Spotlight | Language and Social Interaction

Santoi Wagner, University of Pennsylvania

http://www.gse.upenn.edu/faculty/swagner What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? I think I’m going to be greedy here and claim two entire books. The first is Paul Drew and John Heritage’s (1992) masterpiece collection Talk at work. As a graduate student venturing into the field of discourse, Talk at work…

Michelle Scollo, College of Mount Saint Vincent

http://www.mountsaintvincent.edu/6131.htm What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? There are so many pieces of LSI writing that have been and continue to be a source of inspiration and wonder for me. While it is difficult to select one, the one that has been most inspirational and foundational to…

Hye Ri “Stephanie” Kim, UCLA

http://hstephaniekim.squarespace.com/ What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? Many early studies in conversation analysis on turn-taking (e.g., Goodwin, 1979, 1980; Jefferson, 1984) have inspired me and shaped my thinking as an LSI researcher, but the study that had the strongest impact on me and still continues to be…

Elizabeth Molina-Markham, University of Massachusetts Amherst

What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? One of the pieces that has had a strong influence on my own research thus far has been Bauman’s (1983) Let Your Words Be Few, Symbolism of speaking and silence among seventeenth-century Quakers. I first learned of this work during my first semester as…

Emma Betz, Kansas State University

http://emmabetz.weebly.com/ What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? I remember as both challenging and inspirational an early (1981) article by Peter Auer, “Zur indexikalitätsmarkierenden Funktion der demonstrativen Artikelform in deutschen Konversationen” (“On the use of the demonstrative article as a marker of indexicality in German conversation”) – challenging,…

Cynthia Gordon, Syracuse University

What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? Goffman’s “Footing” was (and continues to be) an inspiration for me. I first read it as an undergraduate enrolled in a discourse analysis course taught by Deborah Keller-Cohen at the University of Michigan. I recall being struck by the scene described…

Ryan Bisel, University of Oklahoma

What one piece of writing was most inspirational to you as an LSI researcher? Taylor and Van Every’s The Emergent Organization. Published in 2000 by Earlbaum. What question you are currently trying to explore? How? Currently, I am playing with this question: What, if any, communication process is both constitutive of organizing and system-entropic? I…