Interweaving Objects,Gestures, and Talk in Context

In a large French hospital, a group of professional experts (including physicians and software engineers) are working on the computerization of a blood-transfusion traceability device. By focusing on a particular moment in this slow process of design, we analyze their collaborative practices during a work session. The analysis takes a praxeological and interactionist approach and is inspired by discussions on the role of artifacts in social practices currently developed within various research frameworks in this field: activity theory, distributed cognition, conversation analysis, and actor network theory. After a brief presentation of the place of objects and artifacts in these ways of approaching action and human cognition, we show how the collective activity analyzed here is generated by the interweaving of discursive, gestural, and artifactual resources.     

Boy Talk/Girl Talk

Abstract

Using data from a comprehensive database of political advertisements broadcast during the 1998 congressional election cycle, this study assesses whether male and female candidates follow different campaign communications strategies. The results of the analysis demonstrate that there are systematic differences between the ways that male and female candidates communicate with voters, but that these differences are typically not sizeable. In other words, gender seems to matter in campaign communications strategies but not always for very much. Where we do observe differences, however, the findings show that they tend to reinforce gender-based stereotypes more so than work to counteract them. Thus, these differences may be partly accountable for the electoral results we observe.     

Cultural Schemas of Religion,Science, and Law in Talk About Social Controversies

We analyze cultural schemas of religion, science, and law reflected in the way ordinary citizens discuss contemporary social controversies and assess whether these schemas accord with a modernization narrative or whether people's experiences with each of these institutional arenas lead them to adopt realistic or critical schemas not predicted by modernization accounts. Focus group participants in three metropolitan areas were asked to talk about one of three vignettes on faith‐based prison ministries, parents’ refusal of medical treatment for a child on religious grounds, or preimplantation genetic diagnosis of human embryos. We find that people's everyday experiences, grounded in specific institutional contexts, produce perceptions of the domains of religion, science, and law that are not fully captured by the modernization account. Further, our findings illustrate that schemas of law, science, and religion are varied and evoked by social context and the specific issues under consideration. Schemas that do not fit the modernization framework provide a way for people to address concerns about power and effectively level the playing field between more and less rationalized social domains. Future research on a broader range of issues is needed to develop a theory of when different schemas of law, science, and religion are activated.     

Fathers' Early Emotion Talk: Associations With Income,Ethnicity, and Family Factors

Contextual, mother‐, child‐, and father‐level variables were examined in association with fathers' emotion talk to infants during a shared picture book activity, in an ethnically diverse, low‐income sample (N = 549). Significant main effects included the rate of emotion talk from fathers' romantic partners (i.e., the infant's mother), infant attention and distress, and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions were also found. Higher income African American fathers referred to negative emotions more than non‐African American higher income fathers. In addition, African American fathers who demonstrated more negative and intrusive parenting referred to positive emotions more than non‐African American fathers who demonstrated negative and intrusive parenting. Our findings support family systems theory and, specifically, the interdependence of individuals' behaviors within the family unit. Interaction effects are discussed with respect to cultural variation in beliefs about parenting behaviors and the cultural experience of African Americans, including the Black cultural experience and the minority experience.     

Talk in organizations: local conversations,wider perspectives

In this paper the relationship between local conversations and wider perspectives in organizations is explored and critiqued initially through an examination of the concept of ‘conversational lamination’ (). It is argued at the outset that the metaphor of lamination promotes an inherently univocal account of the role and status of conversations in organizational settings. This perspective is challenged through the deployment of counter‐metaphors based upon alternative epistemological assumptions (i.e., critical management, postmodernism, and new science). The implications for ethnomethodology and conversation analysis of thinking about the relationship between localised‐interaction and organizational phenomena in a more plurivocal way are discussed. Boden's work on the notion of lamination is then set in a context, showing it as an appropriate and understandable part of her work on bringing ethnomethodology to life for analysts from many different fields.     

What We Talk About When We Talk About Taxes

Taxes are a preeminent issue in domestic politics, but the prevalence, content, and shape of public discussion on taxation is often perplexing to social researchers. We argue that part of the confusion arises from the lack of qualitative data on the meanings Americans associate with taxation. In order to remedy this lack we conducted semi‐structured interviews with white, Southern, small business owners. In answering our questions, our respondents constructed narratives that connected taxation with exploitation and a loss of personal freedom. We propose that everyday fiscal discourse is morally charged and interconnected with boundary work and a sense of group position. Further, qualitative research into tax talk can help make sense of the current political and social landscape (e.g., the continued cultural saliency of the Tea Party).     

