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A deserted Cretan village provided the grounds to look beyond the ruins and study the abandonment and post-abandonment formation processes that transform settlements into archaeological sites. The long abandonment period, as well as the continuous human presence and intervention in the post-abandonment period of individual buildings and larger parts ofthe site, resulted in an evidence-rich environment, idealfor tracing the formation processes in the different stages of ruination. By drawing on a case study in the eastern Mediterranean basin, where only afew other observations have been undertaken, this paper highlights the historic and cultural distinctiveness offormation processes, emphasising the difficulty ofgeneralising about post-abandonment factors associated with sites. The paper attempts to give an account of the observed structures and artefact distributions, and draw conclusions regarding the anthropogenic impact that led to an advanced state ofdecay only 40 years after the abandonment of the settlement. In this context, it addresses the complexity in attributing cultural causes to their effects by linking cultural behaviour to the archaeological record and incoiporating informants' responses about the invisible abandonment andpost-abandonment stages. The paper concludes by underlining the spatiotemporal peculiarities and cultural circumstances of abandoned settlements and the importance of avoiding universal law-like generalisations when it comes to the interaction between humans and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harvey Whitehouse offers a complex and stimulating theory of rituals that bind people together and propagate via affiliative imitation. The Ritual Animal argues that fundamental problems of group cooperation can be solved by causally opaque and goal-demoted behaviors which produce arbitrary cultural conventions, honest signals of membership, and collective fused identities. This amply evidenced and compelling account explains a broad variety of prominent examples, yet other key causal mechanisms emerge from the ethnographic literature and analytical reflection on affiliation and groups. Taking a glance at some widespread and unusual rituals, this paper highlights the importance of cultural transmission via pedagogy with or without copying, costly signaling and coordination without coalitional groups, and meta-representations of impenetrable ritual efficacy. Future research can explain how bonding rituals become central features of social interaction without relying upon a quite debatable adaptive function of ritual behavior for cooperation - or anything else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence against women is a pervasive problem, both in New Zealand society and around the world. Yet assessing the scale and effects of violence is difficult, as many women face barriers to disclosure. This paper examines women's disclosures of violence in calls for help to a victim support agency. We use conversation analysis and focus on membership categorisation to describe the different ways disclosures are built and understood in situ. It was only in a minority of cases (around 20%), that callers made direct reference to violence, or categorised themselves explicitly as victims, albeit with indications of problems in speaking. However, for the majority, women did not mention the words 'victim' or 'violence' at all. Instead, culturally shared knowledge associated with categories of people (e.g. ex-partners) and places (e.g. home and jail) were used to build and interpret a description as a disclosure of violence. Our work contributes to an understanding of women's disclosures of violence by examining them directly in the setting where they occur. We discuss some of the insights gained from examining interactions in situ, and the practical applications of our work for improving services for women who have experienced violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kong Girl stereotype has been circulating in the media since the mid-2000s. The indexical process of associating social meanings to the Kong Girl label becomes heightened in situations of uncertainty and change. Kira Hall uses the term 'indexical dissonance' to explain the state of identity under globalisation. In this paper, we identify three strategies by which more 'positive' representations of Kong Girls emerge: (1) the Kong Girl label shifts in semantic meaning; (2) the specific Kong Girl qualities taken as stance objects shift; and (3) the Kong Girl label is reappropriated. Through these strategies, we show how the meanings associated with a gender stereotype may be co-opted in emerging discourses of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual symbols of society's most deeply lived religious beliefs are ever-present: what one sees is what one believes, and what one believes is evident in what one sees. Relying on the foundational work of sociologists, this paper considers the reciprocal relationship between the political economy and the voice of religion by focusing on a specific object of material culture: the architecture of a Wal-Mart store. People often define place, community, and value in relation to a Wal-Mart store, which raises important theological concerns surrounding individual and community identities, sin, grace, abundance, dependency, commodification, and consumption, as well as specific sociological concerns surrounding class, religious fundamentalism, and militarism. Generated by the neo-colonial interests of economic and cultural globalization, a Wal-Mart building communicates a "visual theology," with roots in a monolithic form of cultural production beyond the control of individuals and communities and yet determinative on many levels of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze the remarks men make to passing young women on the street in 134 naturally occurring encounters that were video recorded in 2013 and 2014 across five countries and four languages and posted