E Stokoe
Biographic Data
| ID | 11303 |
|---|---|
| NAME | E Stokoe |
| GIVEN NAMES | E |
| FAMILY NAME | Stokoe |
| SIGNATURE | STOKOE E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loughborough University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7353-4121 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 86 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1088 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 86 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Discursive psychology and qualitative inquiry in psychology
The softness of hard data: Discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and psychological science
Qualitative methods are sometimes criticized on the grounds that they do not provide “hard” data. However, on inspection, hard data turn out to be produced by unavoidably “soft” human interaction and activities. That means that psychologists must work directly with what people do and say and either transform it into abstractions—with potential distortions along the way—or stay with the raw events to see what questions they may answer. We argue fo…
What is “conversational” about conversational technologies, products, and services? Insights from conversation analysis
“Conversational” technologies, products, and services are in the headlines more than ever. But what does it mean to be “conversational?” We address this question through the lens of six decades of empirical research in conversation analysis, which has identified and described the foundational structure and interactional machinery of human sociality. We consider not only how tacit notions of “conversationality” manifest in technologies, products, …
The conversational action test: Detecting the artificial sociality of artificial intelligence
Drawing on the “Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test”—a science fiction version of Turing’s famous thought experiment—we propose the Conversational Action Test (CAT): a new approach to evaluating conversational artificial intelligence (AI) voice agents. We compare social actions in a range of telephone service encounters where one party is an artificial conversational agent to a range of similar human-human calls. The CAT demonstrates a novel paradigm that …
How "Vulnerability" Manifests as an Interactional Asymmetry in Police Interviews with Adolescent Suspects and Intellectually Impaired Witnesses
Vulnerable suspects and witnesses who interact with the criminal justice system in England and Wales are entitled to legal affordances designed to protect them. We present novel evidence of how categorizations of vulnerability are (re)produced and negotiated to manage institutionally relevant matters during police interviews. We use conversation analysis to examine 30 police interviews with vulnerable suspects ( n = 10) and witnesses ( n = 20). O…
Conversation analysis and conversational technologies: Finding the common ground between academia and industry
Stokoe E, Albert S, Buschmeier H, Stommel W, eds. Conversation Analysis and Conversational Technologies: Finding the Common Ground Between Academia and Industry. Discourse & Communication . 2024;18(6):837-999
The Basis of Patient Resistance to Opportunistic Discussions About Weight in Primary Care
Clinicians expect that talking to patients with obesity about potential/future weight loss will be a difficult conversation, especially if it is not the reason that a patient is seeking medical help. Despite this expectation, many governments ask clinicians to take every opportunity to talk to patients about weight to help manage increasing levels of obesity. Although this is recommended, little is known about what happens in consultations when c…
What does the ‘chat’ tell us about participation and engagement in online video conferencing
Although much is known about the experiential nature of online conferencing, we know less about actual participation and engagement. This paper investigates delegate interactions in the “parallel chat” function of a video platform during an online medical education conference. We collected 813 unique messages, posted while speakers presented on a digital stage. We used descriptive statistics to summarize message/chat content in terms of participa…
How Mental Health Establishes ‘Vulnerability’ as the Basis for Support from a Housing Helpline: Self-Descriptions and Diagnostic Categories
In the UK, there is a greater prospect of receiving housing support if one is considered ‘vulnerable’—that is, at unusual risk. However, there can be a disparity between applicant and provider in the assessment of whether the applicant is indeed vulnerable. We investigate how one particular criterion, mental health, is constructed to reach the required threshold of “vulnerability.” On the one hand, callers brought up their mental health either (a…
British education research and its quality: An analysis of Research Excellence Framework submissions
We analysed the full text of all journal articles returned to the education subpanel of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF2021). Using a latent Dirichlet allocation topic model, we identified 35 topics that collectively summarise the journal articles that research units, typically schools of education, selected for submission. We found that the topics which units wrote about in their submitted articles collectively explained a large prop…
The Role of Alcohol in Initial Help-Seeking Telephone Calls About Domestic Violence to the Police
This article investigates how domestic violence and abuse (DVA), its underreporting and its links with alcohol consumption, manifest in and impact the outcome of help-seeking telephone calls to U.K.-based police services. Conversation analysis of call-takers’ questions about alcohol found that they either (a) focused only on the perpetrator's drinking, and occurred after informing callers that help was being dispatched, or (b) targeted both victi…
