October 11, Ph.D. Colloquia, Dr. Danielle Pillet-Shore
Dr. Danielle Pillet-Shore, Depersonalizing trouble in (parent-teacher) interaction: On “routinizing” and other methods
Abstract
This talk aims to advance our understanding of (institutional) interaction by showing when and how it can be advantageous for speakers to treat addressed recipients as non-unique. Examining how teachers talk about children-as-students during parent–teacher conferences, this investigation illuminates several specific interactional methods that teachers use to depersonalize the focal student’s trouble, delineating as among these the novel practice of ‘routinizing’—citing first-hand experience with other similar cases. Analysis demonstrates how teachers use routinizing to enact their expertise, both responsively as a vehicle for attenuating and credentialing their advice-giving to parents/caregivers, and proactively to pre-empt parent/caregiver resistance to their student assessments/evaluations. This research reveals how routinizing licenses teachers’ authority vis-à-vis the focal student’s trouble by making salient the epistemic basis for their claims. This talk concludes by considering how speakers use this practice in other contexts, showing the social action of routinizing to enable people to manage interactional troubles and enact expertise in both institutional interaction and casual conversation.
Bio:
Danielle Pillet-Shore (PhD, University of California at Los Angeles) is a conversation analyst and Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire (USA). She examines video-recorded naturally occurring interactions between people coming together to socialize and/or work, focusing on how people create and maintain their social and professional relationships. She is currently investigating how both previously acquainted and unacquainted parties open their face-to-face interactions across a wide variety of settings, as well as how primary school teachers and their students’ parents interact during parent–teacher conferences. Dr. Pillet-Shore guest edited Opening and maintaining face-to-face interaction (special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2018), and Talking to and about children (special issue of Research on Children and Social Interaction, 2023, with Kaoru Hayano). She teaches courses on language and social interaction, conversation analysis, and institutional interaction (including in emergency service, legal, medical, family-school, and political contexts).
Dr. Danielle Pillet-Shore, Depersonalizing trouble in (parent-teacher) interaction: On “routinizing” and other methods
Abstract
This talk aims to advance our understanding of (institutional) interaction by showing when and how it can be advantageous for speakers to treat addressed recipients as non-unique. Examining how teachers talk about children-as-students during parent–teacher conferences, this investigation illuminates several specific interactional methods that teachers use to depersonalize the focal student’s trouble, delineating as among these the novel practice of ‘routinizing’—citing first-hand experience with other similar cases. Analysis demonstrates how teachers use routinizing to enact their expertise, both responsively as a vehicle for attenuating and credentialing their advice-giving to parents/caregivers, and proactively to pre-empt parent/caregiver resistance to their student assessments/evaluations. This research reveals how routinizing licenses teachers’ authority vis-à-vis the focal student’s trouble by making salient the epistemic basis for their claims. This talk concludes by considering how speakers use this practice in other contexts, showing the social action of routinizing to enable people to manage interactional troubles and enact expertise in both institutional interaction and casual conversation.
Bio:
Danielle Pillet-Shore (PhD, University of California at Los Angeles) is a conversation analyst and Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire (USA). She examines video-recorded naturally occurring interactions between people coming together to socialize and/or work, focusing on how people create and maintain their social and professional relationships. She is currently investigating how both previously acquainted and unacquainted parties open their face-to-face interactions across a wide variety of settings, as well as how primary school teachers and their students’ parents interact during parent–teacher conferences. Dr. Pillet-Shore guest edited Opening and maintaining face-to-face interaction (special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2018), and Talking to and about children (special issue of Research on Children and Social Interaction, 2023, with Kaoru Hayano). She teaches courses on language and social interaction, conversation analysis, and institutional interaction (including in emergency service, legal, medical, family-school, and political contexts).