on the internet. I categorize these remarks in terms of the speech acts they contain, showing the most common acts, in descending order of frequency, to be addressing, greeting, expressing astonishment or admiration, summoning, and asking rhetorical questions. In immediate interactional terms, the great majority of the men's actions are thus oriented to constituting what Goffman (1963) called a 'focused interaction', a face-to-face engagement with a common focus of attention. The very ordinariness of these acts in terms of content and surface meaning - they are not vulgar or explicitly threatening - may explain why defenders of street remarks regularly draw attention to seemingly benign referential or speech act content, e.g., 'He was just saying "Hi"' or 'He was just giving her a compliment'. At another level, however, street remarks impose intimacy on passing strangers, thus flouting the normative conventions for interaction through which we manage social and personal risk and establish trust. Women targeted by street remarks treat them as breaches by not responding to them. The very ordinariness of the language in the street remarks documented, along with the relative difficulty of articulating the implicit social conventions that they breach, may veil their harm and indirectly contribute to the perpetuation of male domination of women in public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workplace transitions provide rich material for understanding intercultural interaction. Research on transitions has typically focused on the sociocultural effects of moving between nations and/or on examples of career change. Boundary crossing at this macro level has provided insight into how newcomers negotiate novel cultural expectations. As workplace discourse analysts our particular interest is the interactional negotiation that occurs as these newcomers move from one environment to the next. In this paper, using the reflections of those who have experienced such transitions, along with an analysis of recordings of professional migrants in new workplace contexts, we demonstrate how micro-level instantiations of these transitions offer a lens on the contrasting and sometimes conflicting societal norms and sociocultural practices which must be managed in these contexts. The analysis makes use of our social realist model for understanding workplace talk and our interpretations are supported by ethnographic observations and discussion with those who have observed or experienced these transitions. We conclude by outlining ways in which this approach to understanding interaction can be used to help prepare newcomers to navigate new workplace contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social presence is considered an important quality in computer-mediated communication as it promotes willingness in learners to take risks through participation in interpersonal exchanges (Kehrwald, 2008) and makes communication more natural (Lowenthal, 2010). While social presence has mostly been investigated through questionnaire data and quantitative content analysis of online interactions based on a set of predefined indicators, in a smaller number of studies the concept has also been investigated through qualitative analysis of interviews (Kehrwald, 2008, 2010). Yet studies that bring together multiple sources of data collection and examine multimodal language learning contexts are almost non-existent. In this paper, the theory of social presence is employed to explicate language learners' online multimodal communication using a case study approach. Multiple sources of data were collected, including interviews, open-ended and closed post-task questionnaires, stimulated reflection and recordings of video interactions. The main findings of the study included an innovative social presence framework developed for the analysis of online multimodal language learner interactions (Satar, 2010), which can be used in further qualitative and exploratory research. It also has potential applicability for educators to develop strategies for language learners to guide them in creating and transmitting their social presence. The focus of this article is a cross-case analysis for one of the components of social presence, sustaining interaction, bringing together social presence theory, interactional sociolinguistics and multimodal interaction analysis. Finally, strategies are proposed for language learners on how to sustain their online multimodal interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important theoretical construct within the Vygotskian sociocultural approach to second language learning is private speech. Within a conversation-analytic framework, an agnostic stance is taken in this paper toward the possible intrapsychological function(s) of private speech in order to (1) illustrate how private speech can be identified within the details of talk-in-interaction and (2) how private speech can be understood as social action. It is argued that attention to the details of how private speech is produced is important in order to show how private speech has been identified as such; that viewing private speech as social action allows for a more emic perspective; and that, at least within interaction, private speech is social not just in origin, but each time that it is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the development of membership categorization and conversation analysis and, in turn, to their contribution to the gender and language field. Specifically, it shows how speakers invoke, produce, propose and sustain commonsense knowledge about gender categories. Drawing on a variety of spoken and written interactional settings, detailed analyses of a categorial practice are presented, which comprises three design features: description (e.g. 'he offered me a lift'), categorization (e.g. 'typical guy response') and a common knowledge component (e.g. 'y'know'). The analysis shows how these features are produced by one or more speakers, within or across a sequence of turns in particular action-oriented environments, and how they work to formulate idiomatic-style phrases that 'package' cultural knowledge (e.g. 