Undergraduate Honors Students

Current Graduate Students

Jeremy Kelley (Applied Linguistics - forthcoming; co-chaired with Charles Goodwin)

"Queering Conversation: The Functional Properties of Linguistic Camp in U.S. Gay Men’s Interactions."

Jeremy's research offers a multi-sited ethnographic analysis of two aspects of U.S. gay men’s interactional usage of camp (a queer aesthetic and sociopolitical representation in which seriousness is reframed into humor through critical subversion). First, Jeremy explores how U.S. gay men’s camp talk occurs through the invocation of camp aesthetic sources within unfolding interaction. These invocations in turn transform the talk into queer discursive spaces, performing functional communicative goals through LGBTQ forms of expressivity. The primary functional usages explored include camp’s capacities to act a) as a form of communicative stance display, b) as a mitigation device for face-threatening exchanges, c) as a framing for the active construction/performance of LGBTQ identities, and d) as a sociolinguistic resource for establishing in-group community and belonging. Second, in viewing camp as queer linguistic space, Jeremy argues that talk amongst U.S. gay men emerges as self-differentiating from and subversive towards “normative” linguistic practices, in turn challenging dominant hetero models of representation that perpetuate LGBTQ sociocultural and sociopolitical subjugation. From this macro-level perspective, camp is thus understood as a form of social critique that ironizes, through its transformative capacities, dominant regimes of language.

Methodologically, Jeremy’s research frames micrological linguistic practices within poststructuralist Foucauldian critical theory and thought (Foucault, 1979, 1980). In doing so, he takes a critical applied linguistic approach (Pennycook, 2010; Higgins, 2009; Blackledge and Creese, 2011; Fairclough, 2010), situating the interface between macro-level social constraints and micro-level social practice as central to the understanding of sociocultural power differentials. The research is conducted primarily through a combination of ethnographic fieldwork with conversation analytic techniques (Goodwin 1990; 2006), in conjunction with follow-up surveys designed to elicit participant ideologies toward their own camp usages.

Lauren Mason Carris (Applied Linguistics - forthcoming; co-chaired with H. Samy Alim)

Dissertation: "Protecting and Serving Outcast Communities": Performance Narratives in the Chicana/o Verbal Art Genre of Teatro."

This project examines the connections between Chicana/o performance, performativity, and the performance of identities within the context of Chicana/o Teatro. As an ethnographic study of Chicana/o verbal art, this project focuses on the critical social commentary of Los Angeles-based sketch comedy troupe, Chicano Secret Service, focusing on actos (short one-act plays), to provide insight into the multiple semiotic resources used to fashion Chicana/o identities and reinforce, negotiate, and/or subvert expected linguistic and cultural norms. My analysis of Chicana/o performance and performativity is informed by a linguistic anthropological theoretical perspective that focuses on the identity work accomplished through the convergence of stance and style as well as the situated performance of language ideologies, providing an integrated, multifaceted approach to understanding how Chicana/os understand and position ourselves vis-à-vis Dominant culture. 

Consistent with new trends in Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, this project incorporates perspectives that center and re-articulate the experiences of the largest "minority" group in the United States. By incorporating a variety of data sources (video-taped performances, performance transcripts, video- and audio-taped interviews, fieldnotes, and observations) and theoretical frameworks (critical, applied, interactional and linguistic analysis, ethnography of communication, triangulation with consultants) this study moves beyond the rhetorical and textual analyses of performance (Belgrad 2004; Broyles-Gonzalez 1994; Holling & Calafell 2007; Velasco 2002; Ybarra-Fausto 1991) into a new era of research that privileges language and iteraction as a site for exploring identity.

Understanding the intersection between stance, style, and language ideologies through this approach provides a better understanding of Chicana/o performativity, that illuminates the ways in which performers construct and reconstruct nosotros y los otros, ourselves and others, further illustrating the agency of informants, not as objects, but as subjects who are capable of theorizing their own practice, positioning Chicana/os as critical social actors with a great deal to say on and off the stage (Calafell 2004, 2005; de la Garza 2004; Willis 1997; García 2006).

Ekaterina Moore (Applied Lingusitics - forthcoming)

Dissertation: "Language and Social Identity Construction: A Study of a Russian Heritage Language School."

