R Wooffitt
Biographic Data
| ID | 11829 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Wooffitt |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Wooffitt |
| SIGNATURE | WOOFFITT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7710-9667 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Pilots reporting unidentified aerial phenomena and the organisation of professional circumspection
This article describes a conversational sequence by which commercial airline pilots report unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) to local air traffic control. Analysis shows how the sequence is organised to address possible reputational risk associated with reporting UAP and contributes to work on the communicative competences by which reporters of extraordinary events establish the factual status of their claims, the objectivity of the claimed phe…
Beyond Content: Analysing What Is Said and How It’s Said in Interviews about Spiritual Experience Integration
In this paper, we outline an approach to studying spiritually transformative experiences ( STE s) occurring in Euro-American contexts. Our method takes account of the representational function of language (what the experiencers’ report is about) and the situated and dynamic nature of language use in interviews (how the report is constructed through linguistic and descriptive processes). To focus our argument, we apply this method to analyse exper…
Embodiment, Relationality and Epistemics: Observations from Alexander Technique Training in Music Master Classes
Following Shilling's arguments on body pedagogics in sociology, we show how the negotiation of epistemic concerns is central to our understanding of practices of embodied interaction. Using conversation analytic methods, we examine audio and visual data from recordings of tuition in the Alexander Technique to accomplished amateur musicians. Our analysis builds on previous research on the body in pedagogic contexts, and focuses on embodied and dis…
Small stories with big implications: Identity, relationality and aesthetics in accounts of enigmatic communication
In this paper we examine reports of poetic confluence, in which one person’s utterances seems to connect with another’s unspoken or unarticulated thoughts. We argue that analysis of these narratives can be investigated as a window onto social reality, and as a site in which social realities are produced, especially with respect to identity work. We show how this approach complements and develops from the small story paradigm in narrative inquiry.…
Coincidence by design
In this article we develop an approach to coincidences as discursive activities. To illustrate the range of empirical questions that can be explored in the analysis of coincidence accounts, we examine one single written account, which was submitted to a website of a research project to investigate the statistical dimensions of coincidence experiences. Our analysis is broadly ethnomethodological in that we examine this single case to identify how …
Poetic Confluence and the Public Formulation of Others' Private Matters
This article is an exploratory empirical study of a form of interpersonal relationality that takes the form of a speech event in which one participant produces a spoken turn that exhibits a poetic relationship to a co-participant's unspoken thoughts or unarticulated mental imagery. The data consist of anecdotal reports, which are analysed in relation to empirical findings from conversation analytic studies of formulations in institutional and nat…
Shared subjectivities: Enigmatic moments and mundane intimacies
Relational psychoanalysis and anomalous communication: Continuities and discontinuities in psychoanalysis and telepathy
There has been consistent interest in telepathy within psychoanalysis from its start. Relational psychoanalysis, which is a relatively new development in psychoanalytic theory and practice, seems more receptive to experiences between patient and analyst that suggest ostensibly anomalous communicative capacities. To establish this openness to telepathic phenomena with relational approaches, a selection of papers recently published in leading acade…
The transgressive that: Making the world uncanny
In this article, we examine how the demonstrative that may be used to notice an event in the world in such a way as to suggest it has highly unusual or transgressive properties and in so doing invite others to align with that implicit claim. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the uncanny, we examine instances of the transgressive that in circumstances in which participants at least entertain the possibility that they are experiencing anomalous or paran…
Telling the moment: Seeing a UFO
In this paper we examine how the features of an on-going experience are identified as having subsequently reportable properties. Using transcripts of the audio track of a video posted on YouTube purporting to capture the movements of a UFO (or at least, ostensibly anomalous lights in the sky), the analysis examines how the participants exhibit and negotiate their understanding of the object/lights, how they evaluate the evidence provided by the v…
The Paranormal is (Still) Normal: The Sociological Implications of a Survey of Paranormal Experiences in Great Britain
Historically, there has been limited sociological interest in the paranormal and no systematic study of reported paranormal experiences. There are also few medium-to-large-scale survey results with nationally representative populations focusing on paranormal experiences. This paper provides details of an exploratory survey conducted in 2009 with a nationally representative sample of 4,096 adults aged 16 years and over across Great Britain [1] . O…
