too hot” with $ 2 and $ 4 collaboratively
retrieving the term overcompensate (Line 3). But uttered by $ 2 at the end of his turn (Line 9)
pragmatically operates to display a possible action completion for ‘contrasting’ what has been already constructed in his prior
talk (Hata 2016Hata, Kazuki 2016 “Contrast-Terminal:
The Sequential Placement of Trailoff but in Extensive Courses of
Action.” Journal of
Pragmatics 101: 138–154. , 139). The contrast sequentially projects a stepwise move from $ 4’s
point of view, encouraging him to go back to the situation in their earlier talk. Following the hint, $ 4 invokes a
PROBLEM frame, focusing on the contrast between the preferred working status of a generator (working
at its peak, Line 8) and its dis-preferred consequence (You’ve got a heat problem, Line 10). $ 2, on
the other hand, invokes a SOLUTION frame, focusing on the contrast between the problem and the solution
(You have a cooling system, Line 11). $ 4’s follow-up turn with Ah right (Line 12) as a
reception marker (Fuller 2003Fuller, Janet
M. 2003 “The Influence of Speaker Roles
on Discourse Marker Use.” Journal of
Pragmatics 35: 23–45. ) indicates that he is informed of what $ 2 means. This
marks a change in the “locally current state of knowledge of awareness” between interlocutors (Drew and Heritage 1992Drew, Paul, and John Heritage 1992 “Analyzing
Talk at Work: An Introduction.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in
Institutional Settings, eds. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press., 41) and makes their alternate framings mutually accessible with attendance to the ongoing
interactional concerns (McCarthy 2003McCarthy, Michael 2003 “Talking
Back: “Small” Interactional Response Tokens in Everyday Conversation.” Research on Language and
Social
Interaction 36(1): 33–63. ).
The observation suggests that alternate framings of a single situation can be the result of sequential manipulation of interaction at the action level. $ 2 and $ 4’s overlapping talk reveals how information is gathered, interpreted, and conveyed from different viewpoints even when they have similar pragmatic orientations (e.g. to express contrast). The overlapping talk cannot be simply taken as something that $ 4 entering the talk does to $ 2 who currently has the floor thus makes the interaction problematic. On the contrary, the overlapping talk as an interactional phenomenon has an interpretive consequence for alternate framings around a particular situation emerging from the progressive talk.
4.2Co-framings within/beyond speaker role boundary
In this section, the focus is on how the participants collaboratively frame the talk to make it progress in a certain
direction. I shall call such framings co-framings which are motivated by a shared goal and represented by mutual
assistance in meaning negotiation. Different from alternate framings, co-framings show a closer association with speaker roles
which are either assigned in the task script or naturally emerging throughout talk sequences (see Dörnyei and Murphey 2003Dörnyei, Zoltán, and Tim Murphey 2003 Group
Dynamics in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ). A role implies the relationship between one’s actual behavior and the shared
expectations from relevant group members. In this study, speaker roles are either assigned within an institution (e.g. tutors vs.
students), across institutions (e.g. research students vs. company delegations), or by task specifics (e.g. chair, spokesperson).
The role assignment ensures that each participant in a group has got “something specific to do”, which is essential for task
completion. On the other hand, the establishment of emerging roles is a powerful component of group interaction which can reveal
the contextual relevance of co-framings both within and beyond the role boundary.
In Excerpt 6 co-framings are carried out by participants with a shared orientation to a specific task. The two participants are talking about how to draft their project report on the calculation of wave loading.