Grounded in discourse analytic and language socialization paradigms, this dissertation examines issues of language and social identity construction in children attending a Russian Heritage Language Orthodox Christian Saturday School in California.  By conducting micro-analysis of naturally-occurring talk-in-interaction combined with longitudinal ethnographic observations and interviews the study examines how young heritage language learners are positioned as Russian Orthodox Christian children in relation to others: their teachers, peers and parents. The study also explores how the children’s affiliation  with Orthodox Christian values and practices is socialized in their daily classroom interactions.
The dissertation concentrates on discourse analysis of specific language practices: directives in attempts to correct transgressions, accounts given in attempts to correct transgressions, hypothetical direct reported speech modeling ways of talking to parents,
 
stories where children are presented  as knowledgeable about Orthodox Christian values and practices, and assessments of church-related practices. Through the use of language and other semiotic resources children are positioned (and position themselves) as knowledgeable about and emotionally connected to Orthodoxy, respectful and obedient toward, but sometimes more knowledgeable than the parents, part of a collective of peers, where an individual’s behavior affects the group, and pupils who need to learn not only the Russian language, but also concepts of morality
from their teachers. Such positioning of children takes place not only through the use of lexical items (what is said to and around them), but also through the structure of the linguistic practices employed.
The analysis shows that these structures take into consideration the multi-party arrangement of a classroom and other individuals who may be present or absent during the interactions. Hypothetical scenarios where a child is presented  as a moral character are often used in the HL classroom setting. In these scenarios contrast is often employed to demonstrate to children complex moral concepts in concrete ways. Students learn “normative” ways of being Russian Orthodox Christian children who relate to others around them in ways that are acceptable for the Russian HL school setting and who understand and affiliate with Russian Orthodox Christian values and practices.

Lisa Newon (Anthropology - in process)

Dissertation: "Constructing the Virtual Community: Creative Imagining, Language, Interaction and New Media."

Lisa's dissertation fieldwork (2012-2013) will investigate understandings of new media, language, and community, bothonline and offline in the context of computer gaming. She will be studying the ways in which notions of community are creatively imagined and discussed by game developers at an online game development studio. She will also be studying how language is used online by gamers (identifying as community members) and how this interaction organizes players’ social worlds online.

Lisa Thorne (Anthropology - in process)

"The Construction of Stance and Identity in Gay Rights Canvassing Interaction"

Lisa's work examines language and sexuality in social interaction in the context of conversations between California voters and the gay rights canvassers that show up at their doors. Data was collected through participant observation, video recordings of canvassing conversations and canvasser training sessions, records of the voter surveys used in each conversation, and one-on-one interviews with canvassers. The study analyzes the alignments of stance and affiliations that occur as the canvassers try to complete the voter survey as well as persuade voters to support a new education law that requires that California social studies classes teach about the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. The study also examines the rhetorical devices that voters use to construct their opinions on the law and the ways that voters and canvassers display and negotiate their stances toward sexual identity and gender identity as they relate to issues of legitimacy, morality, agency, and freedom.

Past Graduate Students

Laila Hualpa (Applied Linguistics 2012; co-chaired with Steve Clayman)

Dissertation: "The Presidential Press Conference: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of president-press relations."

This dissertation addresses the intersection between practices of interaction and the relation between the news media and the presidency by examining the contemporary presidential news conference. Over the past twenty years, the number of solo news conferences dwindled as the White House experimented with other formats that might give the president more control, such as short question-answer sessions and joint presidential press conferences (where the president appears with a foreign head of state, taking fewer questions). These joint press sessions accounted for 80% of all the press conferences during George W. Bush’s first term.

Studies of president-press relations in journalism and political communication over the past few decades have pointed to an increase in the level of aggressiveness in journalistic questioning. However, they have not addressed the particular micro-level practices used by journalists when questioning presidents and have expressed doubt that aggressiveness could be measured at all. In the past few years, scholars from the field of conversation analysis (CA) have studied the questioning practices used by journalists in news interviews and shed light on how aggressiveness is encoded in formal features of question design as well as question content (Heritage and Roth, 1995; Clayman and Heritage, 2002, among others). The findings from such research allowed Clayman and Heritage to create a coding system that addresses the particular questioning practices used by journalists in presidential news conferences from Eisenhower to
Clinton and therefore has enabled them to measure aggressiveness in question design. These studies have examined not only what questions are asked but how they are asked in the solo presidential news conference (Clayman et al., 2006; Clayman et al., 2007).