'that's lads for you'). The analysis therefore reveals 'what counts' as gendered behaviour, through the activities and predicates that get tied, in situ, to gender categories. Through this categorial practice, speakers invite recipients to display recognition of, proffer as shared, collaboratively develop, challenge or resist the construction of a culture's gender categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how local and regional representations of hegemonic masculinity are (re)produced, and how men's gender identities are constituted through situated interaction in South Africa. It points toward the important role played by the discourse and rhetoric of heteronormativity among these men in hegemonic sense-making, and in particular, the underlying discursive practices of performative/intimate (hetero)sexuality and homosexual rejection/acceptance. An attempt is made to account for complexity and diversity in this sense-making across intersecting social categories such as ethnicity and social class. Focus group discussion among Afrikaans, English and Xhosa men was transcribed and backtranslated where necessary. A technique of discourse analysis that considers the rhetorical aspects of text is developed through the introduction of norm-referencing rhetorical devices. Findings highlight the extent to which practices of both compliance and resistance contribute toward the (re)production of masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how vocatives are exploited in the fictional language of two Spanish speakingfilms: 'Machuca', a Chilean film (2004) and 'Volver', a Spanish film (2006). The aim of this paper is to determine the manner in which the use of vocatives in these films mirrors the functions that they have in naturally occurring data and how they are exploited in order to enhance the representation of orality in the fictional dialogues. Vocatives are considered to be one of the distinctive features of natural speech (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan, 1999; Leech, 1999; McCarthy and O'Keeffe, 2003). The presence of vocatives in films and in similar fictional texts appears to be a contributory factor in the establishment of the social markers of the interactions in which the characters of the film engage, signalling levels of social distance, as well as levels of power and solidarity that the viewing audiences can recognise. Previous research has shown that the use of vocatives, although apparently non-essential for the achievement of particular communicative goals, serves an important social role in a communicative interaction, projecting the level of intimacy established between the participants (McCarthy and O'Keeffe, 2003). The importance of understanding pragmatic variation will be highlighted by comparing the use of vocatives in the two different cultural and linguistic settings represented in the films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that it is time to put women back at the centre of language and gender research. Following a discussion of some issues with social constructionist and postmodernist approaches to the analysis of gendered social interaction, a case is made for identifying general (often repressive or constricting) patterns based on analyses using a detailed ethnographic approach. More specifically, the paper outlines the advantages of using a community of practice approach to analysing workplace discourse, providing evidence of the 'gender order', the repressive ideology which ensures that deviations from gender norms (by women or men) entail penalties. It is argued that such an approach provides a means of identifying discursive behaviours which penalise women in many workplace contexts on the one hand, while documenting a range of active discursive ways of resisting sexist behaviours on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on social activities that consist of multiple genres, also termed macrogenres, remains a relatively unexplored area in the linguistic sciences. Furthermore, representations of genres and macrogenres tend to be constituency based, highlighting ideational meanings as opposed to interpersonal and textual ones. In this paper, I illustrate how Halliday's tripartite metafunctional (ideational, interpersonal, textual) model can be applied to a narrative counselling interview macrogenre. I argue that each metafunctional perspective can provide a different angle through which to observe, represent and explain counselling logogenesis. The data from this study were taken from audiorecordings of 2 cases of 6 conjoint narrative counselling sessions, involving 2 couples and a male counsellor. Using the methods of Genre and Register theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics, it was found that, for both cases of counselling, counsellor and couples drew from similar sets of linguistic resources to collaboratively construct the counselling process. Furthermore, these linguistic patterns were shown to cluster together, forming identifiable generic stages and genres in which couples problems were constructed and subsequently effaced. Finally, it was found that representing the counselling macrogenre from different metafunctional perspectives provided a more comprehensive picture of the purposeful and goal directed unfolding of the counselling process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trans-exclusionary radical feminists challenge transgender people (specifically women) from within a claimed feminist struggle. They exclude transgender women and instead claim they are men colonising women's spaces. I present a conversation analytic and analytical membership categorisation case study of a national radio interview in which the spokesperson for a trans-exclusionary feminist political group debates with the host on the nature of trans women and their exclusion from women's spaces. I show how the interviewee accomplishes trans