1 <$ 2> =Well for me- well- the way when I pitch it if I have to 2 talk about the stuff I ↓do(.) I will tell them(.) what I 3 ↑had 4 <$ 1> Yeah 5 <$ 2> What I had to deve↑lop 6 <$ 1> Yeah 7 <$ 2> To work, out the results 8 <$ 1> Yes 9 <$ 2> What I did have is the= a class report 10 <$ 1> Yeah 11 <$ 2> With the: significant wave height 12 <$ 1> Yeah 13 <$ 2> Then I ha:d to look, for ↑formulas- 14 <$ 1> Yeah 15 <$ 2> =to find the wave ↑length- 16 <$ 1> Yeah 17 <$ 2> =and the wave- eh(.) whatever characteristics of the ↑wave- 18 <$ 1> Yeah(.) yeah 19 <$ 2> =and use Morison’s equation- 20 <$ 1> Yeah 21 <$ 2> =to develop the= the= the wave ↓loading 22 <$ 1> Yeah 23 <$ 2> The current loading the wind loading u= works on about the 24 same ↑principle- 25 <$ 1> Yeah 26 <$ 2> =used the Atlas and so on and so forth 27 <$ 1> Yeah
The two participants pay a joint attention (Goffman 1963Goffman, Erving 1963 Behavior
in Public Places. New York: The Free
Press.;
see also Kidwell and Zimmerman 2007Kidwell, Mardi, and Don
H. Zimmerman 2007 “Joint
Attention as Action.” Journal of
Pragmatics 39: 592–611. ) to reproduce the procedure of the report by
highlighting the transactional dimension of the report. $ 2 is the person who is responsible for reporting the calculation of wave
loading, thus invokes a REPORT frame. $ 1 is expected to facilitate $ 2’s reporting by simultaneously monitoring
the process to check the accuracy of the information and the logic of inquiry thus is expected to main the REPORT
frame invoked by $ 2. The roles assigned to the task results in the linear talk sequences are of particular interactional
relevance. The turn-takings are quite rapid and compact with $ 1 using the response token yeah 12 times
(yes for once, Line 8). Schegloff (1982)Schegloff, Emanuel
A. 1982 “Discourse as Interactional
Achievement: Some Uses of “uh huh” and Other Things That Come between
Sentences.” In Analyzing Discourse, Text, and
Talk, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 71–93. Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press. observes the
multi-functioning of the response token yeah: it not only marks acknowledgment and confirmation but also
expresses agreement, “signaling an enthusiastic or encouraging response” (McCarthy
2003McCarthy, Michael 2003 “Talking
Back: “Small” Interactional Response Tokens in Everyday Conversation.” Research on Language and
Social
Interaction 36(1): 33–63. , 40).
A reasonable interpretation of the repetitive use of yeah in this excerpt, however, requires an
analysis of the token along with other contextual resources to explicate its affective (McCarthy 2003McCarthy, Michael 2003 “Talking
Back: “Small” Interactional Response Tokens in Everyday Conversation.” Research on Language and
Social
Interaction 36(1): 33–63. ) or affiliative (Stivers et al. 2011Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig 2011 “Knowledge,
Morality and Affiliation in Social Interaction.” In The Morality of
Knowledge in Conversation, eds. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 3–26. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ) consequences for the
co-framing. Yeah as a response token is “more retrospective than prospective” (Gardner 2007 2007 “The
Right Connections: Acknowledging Epistemic Progression in Talk.” Language
in Society 36: 319–341. ) and reveals more involvement and more speakership incipiency (Jefferson 1984 1984 “Notes
on a Systematic Deployment of the Acknowledgement Tokens ‘Yeah’ and ‘Mm hm’.” Papers in
Linguistics 17: 197–216. ). It functions, as shown in numerous existing studies on conversations, as
backchannels to indicate “non-turn-claiming-talk” (Rühlemann 2017Rühlemann, Christoph 2017 “Integrating
Corpus-Linguistic and Conversation-Analytic Transcription in XML: The Case of Backchannels and Overlap in Storytelling
Interaction.” Corpus
Pragmatics 1: 201–232. ,
212; see also Levinson and Torreira 2015Levinson, Stephen
C., and Francisco Torreira 2015 “Timing
in Turn-Taking and Its Implications for Processing Models of Language.” Frontiers in
Psychology 6: 1–17. ), “vocalizing understanding” of the recipient
thus encourage the speaker to proceed (Gardner 1998Gardner, Rod 1998 “Between
Speaking and Listening: The Vocalisation of Understandings.” Applied
Linguistics 19(2): 204–224. , 220). I shall argue that, in Excerpt 6, $ 1’s repeated uses of yeah indicate a combination of both
affective attendance and communicative economy. $ 1 uses the yeahs as continuers (Schegloff 1982Schegloff, Emanuel
A. 1982 “Discourse as Interactional
Achievement: Some Uses of “uh huh” and Other Things That Come between
Sentences.” In Analyzing Discourse, Text, and
Talk, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 71–93. Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press.) to construct his concurrent talk (Goodwin
2007 2007 “Interactive
Footing.” In Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in
Interaction, eds. by Elizabeth Holt, and Rebecca Clift, 16–46. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.), frequently informative about his analysis of what is being said by $ 2 and his stance towards it (Jefferson 1983Jefferson, Gail 1983 “On
a Failed Hypothesis: ‘Conjunctionals’ as Overlap Vulnerable.” Tilburg Papers Lang.
