This article explores the interactional history of talk about a topic that emerges as the patient's key problem over a series of psychotherapy sessions. Drawing on a complete series of 25 video-recordings of a psychodynamic psychotherapy spanning over six months, we analyze how common ground between therapist and patient concerning the patient's aging process develops. The study shows how common ground emerges step by step, yet remains largely opaque at various points in the interaction. An initial ack of common ground becomes evident in the way the therapist responds to patient's uptake of prior therapeutic interventions and encourages him to self-explore different facets of his aging process. Therapeutic change and increasing agreement over the interactional history are closely related to the gradual accumulation of common ground concerning what is ultimately jointly regarded as the patient's core problem. Data are in German.
In theater rehearsals, participants cooperate in order to create a stable performance. We report on changes in the choice of expressions that members of a theater crew use for referring to an embodied figure across 44 rehearsals of a single scene in which the figure occurs. We show how lexical changes over the interactional history are tied both to the emergence of common ground and to reconceptualizations of the referent. Participants change expressions referring to the same referent in order to develop the play, leading to changes in the referent itself, which is implemented by the embodied practices of the actors. The referential trajectory thus reflects the creative nature of the participants' activity in this setting. We use multimodal conversation analysis to show how professionals use verbal and embodied resources for constructing and understanding referential expressions tailored to the relevancies of their work. Data are in German.
Professional vision refers to the ways in which professionals interact to shape visual phenomena into task-relevant objects. This article uses longitudinal conversation analysis to study the development of a UN military observer team's professional vision during a one-day patrolling exercise. The analysis builds on a collection of six consecutive episodes that start with a first noticing of unexpected military activity. It focuses on turn design, sequential organization of action, and embodied conduct. It tracks changes in the team's interaction through their shared interactional history and shows how they draw on their joint interactional history to accomplish the task. The findings reveal changes in the team's interaction, suggesting how the team members begin to "bed into" their respective roles and responsibilities to establish joint seeing and complete the task. The video data have been recorded in a UN military observer course. The language is English as a lingua franca.
In this study, we focus on the recurrent action of transmitting radio messages to examine change in military observer trainees' joint coordination of actions during a patrolling exercise. We analyze radio communication of one team, including a trainee with no prior experience in radio use. The analysis shows how the change in the participants' orientation to the ongoing task and the competence of the novice trainee are manifested in their joint coordination of actions. Furthermore, the episodes reveal the following organization of activity: (a) new practices are demonstrated on the first occasion; (b) after that, one is expected to be able to repeat them, (c) unless trouble is flagged. The study illustrates how a micro-longitudinal approach in ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) can shed light on instructed actions in task-based pedagogical activities and the subtleties of collaborative work, of which we know little. Data are in English as lingua franca.
Conversation analysis has traditionally focused on the development of interaction order within sequences of social interaction. Expanding this temporal perspective, this special issue explores interactional histories that unfold across multiple interactional events, ranging from several minutes to several years. This introduction presents a theoretical framework for understanding interactional histories, locating them within the temporality of social interaction. It reviews the state of the art and discusses how interactional histories contribute to changes in interactional practices and the emergence of routines and social relationships. It outlines how interactional histories play a role in the achievement of intersubjectivity, in recipient design, and in practices of reference and action formation. It argues that specific methodological requirements for data sampling and analysis must be met when studying interactional histories. Finally, it reflects on how interactional histories contribute to the emergence of social order in interaction and enhance our understanding of members' competencies.