Apart from the research done by Clayman and Heritage (2002) and Clayman et al. (2006, 2007), much remains unknown surrounding the circumstances where the White House press corps becomes more aggressive. We know even less about how presidents deal with such aggressiveness as a particular question is unfolding. With two major, but methodologically different objectives, this dissertation aims to: 1) measure the aggressiveness in journalists’ questions and determine whether journalists are more aggressive in solo press conferences than in joint press conferences, 2) study how presidents react vocally and non-vocally to the aggressiveness built in the question design. To accomplish the first objective, I study videotaped press conferences from the George H.W. Bush presidency (when joint press conferences were institutionalized) up to the first two years of the Obama presidency by using a coding system (Clayman and Heritage, 2002) that decomposes aggressiveness into five outcome measures. These outcomes in turn are composed of concrete indicators that examine content and form. To tackle the second objective: I use the tools offered by multimodal discourse analysis and conversation analysis (CA) which allow for the close inspection of the presidents’ monitoring of the question at particular junctures of the question turn.

Annice Barber (Applied Linguistics 2007)

Dissertation: "Destruction is pretty cool sometimes": The Negotiation of Morality through Narrative.

In this ethnographic study she analyzes the negotiation of a moral identity for minority urban adolescents through an examination of communicative practices employed in a community youth organization. More specifically, through participant observation, conversation analysis and study of cultural practices, she investigates how teens and adult leaders communicate to co-construct a framework for judging the morality of thoughts and actions.

Annice's research site is an inner-city Catholic parish youth group. Over a 10 month period, she gathered data primarily through video recording and supplemented this with audio recordings and field notes. She has collected approximately 110 hours of video and audio data and collected copies of all materials used for the activities. Activities were observed in a wide variety of settings including religious services, weekly meetings, social events (dances, softball games etc), service events (visiting skid row, mission trip to Jamaica) and retreats. She also conducted approximately 25 hours of interviews as supplemental ethnographic data. Through this research she will 1) study moral formation through everyday talk; 2) study moral construction and action; 3) study moral formation in a group; and 4) address the impact of community youth organizations in the formation of a moral self.

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Ignasi Clemente (Anthropology 2005)

Ignasi's dissertation investigates how pediatric cancer patients use both verbal and nonverbal communication to accept, resist or contest everyday treatment choices during different stages of their cancer treatment in a hospital in Barcelona, Catalonia. Specifically, he examines the embodied discursive practices through which children are either included or excluded from the treatment negotiation, as well as the embodied ways in which children actively attempt to participate in it.

In this analysis he argues that children's questions reveal their knowledge of and emotions about their cancer and its treatment. In addition, examining children's questions may offer insight into the organization of children's agency in these negotiations. Moreover, children's questions occur in an environment where children find themselves being routinely talked about, talked on behalf of, and only occasionally considered as competent interlocutors and interpreters of their own lives. Thus, Ignasi's aim is to reveal how adults treat children as non-interactional participants, how the child patient is constituted as a "non-person," and more significantly, how pediatric patients actively contest this "non-person" identity. He explores, from a longitudinal micro-ethnographic perspective, the politics of children1s cancer treatment, at the intersection of the cultural constructions of both childhood and patienthood in Catalonia.

Carleen Curley (Applied Linguistics 2004; co-chaired with Charles Goodwin)

Dissertation: "Developmental Stance Taking in a Japanese Elementary School."

Carleen's study examines the development of stance taking as exhibited in the linguistic patterns of Japanese elementary school children from the first until third grades as they engage in classroom and collaborative activities. Drawing upon research from language socialization, moral education, child language development, conversation analysis, and sociocultural activity theory, her study explores the ways in which pronoun usage, naming practices and directives, and epistemic training through reported speech are utilized in classroom interaction in order to better understand how children learn to treat each other in socially appropriate ways. Carleen's dissertation contributes to an understanding of the role of language, cultural variability, and socialization practices in the development of young children as they engage in elementary school life.