Lit 28: 29–33., 1984 1984 “Notes
on a Systematic Deployment of the Acknowledgement Tokens ‘Yeah’ and ‘Mm hm’.” Papers in
Linguistics 17: 197–216. ). $ 1’s responses are
both supportive (Holmes and Stubbe 2015Holmes, Janet, and Maria Stubbe 2015 Power
and Politeness in the Workplace: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at
Work. London: Routledge. ) and engaging (O’Keeffe and Adolphs 2008O’Keeffe, Anne, and Svenja Adolphs 2008 “Response
Tokens in British and Irish Discourse: Corpus, Context and Variational
Pragmatics.” In Variational Pragmatics, eds.
by P.
Schneider Klaus, and Anne Barron, 69–98. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. ) thus strengthen the shared orientation to co-framing the talk.
On the other hand, $ 1’s right to take turns is to a large extent constrained anyway (see Houtkoop and Mazeland 1985Houtkoop, Hanneke, and Harrie Mazeland 1985 “Turns
and Discourse Units in Everyday Conversation.” Journal of
Pragmatics 9: 595–619. ; Schegloff 1982Schegloff, Emanuel
A. 1982 “Discourse as Interactional
Achievement: Some Uses of “uh huh” and Other Things That Come between
Sentences.” In Analyzing Discourse, Text, and
Talk, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 71–93. Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press.) when $ 2 is
engaged in an extended report which is tightly bound by the task procedure. $ 1 says yeah repeatedly, but within
“quick and close sequences” (Tottie 1991Tottie, Gunnel 1991 “Conversational
Style in British and American English: The Case of
Backchannels.” In English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of
Jan Svartvik, eds. by Karin Aijmer, and Bengt Altenberg, 254–271. New
York: Longman., 261), which indicates that encouraging $ 2 to
go on talking is possibly due to the consideration of the communicative economy. $ 1 intends to make the discussion as concise and
efficient as possible by holding $ 2 back from further extending his turns. This corresponds to Peters and Wong’s (2015)Peters, Pam, and Deanna Wong 2015 “Turn
Management and Backchannels.” In Corpus Pragmatics: A
Handbook, eds. by Aijmer Karin, and Christoph Rühlemann, 408–429. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. observation that the speaker and the listener will co-monitor and co-control the
intervals before and after yeah to make subsequent courses of action stick to the communicative agenda.
Co-framings are applied by participants who share the labor of playing a specific role in an institution. Excerpt 7 shows how two tutors ($ 1 and $ 2) are collaboratively explaining what schools expect of student-teachers.
1 <$ 1> ↑Well and also I think >a lot of them< ↑appreciate how much 2 tou: qher: it is (.) You know (.) what the expectations are on 3 student-teachers 4 <$ 5> Mm(.) Yeah 5 <$ 1> (1.5)Um and I we= I think ↑we forget (.)actually(.) about- 6 [what= what= <the SYETEM now EXPECTE of you>] 7 <$ 2> [°The pressure in schools has increased° ](.) Yeah 8 <$ 1> (.)mean- when even three ↑years ago(.) we >didn’t have to 9 Use< the Ofsted um(.) [criteria for- 10 <$ 2> [That’s right (.) Mm 11 <$ 1> =satisfactory good and outstanding at student-teacher 12 level
Co-framings are performed in an EXPECTATION frame when the two tutors deal with the overlapping talk (Line 6–7). $ 1’s overlapping talk indicates that what she is concerned about is the gap between the existing evaluative systems and what to expect of student-teachers in reality. The overlap may be perceived by $ 2 as something problematic when he realizes that $ 1 and himself would probably push the following talk into different conceptual realms. He chooses to close his turn after a short pause with an acknowledgment token (yeah, Line 7). $ 1 takes the floor to build upon her prior talk by making it clearer (I mean, Line 8), pointing out that the explicitly laid-out criteria in a standard evaluative system may not be more useful or reliable than what schools did before the system was introduced. Her idea receives a confirmation from $ 2 (That’s right, Line 10) which is uttered in an overlapping way again. The shortened transition space here, however, can be seen as attributive to $ 1’s short pause (Line 9) which seems to create a place for legitimate speaker change. Finding that $ 1 orients to holding the floor after her pause, $ 2 again chooses to close his turn to make the talk progress.
