Eva Duran Eppler [e-mail] Roehampton University, London

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Eva Duran Epplere.eppler_at_roehampton.ac.ukRoeham
pton University, London

• Four women, two codes, and
• one (crowded) floor
• The joint construction of a
• bilingual collaborative floor

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Gender and Spoken Interactionin honour of
Jennifer Coatesedited by Eva Eppler Pia Pichler
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Aim

• This paper aims to establish if
• four Austrian Jewish émigrés in London index
  their ethnic and gendered identities on a
  bilingual collaborative floor.
• If they do, it will illustrate how they do it.

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Outline

• Introduction
• The data
• Gendered and ethnic interactional styles
  bilingual code-switching
• Four women, two codes and one crowded floor
• Conclusion
• References

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Indexicality

• Language users tend to associate particular
  linguistic forms with specific kinds of speakers
  or contexts of speaking (a basic assumption of
  variationist sociolinguistics).
• Meaning derived in this way from contiguity or
  association is known in the semiotics of C. S.
  Peirce (1960) as indexicality.

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Indexicality Silverstein (2003)

• First-order indexicality is the semiotic work of
  forming associations between a linguistic
  variable and a category of speakers.
• First order indexicality renders a linguistics
  feature available for association with
  stereotypes associated with the category, and
  thus enables it to become a second order index.

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Indexicality Silverstein (2003)

• Second-order indexicality brings ideology
• to bear on the relationship noticed.
• Second-order indexicality involves the
  politically and/or morally loaded cultural
  construal of the first-order indexical
  association with an intentional content or
  meaning.
• At this second level, actors rationalize,
  explain, and thus evitably
• naturalize and ideologize the sociolinguistic
  associations
• (indexical relations) they have registered at the
  first order.

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For this paperFirst order indexicality is
important

• because I aim to show
• which conversational strategies that have often
  been associated with ethnic (Jewish) and gendered
  (female) interactional styles are being used by
  the speakers,
• which ones are not,
• and why.

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I will argue that .

• code-switching facilitates the construction of
  a collaborative floor, because the use of the
  other code for specific functions is less
  likely to be constructed as seizing the floor and
  because a change in language requires speakers to
  pay even closer attention to each other at all
  linguistics levels than in monolingual mode.

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The data

• This paper is based on a corpus of
• German/English bilingual interaction
• drawn from a community of Austrian Jews,
• refugees from the Holocaust,
• living in London, UK.

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Sampling Data Collection

• contact letter was sent to a random sample (50)
  of Austrian Jewish refugees in London
• The complete data set consist of approximately
  forty hours of audio recordings
• slightly over fifteen of which are transcribed in
  the LIDES format

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The data this paper is based on

• were extracted from
• slightly over eight hours (93,235 words) of group
  recordings,
• using participant observation during card game
  and gossip sessions,
• involving the central participant DOR, three of
  her friends from the refugee generation (TRU, MEL
  and LIL) and the researcher

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Emigranto

• German/English bilingual mode of interaction
• Linguistically Emigranto is characterised by
  heavy intra-sentential code-switching, frequent
  changes in code at speaker turn boundaries, and
  the alternating use of two or more codes or
  languages within one conversational episode.

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Features of discourse style

• that have been preferably associated with female
  and Jewish ways of speaking
• (You might want to note them down,
• well need them later for a little exercise.)

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Feminine interactional style

• facilitative
• supportive
• conciliatory
• person / process orientated and
• collaborative
• Holmes (2006 6)

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Collaborative floor (Edelsky 1993)

• is an interactional structure which is jointly
  accomplished by all speakers involved in the
  conversation
• The classic components of the collaborative floor
  are short turns, jointly constructed ideas and
  utterances, overlapping speech, repetition,
  joking and teasing.

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Features of feminine interactional styles

• which are said to contribute to the
  cooperative nature of informal talk among
  female friends include the components of a
  collaborative floor listed above,
• latching (turn transition without pause) and
• self- and other-completions (following incomplete
  utterances and false starts)

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Features of Jewish interactional styles

• latching,
• cooperative overlap and
• participatory listenership
• persistence, Tannen (1981) /
• sustained disagreement Schiffrin (1984)
• Joking and teasing (Blum-Kulka 1997)

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Summary methodology

• I use
• a fine-grained micro-analysis to the data, and
• supplement it with tools developed by
  interactional sociolinguistic work on bilingual
  code-switching.