How Do Students Receive Help from Teachers? Initiating Assistance in Small Group Classroom Interactions
How do teachers decide when and how to help their students if not explicitly asked to do so? Based on conversation analysis of 14 h of video-recorded small group interactions in secondary schools, we discovered that teachers and students orient to subtle actions built through embodied conduct, to decide whether or not assistance is needed. We also found that problem-solving can be initiated without disturbing students’ progress and that the teach…
A Cry for “Help”? How Crisis Negotiators Overcome Suicidal People's Resistance to Offers of Assistance
This paper explores how police negotiators offer “help” to suicidal persons in crisis. The phrase “a cry for help” is long associated with suicide ideation, and “help” is a key offer made in crisis situations. However, we know little about how “help” is formulated, and received, in crisis encounters as they actually unfold. Fourteen cases (31 h) of UK-based police crisis negotiations with (suicidal) individuals in crisis were transcribed and anal…
Resistance in Business-to-Business “Cold” Sales Calls
In “cold” sales calls, the salesperson's job is to turn call-takers, or “prospects,” into clients while, very often, the latter resist them. In contrast to laboratory-based research, “cold” calls provide a natural environment where the stakes are real and resistance is manifest. We collected and transcribed 159 “cold” calls the goal of which was for salespeople to secure an appointment to meet prospects. Using discursive psychology and conversati…
Asking for help without asking for help: How victims request and police offer assistance in cases of domestic violence when perpetrators are potentially co-present
Requesting police assistance can be especially challenging in cases of domestic violence, since perpetrators may be able to overhear victims’ telephone calls. This means that callers may not be able to make direct requests for help. Simultaneously, a routine task for police call-takers is to categorize incoming calls as genuine rather than, say, accidental or nuisance. We collected and transcribed 192 audio-recorded calls to a UK police service, …
Social interaction in high stakes crisis communication
An introduction to conversation analysis in social work research
When social worker and client meet, whatever else they may be doing most of their time is spent talking to one another."(Baldock & Prior, 1981: 19
Open science communication: The first year of the UK's Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the complex relationship between science and policy. Policymakers have had to make decisions at speed in conditions of uncertainty, implementing policies that have had profound consequences for people's lives. Yet this process has sometimes been characterised by fragmentation, opacity and a disconnect between evidence and policy. In the United Kingdom, concerns about the secrecy that initially surrounded…
Talking delicately: Providing opportunistic weight loss advice to people living with obesity
Obesity is a major worldwide public health problem. Clinicians are asked to communicate public health messages, including encouraging and supporting weight loss, during consultations with patients living with obesity. However, research shows that talking about weight with patients rarely happens and both parties find it difficult to initiate. Current guidelines on how to have such conversations do not include evidence-based examples of what to sa…
Conversation analysis, public engagement and ‘following your nose’ (with a good sense of smell)
Elizabeth Stokoe is Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University and was named as an Honorary Fellow by the BPS in 2021. Beyond academia, Liz is well known for developing the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (‘CARM’) and working with industry including software companies like Typeform and Deployed. Additionally, Liz has a wide-ranging background in science communication as well as presenting a keynote lecture at the online QMi…
Preparing to talk: Behind-the-scenes planning between negotiators for subsequent communication with persons in crisis
How categorization impacts the design of requests: Asking for email addresses in call-centre interactions
Marketing research shows that organizations tailor communication for particular customer 'segments', but little is known about the live design of interaction for different categories. To investigate this, we examine telephone calls to a holiday sales call-centre (for 'seniors') and a university admissions call-centre (for 'young' students). While topically different, call-takers in both datasets requested callers' email addresses in order to prog…
Asking more than one question in one turn in oral examinations and its impact on examination quality
The assessment of oral skills is a key part of school examination systems around the world. Typically, examiners engage candidates in a conversational encounter to elicit assessable talk. However, we know little about how examiner's elicitations may impact, constrain, or create opportunities for subsequent talk by candidates. In this study, we analyse a Norwegian dataset comprising video-recorded disciplinary oral competence exams in secondary sc…
Psychological matters in institutional interaction: Insights and interventions from discursive psychology and conversation analysis
In this article, I describe how psychologists who work with language—in particular, naturally occurring social interaction—can develop evidence-based communication training for professionals. I start by situating my research in discursive psychology and conversation analysis and explaining some points of (dis)connection between mainstream and qualitative/critical psychology that nevertheless enable practical application and impact. I explain how …