The observation reveals that at a particular moment of an interaction a leading role may naturally emerge to frame the talk while the co-participants can choose to accept or challenge the legitimacy of projected co-framing moves. In Excerpt 7, $ 2’s co-framing practice with $ 1 is represented by his following and building upon the latter’s talk, even though the contextual relevance of taking over her leading role is made pragmatically salient to him. While $ 1 tends to produce extended turns within her frame, $ 2 manages to make his turns short and brief to maintain the progressivity of the talk. This demonstrates how co-framings are carried out not only at the cognitive but the action level.
Excerpt 8 is another example to show how co-framings can be applied at the action level. In this excerpt, an expert in biology ($ 7) and a member of a student research team ($ 8) are talking about what to find in drug targeting.
1 <$ 8> Yeah(.) But that’s why we in the first one we’re looking for 2 variants and this one we’re just looking for(.) erm(.) 3 alignments- 4 <$ 7> Right 5 <$ 3> =To see(.) what level of alignment we’ve ↑got(.) Erm(.) but 6 also when i- said characterise in the first one= We was 7 characterising for (.) basically location and accessibility- 8 <$ 7> Mm-mm (.) Sounds good 9 <$ 8> =And this one(.) we’re looking for metabolic function 10 <$ M> Mm-mm 11 <$ 7> Right 12 <$ 3> So- 13 <$ 7> =Nope(.) That sounds like a= a reasonable approach(.) ↑Yeah
A SUPERVISION frame is invoked based upon the mutual expectation that the expert gives comments on
the student research team’s proposal. $ 8’s extended turns (Line 1–3; 5–7; 9) receive brief acknowledgment and short comments from
$ 7 (Line 4, 8, and 11). The two rights used by $ 7 as response tokens can be understood as epistemic dependency
markers which reveal her recognition of the relationship between what is currently under discussion and something that had been
said earlier (Gardner 2007 2007 “The
Right Connections: Acknowledging Epistemic Progression in Talk.” Language
in Society 36: 319–341. , 325). It is in Line 12 that $ 8 orients to extending his
talk by initiating a new turn (so, Line 12). Because his turn is interrupted by $ 7 right after his utterance of
so, his following action is open to multiple predictions. He may orient to introducing the result of
approaching the project in the way he has just mentioned, clarifying the motivation for adopting the proposed approach, or
providing an evaluation of its rationale. His framing is constrained from further expansion with $ 7 entering the interaction.
The word nope (Line 13) is quite curious considering what $ 7 says following: That sounds
like a reasonable approach (Line 13). A conceptual conflict can be identified that she negates what the prior speaker
said and shows an affirmative attitude right after the negation. The hidden psychological process becomes traceable and
interpretable when one goes back to examine the prior talk sequences. One possible interpretation is that what $ 7 negates is not
what $ 8 said but her next move to give comments. That $ 8’s talk is interrupted indicates that he prefers another extended turn
over comments from $ 7, while $ 7 might be ready to comment from the moment $ 8 began his talk but decides not to do so. This
could partially explain why $ 7’s replies are quite brief – she may have been considering $ 8’s proposal and does not want to
suspend her train of thought by stopping to give longer comments. This is also revealed by $ 7’s use of the word
nope but not the less emphatic no, by which she may have no intention to change the truth
condition (see Fuller 2003Fuller, Janet
M. 2003 “The Influence of Speaker Roles
on Discourse Marker Use.” Journal of
Pragmatics 35: 23–45. ) of $ 8’s talk but still uses the negation marker to show
her agreement in a relatively relaxed manner. Yeah with a rising intonation at the end of $ 7’s turn (Line 13)
suggests that an acknowledging action in response to the prior other’s action is embedded as a cognitive consequence. $ 7’s
“holding-herself-back” action
The observation shows that a conjunctional (e.g. so) can be vulnerable to another speaker’s turn
initiation (Jefferson 1983Jefferson, Gail 1983 “On
a Failed Hypothesis: ‘Conjunctionals’ as Overlap Vulnerable.” Tilburg Papers Lang.