Self-identity, authenticity and the Other: The spirits and audience management in stage mediumship
Introspective Discourse and the Poetics of Subjective Experience
This article examines poetic phenomena—rhymes, alliteration, puns—that appear in the introspective reports of people who have taken part in a psychology experiment. We argue that these phenomena are a form of discourse poetics identified in conversational data by Sacks and subsequently discussed by Jefferson, among others. We extend earlier research, first, to identify how the organization of these introspective narratives facilitates a range of …
Anomalous Experience and Qualitative Research: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The authors provide an introduction to the articles and commentaries which comprise the special issue on anomalous experience and qualitative research. It is argued that within psychology there have been two broad responses to reports of paranormal experiences: laboratory-based parapsychological studies and studies which seek to identify the determining factors that lead people to believe that they have experienced paranormal phenomena. However, …
Introspection as Institutional Practice: Reflections on the Attempt to Capture Conscious Experience in a Parapsychology Experiment
Parapsychology is the scientific study of claims of anomalous communication, or anomalous cognition, and it is a predominantly experimental and laboratory-based discipline. In this article we examine transcripts of recordings from extra sensory perception (ESP) experiments as part of which participants were required to make introspective reports on their inner mental experiences. The data are recordings and transcripts of “ganzfeld” ESP experimen…
Silence and its organization in the pragmatics of introspection
In this article we examine periods of silence during introspective reports produced during an experimental laboratory procedure. Drawing from conversation analytic research and Sacks’s observations on silences, we argue that silences are a significant resource by which introspective accounts may be designed for the institutional requirements of the experimental setting. We identify the normative features of silence, and sketch some of the pragmat…
Discourse, rhetoric, and the accomplishment of mediumship in stage demonstrations
This paper examines the use of language in stage demonstrations of mediumship in secular contexts, such as in civic halls or hotel conference/function rooms. Focusing on demonstrations by one of the UK's leading mediums, we examine how the organization of the introduction to the demonstration works to establish a set of inferential preconditions in the audience: tacit expectations and norms which shape the audience's interpretation of subsequent …
Participation, procedure and accountability: `You Said' Speech Markers in Negotiating Reports of Ambiguous Phenomena
In this article we study how reported speech markers are used as procedural resources in a laboratory based parapsychology experiment to investigate forms of anomalous communication, such as extrasensory perception. In particular, we focus on how specific activities in a key part of the experiment are mediated by the use of `you said' formulations which project that whatever is said next is a paraphrase or a verbatim report of what the recipient …
Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis
Towards a Discursive Parapsychology: Language and the Laboratory Study of Anomalous Communication
In recent years there has been a change in attitudes among psychologists and social scientists towards ostensibly paranormal experiences in general, and parapsychological research in particular. Instead of seeking to endorse or debunk claims of paranormal experience, attention has shifted to the analysis of the broader psychological, social and cultural implications of reports of anomalous phenomena. This paper contributes to this trend by arguin…
Raising the Dead: Reported Speech in Medium-Sitter Interaction
This article reports some findings from a study of verbal interaction from sittings between members of the public and mediums: people who claim to be able to talk to the dead on behalf of the living. Instead of trying to debunk the ontological status of the mediums' claimed powers and the existence of the afterlife, the article examines mediums' discourse as a form of institutional interaction. It focuses on instances in which mediums report the …
Some Properties of the Interactional Organisation of Displays of Paranormal Cognition in Psychic-Sitter Interaction
This paper presents a sociological investigation of instances of a class of claimed paranormal phenomena: the apparent demonstration of paranormal means of cognition by psychic practitioners, such as mediums, psychics, clairvoyants and tarot-card readers. Using a conversation analytic perspective, this paper examines recordings and transcripts of sittings between psychics and members of the public. It describes a linguistic sequence through which…
Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction
Applying Sociology: Conversation Analysis in the Study of Human-(Simulated) Computer Interaction1