exclusion in talk, often without making explicit claims about trans women, by constructing both biologically essentialist and experiential distinctions between trans and cis women, constructing trans women as participants in patriarchal oppression, and by problematising a claimed redefinition of the category woman being enacted by trans women. This analysis highlights how transphobic (and specifically transmisogynistic) attitudes are accomplished in social interaction through sequential action and categorial inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the complex linguistic situation in Nakivale Refugee Settlement (Nakivale), and demonstrates that, for practical and pragmatic reasons, KiSwahili is emerging as the lingua franca, which needs to be actively promoted by the authorities. Nakivale is located in southwestern Uganda. The refugee settlement was started in 1959, and is of a more permanent nature. An estimated 80,000 people (refugees and Ugandans) reside in Nakivale, in the same settlement, sharing, among other things, health facilities, water, land, administrative services and educational facilities. The huge diversity of nationalities (nine, excluding one Liberian) translates into massive linguistic complexity, making communication across nationalities a nightmare. Lack of a common language breeds mistrust, tension, animosity and at times outright hostility. It is natural that a lingua franca is emerging in Nakivale; it is logical, practical and pragmatic that the lingua franca is KiSwahili. This paper recommends that the Government of Uganda, particularly the administrators of the settlement, together with humanitarian workers, actively promote KiSwahili, by, for example, teaching it in schools in Nakivale and creating informal KiSwahili classes for adults. It is envisaged that a common language would bring harmony, stability and meaningful social interaction among the refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The introduction to the special issue The "Muslim Question": The Micropolitics of Normalizing Islam and Muslims outlines three dynamics at play in all four contributions: normalization, classification and micropolitics. Starting with Michel Foucault and his notion of normalization, I argue that Muslims are classified and problematized in specific ways depending on the particular socio-historical context. Every problem and every classification depends on an idea of the "normal" or on norms. These norms central to the dynamics of normalization are reproduced through practices in everyday life. From this perspective, norm-reproducing micropolitics shapes the social fabric of interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the applicability of a Peircean approach to the intersubjectivity of adult-child shared reading. Peirce's semiosis serves as an analytical device for ways in which intersubjectivity transcends social interaction. By scrutinising instances of signification, i.e., the production and interpretation of signs constitutive of meaning making in the reading of a dual-language picturebook, the analysis reveals that the word-image complementarity renders an unfolding of intersubjective nuances in collaborative learning and intervention. This provides impetus for furthering Vygotsky's sign mediation to embrace the notion of 'intersemiosis' as indexed to the interdependence of signifying codes in communication and representation, thus theorising how the signification of such codes elicits, invites, and empowers social interaction. Resonant with edusemiotics, increasingly a reference point in the philosophical foundation of learning and development, this article offers pedagogical implications for teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/method: Using conversation analytical methodology, this article presents a detailed analysis of how a person with dementia uses the affordances of a print newspaper to initiate, manage, and close topics in an interaction with a visiting researcher during leisure time in the common room of a dementia unit. Results: The analyses show how a print newspaper is introduced and handled effortlessly by a person with dementia and used for communication purposes. The person with dementia recurrently contributes to the interaction by making observations about and assessments of the visual appearance of the newspaper, reading aloud from the newspaper, and commenting. Discussion/conclusion: The study discusses how social interaction that is anchored in familiar objects such as a newspaper may help persons with dementia and their interactional partners find common conversational ground that does not rely on access to specific memories of the past, which may increase active participation by the person with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online learning environments are changing the landscape of education, with evidence supporting their efficacy. However, research that focuses entirely on online distance English-language programs is sparse, especially in regards to oral proficiency. The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of an online distance-learning program in helping students develop oral English-language proficiency as they prepare to attend a university in the United States. The curriculum for the distance-learning program was built upon Moore's transactional distance theory, with an emphasis on interpersonal dialogue as a key tool in promoting oral proficiency. Students participated in synchronous and asynchronous interaction with fellow students, tutors, and their instructors. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) computer-assisted Oral Proficiency Interview (OPIc) provided the pretest and posttest measures for this study. To supplement this data, course surveys provided information concerning student opinions of course activities. OPIc results showed that students made significant gains in their oral proficiency from pretest to posttest. In surveys, students rated interaction with other tutors and teachers as instrumental in assisting them with their language learning, but rated interaction with their peers as less helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This article reconceptualizes theory of mind (ToM) and perspective-taking as a practical accomplishment in social interaction, and analyzes how, and when, autistic children produce explanations of their behavior in ways that address how other people do, or may, understand it. Method: Three families with autistic children collected video recordings of themselves interacting at home. From 5 hours of video, a collection of 45 instances of accounts produced by autistic children was made, transcribed, and subjected to conversation analysis. Results: Accounts occurred in both initiating and responsive turns. Accounts produced in initiating turns addressed the potential characterizations of this and themselves their interlocutors might make. Their accounts in second position addressed actual characterizations in interlocutors' preceding turns. As well, two of the children produced accounts which constructed their behavior as the result of internal causes. Discussion and conclusion: These analyses demonstrate the children's practical reasoning about how other people observe, recognize, and understand their behavior. Despite autism being linked to difficulties with ToM and perspective-taking, these autistic children manage perspective-taking through the provision of accounts in multiple sequential positions. These findings challenge the emphasis on ToM deficitbased explanations of autism, while suggesting a stronger research focus on local, situated perspective-taking in social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A career-long focus on the intersections between religion and politics grew out of family, personal and academic interests. These influences and academic explorations led to questioning the common assumption that religion and politics should--or even can--be 'kept separate'. On the other hand, the ways in which religion and politics intersect and interact, and their various configurations, provide fertile ground for analysis, and have important consequences for our national life. These intersections and interactions take distinctive forms in Australia, meaning that we need local research that, while informed by international models, is firmly grounded in our own situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of language attitudes research have documented negative evaluations of non-standard speakers. However, fewer studies have investigated the experience of stigmatization from the perspective of the non-standard speakers themselves. The study aims to explore the following questions: (1) What perception do speakers hold of their accent? (2) What does perceived accent discrimination look like? (3) How do stigmatized speakers respond to discriminatory experiences? Semistructured interviews were conducted among 36 (native, n=18; non-native, n=18) French-speaking participants in Canada. Participants were systematically selected from three regions in Canada for each group, capturing the experiences of nonstandard speakers from areas with varying levels of French ethnolinguistic vitality. The results show that (1) attitudes towards one's accent often appear to reinforce or diminish pride in one's way of speaking, and feelings of belonging or language competency; (2) accent stigmatization among French speakers in Canada is perceived by many non-standard speakers, and discrimination is perceived to occur in various settings and to take multiple forms; (3) behavioural, cognitive and affective responses to and consequences of discrimination are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study documented the communicative behaviors exhibited by sibling dyads comprised of one typically developing child and his/her sibling with autism. Six US families participated in one 45-minute home observation of sibling interactions, a 20-minute semi-structured interview with the typically developing child, and a 20-minute semi-structured interview with the siblings' parents. Dyads varied across birth order, ages, and genders. Observational data were coded to reveal 38 categories of communicative behaviors and their frequency of occurrence. Interviews yielded information about the siblings' usual interactions and parents' perceptions about their children's relationships. Families provided evidence of sibling support for the communication skills of the child with autism. Findings have implications for siblingmediated facilitation of communicative behaviors in children with autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role and function of imagination and parasocial (fiction-based) relations among autistic individuals. In interviews, seventeen high functioning, autistic young adults describe how they frequently absorb into daydreams, fantasy literature and multiplayer online roleplaying games. These findings diverge from previous cognitive research which suggests that imagination is limited in autistic individuals; a conclusion which is also challenged by scholars in critical autism research. It is suggested that these opposed scholarly views can be bridged analytically and methodologically by separating interpersonal and intrapersonal imagination, of which only the former, social aspect is affected across the whole autism spectrum. The results indicate that parasocial relations are used both for pleasure and to cope with adversities, and that imaginary realms serve as optimal autistic spaces for simulating and practicing social interaction. The article moreover provides a comparative discussion on parasocial and supernatural relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the indigenous Quichuan minority population living in Cali within an asymmetrical contact setting usually make use of linguistic marked elements from two varieties of Spanish which they speak: Andean Spanish and Spanish from Cali. One of these marked linguistic elements is OV syntactic constructions, highly frequent in Andean Spanish. A sequential conversation