Lit 28: 29–33.) in framing-in-interaction since its semantic potential can
be pragmatically rich thus leads to multiple interpretations of what is going to happen next. The next speaker would possibly see
it as a legitimate transition relevance place (TRP) for speaker change and reduce the transition space accordingly to express
his/her interpretation. Co-framings can, as a result, be challenged if the next speaker’s interpretation happens to be divergent
from the current speaker’s agenda. This would have been the case if $ 7’s follow-up agreement was missing since a reduced
transition space and a salient negation marker (nope) are commonly seen in cases of disagreement with or
rejection of the agenda in the prior talk (Liddicoat 2007Liddicoat, Anthony
J. 2007 An Introduction to Conversation
Analysis. London: Continuum., 86). However, the
co-framings are not necessarily successfully achieved but one possible effect of co-framings has been realized.
Co-framings to make sense of complex concepts can be challenging. In Excerpt 9 two tutors ($ 2 and $ 4) and a student ($ 1) are collaboratively analyzing an audio-recorded teacher-student interaction in a foreign language classroom. The participants’ analytic focus is on a question-answer adjacency pair in the recording:
“If you have a bad conscience, how do you feel?”
“Bad (with laughter).”
1 <$ 2> Let’s Just step out of the data for a second and ask 2 ourselves that question(.) If you have a bad conscience(.) 3 how do you ↓feel (.) [Do you feel- 4 <$ 4> [It’s almost like a rhetorical question 5 <$ 2> =do= do you fee:l bad or good ↓though 6 <$ 4> It’s like a silly question 7 Well I don’t know= I’m asking gen= a genuine question(.) 8 <$ 2> do you feel bad or good if you had a bad con↑science 9 <$ 4> Well to me that sounds like a rhetorical question 10 <$ 2> Can you answer it for us= 11 [cos I am asking as a genuine question 12 <$ 4> [Sounds like a silly question(.) How DO I feel if I have a 13 bad conscience ((laughter)) 14 I wouldn’t say yes uh– bad or good 15 <$ 2> Well I mean if [you’ve done something BAD– 16 <$ 4> [I feel- probably feel bad if I’ve got a 17 bad conscience 18 <$ 2> =if you’ve= if you’ve= done something BAD(.) and you don’t 19 feel bad about it (.) does that mean you’ve got a good 20 conscience or a bad conscience 21 <$ 4> If I feel bad I’d probably feel pretty bad 22 <$ 2> No no that’s not what I’m asking(.) If you’ve= if you’ve= 23 done something that you know is wrong- 24 <$ 1> Ah I understand 25 <$ 2> =↑Okay(.) You’ve= you’ve= you’ve hurt somebody ↑right 26 <$ 1> Mm-hm 27 <$ 2> And (l.0) should you feel good or bad ↑about it(.) and then 28 if you feel good do you have a good conscience if you feel 29 bad do you have a bad- it’s not as straight↑ forward as 30 that(.) You would say somebody had a bad conscience in 31 that example (.) if they (.) felt bad
The goal of the participants is to analyze the teacher’s question “If you have a bad conscience, how do you feel?” by collectively invoking a SENSE-MAKING frame. The talk to examine the rationality of this question is initially co-framed by the two tutors when both of them choose to focus on the function of the question. $ 4 claims that the question is like a rhetorical one since it seems to be asked to produce an effect (e.g. to draw attention/elicit interest, to provoke thinking, etc.) or to make a point (e.g. someone should feel good/bad if they have a bad conscience, etc.). The pragmatics of the question, therefore, is to motivate or persuade rather than to pursue an answer. The question, however, is not well formulated as perceived by $ 4, to meet the purpose since it sounds like a silly (Line 6) one with no further contextual information provided. By contrast, $ 2 tends to take the question as a genuine (Line 7) one and invites $ 2 to re-examine its answerability. Having failed to give an articulate answer, $ 2 reiterates that the question is silly (Line 12), whereas $ 1 enters into the talk (Line 14) by implying that the question might not be answered straightforwardly.