Appearance-Related Communication and Body Image Outcomes: Fat Talk and Old Talk Among Mothers and Daughters

The current study sought to investigate mothers’ and daughters’ appearance-related communication and its relation to body image outcomes. Participants included 199 mother-daughter dyads that completed online questionnaires containing measures of fat talk, old talk, body dissatisfaction, body surveillance, drive for thinness, and bulimic tendencies. Actor-partner interdependence models revealed that (a) mothers’ and daughters’ fat talk, but not old talk, were significantly related to one another, (b) mothers’ and daughters’ fat talk and old talk were significantly related to their own body image outcomes, (c) mothers’ fat talk was positively related to daughters’ bulimic tendencies, and (d) mothers’ old talk was positively related to daughters’ body dissatisfaction. These results suggest that engaging in appearance-related communication is problematic for the person making the comments and, to some extent, being exposed to another person’s appearance-related comments can be harmful to the individual as well—at least for the daughters in the current sample.     

Intimacy and its Denial: When Sons and Daughters Talk About Fatherhood,Marriage, and Work

In this article, I want to offer two vignettes to show the internal workings, or the psycho-social interiors, of the Chinese family. How are the private, the personal, the internal, the local, and the familial being affected by the public and the global, by the external forces in the midst of globalization—and, of course, vice versa? One vignette concerns children: sons and daughters, talking about their own fathers and about fatherhood in Singapore. The other vignette concerns daughters and single women in Hong Kong talking about men, intimacy, sexuality, marriage, family, and, more importantly today, work. The two post-colonial societies are similar and different in a number of ways.     

Infants' Listening Preferences: Baby Talk or Happy Talk?

The most robust finding on infants' listening preferences has been widely characterized as a preference for baby talk (BT) over adult‐directed speech (ADS). Although prosodic modifications characteristic of BT also convey positive affect, differences in affect across BT and ADS speech registers have not been controlled in previous studies. This set of experiments sought to elucidate the basis for 6‐month‐olds' listening preference by independently manipulating affect and speech register. When affect was held constant, no preference for any speech register was observed. Moreover, when ADS stimuli presented more positive affect than BT stimuli, infants' preferences followed the positive affect. Higher and more variable pitch was neither necessary nor sufficient for determining infants' preferences, although pitch characteristics may modulate affect‐based preferences. The BT preference is thus attributable to a more general preference for speech that imparts relatively positive affect, a preference perhaps ascribable to a preexisting general‐purpose mechanism opportunistically exploited by language.     

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I read an article,titled Chinese Children's Books Popular with Overseas Readers,on your website.It reported,thanks to the high level of creativity and design,as well as its various models of Chineseforeign cooperation,Chinese children's books have drawn worldwide attention and enjoyed increasing influence in overseas markets.It was a great article.     

What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Performance? Dialogue Theory and Performance Budgeting

This article examines the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)in the federal budgeting process. The early evidence on PARTprompts the search for a theory of budgeting that accepts thatperformance information will influence decisions but will notbe used in the same way from decision to decision, as the espousedtheory of performance budgeting suggests. Dialogue theory emphasizesthe ambiguity of performance information and related resourceallocation choices. An exploratory test of dialogue theory isundertaken through an experiment involving graduate studentsassessing PART evaluations. The results illustrate a varietyof ways in which different individuals can examine the sameprogram and, using logical warrants, come to different conclusionsabout performance and future funding requirements.     

"Free- Will Talk" and Sociology

Hardcore positivistic or humanistic sociologies are rare. In the history of sociology the two extremes have tended to converge, producing an awkward hybrid. A watered-down positivism is brought to the rescue of a stalled Verstehen sociology, or vice versa, and a difficulty like the free nature of human action is covered over with a veneer of pragmatism. Here it will be argued that Paul Tibbetts'recent recasting of the positivism-humanism debate in sociology into an arbitrary choice between linguistic grids perpetuates this unsatisfactory practice. Five propositions will be advanced in opposition to Tibbetts'perspective. First, it will be argued that Tibbetts'discussion clouds the real issues at stake through his failure to really transcend the positivist framework of analysis. Second, it will be shown that the humanistic pre-supposition of voluntarism involves an ontological commitment to a model of rational agency which provides a methodological base for the "scientific" treatment of human freedom. Third, this commitment constitutes a necessary presupposition of all sciences of human action. Fourth, this fact means there are good epistemological reasons why a sociologist's choice of a linguistic grid is not arbitrary. Finally, it will be proposed that the most promising pattern of convergence between humanistic sociology and positivism stems from the formulation of a rough spectrum of principles of rationality to undergird a differentiation of "degrees" and not "kind" between what Tibbetts calls "free-will talk" and "causal-deterministic talk."