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Sending help when needed is a central role for emergency service call takers, but providing help during the call is also an important part of the job. The "care work" call takers do may assist callers with physical and emotional safety and enhance their resilience as they deal with ongoing emergencies prior to the arrival of the police. This conversational analytic study of a collection of 24 emergency telephone calls reveals the interactional techniques the call takers use to accomplish care work and shows how they integrate care work into their communication within the call. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses conversation analysis to investigate how participants in emergency telephone calls in the United States use racial/ethnic categories to describe persons of interest such as suspects, victims, or persons needing assistance. It problematizes the use of racial/ethnic categories in these calls by first analyzing an instance of a caller's racial profiling (in which racial categories are used to justify the call). This instance of racial profiling is then compared with 15 routine emergency service calls to reveal how callers and call takers routinely introduced racial/ethnic categories. I describe how both deviant and routine uses of these categories could lead to racial profiling and/or displace information that might be more effective in creating useful descriptions of persons of interest. The conclusion addresses ideas for further research and practical implications for emergency telephone call takers and those working to transform the way race is tied to policing in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates interactional challenges experienced in calls to emergency services with native English speaking (NS) call takers and non-native speaking (NNS) callers. Case studies of three problematic NNS/NS calls from a collection of emergency service calls were conducted using a conversation analytic approach. These calls were selected from publicly available recordings which were made by callers who were hearably NNS of English. The analysis shows how accents, grammatical and other linguistic choices led to related challenges in the pragmatics of communication (including procedures for sequential organization such as adjacency pairs, repair initiation, confirmation requests, presequences and story solicits). Routine procedures for repair or confirmation can produce hidden disjunctures and/or inaccurate or missing information as a result of the NNS/NS issues in the interaction. These challenges may contribute to failures of intersubjective understanding in the calls, affect the accuracy of information obtained, and extend the length of the call, which may impact the successful provision of emergency services to NNS callers. • Emergency phone calls from non-native speakers may have misunderstandings. • Call takers struggled with non-native speakers' accents, grammar, and word choice. • Non-native speakers' performance of pragmatics challenged by language limitations. • Call takers repair moves may be stymied by caller's language limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I use a conversation analytic approach to investigate the relationship between the location of advice within a mediation session and the mediator's construction of a neutral stance. I find that while mediator advice is often placed after disputant disagreements, problem statements, or position statements, these locations may present challenges for mediator neutrality. On the other hand, the placement of advice within a mediator's extended turn or monologue may insulate it from disputants' prior utterances so that the advice can be given without challenging the mediator's neutral stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use conversation analysis to investigate instructional interactions that occur during inflight pilot training relative to instructors' use of the formulation "I would". The flight instructor's role is multi-dimensional compared with a classroom instructor, as s/he is simultaneously a teacher, potential co-pilot, and safety monitor. The student is flying the plane while the instructor is giving directions, instruction, advice, corrections, or even physical interventions as warranted. We found instructors used the personal hypothetical "I would" to provide explanations, instructions, and corrections of a student's actions and understandings while displaying an orientation to the student's developing autonomy and professional competence. By accomplishing these tasks through a description of what the instructor would do, the "I would" formulations enable the instructor to serve as an expert role model, display how they use their professional vision to pay attention to relevant information, and help students develop their professional vision and situation awareness. We conclude that instructor's "I would" formulations provide a mechanism for the performance of these overlapping roles and goals and facilitate teaching aeronautical decision-making. • Conversation analytic study of interaction during pilot training flights. • Instructors used "I would" formulations in teaching exchanges. • Personal hypothetical "I would" used to give advice, corrections, and directives. • Instructors act as role models while displaying orientation to student's autonomy. • "I would" facilitates teaching professional vision and aeronautical decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I use a critical discourse analytic approach to investigate how President Trump's campaign goal to build a wall along the US/Mexico border has been discussed in United States political discourse. The data analyzed are 30 videotaped speeches and other public events which occurred between October 2016 and March 2018. These data are publicly available from the cable news channel C-SPAN's online video archive. The analysis focuses on the communicative techniques and strategies used to persuade others and justify one's position in the interactions and events studied. In this article, I show how the border wall proposal is reformulated into a debate about border security, and how diverse ways of referring to persons without approved documentation are used to support arguments on both sides of the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a dual-case analysis of presidential campaign interviews conducted with former President George HW Bush when he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, and former President William J. Clinton when he was campaigning for the presidency in 1991. Both interviews were conducted at high schools in New Hampshire and are publicly available on the C-SPAN website. The purpose of this analysis is to investigate how the success or failure of political campaigns may be tied to candidates’ interactional competence and pragmatic skills. This will be done through an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the answers each candidate produced in the context of these non-adversarial interviews. This conversation analytic investigation reveals key differences between the two candidates in the successful display of various types of knowledge, interactional competency, sensitivity to audience design, fluency of speech and organization of their responses. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of interactional skills for the success of political campaigns and the effectiveness of ‘Neutral Informational Interviews’ for educating the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a conversation analytic investigation of an emergency service call in which a hostage in a school shooting played a dual role during the ongoing emergency—the role of 911 caller and the role of de facto crisis negotiator. The analysis will show how the caller used techniques such as footing shifts, tone of voice shifts, self-disclosure, and active listening techniques (including continuers, questions, repeats, and paraphrases) to successfully keep the conflict from escalating, maintain the autonomy of the intruder, and negotiate his surrender while working in collaboration with the 911 call taker. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a conversation analytic investigation of Air Traffic Control (ATC) communications with U.S. Air Flight 1549 and other flights before, during, and after a critical emergency in which the plane (safely) landed in the Hudson River. While foundational conversation analytic research on air traffic communications has already been done, this method has not yet been systematically applied to air traffic communications during actual emergencies. This project will therefore fill a gap in previous research by analyzing ATC/plane interactions during an actual emergency and investigating whether routinized procedures alone are the most effective when emergency situations occur. I will show how routine interactional conventions in this work setting (e.g., the use of scripted talk and ‘positional’ grammar) help participants to maintain the safe flow of air traffic and to accommodate emergencies when they occur. I will show that during the critical emergency the ATCO and the pilot of Flight 1549 switched from a routinized (scripted) form of interaction to a conversational form of interaction, and at times to a ‘hybrid’ format which combined elements of routine ATC talk with elements of the speech exchange system of ordinary conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how perspectives on the appropriate place of the dog in the family shape the practice and experience of dog adoption. This research is based on a comparative case study of a traditional shelter and an independent animal rescue organization. The data were collected through participant observation and interviews with directors and volunteers at these organizations, and with people who adopted dogs through shelter or independent animal rescue organizations. The independent rescue organizations tended to use "dog-centric" discourse to describe the relationship between the dog and its prospective family, while the traditional animal shelter and some adoptive families used "human-centric" discourse. These perspectives were tied to the adoption practices of the organizations and individuals' experiences while adopting a dog. The implications of these findings for the practice of dog adoption are discussed, and suggestions for shelters and animal rescue organizations are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a single case analysis of an emergency service call in which the caller failed to convince the call taker that the request for service was urgent in what turned out to be a tragic event. The analysis of this call using the techniques and findings of conversation analysis reveals that the actions of both the call taker and the caller created an interactional context in which the “big picture” (the potential for danger), became repeatedly submerged in “small picture” details (such as the identity and location of the caller and her role in the situation). This paper builds on previous research on how callers can fail to construct convincing descriptions of the problem and extends this line of work by exploring how participants make or fail to make inferences in order to construct a gestalt or big picture of the event being reported, how participants manage events that unfold during the call, and how callers convey their identity and role in the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the motivations, preferences and satisfactions of individuals who work on jigsaw puzzles. It emplores how motivations, preferenes and satisfactions as the elements relate to the procedures and strategies that puzzlers use to assemble the jigsaw. It mentions the approached to completing the puzzle, including Explorer, Detective, and Matchmaker. It adds that the study of jigsaw helps people better understand leisure activities.

In this article, I analyze the interactional techniques disputants use to construct effective opening statements in mediation sessions. Using a single case analysis, I show how the use of specific interactional techniques by the first disputant created a frame for the second disputant's opening statement, which constricted the paths available to him to present his side of the dispute favorably. I conclude with a discussion of the relevance of disputants' interactional competence for a mediator's efforts to effectively balance power between disputants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical records have become central to nearly all aspects of healthcare. However, little research exists on their creation. Using data from an ongoing ethnographic study of healthcare documentation production, this paper examines the process of medical record creation through the use of speech recognition technology (SRT) and subsequent editing by medical transcriptionists (MTs). Informed by ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA), the results demonstrate the professional knowledge involved in the work of medical transcription, which includes a combination of skilled worksite practices and an orientation toward the social order properties of recorded dictation. Furthermore, we examine how the advantages and limitations of SRTs can impact the work of transcription. We conclude with strategic recommendations for using SRTs to support medical records production and recommend against total automation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we review ethnographic research on the Internet and computer-mediated communication. The technologically mediated environment prevents researchers from directly observing research participants and often makes the interaction anonymous. In addition, in the online environment direct interaction with participants is replaced by computer-screen data that are largely textual, but may include combinations of textual, visual, aural, and kinetic components. We show how the online environment requires adjustments in how ethnographers define the setting of their research, conduct participant observation and interviews, obtain access to settings and research subjects, and deal with the ethical dilemmas posed by the medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how a mediator's actions during a hearing may contribute to a disputant's perception of unfairness. Mediation techniques that cause a perception of bias; Complaints of participants in mediation hearings that their mediator was unfair or biased; Satisfaction rating of mediation processes.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how participants in mediation hearings get ideas for resolution of the dispute on the table for negotiation and bargaining. The data used are 15 small claims mediation hearings which were videotaped, transcribed and analyzed using the conversation analytic method. While the tasks involved in producing suggestions for solution are tied to institutional role (mediators make proposals and solicit position reports from disputants; disputants produce position reports) the mediators and disputants collaboratively produce ideas for resolution, and use several techniques to control production of ideas and their placement. Mediators orient to the institutional requirements of neutrality and disputant empowerment as they engage in these tasks, but have ways of resisting these constraints. Disputants, in turn, can resist mediator's attempts to infringe upon their autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a comparison of the turn-taking systems in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and oral conversation. Previous research on CMC has relied on printouts of conversations as data, whereas we used videotaped recordings of each participant's computer screen in order to capture the interactional process of producing the conversation. We used a transcription system developed specifically for this type of analysis that enabled us to collate the actions and experiences of each participant onto one document. Because of this, we were able to see what information each participant had at the time they made the decision to write, post, edit, or erase a message. This article is based on 4 quasi-synchronous CMC (QS-CMC) conversations between students in a college classroom. We discovered that the turn-taking system of QS-CMC is substantially different from the turn-taking system of oral conversation (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), and we describe some of the implications of this difference for the structure of interaction in QS-CMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze how the call-taker in a taped 911 call came to doubt a caller who was reporting a genuine emergency. Using conversation analysis, we show how the caller's actions in the unfolding context of the call did not successfully support his claims to be a caller with legitimate trouble to report. We show how the participants' experience of the call as it unfolded differed from the media's depictions of the call. The call-taker's doubt was not an intrapersonal phenomenon but was constructed by both participants throughout the call. One of the major factors in this construction was the unsuccessful claims-making techniques used by the caller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]