Interactional linguistics | EPFL Graph Search

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Interactional linguistics (IL) is an interdisciplinary approach to grammar and interaction in the field of linguistics, that applies the methods of Conversation Analysis to the study of linguistic structures, including syntax, phonetics, morphology, and so on. Interactional linguistics is based on the principle that linguistic structures and uses are formed through interaction and it aims at understanding how languages are shaped through interaction. The approach focuses on temporality, activity implication and embodiment in interaction. Interactional linguistics asks research questions such as "How are linguistic patterns shaped by interaction?" and "How do linguistic patterns themselves shape interaction?". Interactional linguistics is partly a development within conversation analysis focusing on linguistic research questions, partly a development of Emergent grammar or West Coast functional grammar. The two approaches can be seen as effectively merged into interactional linguistics, but also with interactional sociolinguistics. While conversation analysis did indeed study language since its beginning, it grew out of sociology and often dealt with sociological research questions and topics. However, over time the use of ideas and methods from conversation analysis for linguistic research questions grew. Some early uses of the term Interactional Linguistics are found in the title of a 1995 conference with the title and 2000 conference Interactional Linguistics: Euro-conference on the Linguistic Organisation of Conversational Activities and in the 2001 book Studies in Interactional Linguistics by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Margret Selting. They mark a development that most clearly took place in the 90s through the publication of various edited volumes - most importantly the book Interaction and Grammar edited by Elinor Ochs, Emanuel Schegloff and Sandra Thompson. While there is no agreed-upon delineation between the two, interactional linguistics is characterized by looking at linguistic structures and employing linguistic terminology for its description of what interactants orient to (and not only looking at e.

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Related publications (3)

Related concepts (5)

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The modern-day scientific study of linguistics takes all aspects of language into account — i.e., the cognitive, the social, the cultural, the psychological, the environmental, the biological, the literary, the grammatical, the paleographical, and the structural. Linguistics is based on a theoretical as well as descriptive study of language, and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning, which entails the study of specific languages.

Linguistic competence

In linguistics, linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which includes all other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice. In approaches to linguistics which adopt this distinction, competence would normally be considered responsible for the fact that "I like ice cream" is a possible sentence of English, the particular proposition that it denotes, and the particular sequence of phones that it consists of.

Conversation analysis

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction that empirically investigates the mechanisms by which humans achieve mutual understanding. It focuses on both verbal and non-verbal conduct, especially in situations of everyday life. CA originated as a sociological method, but has since spread to other fields.

Overlapping speech detection using long-term conversational features for speaker diarization in meeting room conversations

Hervé Bourlard, Sree Harsha Yella

Overlapping speech has been identified as one of the main sources of errors in diarization of meeting room conversations. Therefore, overlap detection has become an important step prior to speaker diarization. Studies on conversational analysis have shown ...

2014

Automatic detection of conflicts in spoken conversations: ratings and analysis of broadcast political debates

Fabio Valente, Alessandro Vinciarelli

Automatic analysis of spoken conversations has recently searched for phenomena like agreement/disagreement in collaborative and non- conflictual discussions (e.g., meetings). This work adds a novel dimension investigating conflicts in spontaneous conversat ...

2012

Automatic nonverbal analysis of social interaction in small groups: A review

Daniel Gatica-Perez

An increasing awareness of the scientific and technological value of the automatic understanding of faceto- face social interaction has motivated in the past few years a surge of interest in the devising of computational techniques for conversational analy ...

2009