The conversation analytic role-play method (Carm): Une alternative à la simulation par jeu de rôle pour entraîner les compétences en communication
La « méthode du jeu de rôle en analyse conversationnelle » (Conversation AnalyticRole-play Method, CARM) est une approche qui, sur la base de preuves tirées del’analyse conversationnelle, propose de s’entraîner à faire face aux problèmes etobstacles qui peuvent survenir dans les interactions institutionnelles. Les méthodestraditionnelles de formation reposent souvent sur des interactions par jeux de rôle quidiffèrent systématiquement de l’événeme…
Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis
This article has four aims. First, it will consider explicitly, and polemically, the hierarchical relationship between conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA). Whilst the CA 'juggernaut' flourishes, the MCA 'milk float' is in danger of being run off the road. For MCA to survive either as a separate discipline, or within CA as a focus equivalent to other 'generic orders of conversation', I suggest it must generate n…
Discourses of Work-Life Balance: Negotiating 'Genderblind' Terms in Organizations
This article examines current debates about gender equality, work-life balance and flexible working. We contrast policymakers’ and organizational discourses of flexible working and work–life balance with managers’ and employees’ talk about these issues within their organizations. We show how, despite the increasingly gender-neutral language of the official discourses, in the data studied participants consistently reformulate the debates around ge…
Making Gender Relevant: Conversation Analysis and Gender Categories in Interaction
In this article, we critically evaluate a conversation analytic approach to the study of the links between gender and language from a feminist perspective. In so doing, we engage in the recent series of exchanges about conversation analysis (CA) and other strands of discourse analysis that have been published in Discourse & Society. We consider talk from two sets of discourse data, focusing on participants' orientation to gender categories as the…
Black this, black that: Racial Insults and Reported Speech in Neighbour Complaints and Police Interrogations
We examine the location, design and uptake of reported racial insults and abuse across two interactional sites: telephone calls to UK neighbourhood mediation centres and police interviews with suspects in neighbourhood crimes. In the mediation data, talk about ethnicity and racism was formulated almost exclusively in `reported speech', as a listed complain-able item about neighbours rather than as the reason for the dispute. In the police data, s…
I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence towards women
This article examines the way male suspects deny accusations of assaulting women in interrogations by police officers. It draws on a large corpus of British police interrogation materials, and uses conversation analysis to shed light on the location and design of, and responses to, suspects’ ‘category-based denials’ that they are not ‘the kind of men who hit women’. Two sections of analysis identify how, first, such denials routinely follow polic…
Mothers, Single Women and Sluts: Gender, Morality and Membership Categorization in Neighbour Disputes
In this article, the links between neighbour relationships, gender and morality are explored from an ethnomethodological perspective. Talk between disputing neighbours was analysed for instances of gender relevance and subsequent moral assessment of neighbourly activities. Data from two contexts were recorded: neighbour mediation and televised disputes. The data were transcribed and subsequently analysed using Membership Categorization Analysis, …
The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (Carm): A Method for Training Communication Skills as an Alternative to Simulated Role-play
The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) is an approach to training based on conversation analytic evidence about the problems and roadblocks that can occur in institutional interaction. Traditional training often relies on role-played interaction, which differs systematically from the actual events it is meant to mimic and prepare for. In contrast, CARM uses animated audio and video recordings of real-time, actual encounters. CARM provi…
The (In)Authenticity of Simulated Talk: Comparing Role-Played and Actual Interaction and the Implications for Communication Training
How authentic is simulated, or role-played, interaction, of the kind produced in communication training contexts? The article addresses this question by comparing actual and role-played police investigative interviews. Both types of interviews were recorded by the police: real ones to fulfill British legal requirements and training ones to maximize the authenticity of the training experience. Interview openings were examined using conversation an…
Did you have permission to smash your neighbour's door?' Silly questions and their answers in police-suspect interrogations
We examine the asking and answering of `silly questions' (SQs) (for example, `might sound a bit silly, but do you know whose window it is?') in British police interviews with suspects, the courses of action SQs initiate, and the institutional contingencies they are designed to manage. We show how SQs are asked at an important juncture toward the ends of interviews, following police officers' formulations of suspects' testimony (e.g. `so you've ad…
Place and Identity in Tourists’ Accounts
Story formulations in talk-in-interaction
