June 2, 2009

The 53rd Meeting of Mind and Activity



Saturday, June 20, 2009

15:00 - 19:00
Honkan (Main building)
Room 1555
Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo

Program

We plan to have three presentations.

1. (15:00 - 16:00) Eric Hauser (The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo)
gHow to be a Japanese female engineering student in an English discussionh

In this presentation, I will look at how speakers of English as a foreign language, with rather limited linguistic resources in English, make sophisticated use of membership categories such as Japanese mother, Japanese husband, and professional. The participants are four Japanese university students who are engaged in a discussion in English as an assignment in an English as a foreign language class. They use these categories to formulate a choice they face, between the pursuit of a career and raising a family. In the process, they also accomplish particular identity work, making relevant for the discussion that they are Japanese, that they are women, and that they are engineering students.

2. (16:00 - 17:30) Domenic Berducci (Toyama Prefectural University, Toyama)
gTURNS AT ?h

As is well known, in CA, turns were originally discovered as turns as TALK. I have been working with infant/caregiver data and the question has emerged whether what they are doing (according to CA research) is turns at all, maybe we can say they are doing turns at conduct. Some crucial turn elements are missing, eg TCUs (because infants cannot talk) and possibly TRPs, again because of the non-linguistic factor. Are these elements needed for the existence of turns or turns at talk?

I will show various fragments of infants and caregivers employing different types of conduct: spitting up, crying, on the part of the infant, and acting as proxy on the part of the caregiver, and thru our data session, hope to (help to ) answer whether we, as CA analysts, can legitimatley call what the infants and caregivers are doing, turns.

3. (17:30 - 19:00) Augustin Lefebvre (University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle)
gThe accomplishment of a ewazaf between skilled practitioners and beginners and the waza as resource to organize interaction in aikido practice.h

From the observation and the transcription of aikido practice video recordings, I will examine the use of verbal and embodied resources in the co-accomplishment of a waza between a skilled practitioner and a beginner. If we consider that the beginner is learning something at this moment it is worth to consider the way he is participating to the production of what he is learning (Nishizaka 2006). Then I will turn to examine the problems that occur to a practitioner who, although he already knows the pattern of the waza he is trying to accomplish, fails to make it efficient on the body of his partner. Finally, I will try to discuss the function of waza as resources in the organization of interaction between bodies.



If anybody is interested in bringing their own data, analyses, observations, arguments, or whatever, to a next meeting to discuss together, please contact Aug Nishizaka at augnish(a)soc.meijigakuin.ac.jp.