Carleen's primary field site is an elementary school in rural Japan. Ethnographic data was collected during the 2000-2001 Japanese academic year while the children were in first grade and follow-up data was collected while the children were in second grade. Third grade data was collected in the fall of 2002. Collected data consists of: 1) over 50 hours of video recordings of classroom interaction and cultural activities, such as sports festivals and school concerts, around school; 2) tape recorded interviews with the primary teacher and vice-principal; 3) field notes based on participant-observation during class and notes about informal conversations with the primary teacher after class; and 4) collection of the children's artwork and letters.

Olga Griswold (Applied Linguistics 2007)

Dissertation: "Becoming a U.S. Citizen: Second Language Socialization in Adult Citizenship Classrooms."

This study examines how, in the course of classroom interaction, citizenship instructors and prospective applicants for U.S. citizenship jointly shape and modify their understandings of what it means to be adequately proficient in English for the purposes of naturalization. Based on ethnographic observations conducted for eleven months at two adult schools in Los Angeles, CA, as well as on the microanalysis of videotaped classroom interactions, Olga examines the practices through which citizenship applicants are socialized into linguistic behaviors deemed necessary and sufficient for the naturalization interview.

This study is qualitative in nature and combines conversation analysis, ethnography of communication, and the analysis of gesture as its methodologies. The analysis concentrates on the teacher's feedback on the students' performance as a vehicle of second language socialization. First, the sequential organization of instructional episodes demonstrates that despite the ostensible focus on U.S. history and government structure, significant attention is given to the students' linguistic accuracy during activities simulating portions of the naturalization interview. Students are, thus, socialized into viewing English proficiency as a practical tool for passing the interview. Second, highly selective error correction shows that hearable grammatical accuracy and the ability to decode vocabulary specific to the topics raised during the naturalization interview are treated as essential components of adequate English proficiency. Third, the teacher's feedback on the students' displays of civics knowledge serves simultaneously as a means of validating the students' status and competence as long-term U.S. residents and as a means of reshaping the presentation of such knowledge in ways most likely to be considered appropriate and acceptable by the officers conducting the interview. 

Jeffrey S. Good (Applied Linguistics 2009; co-chaired with Charles Goodwin)

Dissertation: "Multitasking and Attention in Interaction: Negotiating Multiple Tasks in Everyday Family Life."

Abstract: Generally, studies of parents' multitasking behaviors have been accomplished through self-reports and time diaries. Within that literature, multitasking is understood as episodes in which people report being engaged in more than one activity at a time, usually defined as a 'main activity' and a 'secondary activity'. In my dissertation, I analyze video recordings of naturally occurring interactions with a focus on working parents' weekday activities at home, and particularly, parents' multitasking practices. I suggest that through a closer look at the sequence organization of activities and how people shift in and out of tasks, we can produce a more robust definition of multitasking and a deeper analysis of attention-in-interaction, as well as how multiple activities concurrently operate. Further, by looking at the range of practices withing a web of ongoing activities, we see how parents draw attention to what activities they are engaged in and how they assign priority to certain activities over others. The analyses I present suggest that time, attention, and activity-type are important aspects of an emergent model of multitasking.

The four goals of this dissertation are: (1) compare and contrast findings from the CELF corpus of vide-recorded materials of parents' everyday practices with other corpora based on surveys and time diaries, (2) provide a sequential analysis of attention and joint attention in interaction and discuss the implications of these enalyses on the way we view interaction, (3) provide a sequential analysis of multitasking in everyday interaction and broaden our knowledge about what constitutes multitasking in human interaction and how it can be analyzed, and (4) develop a model of multitasking. In sum, my dissertation has many goals, all of which will contribute new findings to several related fields of research. 

Namhee Han (Applied Linguistics 2004; co-chaired with Alison Bailey)

Dissertation: "Language Socialization of Korean-American Preschoolers: Becoming a Member of a Community Beyond the Family."

Namhee's work investigates child language socialization practices in the Korean-American preschool classroom using ethnographic methods and an in-depth analysis of verbal/non-verbal interaction. She found that various forms of directives were a primary tool teachers used to promote compliance and obedience (e.g. explicit or implicit prompting of social etiquette words and honorific answers, sing-song requests, and disciplinary directives). Teasing was employed to playfully point to child’s learning errors whereas in shaming, social control of a child’s behavior was the major purpose.

Certain vocabulary emerged as a socialization tool (e.g. age-graded terms to teach age appropriate behaviors, or to shame immature behaviors; affect-loaded words to express approval and disapproval of child’s verbal/non-verbal behaviors). Preschool teachers presented social norms in the form of reminder (‘Social Rule’ + ‘Tag Question’) or statement of teacher’s preferences or dispreferences (“Teacher likes/dislikes those who do X”).