The co-framing initiation of $ 4 receives a preferable response from one student instead of the other tutor ($ 1,
Line 24). Nevertheless, it may not be fair to say that $ 2 does not respond to $ 4’s co-framing initiation. His lexical choices to
evaluate the question show subtle evidence of a focus shift. Taking the question as rhetorical he suggests that the answerability
of the question is irrelevant since its function is not to elicit an answer; while he immediately portraits the question as
something silly, which implies that the question is almost unanswerable. $ 2’s responses show that his original framing tends to
remain though the participants negotiate on the spot to achieve conversational cooperation (Gumperz 1982Gumperz, John.
J. 1982 Discourse
Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ). The “resilience of schemas (frames)” (Tannen and Wallat
1986Tannen, Deborah, and Cynthia Wallat 1986 “Medical
Professionals and Parents: A Linguistic Analysis of Communication across Contexts.” Language in
Society 15(3): 295–311. , 306) as such triggers $ 4’s repetition of his question and further elaboration.
In the following talk, $ 4 tries to maintain the sense-making frame by suggesting that the answerability of the question depends on how one would possibly fill the linguistically expressive gap, specifically, how to understand the meaning of bad. A conceptual process to make sense of bad can be identified from $ 4’s successive lexical choices: if you’ve done something bad (Line 15) – if you’ve done something that you know is wrong (Line 23) – if you’ve hurt somebody (Line 25). The lexical choices contribute to creating discursive relevance by intensifying the degree of “being bad”: bad as a gradable adjective towards the negative polar, wrong as a non-gradable adjective, hurt as a verb with a very strong negative prosody. The conceptualization becomes accessible to $ 1 (Ah I understand, Line 24), while $ 2 does not show whether he gets the point too.
The observation suggests that the co-framings applied by the two tutors are insufficient, if not unsuccessful,
throughout the talk sequences even though they have a shared orientation to the task. While $ 4 keeps eliciting co-framing moves
from $ 2, the latter fails to meet the expectation. When another participant who is not the selected co-framer makes the next
co-framing move ($ 1), the original framer would probably create a new co-framing relationship with him/her by giving positive
acknowledgment responses (e.g. ↑Okay, Line 25) and strengthening mutual understanding (e.g.
Mm-hm, Line 26; it’s not straightforward as that, Line 29–30). The co-framings, as shown
above, are closely related to the concept of evidentiality which refers to the speaker’s expressed attitudes
towards the “reliability” of certain knowledge and “the adequacy of its linguistic expression” (Biber and Finegan 1988Biber, Douglas, and Edward Finegan 1988 “Adverbial
Stance Types in English.” Discourse
Processes 11: 1–34. , 93–94). The assessments of the “bad-conscience question” are expressively
explicit in the participants’ framing behaviors which constantly negotiate their epistemic stances (Heritage 2012 2012 “Epistemics
in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 45(1): 1–29. , 6) concerning how the question can induce dramatically different
interpretations.