Application de la sociologie: Analyse de conversation pour l'étude de l'interaction ordinateur (simulé) - homme. Beaucoup de recherches récentes ont porté sur le dessin de systèmes de communication verbal homme-ordinateur conviviaux. Cependant, on rencontre un problème du type "la poule et l'oeuf': comment les dessinateurs de systèmes peuvent savoir de quelle manière les gens réagissent à un ordinateur qui parle et quelles seront leurs exigences;…
Humans and Others, Agents and Things
The Paranormal is (Still) Normal: The Sociological Implications of a Survey of Paranormal Experiences in Great Britain
Historically, there has been limited sociological interest in the paranormal and no systematic study of reported paranormal experiences. There are also few medium-to-large-scale survey results with nationally representative populations focusing on paranormal experiences. This paper provides details of an exploratory survey conducted in 2009 with a nationally representative sample of 4,096 adults aged 16 years and over across Great Britain [1] . O…
Raising the Dead: Reported Speech in Medium-Sitter Interaction
This article reports some findings from a study of verbal interaction from sittings between members of the public and mediums: people who claim to be able to talk to the dead on behalf of the living. Instead of trying to debunk the ontological status of the mediums' claimed powers and the existence of the afterlife, the article examines mediums' discourse as a form of institutional interaction. It focuses on instances in which mediums report the …
Telling the moment: Seeing a UFO
In this paper we examine how the features of an on-going experience are identified as having subsequently reportable properties. Using transcripts of the audio track of a video posted on YouTube purporting to capture the movements of a UFO (or at least, ostensibly anomalous lights in the sky), the analysis examines how the participants exhibit and negotiate their understanding of the object/lights, how they evaluate the evidence provided by the v…
Humans and Others, Agents and Things
Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction
Relational psychoanalysis and anomalous communication: Continuities and discontinuities in psychoanalysis and telepathy
There has been consistent interest in telepathy within psychoanalysis from its start. Relational psychoanalysis, which is a relatively new development in psychoanalytic theory and practice, seems more receptive to experiences between patient and analyst that suggest ostensibly anomalous communicative capacities. To establish this openness to telepathic phenomena with relational approaches, a selection of papers recently published in leading acade…
Self-identity, authenticity and the Other: The spirits and audience management in stage mediumship
The transgressive that: Making the world uncanny
In this article, we examine how the demonstrative that may be used to notice an event in the world in such a way as to suggest it has highly unusual or transgressive properties and in so doing invite others to align with that implicit claim. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the uncanny, we examine instances of the transgressive that in circumstances in which participants at least entertain the possibility that they are experiencing anomalous or paran…
Introspective Discourse and the Poetics of Subjective Experience
This article examines poetic phenomena—rhymes, alliteration, puns—that appear in the introspective reports of people who have taken part in a psychology experiment. We argue that these phenomena are a form of discourse poetics identified in conversational data by Sacks and subsequently discussed by Jefferson, among others. We extend earlier research, first, to identify how the organization of these introspective narratives facilitates a range of …
Coincidence by design
In this article we develop an approach to coincidences as discursive activities. To illustrate the range of empirical questions that can be explored in the analysis of coincidence accounts, we examine one single written account, which was submitted to a website of a research project to investigate the statistical dimensions of coincidence experiences. Our analysis is broadly ethnomethodological in that we examine this single case to identify how …
Introspection as Institutional Practice: Reflections on the Attempt to Capture Conscious Experience in a Parapsychology Experiment
Parapsychology is the scientific study of claims of anomalous communication, or anomalous cognition, and it is a predominantly experimental and laboratory-based discipline. In this article we examine transcripts of recordings from extra sensory perception (ESP) experiments as part of which participants were required to make introspective reports on their inner mental experiences. The data are recordings and transcripts of “ganzfeld” ESP experimen…
Participation, procedure and accountability: `You Said' Speech Markers in Negotiating Reports of Ambiguous Phenomena
In this article we study how reported speech markers are used as procedural resources in a laboratory based parapsychology experiment to investigate forms of anomalous communication, such as extrasensory perception. In particular, we focus on how specific activities in a key part of the experiment are mediated by the use of `you said' formulations which project that whatever is said next is a paraphrase or a verbatim report of what the recipient …
Applying Sociology: Conversation Analysis in the Study of Human-(Simulated) Computer Interaction1