Rosamina Lowi (Applied Linguistics 2007)

Dissertation: "Building Understanding through Language and Interaction: Joint Attention, Social Modals and Directives in Adult-Directed Speech to Children in Two Preschools."

Making use of videotaped records and participant observation in two preschools (in the US and the UK) this dissertation investigates how adults and children in a preschool setting negotiate meaning and build understanding through language. Using discourse analysis, Dr. Lowi investigates processes of establishing joint attention and the utilization of social modals and pronouns by participants. She examines how adults use directives to socialize children into appropriate behaviors, and how establishing joint attention was crucial for achieving preferred responses. A multi-vocal ethnography was conducted to explore the attitudes of teachers at two distinct research sites. 

Bayard Lyons (Anthropology 2007; co-chaired with Sondra Hale)

Bayard's dissertation focuses on the psychological and socio-cultural processes by which adolescents negotiate a sense of social and moral responsibility as they make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Specifically, he is interested in analyzing the cross-cultural variation in the dynamic relationship between historical, social, and cultural authoritative discourses and the evolution of consciousness in adolescence (Bakhtin, 1981). While Bayard focuses on male adolescents and masculinity, he is interested in the intersection of gender relationships and moral and social responsibility. Understanding adolescent development to be an open-ended process in which adolescents both shape and are shaped by the larger social forces as they negotiate identity, Bayard's dissertation research focuses on understanding how the force of adolescence arises out of the cultural context of Turkish northern Cyprus and how this has changed since 1960.

Taking Benedict Anderson's concept of imagined communities, Bayard argues that adolescents make the transition into adulthood by negotiating a sense of self in relation to competing moral communities. One's negotiation of moral communities is parallel to the negotiation of multiple avenues open to adolescents as they negotiate identity. Possible moral communities in relation to which an adolescent negotiates a sense of moral and social responsibility might include family, nation, religion and community related to ethnic identity. Within the last 40 years in northern Cyprus, the predominant moral communities have been the family, the nation and ethnic groups. Bayard's research explores how Cypriot adolescents negotiate their relationship to these three moral communities or create alternative moral communities in light of the social, cultural and historical forces from the 1960's to the present.

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Mee-Jeong Park (Applied Linguistics 2003; co-chaired with Sun-ah Jun)

Dissertation: "The Meaning of Korean Prosodic Boundary Tones."

Mee-Jong's dissertation examines how speakers use prosodic boundary tones to achieve particular communicative goals in Korean.   More particularly, this study claims that speakers use boundary tones to accomplish a wide variety of communicative goals  that cannot often be achieved through other means such as syntax and word choice.  These additional communicative goals include: (a) enhance the semantic meaning of morphosyntactic forms (b) stance toward prepositional content (e.g., attitude, certainty of knowledge); (c) stance toward addressee (e.g., degree of social solidarity); and (d) discourse organization (e.g., marking the boundaries of reported speech).

Laurie Schick (Applied Linguistics 2005)

Dissertation: "On Becoming a ‘Better Person’: Language Socialization From Modality to Morality in Middle School Dance Classes"

This project investigates how modal language (i.e., language which gives directions, makes judgments, expresses emotions and opinions, and formulates hypotheses and plans) can be used to socialize moral reasoning and conduct among older children and adolescents. The dissertation investigates the following interrelated hypotheses: (a) that moral reasoning and behavior need to be understood as dependent upon other broader social and cognitive skills such as social planning and abstract reasoning; (b) that these skills can be promoted through language socialization practices, and (c) that this kind of socialization can and does take place much later in a child's development than has been assumed heretofore.

Laurie's field site is a Los Angeles area public middle school. She has collected data there using three basic methods: (1) the videotaping of naturally-occurring interactions among teachers and students engaged in dance lessons (over 120 hours including three dance classes and one drama class); (2) the taking of field notes based on participant-observation during formal class time and during informal conversations taking place between class and during recess and lunch periods (over a period of three semesters); and (3) the collection of artifacts (generally in the form of photocopies and photographs) such as lesson plans, student journal entries, performance programs, and student art projects. Analysis of the data used linguistic, discourse, and ethnographic methods.