French Language and Social Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics ed. by Fabienne H. G. Chevalier (review)

In this special issue, researchers from across Europe and from Canada are brought together to explore current issues in Conversation Analysis (CA). The volume positions itself as a contribution to the wider examination of CA, discussing in English examples from French, and thereby distinguishing itself from the majority of CA research into French. Several contributors refer to the paucity of analyses in English of French-language data, and the seven chapters approach CA from different perspectives. Turn-taking in its various guises is an inevitable theme that runs through most of this volume, although the contributions by Lorenza Mondada and Geneviève Maheux-Pelletier are notable exceptions. The issue opens with a comprehensive Introduction to CA, with a particularly broad bibliography, which itself serves as a useful resource. The rest of the volume is characterized by dense chapters considering a variety of different contemporary questions in CA. The corpora presented in the volume are helpful for those less familiar with the practice of analysing ordinary conversations from different scenarios. Mondada analyses the sequential relationship between speech and game actions, focusing in particular on the use of imperatives in a corpus of players’ conversations during online football video games. By a close reading of the speech of two players, set against a recording of their on-screen activity, Mondada explores the questions of legitimacy, blame, and responsibility as coloured by the use of imperatives and turn-taking. Simona Pekarek Doehler, Elwys de Stefani, and Anne-Sylvie Horlacher examine right- and left-dislocation (that is, where the subject is repeated in the form of a pronoun at either the start or end of a clause) in the closing of sequences and topics in speech, and find that there is a complementary distribution of both phenomena in same-turn and next-turn closing initiations. The following chapter, by the volume’s editor, explores left-dislocation and argues that not only has this the potential to fulfil multiple functions, but also that analysis of a single case permits an in-depth analysis of the symbiosis between syntactic and lexical resources in turn-taking. In their contribution, Marc Relieu and Julien Morel highlight how talk when giving directions (either face to face or by telephone) places significance on mobility from the perspective of either or both parties. Exchange is also discussed by Mathias Broth in the relationship between actors and their audience, and he posits that the audience co-ordinate their vocal noise (and in particular laughter) with the actors’ lines. This turn-taking here does not conform to the trends observed in ordinary conversation, but does follow patterns, even in terms of volume, and the ending of noise. In the only contribution that explicitly takes CA beyond France, Maheux-Pelletier explores the role played by repair in the negotiation of identity in conversations between francophone Canadians. Esther González-Martínez closes the volume with a discussion of the initial phases of judicial social investigation interviews at the Paris Courthouse, suggesting a distinct pattern in this particular kind of conversation. Collectively, this volume gathers together a cross-section of French-language CA with extensive exemplification that is of interest to those working in Discourse Analysis, and especially interactional sociolinguistics.