Cynthia Gordon
Biographic Data
| ID | 3687574 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cynthia Gordon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cynthia |
| FAMILY NAME | Gordon |
| SIGNATURE | GORDON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2850-1344 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 132 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A slightly hectic but a very normal meal at our house”: Parents’ collaborative facework in a YouTube video for English language learners
We draw on theorizing by Goffman on face (1967), framing (1974), and participation framework (1981) to demonstrate how one mother and father do parental and family facework as their young children exhibit what could be construed as “misbehavior” during a videorecording of a family mealtime that the mother, an English-language instructor, made and posted to her YouTube channel for the purposes of providing learners access to “real English conversa…
Tannen, Deborah
Deborah Tannen is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University (Washington, DC), is best known for elucidating the role of language in interpersonal relationships.
Framing and related concepts in interactional sociolinguistics
This essay provides an overview of the study of framing in discourse as conducated in the field of interactional sociolinguistics. We review key theorizing on frames and related concepts such as footing, positioning, and speech activity that provides the foundation for this research. We note two basic understandings of frame in our field: interactive frames relate to situational definitions of what is going on in an interaction; knowledge schemas…
Linguistic Penalties and the Job Interview.CeliaRoberts. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2021
You might want to look up the definition of ‘continental breakfast’”: Other-initiated repair and community-building in health and weight loss blogs
This study examines other-initiated repair as what has been termed a light practice , demonstrating how it facilitates interactivity and moments of community creation online. Specifically, I analyze user comments on expert-written blogs that appear on an English-language weight loss website, showing how posters collaboratively initiate, accomplish, and show appreciation for repair activities. These activities, which are, as in face-to-face conver…
Mobile phones as cultural tools for identity construction among college students in Oman, Ukraine, and the U.S
Asking for another’ online: Membership categorization and identity construction on a food and nutrition discussion board
This discourse analytic study integrates theories of stance and membership categorization to investigate one online discussion thread initiated by a woman who asks for diet and health advice on behalf of her boyfriend, an interactive move we term ‘asking for another’. Posters to the thread, in relatively explicit ways, construe the original poster as a ‘nag’ and ‘mother-figure’ and her boyfriend as a ‘victim of nagging’ and ‘childish’. Our analys…
Metadiscourse in group supervision: How school counselors-in-training construct their transitional professional identities
We use discourse analysis to examine a group supervision meeting in which graduate students who are training to become school counselors discuss counseling experiences that they had at local high schools. Focusing on metadiscourse, or talk about talk, we integrate Ochs’ concepts of epistemic stance and affective stance and Tannen’s discussion of linguistic strategies as ambiguous and polysemous in terms of power and solidarity in order to demonst…
We Are in the Room to Serve Our Clients: We and Professional Identity Socialization in E-Mail Supervision of Counselors-in-Training
This study uses computer-mediated discourse analysis to investigate use of the first-person plural pronoun "we" in e-mail supervision of 23 graduate-level counselors-in-training who are completing internships. Extending prior research on pronouns and relationship and identity construction, expert-novice discourse, professional identity socialization, and cybersupervision, our analysis highlights two prominent uses of "we" that differ by professio…
 You are killing your kidsâ
‘You are killing your kids’: Framing and impoliteness in a health makeover reality TV show
Honey We’re Killing the Kids is a reality television programme that addresses the childhood obesity epidemic in two ways: by providing expert health education to individual families, and by packaging these families’ experiences as ‘makeovers’ for public consumption. Honey We’re Killing the Kids (hereafter: Honey ) aired in the United States in 2006 and 2007 on TLC (The Learning Channel) and in Canada on The Food Network; the show was developed an…
Beyond the observer's paradox: The Audio-Recorder as a Resource for the Display of Identity
Instead of viewing the 'observer's paradox' or the presence of 'tape-affected speech' as a methodological problem that spoils 'natural' data, in this article, I advocate exploring the opportunities that a recorder offers to research study participants, and the insights tape-affected speech gives to researchers. In my discourse analysis of the week-long self-audio-recorded discourse of members of four American families, I draw on the notions of 'f…
Family Discourse
“Family discourse” refers to a diverse area of study that draws on theories and methods of discourse analysis to examine everyday family communication.
Analysis of Identity in Interaction
The relationship between language and identity has long been a topic of interest in linguistics.
Analysis of Narrative in Interaction
Narrative has been widely studied across the social sciences and humanities.
