Jim and Bonnie's telephone conversation revisited: A meaning-based approach to talk in interactive events
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Madeleine Mathiot
Madeleine Mathiot (b. 1927) is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York 〈mathiotm@buffalo.edu〉. Her research interests include semantic analysis of grammatical categories and lexicon, structure of conversation, method in semantic analysis, and the `O'odham language. Her publications includeA dictionary of Papago usage (1973); ``Sex roles as revealed through referential gender in American English'' (1979); and ``Semantics of sensory perception terms'' (1983).
Abstract
This paper presents the analytic apparatus I have developed to uncover the underlying structure of conversation in American culture, the Verbal Flow Structure, by applying it to an unusually complex case, Jim and Bonnie's Telephone Conversation, previously partially investigated by Schegloff.
The basic constructs are Nucleus (the main line) versus Satellites (excursions from the main line). The nucleus has three slots: Entry, Core, and Exit. Entry and exit are optionally filled. The core is always filled as the core unit conveys the information defining the sequence.
The core unit is constituted by a single init or by a core unit proper and one or several extensions.
The core unit may have two types of satellites: (a) close satellites, Back Channels and Remarks; (b) distant satellites, Incidental Queries.
This paper shows how the participants' repeated use of these building blocks may yield as complex a Verbal Flow Structure as the one underlying the Telephone Conversation.
In concluding, some suggestions are made regarding how the Verbal Flow Structure can provide the analyzed context within which to pursue further investigations.
About the author
Madeleine Mathiot (b. 1927) is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York 〈mathiotm@buffalo.edu〉. Her research interests include semantic analysis of grammatical categories and lexicon, structure of conversation, method in semantic analysis, and the `O'odham language. Her publications include A dictionary of Papago usage (1973); ``Sex roles as revealed through referential gender in American English'' (1979); and ``Semantics of sensory perception terms'' (1983).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- A life for images: Homage to Omar Calabrese
- Semiotic entanglement: The concepts of environment, Umwelt, and Lebenswelt in semiotic perspective
- Passage à l'écrit et production du sensfictionnel : Deux cas du berbère
- The role of symbolism in adolescent gang membership: Results of a pilot study
- What can a philosophy and ethics of communication look like in the context of documentary filmmaking?
- Micropolitics: Signs of interpersonal hierarchy and solidarity in everyday conversation
- Boris Uspenskij and the semiotics of communication: An essay and an interview
- The (non-)random distribution of formational parameters in the established lexicon of Israeli Sign Language (ISL)
- Consumer satisfaction and confirmation of habits of comprehension: The effect of inductive print advertisements – Peircean comments
- Hegemonic signification from perspective of visual rhetoric
- Measuring the luxurious in advertisements: On the popularization of the luxury perfume market
- Environmental issues in unconventional social advertising: A semiotic perspective
- Jim and Bonnie's telephone conversation revisited: A meaning-based approach to talk in interactive events
- Political semiotics of national campaign posters and pictorial representation: Thailand's 2011 general elections