This article contrasts ‘mainstream’ narrative analysis, and the study of researcher-elicited narrative accounts, with conversation analysis and the study of naturally occurring narratives-in-interaction. Our analysis extends previous conversation analytic and discursive psychological work on storytelling (i.e., how stories get embedded in sequences of talk; the actions storytelling does), by focusing on the location and function of speakers’ stor…
IV. Toward a Conversation Analytic Approach to Gender and Discourse
Talking about Gender: The Conversational Construction of Gender Categories in Academic Discourse
The paper explores the nature of academic discourse, paying particular attention to the construction of gender categories within students' conversations. A different approach to the investigation of the links between language and gender is taken to that adopted in previous research in the area. Rather than attempting to define gender differences in talk, or to characterize the interactional styles of men and women, or to explore how gender is `do…
Identifying and Responding to Possible -isms in Institutional Encounters: Alignment, Impartiality, and the Implications for Communication Training
This article examines sequences of interaction in which speakers utter a possible -ism, that is, something possibly racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced, in the course of making, warranting, or defending against complaints. Recorded encounters between mediators and their (prospective) clients were analysed using conversation analysis. I show how participants orient to their own or recipients' talk as possibly prejudiced, occasionally explicitl…
Public Intimacy in Neighbour Relationships and Complaints
This paper examines neighbour relationships as an example of non-familial intimacy. It focuses on the way disputes between neighbours often hinge on notions of obtrusive public intimacy, in which the sights and sounds of normatively private domestic lives become sources of complaint. The analyses are based on approximately 150 hours of naturally-occurring interaction with neighbours including telephone calls to mediation centres, environmental he…
Gender and discourse, gender and categorization: Current developments in language and gender research
In this paper, I review recent developments in the study of language and gender. During the past decade, many researchers have abandoned a ‘gender differences’ agenda in pursuit of constructionist and, increasingly, ethnomethodological analyses of gender's production, performance and occasioning in discourse. I consider these developments in the light of other recent work that focuses on and analyses gender categories and their sequential traject…
Dispreferred actions and other interactional breaches as devices for occasioning audience laughter in television “sitcoms”
The present paper uses conversation analysis to examine a hitherto unexplored aspect of the interactional production of humour. Taking sequences of talk from the American television sitcom Friends, it analyses the way breaches of the “generic orders of conversational organization”, including preference organization and turn-taking, function as devices for occasioning audience laughter. The analysis further reveals that it is not just breaches the…
You can hear a lot through the walls: Noise formulations in neighbour complaints
In this article, we explore noise formulations as they are played out in two institutional contexts: neighbour dispute mediation and neighbours' calls to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) helpline. The data were transcribed and analysed using a discursive psychological approach. Our interest was in the salience of 'noise' description in our data and its formulation as a participants' concern. We found that est…
For the benefit of the tape: Formulating embodied conduct in designedly uni-modal recorded police-suspect interrogations
Producing and Responding to -isms in Interaction
We provide an introduction to some of the conceptual and methodological debates with respect to the focus of this special issue on -isms (a term used to refer to phenomena, e.g., racism, sexism, and heterosexism), focusing on the definition and identification of these phenomena. We offer an overview of the different approaches to research in this regard and conclude by summarizing the contributions to this special issue
On Ethnomethodology, Feminism, and the Analysis of Categorial Reference to Gender in Talk-in-Interaction
This paper sets out an ethnomethodological approach to the study of gender and interaction, and demonstrates how the topic of 'gender' can be studied empirically via its categorial reference in talk-in-interaction. I begin by charting the history of ethnomethodological accounts and studies of gender, starting with Garfinkel's groundbreaking work and the subsequent 'doing gender' project, alongside a more general discussion of feminism's relations…
Gender, language, conversation analysis and feminism
I’ve got a girlfriend”: Police officers doing ‘self-disclosure’ in their interrogations of suspects
This paper investigates when, how and for what interactional function, police officers disclose something about their personal lives to the suspects they interview. Anonymized recordings of 120 interviews between different police officers and suspects in a constabulary area of the British police service were transcribed and analysed using conversation analysis. The analysis revealed that ‘clear’ cases of self-disclosure (SDs) had two main functio…
Introduction to Special Issue on Discursive Psychology