Measuring food deserts in New York City's low-income neighborhoods
Impression management on reality TV: Emotion in parental accounts
A Discourse Analysis of School Counseling Supervisory E-Mail
This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school counseling interns and their e-mail supervisor over a 16-week semester. Course-required e-mail supervision was provided as an adjunct to traditional face-to-face individual and group supervision. School counselor supervisees and supervisor enacted 3 discursive strategies (repetition, labeling, and plural pronoun usage), which were observed to contribu…
Making Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interactions
Cynthia Gordon uses tape-recorded conversations about everyday, mundane topics among three dual-income families to explore how family communication creates a special kind of meaning and a sense of distinctive group coherence within the family
A(p)parent play: Blending frames and reframing in family talk
This study extends Goffman's idea that frames are laminated in various ways in interaction by demonstrating how work and play frames are interrelated in two distinct ways in naturally occurring family conversations. An analysis of excerpts from everyday interactions between parents and young children in three families illustrates how frames of play and parenting are laminated (i) by using language to sequentially transform interaction from a lite…
Reshaping prior text, reshaping identities
This analysis brings together Goffman's concept of alignment, Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, and A. L. Becker's idea that interaction consists of ‘reshaping’ old texts into present contexts to consider how one mother reshapes her own and her child's previous discourse across three conversations to construct different alignments with her co-interlocutors and different identities for herself. The mother, Janet, who works part-time but spends mo…
Al Gore’s our Guy’: Linguistically Constructing a Family Political Identity
This article considers how one family, consisting of a mother, father, and son (aged 4 years 10 months), uses language to collaboratively create (and socialize one another into) one aspect of their shared family identity—as Democrats and supporters of Al Gore—through conversations they tape recorded during the week of the 2000 presidential election. I identify four ways in which this family constructs their political identity. Interlocutors (i) u…
Aligning as a Team: Forms of Conjoined Participation in (Stepfamily) Interaction
Prior research (Falk, 1979; Kangasharju, 1996; Lerner, 1987, 1993) has suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one another and by sharing turns at talk or speaking on behalf of the team. In this article, I explore more closely how participants "do" team talk by analyzing excerpts from two audiotaped stepfamily mealtime interactions. In the analysis, I identify three forms of participation that …
On trial”: Metaphor in telling the life story
Preview this article: “On trial”: Metaphor in telling the life story, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/ni.13.1.01kel-1.gif
Aligning as a Team: Forms of Conjoined Participation in (Stepfamily) Interaction
Prior research (Falk, 1979; Kangasharju, 1996; Lerner, 1987, 1993) has suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one another and by sharing turns at talk or speaking on behalf of the team. In this article, I explore more closely how participants "do" team talk by analyzing excerpts from two audiotaped stepfamily mealtime interactions. In the analysis, I identify three forms of participation that …
Measuring food deserts in New York City's low-income neighborhoods
A(p)parent play: Blending frames and reframing in family talk
This study extends Goffman's idea that frames are laminated in various ways in interaction by demonstrating how work and play frames are interrelated in two distinct ways in naturally occurring family conversations. An analysis of excerpts from everyday interactions between parents and young children in three families illustrates how frames of play and parenting are laminated (i) by using language to sequentially transform interaction from a lite…
I'm Mommy and you're Natalie: Role-reversal and embedded frames in mother-child discourse
This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a young child (age 2 years 11 months) and her mother, wherein the participants reverse roles from real life and reenact shared prior experiences. Data consist of two tape-recorded naturally occurring pretend-play episodes and the real-life interactions on which they are based, all of which took place at home. Analysis of the role-play episodes illustrates…
Al Gore’s our Guy’: Linguistically Constructing a Family Political Identity
This article considers how one family, consisting of a mother, father, and son (aged 4 years 10 months), uses language to collaboratively create (and socialize one another into) one aspect of their shared family identity—as Democrats and supporters of Al Gore—through conversations they tape recorded during the week of the 2000 presidential election. I identify four ways in which this family constructs their political identity. Interlocutors (i) u…
Beyond the observer's paradox: The Audio-Recorder as a Resource for the Display of Identity
Instead of viewing the 'observer's paradox' or the presence of 'tape-affected speech' as a methodological problem that spoils 'natural' data, in this article, I advocate exploring the opportunities that a recorder offers to research study participants, and the insights tape-affected speech gives to researchers. In my discourse analysis of the week-long self-audio-recorded discourse of members of four American families, I draw on the notions of 'f…
We Are in the Room to Serve Our Clients: We and Professional Identity Socialization in E-Mail Supervision of Counselors-in-Training
This study uses computer-mediated discourse analysis to investigate use of the first-person plural pronoun "we" in e-mail supervision of 23 graduate-level counselors-in-training who are completing internships. Extending prior research on pronouns and relationship and identity construction, expert-novice discourse, professional identity socialization, and cybersupervision, our analysis highlights two prominent uses of "we" that differ by professio…
Impression management on reality TV: Emotion in parental accounts
On trial”: Metaphor in telling the life story
Preview this article: “On trial”: Metaphor in telling the life story, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/ni.13.1.01kel-1.gif
Asking for another’ online: Membership categorization and identity construction on a food and nutrition discussion board
This discourse analytic study integrates theories of stance and membership categorization to investigate one online discussion thread initiated by a woman who asks for diet and health advice on behalf of her boyfriend, an interactive move we term ‘asking for another’. Posters to the thread, in relatively explicit ways, construe the original poster as a ‘nag’ and ‘mother-figure’ and her boyfriend as a ‘victim of nagging’ and ‘childish’. Our analys…
