In this article, we propose a structure of threaded learning conversations taking place in virtual learning communities. This new structure aims at facilitating the emergence of learning conversations in these learning communities. These threaded conversations take place in a forum-type tool that uses a tree data structure composed of threads to organize group communication. We identify two sit...

The goal of the paper is to discuss how situation-bound utterances (Kecskes, 1997, 2000, 2003) relate to pragmemes (Mey, 2001) that refer to generalized pragmatic acts. In pragmatic interpretation the cognitivephilosophical line of research appears to put more emphasis on the proposition expressed (e.g. Horn, 2005; Levinson, 2000) while the socio-cultural interactional line (e.g. Verschueren, 1...

Word finding difficulties in children are typically characterized by search behaviours such as silence, circumlocution, repetition, and empty words. Yet, how children's word searches are constructed (including gesture, gaze, and prosody) and the actions accomplished during interaction have not yet been researched. In this study, 8-year-old Ciara is interacting with her teacher in the classroom....

This study examined whether social class moderated the relationship between empowering and disempowering processes and psychological empowerment (PE) in a sample of individuals from five community organizing initiatives (N5 490). Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the relationship between community participation (CP) and alienation on the intrapersonal and interactional componen...

Although repetition of prosody plays a significant role in children’s language development, few studies have investigated the interactional role of children’s use of boundary tones in talk-in-interaction. This study investigates the interaction between a two year old Korean child and her caretakers to describe the child’s ability to participate in building adjacency pair sequences using boundar...

The complexities of intimate partner abuse and violence have been studied from a range of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives. It is argued here that symbolic interactionist analyses offer specific and powerful insights into this particular interactional domain. This article is based on data generated by a topical life-history case study of a well-educated, middle-class, mi...

The present article proposes an interactional model of schizophrenic disorders in which three parameters of stressors (e.g. stressor category, stressor content, stressor descriptors) interact with four parameters of social networks/supports (e.g. structure, interactional properties, qualitative properties, functional indices) to produce a stress state characterized by positions along three orth...