Since its inception in 1987, Discursive Psychology (DP) has developed both methodologically, for instance by drawing closer to Conversation Analysis, and theoretically, by building a body of knowledge which outlines the discursive accomplishment of mind-world relations. One of DP’s contributions to psychology consists in the respecification of mainstream topics (like attitudes, identity, memory, and emotions). This editorial outlines the meta-the…
Analysing gender and language
III. Gender Differences in Undergraduates' Talk: Contrasting Analyses, and what they Offer
An Evaluation of Two Studies of Gender and Language in Educational Contexts: Some problems in analysis
Two studies of the links among language, gender and education are critically evaluated as a basis for further discussion: one from the primary education sector and the other from a further education perspective. Some methodological pitfalls in the qualitative analyses included in these papers are discussed. Alternative theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of gender and discourse are considered
Talking about Gender: The Conversational Construction of Gender Categories in Academic Discourse
The paper explores the nature of academic discourse, paying particular attention to the construction of gender categories within students' conversations. A different approach to the investigation of the links between language and gender is taken to that adopted in previous research in the area. Rather than attempting to define gender differences in talk, or to characterize the interactional styles of men and women, or to explore how gender is `do…
I Take Full Responsibility, I Take Some Responsibility, I'll Take Half of it But No More Than That: Princess Diana and the Negotiation of Blame in the `Panorama' Interview
The focus of this article is the conversational management of blaming and accountability. In particular, we explore how involved speakers routinely allocate and avoid blame in everyday talk. In considering such a problematic notion of social interaction, we analyse the BBC interview between Princess Diana and Martin Bashir that was aired on British national television on 20 November 1995. In the analysis, we consider how different discursive stra…
IV. Toward a Conversation Analytic Approach to Gender and Discourse
Making Gender Relevant: Conversation Analysis and Gender Categories in Interaction
In this article, we critically evaluate a conversation analytic approach to the study of the links between gender and language from a feminist perspective. In so doing, we engage in the recent series of exchanges about conversation analysis (CA) and other strands of discourse analysis that have been published in Discourse & Society. We consider talk from two sets of discourse data, focusing on participants' orientation to gender categories as the…
Gender, language, conversation analysis and feminism
Constructing discussion tasks in university tutorials: Shifting Dynamics and Identities
This article examines task-setting sequences in university tutorial sessions. Classes from three higher education institutions were audio- and video-recorded. The resulting data, which included both tutor-led and peer group discussions, were transcribed and analysed using conversation analysis (CA). A number of themes emerged from our analysis. First, we found that the tutor's opening turns routinely followed a three-part sequence, the interperso…
Mothers, Single Women and Sluts: Gender, Morality and Membership Categorization in Neighbour Disputes
In this article, the links between neighbour relationships, gender and morality are explored from an ethnomethodological perspective. Talk between disputing neighbours was analysed for instances of gender relevance and subsequent moral assessment of neighbourly activities. Data from two contexts were recorded: neighbour mediation and televised disputes. The data were transcribed and subsequently analysed using Membership Categorization Analysis, …
Gender and discourse, gender and categorization: Current developments in language and gender research
In this paper, I review recent developments in the study of language and gender. During the past decade, many researchers have abandoned a ‘gender differences’ agenda in pursuit of constructionist and, increasingly, ethnomethodological analyses of gender's production, performance and occasioning in discourse. I consider these developments in the light of other recent work that focuses on and analyses gender categories and their sequential traject…
Place and Identity in Tourists’ Accounts
Discourses of Work-Life Balance: Negotiating 'Genderblind' Terms in Organizations
This article examines current debates about gender equality, work-life balance and flexible working. We contrast policymakers’ and organizational discourses of flexible working and work–life balance with managers’ and employees’ talk about these issues within their organizations. We show how, despite the increasingly gender-neutral language of the official discourses, in the data studied participants consistently reformulate the debates around ge…
You can hear a lot through the walls: Noise formulations in neighbour complaints
In this article, we explore noise formulations as they are played out in two institutional contexts: neighbour dispute mediation and neighbours' calls to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) helpline. The data were transcribed and analysed using a discursive psychological approach. Our interest was in the salience of 'noise' description in our data and its formulation as a participants' concern. We found that est…
Analysing gender and language
Discourse and Identity
GBS_insertPreviewButtonPopup('ISBN:9780748617500); 'Identity' is a central organizing feature of our social world. Across the social sciences and humanities, it is increasingly treated as something that is actively and publicly accomplished in discourse. This book defines identity in its broadest sense, in terms of how people display who they are to each other. Each chapter examines a different discursive environment in which people do 'identity …