Metadiscourse in group supervision: How school counselors-in-training construct their transitional professional identities
We use discourse analysis to examine a group supervision meeting in which graduate students who are training to become school counselors discuss counseling experiences that they had at local high schools. Focusing on metadiscourse, or talk about talk, we integrate Ochs’ concepts of epistemic stance and affective stance and Tannen’s discussion of linguistic strategies as ambiguous and polysemous in terms of power and solidarity in order to demonst…
A Discourse Analysis of School Counseling Supervisory E-Mail
This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school counseling interns and their e-mail supervisor over a 16-week semester. Course-required e-mail supervision was provided as an adjunct to traditional face-to-face individual and group supervision. School counselor supervisees and supervisor enacted 3 discursive strategies (repetition, labeling, and plural pronoun usage), which were observed to contribu…
Framing and related concepts in interactional sociolinguistics
This essay provides an overview of the study of framing in discourse as conducated in the field of interactional sociolinguistics. We review key theorizing on frames and related concepts such as footing, positioning, and speech activity that provides the foundation for this research. We note two basic understandings of frame in our field: interactive frames relate to situational definitions of what is going on in an interaction; knowledge schemas…
Mobile phones as cultural tools for identity construction among college students in Oman, Ukraine, and the U.S
Sexual Symmetry in Psychiatric Diagnosis
While proponents of the psychiatric perspective submit that diagnosis using DSM is sex symmetrical, i.e., males and females with similar mental illness symptoms receive the same diagnosis, followers of the labeling perspective argue that diagnosis is not sex symmetrical, i.e., males and females with similar symptoms receive diagnosis that is concomitant with sex role expectations. Research provides conflicting evidence on the effects of sex on di…
Sexual Symmetry in Psychiatric Diagnosis
While proponents of the psychiatric perspective submit that diagnosis using DSM is sex symmetrical, i.e., males and females with similar mental illness symptoms receive the same diagnosis, followers of the labeling perspective argue that diagnosis is not sex symmetrical, i.e., males and females with similar symptoms receive diagnosis that is concomitant with sex role expectations. Research provides conflicting evidence on the effects of sex on di…
I'm Mommy and you're Natalie: Role-reversal and embedded frames in mother-child discourse
This study investigates framing in discourse while considering spontaneous role-play between a young child (age 2 years 11 months) and her mother, wherein the participants reverse roles from real life and reenact shared prior experiences. Data consist of two tape-recorded naturally occurring pretend-play episodes and the real-life interactions on which they are based, all of which took place at home. Analysis of the role-play episodes illustrates…
Aligning as a Team: Forms of Conjoined Participation in (Stepfamily) Interaction
Prior research (Falk, 1979; Kangasharju, 1996; Lerner, 1987, 1993) has suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one another and by sharing turns at talk or speaking on behalf of the team. In this article, I explore more closely how participants "do" team talk by analyzing excerpts from two audiotaped stepfamily mealtime interactions. In the analysis, I identify three forms of participation that …
On trial”: Metaphor in telling the life story
Preview this article: “On trial”: Metaphor in telling the life story, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/ni.13.1.01kel-1.gif
Aligning as a Team: Forms of Conjoined Participation in (Stepfamily) Interaction
Prior research (Falk, 1979; Kangasharju, 1996; Lerner, 1987, 1993) has suggested that individuals participate as teams in interaction by aligning supportively with one another and by sharing turns at talk or speaking on behalf of the team. In this article, I explore more closely how participants "do" team talk by analyzing excerpts from two audiotaped stepfamily mealtime interactions. In the analysis, I identify three forms of participation that …
Al Gore’s our Guy’: Linguistically Constructing a Family Political Identity
This article considers how one family, consisting of a mother, father, and son (aged 4 years 10 months), uses language to collaboratively create (and socialize one another into) one aspect of their shared family identity—as Democrats and supporters of Al Gore—through conversations they tape recorded during the week of the 2000 presidential election. I identify four ways in which this family constructs their political identity. Interlocutors (i) u…
Reshaping prior text, reshaping identities
This analysis brings together Goffman's concept of alignment, Bakhtin's notion of dialogicality, and A. L. Becker's idea that interaction consists of ‘reshaping’ old texts into present contexts to consider how one mother reshapes her own and her child's previous discourse across three conversations to construct different alignments with her co-interlocutors and different identities for herself. The mother, Janet, who works part-time but spends mo…
A(p)parent play: Blending frames and reframing in family talk
This study extends Goffman's idea that frames are laminated in various ways in interaction by demonstrating how work and play frames are interrelated in two distinct ways in naturally occurring family conversations. An analysis of excerpts from everyday interactions between parents and young children in three families illustrates how frames of play and parenting are laminated (i) by using language to sequentially transform interaction from a lite…
Making Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Interactions
Cynthia Gordon uses tape-recorded conversations about everyday, mundane topics among three dual-income families to explore how family communication creates a special kind of meaning and a sense of distinctive group coherence within the family
Measuring food deserts in New York City's low-income neighborhoods
Impression management on reality TV: Emotion in parental accounts
A Discourse Analysis of School Counseling Supervisory E-Mail
This article is a discourse analysis of weekly computer-mediated communications between 8 school counseling interns and their e-mail supervisor over a 16-week semester. Course-required e-mail supervision was provided as an adjunct to traditional face-to-face individual and group supervision. School counselor supervisees and supervisor enacted 3 discursive strategies (repetition, labeling, and plural pronoun usage), which were observed to contribu…
Family Discourse
“Family discourse” refers to a diverse area of study that draws on theories and methods of discourse analysis to examine everyday family communication.