Application de la sociologie: Analyse de conversation pour l'étude de l'interaction ordinateur (simulé) - homme. Beaucoup de recherches récentes ont porté sur le dessin de systèmes de communication verbal homme-ordinateur conviviaux. Cependant, on rencontre un problème du type "la poule et l'oeuf': comment les dessinateurs de systèmes peuvent savoir de quelle manière les gens réagissent à un ordinateur qui parle et quelles seront leurs exigences;…
Humans and Others, Agents and Things
Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction
Some Properties of the Interactional Organisation of Displays of Paranormal Cognition in Psychic-Sitter Interaction
This paper presents a sociological investigation of instances of a class of claimed paranormal phenomena: the apparent demonstration of paranormal means of cognition by psychic practitioners, such as mediums, psychics, clairvoyants and tarot-card readers. Using a conversation analytic perspective, this paper examines recordings and transcripts of sittings between psychics and members of the public. It describes a linguistic sequence through which…
Raising the Dead: Reported Speech in Medium-Sitter Interaction
This article reports some findings from a study of verbal interaction from sittings between members of the public and mediums: people who claim to be able to talk to the dead on behalf of the living. Instead of trying to debunk the ontological status of the mediums' claimed powers and the existence of the afterlife, the article examines mediums' discourse as a form of institutional interaction. It focuses on instances in which mediums report the …
Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis
Towards a Discursive Parapsychology: Language and the Laboratory Study of Anomalous Communication
In recent years there has been a change in attitudes among psychologists and social scientists towards ostensibly paranormal experiences in general, and parapsychological research in particular. Instead of seeking to endorse or debunk claims of paranormal experience, attention has shifted to the analysis of the broader psychological, social and cultural implications of reports of anomalous phenomena. This paper contributes to this trend by arguin…
Discourse, rhetoric, and the accomplishment of mediumship in stage demonstrations
This paper examines the use of language in stage demonstrations of mediumship in secular contexts, such as in civic halls or hotel conference/function rooms. Focusing on demonstrations by one of the UK's leading mediums, we examine how the organization of the introduction to the demonstration works to establish a set of inferential preconditions in the audience: tacit expectations and norms which shape the audience's interpretation of subsequent …
Participation, procedure and accountability: `You Said' Speech Markers in Negotiating Reports of Ambiguous Phenomena
In this article we study how reported speech markers are used as procedural resources in a laboratory based parapsychology experiment to investigate forms of anomalous communication, such as extrasensory perception. In particular, we focus on how specific activities in a key part of the experiment are mediated by the use of `you said' formulations which project that whatever is said next is a paraphrase or a verbatim report of what the recipient …
Anomalous Experience and Qualitative Research: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The authors provide an introduction to the articles and commentaries which comprise the special issue on anomalous experience and qualitative research. It is argued that within psychology there have been two broad responses to reports of paranormal experiences: laboratory-based parapsychological studies and studies which seek to identify the determining factors that lead people to believe that they have experienced paranormal phenomena. However, …
Introspection as Institutional Practice: Reflections on the Attempt to Capture Conscious Experience in a Parapsychology Experiment
Parapsychology is the scientific study of claims of anomalous communication, or anomalous cognition, and it is a predominantly experimental and laboratory-based discipline. In this article we examine transcripts of recordings from extra sensory perception (ESP) experiments as part of which participants were required to make introspective reports on their inner mental experiences. The data are recordings and transcripts of “ganzfeld” ESP experimen…
Silence and its organization in the pragmatics of introspection
In this article we examine periods of silence during introspective reports produced during an experimental laboratory procedure. Drawing from conversation analytic research and Sacks’s observations on silences, we argue that silences are a significant resource by which introspective accounts may be designed for the institutional requirements of the experimental setting. We identify the normative features of silence, and sketch some of the pragmat…
Introspective Discourse and the Poetics of Subjective Experience
This article examines poetic phenomena—rhymes, alliteration, puns—that appear in the introspective reports of people who have taken part in a psychology experiment. We argue that these phenomena are a form of discourse poetics identified in conversational data by Sacks and subsequently discussed by Jefferson, among others. We extend earlier research, first, to identify how the organization of these introspective narratives facilitates a range of …
Self-identity, authenticity and the Other: The spirits and audience management in stage mediumship
Telling the moment: Seeing a UFO
