Abstract
When arriving to a social encounter, how and when can a person show how s/he is doing/feeling? This article answers this question, examining personal state sequences in copresent openings of casual (residential) and institutional (parent-teacher) encounters. Describing a regular way participants constitute – and move to expand – these sequences, this research shows how arrivers display a non-neutral (e.g., negative, humorous, positive) personal state by both (i) deploying interactionally-timed stance-marking embodiments that enact a non-neutral state, and (ii) invoking a selected previous activity/experience positioned as precipitating that non-neutral state. Data demonstrate that arrivers time their non-neutral personal state displays calibrated to their understanding of their relationship with coparticipants. Analysis reveals that arrivers use this action to proffer a first-hand experience as a self-attentive first topic that works as a bid for empathy, inviting recipients to collaborate in expanding the personal state sequence and thereby co-create an empathic moment. Data in American English.
Department
Communication, Sociology, Anthropology, Education
Publication Date
9-2018
Journal Title
Research on Language and Social Interaction
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Pillet-Shore, Danielle (2018). Arriving: Expanding the personal state sequence. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(3), special issue “Opening and maintaining face-to-face interaction” (Pillet-Shore, ed.), available online at: www.tandfonline.com/hrls
Included in
Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, Anthropology Commons, Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons
Comments
This is an Author’s Original Manuscript/Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Research on Language and Social Interaction in 2018, available online: www.tandfonline.com/hrls