5.Concluding remarks
This study examines university students’ and tutors’ framing behaviors for meaning construction and negotiation in
interactive small group talk. University small group talk manifests complexity in framing (Tovares
2016Tovares, Alla
V. 2016 “Going Off-Script and Reframing
the Frame: The Dialogic Intertwining of the Centripetal and Centrifugal Voices in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Hearings.” Discourse &
Society 27(5): 554–573. ). First, framing in university small group talk is found to be more straightforward than what is identified in
everyday interaction (see Gordon 2009 2009 Making
Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction. New
York: Oxford University Press. ). Both alternate framings and co-framings are built
on what occurs as meaning shared and projected by participants’ prior disciplinary knowledge (Tannen 2005), thus are more explicitly
marked and procedurally operated. Second, participants’ situated interpretations are partial representations of relevant knowledge
structures (see Coulson 2001Coulson, Seana 2001 Semantic
Leaps: Frame-shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning
Construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ) and interactive framings do not usually happen on a large
scale but quite incrementally in the on-going talk (see Gordon 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. , 2015 2015 “Framing
and Positioning.” In The Handbook of Discourse
Analysis, eds. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi
E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 324–345. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.). Participants, therefore, tend to stay longer within certain frames than what they may do in everyday
interaction (see Gordon 2009 2009 Making
Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interaction. New
York: Oxford University Press. ) to produce and orient to the institutional regularities
(Heritage and Atkinson 1984Heritage, John, and Maxwell Atkinson 1984 Structures
of Social Action: Studies in Conversation
Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.). Third, both alternate framings and co-framings are
approached from an operational rather than a categorical perspective in this study. The labeling of different interactive frames
contributes to highlighting how framing at the action level correspond to distinct conversational patterns (see Betz 2013Betz, Emma 2013 “Quote-unquote
in One Variety of German: Two Interactional Functions of Pivot Constructions Used as Frames for Quotation in Siebenbürger
Sächsisch.” Journal of
Pragmatics 54: 16–34. ).
Alternate framings of a single situation recurs in the general discussion stage of small group talk where different
conceptualizations of a particular topic are tolerated or even encouraged for information exchange and meaning representations.
Different ways of framing a single situation can be a result of contrasting actions, different viewpoints, distinct institutional
values, conceptual mismatches, and management of framing mutability. Alternate framings co-occur with traceable interactional devices
for the sequential organization, including prosody, backchannels in overlap, discourse markers, self-selecting overlaps to initiate
new turns, and a shift of assessment tokens. The alternate framings identified in this study demonstrate how a single situation under
discussion evolves at talk and how it takes on different meanings when participants align with the group to make meanings emerge and
converge. Alternate framing shares features with Tannen’s
(2006) 2006 “Intertextuality
in Interaction: Reframing Family Arguments in Public and Private.” Text &
Talk 26(4/5): 597–617.
reframing in terms of “changing what the discussion is about”, but the former differs from
the latter in that what has been changed is not the topic itself but how the topic is to be interpreted.
By contrast, co-framings show a closer association with speaker roles which are either previously assigned or naturally
emergent at talk. Co-framings usually happen when at least one (group) of participants is highly goal-oriented, for example, to give
instructions, to explicate working procedures, to produce extended explanations, to provide evaluative comments, etc. On the other
hand, co-framings beyond the role boundary are identified to be applied, with individual framing moves showing conditional relevance
to the prior courses of action and negotiation of epistemic stance showing reverence for more powerful social groups. More complex
structures are expected to be associated with co-framings when the listener’s interpretation needs to be adjusted to the change of
element(s) in the speaker’s framing. Co-framings can be challenged thus risk failure in situations where a selected co-framer does not
align him/herself with the co-framing initiator or refuses to adjust his/her interpretation when the former changes his/her
representation of certain elements of framing. The sequential projection of possible contrasting actions or simply the complexity of a
topic can override co-framing initiations and navigate individual framings into different layers of conceptualization. This
corresponds to Goffman’s (1981a) 1981a Forms
of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press. observation that framing can be laminated when
interlocutors’ alignments are fully (or partially, as shown in this study) enclosed within one another (Gordon 2002 2002 “I’m
Mommy and You’re Natalie’: Role-Reversal and Embedded Frames in Mother–Child
Discourse.” Language in
Society 31: 679–720. , 2008 2008 “A(p)parent
Play: Blending Frames and Reframing in Family Talk.” Language in
Society 37: 319–49. ).