analysis shows that when Quichuas in Cali interact with someone outside the group, they may express differentiation through the use of OV constructions. Construed as a social positioning, this differentiation takes place in an act of stance (Du Bois 2002, 2007; Jaffe 2009; Johnstone 2009; Kiesling 2011) which arises with an evaluation of a referent in the discourse situation by a speaker, then triggers a social positioning that finally leads to a disalignment vis-à-vis another speaker. This article discusses the social effects of linguistic marked forms such as OV constructions in an understudied area (Cali, Colombia) within a field of research (Spanish-Quichua contact) that usually focuses on contact issues from a typological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with autism, spectrum, disorder (ASD) are vulnerable to interactional trouble. Conversation analytic (CA) work has extensively examined how interactional trouble gets repaired verbally among neurotypical speakers. Other examinations have been concerned with how children with ASD respond to clarification requests, yet little is known about how they might initiate solving difficulties in social interaction. Drawing on CA, this study reports on video recorded interactions involving school-aged children with ASD and their adult co-participants. The analysis shows that children use both verbal and nonverbal resources to initiate the management of apparent troubles. Occasionally the co-participants carry out the repair work, yet sometimes they demonstrate challenges in identifying what the nature of a child's trouble is. In trying to solve such dilemmas, the candidate repairs produced by the co-participants can create further difficulties for these children. The study suggests that the co-participants' sensitive facilitation provides a resource for building mutual understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russian-speaking migrant communities in Germany and Norway share a large part of a common history during the time of the Soviet Union, and each community has developed their unique ways of interaction in and with the accepting society. The article focuses on the main areas for communication between Russian-speaking migrants in Germany and Norway, as well as the wish to maintain contact with ones' home country. As the question of maintaining ones identity as well as the vitality of these communities is strongly linked to its members' wish to maintain their common language, these aspects were covered in particular through the study. The article uses a combined research method consisting of a quantitative and qualitative part. The findings indicate that while the groups are different from each other, particularly in their demographic composition, distribution and communication patterns, they do possess some similarities, for example having common elements defining and retaining their cultural heritage and approaches towards maintaining the Russian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the co-production of narratives based on an analysis of audio recordings from 12 statutory lay-interprofessional meetings involving clients and concerning rehabilitation for return-to-work. Using Bakhtin's (1981) notion of voice in a similar vein to Mishler (1984), it is argued that a voice represents a specific normative order, displayed in the way of speaking. The premises of the approach taken is that citizens' problems and needs are often presented as stories and that this particular type of meeting opens up the possibility for what Wertsch (1991) calls multi-voicedness. Three patterns of co-narrating the client's story of illness and the process of rehabilitation were found. In the most frequently recurring form, there was one primary storyteller and another participant who joined in as a co-teller. Another pattern was that dyadic co-narrated episodes commonly drew on prior contacts between the two storytellers. A third salient feature was how storytelling episodes involved revoicing an absent expert - that is, the interactional move when a speaker makes use of someone else's words, and what Bakhtin (1981) calls rhetorical double-voicedness. Due to the multi-voicedness character, co-narrated stories in lay-interprofessional meetings often represent two or more perspectives and are founded on the blending of voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vounous Bowl occupies a privileged position in discussions of prehistoric representations on Cyprus. It has most commonly been viewed as a sacred scene, or a religious ceremony conducted within a rural sanctuary and several commentators have emphasized the funerary connotations of the scene, perhaps depicting idealized funerary ritual or an ancestor cult. Somewhat mundane interpretations of the bowl place it within a range ofgenre scenes, portraying daily life in a Bronze Age village. More recently it has been interpreted as the physical expression of emergent elite authority on Cyprus during the Bronze Age. This study explores the object as aform of social communication: through a detailed structural analysis ofthe Vounous Bowl it aims to develop a clearer understanding ofthe social world of Early-Middle Bronze Age Cyprus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on fieldwork in the United States, the article analyses the social construction of gender in contemporary OTO. The article addresses an important and often neglected area of study in research on Western esotericism, and discusses how the notion of binary gender is both created and challenged in interactions between OTO members. Thelemic divinity as presented in Liber AL is envisioned as consisting of a divine father, Hadit, mother Nuit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, their divine offspring. Despite the gender polarity constructed thus, contemporary OTO members stretch the boundaries of binary gender through a plethora of deities, personal gender performances and acceptance of different sexual orientations and lifestyles. The creativity and innovation