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New Caterer ExampleArgument Development
New v cook _at_ AJR Day Centre
Old caterer Israeli ?
New caterer v Czech
Old caterer Czech Israeli v
New caterer English v
Refugee or émigré?
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Extract 1

• 1. MEL die X hat mir heute gesagt, dass ein new
  cook jetzt in Cleve Rd is(t).
• tra www told me today, that there is a new
  cook in Cleve Road now.
• 2. DOR a new caterer .
• 3. TRU I dont know about new cook - . a new
  caterer .
• 4. MEL oh I see a new caterer ,, I see .
• 5. TRU the Israeli gave it / gave it ...
• 6. LIL he is not any more the Israeli ?
• 7. TRU no no it (i)s a new caterer .
• 8. DOR is(t) ein / ein Tscheche . is a
  Czech
• 9. TRU what -? this new one is a Czech ?
• 10. DOR nein is(t) English glaub(e) ich
  I think I do-'nt know //
• tra ich weiss es nicht .

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• 11. TRU wie kommst auf Czech ? why do you
  think hes Czech?
• 13. DOR nein der Israeli war Czech . no,
  the Israeli was Czech.
• 14. TRU was he ?
• 15. TRU I thought he was an Israeli .
• 16. DOR nein er war Czech . no he was
  Czech.
• 17. TRU how can he be an Israeli , when he is a
  Czech ?
• Activities laughter
• 18. DOR er ist gefahren von der Tchoslowakei
  nach Israel .
• tra he travelled from Czechoslovakia to
  Israel
• 19. TRU oh I see ,, der !! he or his
  parents ?
• 20. DOR ! das hab(e) ich ihn nicht gefragt .
• tra that I didnt ask him
• 21. TRU why did-'nt you - .
• Activities laughter File Jen1, lines 1335-1367

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The search for the right word

• Extract 2 Brainwave
• 1. TRU etwas tra something/sort of a
  whats it called ?
• 2. DOR a brainwave .
• 3. TRU , ja in the last minute . File
  Jen1, lines 2634-2636
•  

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Extract 3 Charwoman

• 1. LIL my charwoman //.
• Comment LIL addresses EVA
• 2. LIL you know what a charwoman is ?
• 3. LIL a cleaner /.
• 4. TRU cleaner charwoman is(t) beides
  Englisch both are English ...
• 5. LIL oh yes .
• Activities laughter
• 6. LIL die Aufwartefrau , wie die Deutschen
  sagen .
• tra charwoman, as the Germans say
• 7. MEL Bedienerin charwoman, Austrian
  German
• 8. LIL , comes Tuesdays and Fridays . File
  Jen1, lines 334-42

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Extract 4 Zusammenhang Connection

• 1. EVA seitdem versuche ich Spezialisten zu
  fragen, ob es da irgendeine ...
• tra since then I have been trying to ask
  specialist whether there is a
• 2. DOR zusammenhang
• tra connection
• 3. EVA , zusammenhang gibt. File IBron,
  lines 560-63

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Extract 5 dead, stationary or stuck?

• 1. LIL the window is down about that much.
• Action gesture indicating how wide the window
  was open
• 2. LIL , / about that much and it can't be
  moved up or down.
• 3. LIL its just dead .
• 4. MEL stationary .
• 5. EVA stuck .
• 6. LIL its just stuck .
• Jen1.cha, lines 111-119

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Extract 6 The car crash

• 1. LIL he took the number and his name and since
  /.
• 2. XXX the lorry didn't /.
• 3. MEL oh Dorit told gt me /.
• 4. DOR ich lt hab(e) geglaubt the
  lorry is gt xxx .
• tra I thought the lorry is
• 5. LIL no lt the lorry didnt do /.
• 6. DOR der wind hat (e)s aufgeblasen und the
  lorry hat /.
• tra the wind has blown it open and the
  lorry has
• 7. LIL but the lorry didnt /.
• 8. MEL lock the door auf open ?
• 9. MEL das haben wir gedacht ,, weisst ?
• tra thats what we thought,, you know?
• 10. LIL and he got out -? .