Analysis of Identity in Interaction
The relationship between language and identity has long been a topic of interest in linguistics.
Analysis of Narrative in Interaction
Narrative has been widely studied across the social sciences and humanities.
 You are killing your kidsâ
‘You are killing your kids’: Framing and impoliteness in a health makeover reality TV show
Honey We’re Killing the Kids is a reality television programme that addresses the childhood obesity epidemic in two ways: by providing expert health education to individual families, and by packaging these families’ experiences as ‘makeovers’ for public consumption. Honey We’re Killing the Kids (hereafter: Honey ) aired in the United States in 2006 and 2007 on TLC (The Learning Channel) and in Canada on The Food Network; the show was developed an…
Beyond the observer's paradox: The Audio-Recorder as a Resource for the Display of Identity
Instead of viewing the 'observer's paradox' or the presence of 'tape-affected speech' as a methodological problem that spoils 'natural' data, in this article, I advocate exploring the opportunities that a recorder offers to research study participants, and the insights tape-affected speech gives to researchers. In my discourse analysis of the week-long self-audio-recorded discourse of members of four American families, I draw on the notions of 'f…
Metadiscourse in group supervision: How school counselors-in-training construct their transitional professional identities
We use discourse analysis to examine a group supervision meeting in which graduate students who are training to become school counselors discuss counseling experiences that they had at local high schools. Focusing on metadiscourse, or talk about talk, we integrate Ochs’ concepts of epistemic stance and affective stance and Tannen’s discussion of linguistic strategies as ambiguous and polysemous in terms of power and solidarity in order to demonst…
We Are in the Room to Serve Our Clients: We and Professional Identity Socialization in E-Mail Supervision of Counselors-in-Training
This study uses computer-mediated discourse analysis to investigate use of the first-person plural pronoun "we" in e-mail supervision of 23 graduate-level counselors-in-training who are completing internships. Extending prior research on pronouns and relationship and identity construction, expert-novice discourse, professional identity socialization, and cybersupervision, our analysis highlights two prominent uses of "we" that differ by professio…
Mobile phones as cultural tools for identity construction among college students in Oman, Ukraine, and the U.S
Asking for another’ online: Membership categorization and identity construction on a food and nutrition discussion board
This discourse analytic study integrates theories of stance and membership categorization to investigate one online discussion thread initiated by a woman who asks for diet and health advice on behalf of her boyfriend, an interactive move we term ‘asking for another’. Posters to the thread, in relatively explicit ways, construe the original poster as a ‘nag’ and ‘mother-figure’ and her boyfriend as a ‘victim of nagging’ and ‘childish’. Our analys…
You might want to look up the definition of ‘continental breakfast’”: Other-initiated repair and community-building in health and weight loss blogs
This study examines other-initiated repair as what has been termed a light practice , demonstrating how it facilitates interactivity and moments of community creation online. Specifically, I analyze user comments on expert-written blogs that appear on an English-language weight loss website, showing how posters collaboratively initiate, accomplish, and show appreciation for repair activities. These activities, which are, as in face-to-face conver…
Linguistic Penalties and the Job Interview.CeliaRoberts. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2021
Framing and related concepts in interactional sociolinguistics
This essay provides an overview of the study of framing in discourse as conducated in the field of interactional sociolinguistics. We review key theorizing on frames and related concepts such as footing, positioning, and speech activity that provides the foundation for this research. We note two basic understandings of frame in our field: interactive frames relate to situational definitions of what is going on in an interaction; knowledge schemas…
Psychology (20 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (10 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (7 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (7 works) · Communication (6 works)