Story formulations in talk-in-interaction
This article contrasts ‘mainstream’ narrative analysis, and the study of researcher-elicited narrative accounts, with conversation analysis and the study of naturally occurring narratives-in-interaction. Our analysis extends previous conversation analytic and discursive psychological work on storytelling (i.e., how stories get embedded in sequences of talk; the actions storytelling does), by focusing on the location and function of speakers’ stor…
Competency and Participation in Acquiring a Mastery of Language: A Reconsideration of the Idea of Membership
For ethnomethodology and conversation analysis the concept of 'member' or 'participant' remains central. The aim of this paper is to consider a number of ideas originally outlined by Garfinkel and Sacks (1970) , and by way of extension and clarification, discuss transcript extracts from recorded everyday interactions between two parents and their pre-school child. We note that membership, or what might constitute being a member, involves possessi…
On Ethnomethodology, Feminism, and the Analysis of Categorial Reference to Gender in Talk-in-Interaction
This paper sets out an ethnomethodological approach to the study of gender and interaction, and demonstrates how the topic of 'gender' can be studied empirically via its categorial reference in talk-in-interaction. I begin by charting the history of ethnomethodological accounts and studies of gender, starting with Garfinkel's groundbreaking work and the subsequent 'doing gender' project, alongside a more general discussion of feminism's relations…
Public Intimacy in Neighbour Relationships and Complaints
This paper examines neighbour relationships as an example of non-familial intimacy. It focuses on the way disputes between neighbours often hinge on notions of obtrusive public intimacy, in which the sights and sounds of normatively private domestic lives become sources of complaint. The analyses are based on approximately 150 hours of naturally-occurring interaction with neighbours including telephone calls to mediation centres, environmental he…
Self-Help in Calls for Help With Problem Neighbors
In telephone calls to United Kingdom mediation centers for disputing neighbors, participants deal with clients' prior efforts at resolving the problem. Where no such efforts are mentioned in initial complaint narratives, there follows a typical sequence of actions. On the evident completion of the complaint, mediators (M) ask whether efforts have been made to speak with the problem neighbor. Clients and M treat the question not only as informatio…
Black this, black that: Racial Insults and Reported Speech in Neighbour Complaints and Police Interrogations
We examine the location, design and uptake of reported racial insults and abuse across two interactional sites: telephone calls to UK neighbourhood mediation centres and police interviews with suspects in neighbourhood crimes. In the mediation data, talk about ethnicity and racism was formulated almost exclusively in `reported speech', as a listed complain-able item about neighbours rather than as the reason for the dispute. In the police data, s…
Dispreferred actions and other interactional breaches as devices for occasioning audience laughter in television “sitcoms”
The present paper uses conversation analysis to examine a hitherto unexplored aspect of the interactional production of humour. Taking sequences of talk from the American television sitcom Friends, it analyses the way breaches of the “generic orders of conversational organization”, including preference organization and turn-taking, function as devices for occasioning audience laughter. The analysis further reveals that it is not just breaches the…
Did you have permission to smash your neighbour's door?' Silly questions and their answers in police-suspect interrogations
We examine the asking and answering of `silly questions' (SQs) (for example, `might sound a bit silly, but do you know whose window it is?') in British police interviews with suspects, the courses of action SQs initiate, and the institutional contingencies they are designed to manage. We show how SQs are asked at an important juncture toward the ends of interviews, following police officers' formulations of suspects' testimony (e.g. `so you've ad…
Asking Ostensibly Silly Questions in Police‐Suspect Interrogations
This chapter, written by Elizabeth Stokoe and Derek Edwards, considers the occurrence in police‐suspect interrogations of what the authors term “silly questions.” A “silly question” is one that has an answer that both the police officer (i.e., the questioner) and the suspect (i.e., the answerer) already know and is asked in order “to establish for the record” something of the suspect's reported state of mind when engaged in the arrestable activit…
Doing actions with identity categories: Complaints and denials in neighbor disputes
This paper examines the way making complaints about the neighbors and denying responsibility for disputes systematically bring into play categorizations of those involved. It draws on a corpus of British conversational materials including telephone calls to neighbor mediation centers and police interrogations of suspects. The analytic approach was conversation analytic: sequences of talk in which membership categories (e.g., "old man," "kids") an…
Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (70 works) · Psychology (65 works) · Conversation (49 works) · Communication (43 works) · Conversation analysis (43 works) · Social Psychology (43 works) · Sociology (43 works) · Political science (41 works) · Computer Science (33 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (30 works)