Mai Frick | University of Oulu (original) (raw)
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Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture
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Papers by Mai Frick
Social Semiotics, 2013
Drawing on a database of 26 hours of video-recorded Finnish conversations from three different se... more Drawing on a database of 26 hours of video-recorded Finnish conversations from three different settings everyday conversations among family and friends, instrumental lessons and church workplace meetings we consider the ways in which singing can be used as an interactional resource to enact the three basic communicative motives of humans: requesting, informing, and sharing (see Tomasello 2008). Singing has the potential to initiate joint activities, which allows the participants to share their emotional stances. The usage of singing is, however, more limited in requesting or informing – a disadvantage which people, especially in musical settings, need to deal with. There are, nevertheless, situations where the possibility to choose to perform such actions through singing can help maintain mutual solidarity between participants.We argue that people’s distinct ways of interpreting spoken and sung utterances can be best understood from the perspective of participants’ orientations to agency and accountability.
Turns in interaction that initiate closure of expanded sequences are often summaries, accounts an... more Turns in interaction that initiate closure of expanded sequences are often summaries, accounts and assessments of the preceding talk. Sometimes these turns are produced by means that can be described as heteroglossic. This paper investigates singing and codeswitching in sequence closures, as well as other accompanying contextualisation cues such as prosodic changes and gestures. The heteroglossic character of these contextualised turns is a means for the speakers to distance themselves from the actions of their turns, and from the ongoing sequential activities. For the recipients this gives a possibility to make interpretations of non-seriousness. The sequences can then be closed with joint affiliative action such as laughter. In cases where the sequences have been expanded because of problems in interaction, singing and codeswitching relieve the tension between participants. On occasion, they also give rise to new topics. This paper is written in a conversation analytic framework, on data collected from everyday faceto-face interaction among Finns living in Estonia.
Social Semiotics, 2013
Drawing on a database of 26 hours of video-recorded Finnish conversations from three different se... more Drawing on a database of 26 hours of video-recorded Finnish conversations from three different settings everyday conversations among family and friends, instrumental lessons and church workplace meetings we consider the ways in which singing can be used as an interactional resource to enact the three basic communicative motives of humans: requesting, informing, and sharing (see Tomasello 2008). Singing has the potential to initiate joint activities, which allows the participants to share their emotional stances. The usage of singing is, however, more limited in requesting or informing – a disadvantage which people, especially in musical settings, need to deal with. There are, nevertheless, situations where the possibility to choose to perform such actions through singing can help maintain mutual solidarity between participants.We argue that people’s distinct ways of interpreting spoken and sung utterances can be best understood from the perspective of participants’ orientations to agency and accountability.
Turns in interaction that initiate closure of expanded sequences are often summaries, accounts an... more Turns in interaction that initiate closure of expanded sequences are often summaries, accounts and assessments of the preceding talk. Sometimes these turns are produced by means that can be described as heteroglossic. This paper investigates singing and codeswitching in sequence closures, as well as other accompanying contextualisation cues such as prosodic changes and gestures. The heteroglossic character of these contextualised turns is a means for the speakers to distance themselves from the actions of their turns, and from the ongoing sequential activities. For the recipients this gives a possibility to make interpretations of non-seriousness. The sequences can then be closed with joint affiliative action such as laughter. In cases where the sequences have been expanded because of problems in interaction, singing and codeswitching relieve the tension between participants. On occasion, they also give rise to new topics. This paper is written in a conversation analytic framework, on data collected from everyday faceto-face interaction among Finns living in Estonia.