Liminality in Language Use: Some Thoughts on Interactional Analysis from a Dialogical Perspective

Abstract

This essay traces my engagement with Michèle Grossen's ideas of a dialogical perspective on interaction analysis (Grossen Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 1-22, 2009) and highlights a process account of self in interaction. Firstly I draw on Turner's concept of liminality with respect to the transformative, temporal significance in interaction. Secondly I explored further the conversation analytic concepts such as formulation and reformulation as a viable analytical tool for a dialogical perspective. Lastly, I addressed the issue of interaction in institutional settings, in particular with interactional asymmetries of interaction, whilst relativising the I-position dialogical perspective. I explore insights from social anthropology as well as revisiting conversation analysis and discursive psychology, concluding that a promising direction would be sought through a cross-fertilisation between dialogism and other sibling perspectives concerning language use, communication, social action and discourse- and narrative-based analyses.

Positioning Microanalysis: Studying the Self Through the Exploration of Dialogical Processes

“…Thus, we have micro and macro descriptions, but we still have not grasped the genetic movement of the emergence of self positions and cycles over time (see Marukami, 2010). Since we still lack a comprehensive theory about the genesis of positions and their flux over time, a whole field of research lies ahead.…”

Change in Psychotherapy: A Dialogical Analysis Single-Case Study of a Patient with Bulimia Nervosa

“…The analysis was carried out in order to identify vocabulary which was more characteristic of one voice of the individual with respect to another, and to trace out a change in the client’s style of response, from one time to the next (Murakami, 2010; Faccio et al, 2011b, 2012b). The Vospec (specific vocabularies) procedure from the software Spad was applied to the texts, which were pre-treated so as to define the precise usage of particular terms.…”