Conversation analysis (CA) can be a useful tool for research when investigating toddlers' social interactions, because it can showcase their capabilities and agency through in-depth analysis of their verbal and non-verbal actions. This article argues that by using CA to analyse the details of toddler conversations within the peer group, we can not…

This article discusses how children in New Zealand make meaning in their spontaneous pretend play from kindergarten (four years old) through to their first year of primary school (five years old). The findings discussed here are taken from a wider project investigating children's storytelling where 12 child participants were video recorded during…

A large body of research has shown that verbal phrases such as "move the pen" are better remembered when they are physically enacted than when the same phrases are studied under standard verbal learning instructions (e.g., Engelkamp & Krumnacker, 1980). More recently, a non-literal enactment effect was discovered in which verbal material that was…

This paper studies meaning as a construct of human interaction. Basic to this approach is the concept of the act of communication, which may be realized verbally or non-verbally. In order to integrate non-verbal behaviors into descriptions of discourse and interaction, a series of functional, not anatomic, categories is needed. For the kinesic…

Nonverbal phenomena associated with communication can take a variety of forms: kinesic behavior, physical characteristics, touching behavior, paralanguage, proxemics, artifacts, or environmental factors. To be regarded as communication, nonverbal behavior should be intentional and goal-directed, but it need not involve a conscious choice by the…

Conversations between adult students of English as a second language were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in order to establish principles of extralinguistic conversational repair technique among second language learners. A variety of gestural and kinesic features were discovered; these are described in detail and their use is contextualized…

Linguistic research has paid little attention to "fillers." These so-called "hesitation forms" can be classified as being either "buffers" or "back channel elicitors," the former being self-primers, and the latter being other-directed. These forms are difficult to distinguish without access to kinesic and…

Details of conversational behavior can often not be interpreted until the social interaction, including the rights and obligations of the participants, their intent, the topic, etc., has been defined. This paper presents a model of conversation in which the conversational image a person presents in a given conversational situation is a function of…

This is a report on a proposed research project on the interaction processes (verbal, non-verbal, and kinesic) present in a seminar situation, with a view towards positing a model of interaction in this type of situation. The seminar was chosen as a setting because it provides a structured context with a variety of discursive acts, favoring the…