The current special issue is dedicated to studies exploring social interaction in second language educational environments that feature technology. In this introduction article, we contextualize the empirical studies included here with respect to the changing role of technology in education and situate them in the research tradition of multimodal…

The Swedish gender-neutral pronoun (GNP) "hen" has been in popular use since its (re)introduction to the public in 2012. Earlier research, analysing newspapers, academic papers and blogs, shows two uses of "hen": when gender is unknown and when gender is irrelevant. However, there is a lack of studies of verbal, situated, uses…

While existing research into L2 classroom discourse has highlighted how knowledge and knowledge positions are negotiated, no attention seems to have been paid to what might be called "conceptual epistemic domains." Drawing on 22 hours of video-recorded data from Iranian EFL classrooms, our conversation analytic study illustrates how…

This study shows how learner initiatives are taken during classroom discussions where the teacher seeks to make room for subjectification. Using Conversation Analysis, subjectification can be observed when students take the freedom to express themselves as subjects through learner initiatives. Drawing on data from classroom discussions in language…

Preliminaries are prefatory turns and sequences that are used to alert co-participants to the incipient social actions in talk-in-interaction. Using multimodal conversation analysis, this study examines the videorecordings of paired role play interactions in an L2 interactional competence (L2IC) assessment setting. We describe how the participants…

This study examined interactional sequences in which students initiated storytelling in classroom interactions. The data consisted of 13 stories initiated by students in intermediate and advanced Persian language classes at two North American Universities. The study drew on conversation analysis in combination with membership categorization…

Adopting the methods of multimodal conversation analysis, this study demonstrates that adult second language (L2) users with emergent literacy formulate requests as 'complex multimodal Gestalts' consisting prototypically of deictic or depictive gestures combined with gaze, situationally relevant material, and vocal or linguistic resources. The…

Classroom discourse is an interdisciplinary area of study that contributes to multiple domains of knowledge, including pedagogy, teacher training, second language acquisition, and communities of practice, to name a few. As classroom discourse continues to grow and evolve, so too have the approaches used by scholars to investigate the discourse in…

Even though small talk has been investigated in a variety of business contexts and service encounters, it is understudied in instructional settings. This paper explores the occurrence of small talk in a university chemistry lab between a Chinese international teaching assistant (ITA) and American students. Drawing on naturally occurring…

Based on interaction recorded in EFL classrooms, this study uses Conversation Analysis to document the post-first deployment of an absurd candidate formulation (ACF) to pursue recipient response at points of interactional delay. ACFs are a form of correction-invitation device in which the question initiator proffers a candidate response that is…

The contemporary literature regarding dialogic classroom interaction has primarily focused on the meaning-making attributes of dialogue while acknowledging but otherwise providing less emphasis to the social dimensions of the learning community and the dialogic resources that students bring to the classroom. As a result, this paper explores the…

Teachers' interactional practices shape children's displays of knowledge. Teachers often rely on direct interactional devices, such as questions, to call for knowledge displays from children. However, case examples suggest that interactional strategies that downgrade teachers' expert status, such as 'I wonder…' formulations may enhance child…

This paper investigates the use of laughter and smiling to manage (dis)affiliation during two types of disturbances in the interactional unfolding of classrooms: delayed and disaligning responses. The analysis reveals that the sequential position and embodied turn design are integral to understanding the (dis)affiliative work laughter and smiling…

As educators learn about new tools to utilise in their classrooms, there can be questions and ambiguity that accompany the new information; yet they are not always given time or support to address their questions. Acknowledging and embracing the uncertainties that teachers inevitably face when learning about new instructional approaches can help…

Conversation analysis (CA) has been used for interventionist purposes in different fields, such as medicine, mediation services, and speech and language therapy, but it has yet to be fully utilised in teacher education. In this report, I describe how CA is used in teacher supervision to intervene with the development of a student-teacher (ST) in a…