In this paper we examine how the features of an on-going experience are identified as having subsequently reportable properties. Using transcripts of the audio track of a video posted on YouTube purporting to capture the movements of a UFO (or at least, ostensibly anomalous lights in the sky), the analysis examines how the participants exhibit and negotiate their understanding of the object/lights, how they evaluate the evidence provided by the v…
The Paranormal is (Still) Normal: The Sociological Implications of a Survey of Paranormal Experiences in Great Britain
Historically, there has been limited sociological interest in the paranormal and no systematic study of reported paranormal experiences. There are also few medium-to-large-scale survey results with nationally representative populations focusing on paranormal experiences. This paper provides details of an exploratory survey conducted in 2009 with a nationally representative sample of 4,096 adults aged 16 years and over across Great Britain [1] . O…
The transgressive that: Making the world uncanny
In this article, we examine how the demonstrative that may be used to notice an event in the world in such a way as to suggest it has highly unusual or transgressive properties and in so doing invite others to align with that implicit claim. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the uncanny, we examine instances of the transgressive that in circumstances in which participants at least entertain the possibility that they are experiencing anomalous or paran…
Relational psychoanalysis and anomalous communication: Continuities and discontinuities in psychoanalysis and telepathy
There has been consistent interest in telepathy within psychoanalysis from its start. Relational psychoanalysis, which is a relatively new development in psychoanalytic theory and practice, seems more receptive to experiences between patient and analyst that suggest ostensibly anomalous communicative capacities. To establish this openness to telepathic phenomena with relational approaches, a selection of papers recently published in leading acade…
Shared subjectivities: Enigmatic moments and mundane intimacies
Poetic Confluence and the Public Formulation of Others' Private Matters
This article is an exploratory empirical study of a form of interpersonal relationality that takes the form of a speech event in which one participant produces a spoken turn that exhibits a poetic relationship to a co-participant's unspoken thoughts or unarticulated mental imagery. The data consist of anecdotal reports, which are analysed in relation to empirical findings from conversation analytic studies of formulations in institutional and nat…
Coincidence by design
In this article we develop an approach to coincidences as discursive activities. To illustrate the range of empirical questions that can be explored in the analysis of coincidence accounts, we examine one single written account, which was submitted to a website of a research project to investigate the statistical dimensions of coincidence experiences. Our analysis is broadly ethnomethodological in that we examine this single case to identify how …
Small stories with big implications: Identity, relationality and aesthetics in accounts of enigmatic communication
In this paper we examine reports of poetic confluence, in which one person’s utterances seems to connect with another’s unspoken or unarticulated thoughts. We argue that analysis of these narratives can be investigated as a window onto social reality, and as a site in which social realities are produced, especially with respect to identity work. We show how this approach complements and develops from the small story paradigm in narrative inquiry.…
Embodiment, Relationality and Epistemics: Observations from Alexander Technique Training in Music Master Classes
Following Shilling's arguments on body pedagogics in sociology, we show how the negotiation of epistemic concerns is central to our understanding of practices of embodied interaction. Using conversation analytic methods, we examine audio and visual data from recordings of tuition in the Alexander Technique to accomplished amateur musicians. Our analysis builds on previous research on the body in pedagogic contexts, and focuses on embodied and dis…
Pilots reporting unidentified aerial phenomena and the organisation of professional circumspection
This article describes a conversational sequence by which commercial airline pilots report unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) to local air traffic control. Analysis shows how the sequence is organised to address possible reputational risk associated with reporting UAP and contributes to work on the communicative competences by which reporters of extraordinary events establish the factual status of their claims, the objectivity of the claimed phe…
Beyond Content: Analysing What Is Said and How It’s Said in Interviews about Spiritual Experience Integration
In this paper, we outline an approach to studying spiritually transformative experiences ( STE s) occurring in Euro-American contexts. Our method takes account of the representational function of language (what the experiencers’ report is about) and the situated and dynamic nature of language use in interviews (how the report is constructed through linguistic and descriptive processes). To focus our argument, we apply this method to analyse exper…
Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (13 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Conversation (10 works) · Communication (9 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (9 works)