of contemporary OTO members' gender constructions demonstrates the necessity of greater methodological diversity in research on Western esotericism, in order to allow an understanding of esoteric traditions as lived religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of how Finnish teenagers use prosodic imitation in their classroom interaction. The data consists of video recordings (14 lessons) of naturally occurring classroom interaction in junior secondary schools (students aged 13-15). The study is conducted by applying Conversation Analysis (CA). The prosodic imitation I explore involves the turns-at-talk that orient prosodically to the preceding turns in terms of, for example, intonation, pitch, volume, rhythm, or voice quality (Szczepek Reed 2006). When imitating, the participants usually also recycle some of the verbal elements (words or a syntactic construction) in their source turns. I argue that while prosodic imitation is in many respects a gendered practice, in addition to earlier studies that report boys silencing girls by imitating them (Gordon et al. 1999; Palmu 2003), I show that students use prosodic imitation to various interactional purposes. It is suggested that the prevalent function of prosodic imitation is to express alignment with the preceding turn/speaker, and the students, especially the girls, make most use of this imitation in the negotiations concerning institutional and gender asymmetries. Prosodic imitation is thereby one means for students to playfully deconstruct the institutionally organized interactional setting, and hence one of the instruments they use to empower themselves in interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the interactional function of Japanese interactive markers yo and sa in conjunction with the notion of involvement, and sheds light on some issues of verbal exchange in spoken discourse. The study argues that these markers commonly share the function of signalling the speaker's attitude of inviting the hearer's involvement in a 'monopolistic' manner, by which the speaker is committed to enhance his/her position as a deliverer of the contents/feeling conveyed in the utterance. Further, each marker indicates the speaker's monopolistic attitude in its unique way: yo signals the speaker's monopolistic attitude of ensuring the hearer's understanding of the contents/feeling conveyed in the utterance, while sa signals the speaker's monopolistic attitude of presenting the contents/feeling conveyed in the utterance as a matter of course for him/her. Based on these functions, their co-occurrence restrictions with modal expressions and their use in social contexts are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following describes an evolutionary model for religious cooperation called 'charismatic signalling'. The core motivation for this model comes from an appreciation that large-scale exchange requires a widespread predictability in the social-interactive responses of partners. The model is based on evidence that elements of religious culture-its music, dance, postures, parades, and prayers-reliably align prosocial motivations in potentially large exchange groups. This alignment, I propose, affords cooperation reliably. The model is interesting because it explains how sacred culture enhances cooperative prediction and response among anonymous partners, and because it explains the otherwise puzzling conservation of old religious cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an area of 13 ha and an estimated population running into the thousands, Çatalhöyük is one of the largest settlements of the Near Eastern Neolithic. On the basis of its size, the site has often been interpreted as a town or city, without due consideration whether the settlement has the characteristics associated with these concepts. Furthermore, the normative categorization of the settlement has led to a neglect of how the local community at Çatalhöyük was constituted. In this study my focus is on the ways in which the built environment at Çatalhöyük structured social interaction at various scales of social life. It is argued that the local community was constituted through a series of nested social collectivities central to the social life of people at Çatalhöyük. Finally, I consider the manner in which the Çatalhöyük community was related to other communities, on the basis of regional settlement data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interdisciplinary journal Psychiatry, founded in 1938 by the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, provided a remarkable interdisciplinary forum for such outstanding social scientists as Edward Sapir, Harold Lasswell, Ruth Benedict, Gregory Bateson, Ashley Montague, Lev Vygotsky, Erich Fromm, Erving Goff man, A. H. Maslow, and Robert Merton. The journal sought an interdisciplinary synthesis concerning personality, problems of living, and community mental health. Almost all of the major contributors to the early years of the journal drew strongly on the pragmatic tradition. In that tradition, Sullivan saw language shaping the development of personality and the interactions that constitute social life. Major themes of articles in the journal included the relation of personality of culture, the relation of the political order to the psychic order, propaganda and the creation of public and private meaning, racial and gender issues, and social arrangements influencing mental health. While pursuing the many dimensions of being human revealed by the different social sciences, the journal never developed an integrative theory to create a coherence among the many thematic strands and disciplinary perspectives on its pages. The journal also never developed an adequate account of how language served a central role in mediating personality development and social interactions. With the added theoretical and methodological tools now at our disposal we may be in a position to advance the unfinished project proposed by this journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]