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• 11. LIL and he was very nice -? .
• 12. LIL and he helped me tie it up -? because
  the door gt didnt close -? .
• 13. MEL gt of course .
• 14. DOR gt na so was oh
  no.
• 15. LIL and the window didnt close -? .
• 16. MEL und / und das andere is(t) auch
  eingequetscht worden ?
• tra and / and the other part has been
  squashed as well?
• 17. LIL well the front looks pretty awful -_ .
• 18. MEL ach Gott oh God.
• 19. LIL , through the impact of gt
  the door - !
• 20. MEL gt ja ja lt .
• 21. LIL the hinges and ...
• 22. MEL na so was -_ oh no .
• 23. LIL , they the hinges are out of
  alignment and / and everything ...
• 24. DOR thats very unfortunate .
• 25. LIL terrible .
• 26. MEL schrecklich awful. File Jen1.cha,
  lines 27-56

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Conclusions

• The analysis of six typical extracts from the
  Emigranto data has shown that the participants in
  the natural conversations combine strategies
  which hitherto have only been shown to index
  either female or Jewish or Austrian/English
  identity to express that they are bilingual,
  Austrian, Jewish women living in London, UK.

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Similarities

• The analysis of the Emigranto data has shown
  that those linguistic features, strategies and
  topics that have been indexed with both
• female and Jewish ways of speaking,
• are prevalent (fast turn-taking, latching,
  cooperative overlap, participatory listenership,
  stories on personal topics on emotional
  experiences).

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Differences

• Where female and (Eastern European) Jewish
  conversational styles diverge, the discourse
  patterns that index gendered meaning prevail
• disagreement is not sustained and the talk is
  conciliatory, facilitative, supportive,
  egalitarian and cooperative. The normative,
  appropriate and unmarked means of signalling
  female identity (cf. Holmes 2006 7), win out
  over culturally normative components of Jewish
  interactional style (Schiffrin 1984).

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Differences

• Speech rate
• ? where Eastern European Jewish and Viennese
  discourse patterns diverge, the conversational
  styles that index Austrian identity seem to
  prevail in the speech of the four Ashkenazi
  Jewish women.

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Conclusion interactional styles

• The way of speaking outlined in this paper is
  thus
• most fully realised in interaction among the
• Austrian Jewish women living in London
• (as opposed to in interaction with people who
  typically draw on other strategies)
• First, they only code-switch in in-groups
  situations.
• Second, unlike other Eastern European Jews, they
  speak slowly.
• Third, where ethnic and gendered ways of speaking
  clash, the style that has been indexed with
  female identity prevails.

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Conclusions Bilingual code-switching

• This study adds to our knowledge of gendered and
  ethnic interactional styles
• ...that the bilingual use of linguistics features
  that are indexed with them can facilitate the
  construction of a collaborative floor.

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Conclusions Bilingual code-switching

• bilingual code-switching can become just
• another building block in the construction of
• an egalitarian collaborative floor because
• overlapping utterances are not in direct
  competition with the main turn
• the joint construction of bilingual utterances
  and sequences requires speakers to pay even
  closer attention to each other at all linguistics
  levels than the monolingual production of a
  collaborative floor

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References

• Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1997. Dinner Talk. Cultural
  Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in
  Family Discourse. Mahwah, New Jersey Lawrence
  Erlbaum.
• Edelsky, Carole. 1993. Whos got the floor? In
  Deborah Tannen (ed.) Gender and Conversational
  Interaction. Oxford Oxford University Press.
  189-230.
• Eppler, Eva. 2003. German/English LIDES Database.
  Talkbank lthttp//talkbank.org/data/LIDES/Eppler.zi
  pgt (accessed 08/07/09).
• Holmes, Janet. 2006. Gendered Talk at work.
  Constructing Gender Identity through Workplace
  Discourse. Oxford Blackwell.
• Pichler, Pia Eva Eppler (eds.) (2009) Gender
  and Spoken Interaction. Houndsmill, Basingstoke
  Palgrave Macmillan.
• Schiffrin, Deborah. 1984. Jewish argument as
  sociability. Language in Society 13 311- 35.
• Tannen, Deborah. 1981. New York Jewish
  Conversational Style. International Journal of
  the Sociology of Language 30 133-48.
• Tannen, Deborah (ed.) 1993. Gender and
  Conversational Interaction. Oxford Oxford
  University Press.
• Tannen, Deborah. 1994. Gender and Discourse.
  Oxford Oxford University Press.
• Tannen, Deborah. 2005. Conversational style.
  Analysing Talk among Friends. Oxford Oxford
  University Press.

37
Gender and Spoken Interactionin honour of
Jennifer Coatesedited by Eva Eppler Pia Pichler
38
Dankeschön!

• Thanks for the invitation your attention
• Diolch yn fawr iawn Bangor!