This study sketches out and illustrates the research opportunity offered by taking framing as a global organization resource
to characterize contextualization in routinized, interactive academic talk. The analysis represents an extension of a growing body of
research on the action formation in institutional communication. While the universal infrastructure in ordinary social interaction
does hold in institutional exchanges (Kendrick et al. 2020Kendrick, Kobin
H., Penelope Brown, Mark Dingemanse, Simeon Floyd, Sonja Gipper, Kaoru Hayano, Elliott Hoey, Gertie Hoymann, Elizabeth Manrique, Giovanni Rossi, and Stephen
C. Levinson 2020 “Sequence
Organization: A Universal Infrastructure for Social Action.” Journal of
Pragmatics 168: 119–138. ), a conceptual merger of
interactive framing and sequential analysis with CA concerns sheds light on how participants select and develop specific formats
(Pallotti 2009Pallotti, Gabriele 2009 “Conversation
Analysis: Methodology, Machinery and Application to Specific
Settings.” In Conversation Analysis and Language for Specific
Purposes, eds. by Hugo Bowles, and Paul Seedhouse, 37–67. Bern: Peter
Lang AG.) so that institutions are “talked into being” (Heritage 1984Heritage, John 1984 Garfinkel
and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity
Press., 290). The findings also contribute to the ongoing debate on the identification and explication
of the cognitive dimension in the analysis of talk-in-interaction (see Potter and te Molder
2005Potter, Jonathan, and Hedwig
te Molder 2005 Conversation
and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.; Oakley and Hougaard 2008Oakley, Todd and Anders Hougaard 2008 Mental
Spaces in Discourse and Interaction. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company. ; Deppermann
2012Deppermann, Arnulf 2012 “How
Does ‘Cognition’ Matter to the Analysis of Talk-in-Interaction?” Language
Sciences 34(6): 746–767. ; Pan 2020Pan, Yun 2020 “Meaning
Construction in Interactive Academic Talk: A Conversation-Analytic Approach to Mental
Spaces.” Pragmatics &
Cognition 26(2/3): 422–454.).
Notes
, 688). Scholars following distinct research traditions may be reluctant to accept an
unmarked use of frame to refer to different (though related) phenomena in a single research project, for example,
a “mental knowledge structure” from a cognitive perspective (see Minsky 1974Minsky, Marvin 1974 “A
Framework for Representing Knowledge.” Artificial
Intelligence 306: 1–82.; Barsalou 1992Barsalou, Lawrence
W. 1992 “Frames, Concepts and Conceptual
Fields.” In Frames, Fields, and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantic and
Lexical Organizations, eds. by Adrienne Lehrer, and Kittay
Eva Feder, 21–74. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.; Fillmore 1982Fillmore, Charles.
J. 1982 “Frame
Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning
Calm, ed. by In-Seok Yang, 111–137. Soeul: Hanshin.) or a “sense of
activity system” from a socio-interactional perspective (see Goffman 1974 1974 Frame
Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New
York: Harper Colophon Books., 1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. ; Tannen and Wallat 1993 1993 “Interactive
Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination
Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed.
by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.). This study
shares the theoretical and methodological concerns of Conversation Analysis (Sacks et al.
1974Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel
A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson 1974 “A
Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for
Conversation.” Language 50(4): 696–735. ) to examine framing in interaction. This preference, however, does not mean that the cognitive
dimension of framing is irrelevant or peripheral to the data analysis. Scholars following the socio-interactional path have never
failed to highlight the significance of interactants’ “cognitive relation” (Goffman
1983 1983 “The
Interaction Order.” American Sociological
Review 48 (1): 1–17. , 4) and mental connection between present things and past experience (Tannen
1993aTannen, Deborah 1993a “Introduction.” In Framing
in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3–13. Oxford: Oxford
University Press., 15) in their analysis of social interaction. uses contextualization to refer to
“speakers and listeners’ use of verbal and nonverbal signs to relate what is said at any one time and in any one place to
knowledge acquired through past experience” (p. 230)., 10). The labeling approach proves to serve the research purpose well, while
scholars favoring a cognitive approach to framing may prefer a more technically rigorous way of labeling frames based on the
identification and categorization of specific lexical concepts in pre-established semantic domains (see Ruppenhofer et al. 2006Ruppenhofer, Josef, Michael Ellsworth, Miriam
R. L. Petruck, Christopher
R. Johnson, and Jan Scheffczyk 2006 “FrameNet
II: Extended Theory and Practice.” International Computer Science
Institute, Berkeley, California.; Rayson 2008Rayson, Paul 2008 “From
Key Words to Key Semantic Domains.” International Journal of Corpus
Linguistics 13(4): 519–549. ).References
Address for correspondence
Biographical notes
Dr. Yun Pan is currently a lecturer in Foreign Languages College at Shanghai Maritime University, China. She got her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics in Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests include pragmatics, Conversation Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, and general discourse studies.
